Make "proposed home teaching changes" report?

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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kisaac
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Make "proposed home teaching changes" report?

#1

Post by kisaac »

Problem: Any changes to MLS Home teaching & VT assignments happen immediately. However, there are times when we need to make extensive Home teaching assignment changes, but need to wait before they take effect, such as the need to get bishopric approval, or finish last months reports.

How can we build a feature into MLS that would allow a presidency to make "proposed HT assignment changes," but do so without actually messing up the current assignments?

Possible solutions: Could it be as simple as creating a duplicate "work-in-progress" file, keeping the original file of home teaching assignments in it's orignal state as a "fall-back?" Or, adding an "undo," or "restore to previous date" or "make effective on a future date" feature?

As an Elders quorum presidency with approved MLS access, and lots of apartments and thus continual home teachings changes, we accomplish this in one of two tedious ways. neither is very satisfactory, but at first we used #1, but now use #2 as we have less errors that way.

1) print the current HT assignment list, make notes, arrows and scribbles all over the papers while we work and re-work, and then retype the final "proposed changes" in a word processor and give this to the bishop. If approved, we make the changes in MLS. Or...
2) Print current HT assignments. Make extensive changes on MLS. Print HT assignment report from MLS and write "proposed" on top, circling those We've changed. If approved, were done. If not, we use the list we printed before we started to restore the list to the original assignments, and hope we don't mess it all up!

(a third possibility exists. Output the assignments via "copy to clipboard," or CSV export, paste into third party spreadsheet, manipulate, then print a "proposed report," then conform manually (not import) in MLS after bishopric feedback.)

I know this topic has been presented before, but I don't see it in the "MLS changes" Wiki. Any ideas?
RossEvans
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#2

Post by RossEvans »

The likelihood of significant enhancements in MLS functionality for HT/VT assignments seems small because the church's future development roadmap points to a web-based replacement app. (That is a long story.)

With current systems, a workaround would be for the quorum to take a snapshot export from MLS of the HomeTeaching.csv file, which has the assignment (or lack thereof) for every family in the ward. Someone with administrative privileges in MLS, such as the bishopric or ward clerk, must log on MLS to export such a file.

HomeTeaching.csv can be loaded into the spreadsheet or other tools of your choice offline. (In my experience, quorum presidencies typically do not do their work huddled around the computer in the clerk's office anyway.) When the proposed changes are approved, someone such as the quorum secretary needs to key the changes back into MLS.
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mkmurray
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#3

Post by mkmurray »

boomerbubba wrote:The likelihood of significant enhancements in MLS functionality for HT/VT assignments seems small because the church's future development roadmap points to a web-based replacement app. (That is a long story.)
And this "proposed home teaching changes" report has been talked about extensively on the Wiki for the HT/VT web application. Though I can't remember if it made it into version 1 or not.
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