Anyone using JW Scheduler software?

[PubServ]

There are principles, and there are rules.  Sometimes rules are necessary (Acts 15:28-29).  Most of the time they are not, and we are guided through a thought process to reach a mature conclusion - much like teaching new Bible students. 
 

It’s my considered opinion that we are now in that latter state on this topic.   - Take care with the data

- Use encryption

- Protect from obvious or flagrant exposure

- Limit access (appropriate privileged access tenets)

- Don’t send unencrypted sensitive data in regular email

 

These amount to ‘due-dilligence’, and the rest is fully within Jehovah’s hands if something greater/stronger is required. 

Take care all. 
 

[Floyd]

 

9 hours ago, PubServ said:

There are principles, and there are rules.  Sometimes rules are necessary (Acts 15:28-29).  Most of the time they are not, and we are guided through a thought process to reach a mature conclusion - much like teaching new Bible students. 
 

It’s my considered opinion that we are now in that latter state on this topic.   - Take care with the data

- Use encryption

- Protect from obvious or flagrant exposure

- Limit access (appropriate privileged access tenets)

- Don’t send unencrypted sensitive data in regular email

 

These amount to ‘due-dilligence’, and the rest is fully within Jehovah’s hands if something greater/stronger is required. 

Take care all. 
 

 

I agree with you. But Jehovah's organization has the right to set rules and they have. 

[PubServ]

I’m a MS, and therefore not privy to the shepherd book nor direct letters, and I’ve come to this forum (only found it a few weeks back) to gain some information.  So I’ll take your word for it, though it seems like technological developments in the last 10 years, including all the progress and adoption of tech by the organization would have triggered some updates in this realm of data protections and others.  Of course I can inquire to my body as well.

 

Thanks for the dialogue. 

[jwhess]

1 hour ago, PubServ said:

I’m a MS, and therefore not privy to the shepherd book nor direct letters, and I’ve come to this forum (only found it a few weeks back) to gain some information.  So I’ll take your word for it, though it seems like technological developments in the last 10 years, including all the progress and adoption of tech by the organization would have triggered some updates in this realm of data protections and others.  Of course I can inquire to my body as well.

 

Thanks for the dialogue. 

Welcome to the discussion, Br. Eric.

[jwhess]

Is there a setting or button to enable the Field Service Report  on the home page (when I click on the month) to load the monthly report data from the Field Service Activity report totals from the "Me" page?

[jwhess]

34 minutes ago, jwhess said:

Is there a setting or button to enable the Field Service Report  on the home page (when I click on the month) to load the monthly report data from the Field Service Activity report totals from the "Me" page?

I should have mentioned it was the individual NW Publisher app I was talking about.  Sorry.

[molnarj]

It should load automatically. Bit it doesn't. This is bug which I hope will be resolved soon. 

[New World Explorer]

58 minutes ago, molnarj said:

It should load automatically. Bit it doesn't. This is bug which I hope will be resolved soon. 

Not easy to work with any software, thanks for hard working developers. 

[Kennykuva]

Transfer of all current data from KHS is seamless if you follow the instructions. KHS files have to be changed to a different extention then uploaded to NWS by a third party office program. If brothers have not been modifying KHS files by using a separate program (for Speakers or Service records or whatever) this information will not be updated


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[More4me2do]

Just my preference but for Talk Coordinators, KHS is more intuitive for locating changes in speakers details, moving, cancelling speakers and adding non Sunday talks which in NWS has to be done as a congregation event which now requires totally different permissions. Elders and human nature being what it is are hesitant to giving out new permissions because of fear that something can go wrong.

At times I feel that Murphy's law is to be expected when using NWS but I recognize that this is perhaps normal for any product that is in its 3rd year cycle of production.

[Hope]

We've just started using NW Publisher. Apart from Territory Helper, it's the first app our congregation has officially sanctioned for general use and I'm excited. Now... back to read this thread! 😊

 

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=6560937595932384586

 

 

[Qapla]

We have been using NW Publisher for quite some time now. Only thing is, this morning I got an email letting me know I needed to update to the lates version. The email was from the "congregation" (To use New World Publisher app, your congregation must be using New World Scheduler) and it knows what version the publishers are using when it sends notifications.

 

The thing is - I have the latest version - it updated several days ago.

 

Still, we have liked this app and it seems to work fairly well.

 

 

[jwhess]

1 hour ago, Qapla said:

We have been using NW Publisher for quite some time now. Only thing is, this morning I got an email letting me know I needed to update to the lates version. The email was from the "congregation" (To use New World Publisher app, your congregation must be using New World Scheduler) and it knows what version the publishers are using when it sends notifications.

 

The thing is - I have the latest version - it updated several days ago.

 

Still, we have liked this app and it seems to work fairly well.

 

 

There were about 3 updates in a week.  NW Publisher latest update is 2.7.2  Bit the NW Scheduler app the congregation uses  is version 6.6

[luisenriquereyes]

6 hours ago, jwhess said:

There were about 3 updates in a week.  NW Publisher latest update is 2.7.2  Bit the NW Scheduler app the congregation uses  is version 6.6

Yes a number of updates to both NW Publisher and NW Scheduler recently.

