Reporting HT stats to the Stake?

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
lajackson
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#11

Post by lajackson »

Alan_Brown wrote:Our stake presidency takes an active interest in home teaching. As has been mentioned, MLS does not provide much detail at the stake level for home teaching, so our stake president has requested that each ward send him a home teaching report each month.
If the reports are easily available in MLS at the ward level, I have no problem at all taking the few extra minutes to print them out for the bishop and stake president if they so desire. And, as a matter of personal policy, I will do anything I need to do to give the stake president any report he desires, whether or not the information is in MLS.

I believe statistics and reports have an important place, but I must share a short story here.

Many years ago in a bishopric training meeting, the stake president asked me what the overall home teaching percentage was for my ward. I said I did not know. I turned to my two counselors and asked them if they knew. They did not.

I told the stake president I was sorry I did not know the number, and that I did not have my monthly report with me, either, to look it up. He was visibly stunned.

He announced to the meeting our HT percent. He then asked how we could have the highest percentage of home teaching in the stake and yet, as the bishop, I did not even know what it was.

After several minutes of discussion, he turned back to me and asked what I thought. I told him I was sorry that our home teaching percentage was so poor, and that I would encourage my priesthood leaders to have better stewardship interviews so we could improve it.

And I know we did, because at the meeting next month, the stake president told us how much our HT percent had gone up.
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#12

Post by RossEvans »

I can certainly see the utility of the Return and Report application within quorums and Relief Society if they use it right. But from a systems point of view I see potential problems passing its reports up to the ward, and even further to the stake, because parallel reporting systems can generate inconsistent data. Just managing the timing differences would be tricky.

In our own ward one of the quorums had an internal method of managing all its HT assignments and visits, but was sometimes remiss in getting both data elements keyed into MLS, which is what really counts. That caused problems all around.

So with regard to the original poster's question about rolling up reports to the stake, I think those should be based on the official data in MLS, whether by predefined or custom reports.
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#13

Post by brado426 »

boomerbubba wrote:I can certainly see the utility of the Return and Report application within quorums and Relief Society if they use it right. But from a systems point of view I see potential problems passing its reports up to the ward, and even further to the stake, because parallel reporting systems can generate inconsistent data. Just managing the timing differences would be tricky.

I have gone through great lengths to eliminate timing issues when designing RAR. Of course, the reports are only going to be as accurate as those managing the reporting desire it to be, but the Stake Presidency gets a real-time accurate representation of what has been reported. These reports can either be viewed throughout the month in real-time as the teachers are reporting or they can be viewed for past months.

I ask that rather than making assumptions regarding potential issues with this tool, that people do some actual tests with it and post concerns or problems in the RAR message forum so that we can further enhance and develop it. I have no problem with anyone creating a fake test group and performing any desired testing. Simply send a note when you are done with your test group to RAR Support and it will be deleted.
In our own ward one of the quorums had an internal method of managing all its HT assignments and visits, but was sometimes remiss in getting both data elements keyed into MLS, which is what really counts. That caused problems all around.

RAR specifically encourages members to follow Church policy and enter data into MLS in a timely manner.
So with regard to the original poster's question about rolling up reports to the stake, I think those should be based on the official data in MLS, whether by predefined or custom reports

MLS is still the official source, but RAR is a tool that assists in significantly increasing the accuracy of the data being entered on the ward clerk computer.
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#14

Post by RossEvans »

Brad O. wrote:I have gone through great lengths to eliminate timing issues when designing RAR. Of course, the reports are only going to be as accurate as those managing the reporting desire it to be, but the Stake Presidency gets a real-time accurate representation of what has been reported. These reports can either be viewed throughout the month in real-time as the teachers are reporting or they can be viewed for past months.

I ask that rather than making assumptions regarding potential issues with this tool, that people do some actual tests with it and post concerns or problems in the RAR message forum so that we can further enhance and develop it. I have no problem with anyone creating a fake test group and performing any desired testing. Simply send a note that you are done with your test group to RAR Support and it will be deleted..

Sorry, I don't mean to prejudge. If my calling involved reporting home teaching within my quorum or group, I would certainly invest the time to try it out. I think our HPGL is looking for a reporting tool, and I'll pass along a link. From my reading of the prior threads here I gather that any policy qualms have been resolved.

The particular timing issue I had in mind is the close of the prior month. Do you have functionality to lock out changes after the time of such close, so that the printout of that snapshot is what gets keyed into MLS and RAR's data will be frozen in that state, or some similar safeguard? In the abstract, it seems that without any import functionality in MLS, or tighter integration, that's about the best one could expect.

As far as the original poster's question, I don't see any harm is providing this reporting to the stake, so long as the numbers are reliably guaranteed to match those in MLS. I see less utility to having the stake president browse into the data before the month is even over, but if he wants to drill down that far that's up to him. I think the original poster is still trying to get the prior month's official detail out of MLS.
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#15

Post by brado426 »

boomerbubba wrote: The particular timing issue I had in mind is the close of the prior month. Do you have functionality to lock out changes after the time of such close, so that the printout of that snapshot is what gets keyed into MLS and RAR's data will be frozen in that state, or some similar safeguard? In the abstract, it seems that without any import functionality in MLS, or tighter integration, that's about the best one could expect.

Yes.... the finalization of the report is a bit of a trick. In fact, you can't really finalize it because there is always a chance that a Presidency may want to make a change to it later.

On the 1st of the month, the RAR system automatically marks all households or sisters that have not yet been reported for as "Assumed Not Visited" or "Assumed Not Contacted." The Presidency then knows who has not reported and can make any necessary changes after the 1st of the month. If a teacher reports after the last day of the reporting month or the Presidency reports for the teacher, the "Assumed" indicator is removed.

The deadline for a report being completed is solely up to the Stake Presidency and the ward leaders. I think that a future enhancement would be an option that marked the report as final. if such a feature was added, I think it would need to be a manually initiated feature rather than being based on a specific day of the month.

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#16

Post by aebrown »

Brad O. wrote:Yes.... the finalization of the report is a bit of a trick. In fact, you can't really finalize it because there is always a chance that a Presidency may want to make a change to it later.

On the 1st of the month, the RAR system automatically marks all households or sisters that have not yet been reported for as "Assumed Not Visited" or "Assumed Not Contacted." The Presidency then knows who has not reported and can make any necessary changes after the 1st of the month. If a teacher reports after the last day of the reporting month or the Presidency reports for the teacher, the "Assumed" indicator is removed.

The deadline for a report being completed is solely up to the Stake Presidency and the ward leaders. I think that a future enhancement would be an option that marked the report as final. if such a feature was added, I think it would need to be a manually initiated feature rather than being based on a specific day of the month.

While this is a good question to consider, I would note that any time you print a report from MLS, you have finalized that report (at least for the paper it is printed on). The HT information can be changed after that, making the paper out of date.

Adding the manual finalization feature to RAR would make it similar to the act of printing a paper report, but of course be much more accessible.
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