Tech Forum

Organizing our ward's VT routes is a lot of work - we have a very transient ward. We have a lot of sisters who can only do visits or receive visits in the daytime or evening, and we have to take that into account when creating companionships and routes. Could a (or some) custom fields be created to allow that extra functionality at a ward level? It took us 4 hours yesterday to review each person's preferences, their assignments, their visiting teachers, and then basically overhaul the whole set up. To complicate it further, some can only visit during the day and can only receive visits in the evening, so we would need at least two fields to account for that.

You may not have any idea how many tears of joy we would shed if we could organize the data this way. With our available sisters changing every month organizing this is a ton of work.

Custom fields are a possibility. Wither or not you can use them effectively is a different question. IIRC custom fields is a great idea handicapped with poor reporting options. The other question is what rights are required to update them.

You can read some information about them in the wiki.

Also keep mind that it appears that sometime in the next few months HT/VT will move to the web. When that happens you'll no longer be able to administer VT via MLS and you'll not have any access to custom fields on the web. As such, I'm not sure the idea is worth messing with at this point.

russellhltn wrote:Also keep mind that it appears that sometime in the next few months HT/VT will move to the web. When that happens you'll no longer be able to administer VT via MLS.

That's not my understanding. Wards will still have the option to stick with MLS. This post talks about the OPTION to move to LCR, but it's not mandatory at this point. I'm guessing that it would be required at some point, but I would seriously doubt that it would be required in 2015.

The details of the decision are unclear (and may not have been decided). It seems that the decision will be made at least by ward, and possibly by stake. Bottom line, the timing may be forced upon them.

But, you are right. It may not come that soon for them. But the day will come, so it might be wise to plan for it and not develop something that only works in MLS.