Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

Discussions about the Lesson Schedules Tool
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russellhltn
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#81

Post by russellhltn »

lajackson wrote:
russellhltn wrote:If the product cost nothing to maintain, there's be no incentive to shut it down.
I believe that is the reason Lesson Schedules was discontinued, not because of cost, but because of time and effort it took someone at headquarters each year to set up the curriculum and all of its links for us to access.
When I say "cost", I'm using it in it's broadest sense - money, time and labor. Yes, there is a cost to adding the 2017 curriculum, but that seems pretty low. You could probably put a intern or service missionary on that.

Let me ask a tangential question - why is newsletter being killed? There is no annual curriculum for that. If you come up with an answer for the newsletter, when perhaps the same answer applies to the Lesson Schedules. And since they know it's coming, the time to kill it is now at the beginning of the year, not mid-year.

That's why I'm speculating that there is some change is in the works that would break Lesson Schedules and the Newsletter. But due to limited resources and low usages, the church is unwilling to rescue them this time like they did when they pulled the plug on Local Unit Websites.
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lajackson
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#82

Post by lajackson »

russellhltn wrote:Let me ask a tangential question - why is newsletter being killed? There is no annual curriculum for that. If you come up with an answer for the newsletter, when perhaps the same answer applies to the Lesson Schedules. And since they know it's coming, the time to kill it is now at the beginning of the year, not mid-year.

That's why I'm speculating that there is some change is in the works that would break Lesson Schedules and the Newsletter. But due to limited resources and low usages, the church is unwilling to rescue them this time like they did when they pulled the plug on Local Unit Websites.
First, I have no Idea or insight into the answer to your question and therefore no basis at all to speculate. But I think you answered it yourself, "due to limited resources and low usages". Whether or not there is some type of a "break" coming, maintaining the website requires resources, and if only 2% of the church is using the resource, there is not much incentive to continue it.

As for continuing the Newsletter a few months longer, I think it is simply a courtesy to allow time for those few units to recover their articles and find a new Newsletter solution after they finish figuring out how to recover from the loss of Lesson Schedules.
mevans
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#83

Post by mevans »

lajackson wrote:
russellhltn wrote:If the product cost nothing to maintain, there's be no incentive to shut it down.
I believe that is the reason Lesson Schedules was discontinued, not because of cost, but because of time and effort it took someone at headquarters each year to set up the curriculum and all of its links for us to access.
Somehow that doesn't sound like the right reason. They're also discontinuing the Newsletter and they didn't have to do any maintenance on that (although there seemed to be the periodic problem of attachments not working). I've actually tried a few times over the years to offer doing the data update for them, since it seemed to be such a last minute afterthought, but I'm submitting that offer to Feedback missionaries who frequently don't even know what the Lesson Schedules tool is (even when I provide the URL). I don't know what's involved in the Lesson Schedules data update, but I've worked with a lot of data over the years that's seemingly much more complicated than what I perceive the Lesson Schedules update could be. It just doesn't feel like it's that complicated. Tedious, probably, but complicated, not likely.

Oh well...I hope people have submitted Feedback.
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marianomarini
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#84

Post by marianomarini »

It just doesn't feel like it's that complicated. Tedious, probably, but complicated, not likely.
So WE can do it! :D
kennethjorgensen
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#85

Post by kennethjorgensen »

lajackson wrote:
russellhltn wrote:If the product cost nothing to maintain, there's be no incentive to shut it down.
I believe that is the reason Lesson Schedules was discontinued, not because of cost, but because of time and effort it took someone at headquarters each year to set up the curriculum and all of its links for us to access.
If it is a maintenance issue then it would have been ideal for a tech volunteer to look after it and even provide a bit of tech support for questions on it via this forum.
It only took me 1-2 hours to put together the lesson schedule spreadsheet for 2017 and most of the time was spent on copying the lesson titles etc.

I think Tech Volunteers would be ideal to do some of this maintenance and setting up stuff for following years.
russ2p
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#86

Post by russ2p »

I'm also disappointed :cry: to see this feature being discontinued. I was just getting our ward council (new ward formed recently) excited about using it. Please reconsider this decision and bribing lessons schedules back or some form of electronic way of providing the same functionality. Looking at the suggestions in this thread none of them quite properly replace the great functionality of Lesson schedules.

Is there an official release on why this is being removed?
russellhltn
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#87

Post by russellhltn »

russ2p wrote:Is there an official release on why this is being removed?
As close as we've gotten: LDS media blog
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wrigjef
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#88

Post by wrigjef »

At this point I'm more interested in alternative solutions as opposed to the reason discussion.
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marianomarini
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#89

Post by marianomarini »

With less than 12,00 (twelve) €uros/year in Italy we can buy an hosted site (10 GB and enough bandwidth for a Ward traffic).
It'll be good if Church can provide its site code so we can implement into our.
This way we can provide easily the same service.
russ2p
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Re: Lesson Schedules Discountinued 2017

#90

Post by russ2p »

russellhltn wrote:
russ2p wrote:Is there an official release on why this is being removed?
As close as we've gotten: LDS media blog
Thanks russelltltn as the link to the blog made it easy and is much appreciated. sometimes google-ing for it doesn't always get what you need as easily as you hoped.

I understand the reasoning in the blog. I wonder if this is a case of what other folks have mentioned, a lack of awareness/marketing plan/training/etc. that otherwise may have brought more users to adopt what I think is great functionality.
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