Tech Forum

TerrySackett wrote:I thought returnandreport.org seemed like it would be really cool. I never could get it to work, even after paying a for a year subscription.

Terry,

Please Email support@returnandreport.org and I will help you get your problem resolved. I can help you to fix whatever problem you are having, or just refund your money if you don't want to mess with it anymore.

Brad O.

aebrown wrote:Are you really talking about returnandreport.org? That's always been free.

Not true, aebrown. I started charging an annual fee about 2 years ago. I hoped I could get some support for the project, but when it became clear that I would never get any support, I had to institute a mandatory annual fee to keep the project alive. Fortunately, the site has become self-sustaining since then and I no longer need to invest my own personal cash into it. The site should easily last until the Church decides to develop an equivalent solution. The cost is $10 per year for 1 - 29 teachers or $20 per year for 30 or more teachers.

Thanks,

Brad O.

The first three months is free. After that it's $10/year. The one to which I am referring is located at http://www.returnandreport.org/.

brado426 wrote:Terry,

Please Email support@returnandreport.org and I will help you get your problem resolved. I can help you to fix whatever problem you are having, or just refund your money if you don't want to mess with it anymore.

Brad O.

I may have already had contact with you about it. I tried getting support (it has been a few months), and whatever was suggested didn't work. It went past the 30 day refund limit, and I wasn't too worried about it. I'm going to try it again on my computer at work and see if it works here. Maybe there's something weird going on with my computer at home.

brado426 wrote:Not true, aebrown. I started charging an annual fee about 2 years ago.

Thanks for the clarification -- I apologize for making an incorrect statement based on my recollection of how it used to be.

Could someone please tell me whatever happened to this project? I am a HP First Assistant in charge of HT reporting, am highly motivated to get this project operational. According to the first post in this thread it was the first project for which the church was looking for volunteers.

I am willing to jump in with both feet and get this thing working. I have a depth of experience in Java-based database-driven web applications (more than 12 years) and need DESPERATELY to get Home Teaching reporting and report generation away from having to sit at the clerk's office PC to do so. I also have been previously involved in the Gospel Library project and was the community project leader for the first version of Gospel Library for Android.

Please, please PLEASE let me help!

jackcholt wrote:Could someone please tell me whatever happened to this project? I am a HP First Assistant in charge of HT reporting, am highly motivated to get this project operational. According to the first post in this thread it was the first project for which the church was looking for volunteers.

I am willing to jump in with both feet and get this thing working. I have a depth of experience in Java-based database-driven web applications (more than 12 years) and need DESPERATELY to get Home Teaching reporting and report generation away from having to sit at the clerk's office PC to do so. I also have been previously involved in the Gospel Library project and was the community project leader for the first version of Gospel Library for Android.

Please, please PLEASE let me help!

Your willingness to help is admirable, but there is no opportunity for outside people to help. As you can see on the one remaining wiki page from the project:

As of 3/20/2012, this wiki content is no longer needed. As per a discussion with Vard Lott, project manager over this effort, the HT/VT effort has been moved to an internal project, and this content should be deleted. The information on these project pages is outdated.

jackcholt wrote:Could someone please tell me whatever happened to this project? I am a HP First Assistant in charge of HT reporting, am highly motivated to get this project operational. According to the first post in this thread it was the first project for which the church was looking for volunteers.

I am willing to jump in with both feet and get this thing working. I have a depth of experience in Java-based database-driven web applications (more than 12 years) and need DESPERATELY to get Home Teaching reporting and report generation away from having to sit at the clerk's office PC to do so. I also have been previously involved in the Gospel Library project and was the community project leader for the first version of Gospel Library for Android.

Please, please PLEASE let me help!

Hi Jack,

In 2006, I wanted to expidite this as well because I felt it was important and I believed that it was possible to make it happen. Now, it is 6 years later... I have influenced and expidited nothing. Fortunately, people are benefiting from the 3rd-party Home/Visiting Teaching site that I developed during the process, so I figure my time wasn't totally wasted. I can assure you that there is nothing we can do to get this to happen faster. There are way too many roadblocks. Every time I thought progress was being made with the project, a new, seemingly impassable roadblock was introduced. Hopefully they will be able to come up with something that works internally, but ultimately, it will get done whenever it will get done... hopefully not another 6 years. I feel that Home/Visiting Teaching is the most important thing that we do as Church members and a tool that modernizes this should be top priority. Obviously, others disagree with that statement because every other project seems to get priority.

Brad O.

So what does it mean when a project gets moved to be an internal project? Does this mean that they are now focusing on it internally or that they have decided to drop the project for now? I hope it is getting strong focus! I share the belief that Home Teaching/Visiting Teaching is one of the most important programs of the church and that technology can help greatly in this effort.

For example, in my Elder's quorum we went from having about 15% home teaching to over 60% once we started using http://www.returnandreport.org. That was huge! I have seen this result in other wards as well and have also seen it drop back to 15% once a new Presidency was called that decided not to pay for or utilize returnandreport.org anymore.

I sincerely hope this is getting top priority internally as I feel that every month we do not have these tools means many many families are not being visited. Obviously we should be able to get by without them and raise percentages regardless, but in our day and age it seems digital reminders are necessary for everything if you want it to get done.

Thanks for your efforts!

Deggertsen wrote:So what does it mean when a project gets moved to be an internal project? Does this mean that they are now focusing on it internally or that they have decided to drop the project for now?

It just means that this project was started as a community project, with volunteer developers doing much of the work. But now that it is an "internal project" the work is being done by a group of Church employees. So the project is not very visible to those of us on the outside.

There have clearly been some delays and changes of direction in this project, but there are many indications that the project is being actively worked on at this point. Many people would love to know the details of what and when, but we just have to be patient for now.

Deggertsen wrote:I sincerely hope this is getting top priority internally as I feel that every month we do not have these tools means many many families are not being visited.

I sincerely hope that's not true. Plenty of people consistently did 100% home teaching long before the Internet was even invented. But anything that helps remind people is good, and reducing administrative overhead so that we can focus more on ministering to people is certainly a worthy goal.