Some ideas for LUWS 2.0

Share discussions around the Classic Local Unit Website (LUWS).
michaelcox
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Some ideas for LUWS 2.0

#1

Post by michaelcox »

I've been a Ward Admin in 3 different Wards so far (although not currently).

A few ideas:
  1. Look up HT/VT families and report Home Teaching & Visiting Teaching visits
  2. I really like the Map idea discussed on the Forum!
  3. The leadership directory being updated automatically much like the Membership directory is (add an option in MLS to "Publish Calling to Website")
  4. E-mail addresses automatically add to MLS after being added on Website (and vise versa).
  5. If and when the Local Units go High Speed instead of dialup to SLC, having the Photos download in MLS would be nice.
  6. On the same token, allowing individual pictures as well as a family picture.
  7. Allowing members to print up a Photo Directory and/or apprev. directory for their Quorum/Class.
  8. Allowing Leaders to e-mail broadcast everyone without having admin rights to the whole site.
  9. Ability to block or hide some of the Church WIde events from the Calendar. It's great that the Church has open houses in Salt Lake, for example, the week before General Conference, but if we print the Calendar up from the Website it just confuses people.
  10. On the Stake Website, you can submit an event and say what Wards you want it to show up on. When you look at the Stake Calendar, all those events are there. It would be nice to take that a step further. When you submit an event to the Stake and/or Ward calendar, have it ask you what Organization this event is for. Then the YW, for exampe, can print a YW only calendar that shows all Stake & Ward events that are just for the YW. Yet, when you print up a Ward Calendar, it will still show all Ward Events.
  11. When you add an event and you tell it to e-mail it would be nice if you could schedule when the e-mail is sent. So, for example, I submit an event that will take place in 3-months. I never have those e-mail out because people won't remember it in 3-months. But, if I could schedule it to e-mail 7 days before the event, that would be great.
I'm sure I'll think of more. Overall, I really like features and usability of LUWS, but I think this would make it even greater!

Michael H. Cox
russellhltn
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#2

Post by russellhltn »

I'd like to add a vote for expanded use of photos. Simply put, our brains are wired to use faces rather then names on a list. I believe it's far easier to be a good shepherd when you've got faces to go with the names. Some of the wards I've been in, they've done a list like that. Particularly student wards which have a very transient population. It would be nice if MLS was able to support that.

I realize that not all members may be comfortable with this so it needs to be handled sensitively, but since LUWS does it, it seems that at minimum MLS can reflect what's on LUWS.

And yes, there need to be support for individual photos as well. Individual photos are more appropriate for leadership lists.
dshep2020
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#3

Post by dshep2020 »

Along the same lines as point #10 of Michael's post.... Our ward uses a ward resource calendar to track YW/YM calendar items due to the number of items that are needed...ie, BYC, WAPC, quorum/class presidency meetings, lesson assignments, mutual activities, scout campouts etc. If we submitted these to the ward calendar, it tends to make the ward calendar hard to read/print. Plus, we can make YM/YW leaders admins of the resource calendar to approve items specifically for the YW/YM calendar.

What tends to be a problem is when we want events from the YW/YW resource calendar to show up on the ward calendar. ie...Court of Honor, New Beginnings, etc... It means some double entry for our YW/YM leaders. It would be nice if we could either filter the Ward calendar so only the events you want are shown (ie...all YW/YM items are submitted to ward calendar) or allow certain resource calendar items to be propagated up to be visible on the Ward calendar.

DS
seangates
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#4

Post by seangates »

I'd like to be able to approve a block of News/Information/Calendar items all at once. I just got through 31 new calendar items one of our Sisters just submitted. Although I'm totally grateful she entered it all in, I don't want to have to touch each and every submission and comment on it.

Also, I guess I don't understand why I have to add a comment to every submission. I simply pasted "Thx" in the field every time.
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bhofmann
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#5

Post by bhofmann »

seangates wrote:Also, I guess I don't understand why I have to add a comment to every submission. I simply pasted "Thx" in the field every time.
I feel your pain. I usually put a space in the admin comments and it submits.
margiestroble
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Sneaky!!!

#6

Post by margiestroble »

bhofmann wrote:I feel your pain. I usually put a space in the admin comments and it submits.
I usually put OK or something, but if just a single space works, that's even better! Less to type, especially if you have a lot of submissions!
Thanks :)
seangates
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#7

Post by seangates »

bhofmann wrote:I feel your pain. I usually put a space in the admin comments and it submits.
I have to laugh because I had thought of that. Being a web developer I sometimes try to fool the tools to do what I want. I'll do that next time. Thanks!
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greenwoodkl
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News/Information page concern, feedback concern

#8

Post by greenwoodkl »

I have a concern/complaint to pass on about the current design of the News and Information page. I had not noticed this until my technically-challenged grandfather pointed it out to me on his ward website.

On the News and Information page, individual events that exceed the characters allowed for the summary page have a "More" link that allows you to click and read further. However, clicking this link does not allow you to read the other events with the expanded information on the one event. There is a way to have a print-friendly version of each event.

My grandfather would like to see the ability to click "More" and see the additional detail while still seeing the other events. He'd also like to see a way to print the entire news and information section including the full text of any events with "More" links. I imagine some new AJAX/CSS or other solutions could be implemented in LUWS 2.0 to help with this.

Along with this concern, there is no easy way to get meaningful feedback or questions answered by the end users. In my grandfather's case, he only could find contact information for his ward website admin who barely knew how to enter data and could not help with the technical concern. If there was a way to provide feedback on the application itself and be more transparent in feedback options, that would help avoid frustration.

Thoughts?
russellhltn
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#9

Post by russellhltn »

kgthunder wrote:Along with this concern, there is no easy way to get meaningful feedback or questions answered by the end users.
Member's feedback goes to the unit admin(s). It's up to them to escalate it as needed. If a unit admin gives feedback while in admin mode (green screen), it goes to the stake admin. If the Stake admin gives feedback while in admin mode, then it goes to CHQ. (At least that's what I've observed. I could be wrong.) If you want to go direct to CHQ, then I think the email address is MLSSupport at ldschurch dot org.

One thing I've noticed with the news and information is that the summery doesn't close any tags that might have been opened by the announcement. In my case I had created a table to structure some information. It then caused all the announcements below it to become part of that table. (ugh!)
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greenwoodkl
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#10

Post by greenwoodkl »

That feedback system of word-by-mouth or duplicating from each level to another seems so easily broken. Sorta like a gossip or telephone game gone bad. Couldn't there be a decision support system or troubleshooting "tree" drop-down list that helped narrow down the concern or topic of feedback and sent it directly to the appropriate level. Content concerns to unit or stake, application concerns to CHQ? Just some ideas for the LUWS 2.0 release. I'd be curious to see a screenshot or example of your table/tag issue Russ - I haven't added any tables in my news/information, could be a good thing to avoid if it is a bug. :)
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