 

Latest Scheduler is now version 6.7 (Build #1256)

Edited January 3, 2023 by luisenriquereyes

[Qapla]

10 hours ago, jwhess said:

NW Publisher latest update is 2.7.2

 

That is the version I have  

 

 

[computerwiz]

12 hours ago, Qapla said:

We have been using NW Publisher for quite some time now. Only thing is, this morning I got an email letting me know I needed to update to the lates version. The email was from the "congregation" (To use New World Publisher app, your congregation must be using New World Scheduler) and it knows what version the publishers are using when it sends notifications.

 

The thing is - I have the latest version - it updated several days ago.

 

Still, we have liked this app and it seems to work fairly well.

 

 

 

If you have another device, or one that you broke/retired/sold but had NW Publisher on it, it will still be in your administrators list of devices if it had an older version.  And it will continue to be there until it expires or your administrator manually deletes it.

[Sooner Guy 89]

I am wondering if anyone knows a fix for this issue. When I look under 'App Devices' I see 4 devices that have no name. And one of them sent their FS report and it shows as unknown. Any idea on a fix?

[jwhess]

Our NW Publisher app updated to 2.7.3  on my Iphone

[PubServ]

On 1/6/2021 at 5:17 PM, Floyd said:

Questions:

 

Does it keep publisher data on the cloud somewhere?

 

Does it do publisher field service records?

 

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by PubServ
Scratch this quoted post - just noticed that was an old post from 2021.

[PubServ]

On 12/30/2022 at 8:12 AM, PubServ said:

I’m a MS, and therefore not privy to the shepherd book nor direct letters, and I’ve come to this forum (only found it a few weeks back) to gain some information.  So I’ll take your word for it, though it seems like technological developments in the last 10 years, including all the progress and adoption of tech by the organization would have triggered some updates in this realm of data protections and others.  Of course I can inquire to my body as well.

 

Thanks for the dialogue. 

Follow up on this thread:

 

I‘ve learned more about how NWS handles data, that sensitive data is local PC only, and synchronized where needed through ‘congregation sharing’.  Turns out this feature is enabled only between elders/servants using the JW Scheduler (not ‘Publisher’) product, and requires an out-of-band sharing of a password (a kind of pre-shared key (PSK)) those brothers would use as part of authenticating to the central sharing server.  This immediately reduces the risk to one central location and to only a handful of users who would have that PW (and I see no reason why the PW couldn’t be a new one every time an update is created - with that new PW shared over a pathway such as WhatsApp or Signal (both use end-to-end encryption), or even via encrypted email like Proton Mail). 

 

Data pushed to central sharing is ‘differential’ in nature (not an entire dataset), and is also encrypted prior to uploading to the server share.   

Encryption employed uses AES-128 with HMAC-SHA-1 as the key hashing component (a 128-bit key length, with a 256-bit randomized salt + 256-bit initialization vector (IV) + 2000 iterations), all run through the AES block cipher.  

 

Considering the abstract attributes pushed out for sharing, and the encryption scheme employed - the file uploaded is more than adequately protected - even considering current attack methods and compute power (an upgrade to AES-256 and HMAC-SHA-256 and many more iterations would be a nominal increase in compute and time cost, for a substantial gain in protection). 

 

Some details about it are here:

https://nwscheduler.com/how-to/congregation/how-does-congregation-sharing-work/

 

I’ve discussed this with the body and we have consensus that, based on available branch guidance, considered along with  more recent examples of branch technology decisions over the last 5-10 years, NW Scheduler offers more than adequate data encryption as protection and actually exposes so little ‘delta’ or differential data in synchronization updates as to render moot any risk. 

 

We’re planning to move forward with it soon.

 

And even at 4-5x their asking cost - it would be worth it, so we’ll likely contribute a bit more (for an equalizing…). 🙂

Edited January 7, 2023 by PubServ
Typo

[JJWest]

7 hours ago, Benjamin said:

I am wondering if anyone knows a fix for this issue. When I look under 'App Devices' I see 4 devices that have no name. And one of them sent their FS report and it shows as unknown. Any idea on a fix?

This also happened to us for the first time this month, I wonder if this has anything to do with the latest update to 6.7?

[jwhess]

On 1/2/2023 at 2:58 AM, molnarj said:

It should load automatically. Bit it doesn't. This is bug which I hope will be resolved soon. 

I posted last month that the field service totals did not appear on the page when we want to send themonth's report.

 

I feel it necessary to say that when I went to report the January form, all of the months total were populated (and correctly) for my use.  I checked the numbers carefully and simply had to dit the "submit: button.  It was very nice.  Thanks to the developers.

[Luk_KK]

Is there any option for a web application?

[Brad Smith]

I was thinking about learning to use this software, but do we know anything about the author of this software? I mean, all our brothers and sisters would be listed in this app, and could easily be shared.

 

Do we really want a DB of all the Witnesses. Who are the authors of this software, it's NOT the organization? Do we know anything about them/the brothers making this (is it brothers)?

[molnarj]

This you can read on their website:

 

Hello!

New World Scheduler was created to help simplify and unify the scheduling and organising by appointed brothers in the congregation. Whether you are serving as an elder or ministerial servant, the Coordinator of the Body of Elders, Secretary, or have any other responsibility, we hope that New World Scheduler makes your work easier and quicker. That way we can all spend more time with our families, preaching, teaching and shepherding!

New World Scheduler was created and is maintained by a small team of brothers and sisters based in Australia. Our team are all currently in full-time service, and all brothers are elders. Between us we have spent over 30 years in the full-time service, including more than 10 years in special full-time service. Our team members have also served at branch offices, remote translation offices and in lands where the need is greater.

Kind Regards,
New World Scheduler Team