NW Scheduler/Publisher - Updates, Support, and Suggestions

[carlos]

5 hours ago, Brother Pete said:

No. According to the directions we have been instructed not to record Not At Homes at a congregation level. Such record keeping must be personal and done at a publisher level. Unless this direction has changed I thought this was global due to data privacy. 

 

Hey Pete, welcome to JWTalk!

 

Instructions vary from country to country. In Europe we cannot record anything at all, not even the contact data if we meet an interested person. We give them our contact information and pray that they call us, or try to memorize the address. In the US, on the other hand, privacy laws are a lot more permissive.

 

In any case, I think the NW Schedule territory system could still be adapted to most situations. Instead or recording not at  homes, we could use two states: done or pending. Houses that are already worked can be marked as done until the territory is finished. 

 

In case laws do not even allow that, maps can be used without marking individual houses.

 

[WestBro]

Our territory is large, and we haven't been able to register all the addresses yet. Although NWS doesn't have a built-in feature for what we do, we mark each block in the territory as a single address. In other words, instead of houses, we just have one address for each block of houses. An average territory has around 15 blocks.

The conductor is responsible for marking the block as completed once all the homes have been visited. The status of each house is kept by the publisher who went there. For now, that's what we're doing.

[More4me2do]

10 hours ago, Brother Pete said:

No. According to the directions we have been instructed not to record Not At Homes at a congregation level. Such record keeping must be personal and done at a publisher level. Unless this direction has changed I thought this was global due to data privacy. 

There are 6 buttons on the app that can be enabled or disabled for the status. Since you are in a country that has data protection, I would investigate with the developers how they handle these situations. NWS started in Australia also the servers where separated in regions and I imagine that also had to do with data protection.

 

How do you at present handle Do Not Calls, Not at homes and RVs?

[Brother Pete]

13 hours ago, More4me2do said:

There are 6 buttons on the app that can be enabled or disabled for the status. Since you are in a country that has data protection, I would investigate with the developers how they handle these situations. NWS started in Australia also the servers where separated in regions and I imagine that also had to do with data protection.

 

How do you at present handle Do Not Calls, Not at homes and RVs?

At present we handle Do Not Calls via NW Scheduler as this is the only permitted list maintained by the congregation. As for Not at homes and RVs the publisher makes a personal record and are responsible to follow up. 12 years ago we were instructed not to use S-8 slip aka "house to house" record, as well as the S-43 "please follow up" slip (usually used for foreign language people). The congregation cannot officially record and maintain personal details.

[Brother Pete]

14 hours ago, WestBro said:

Our territory is large, and we haven't been able to register all the addresses yet. Although NWS doesn't have a built-in feature for what we do, we mark each block in the territory as a single address. In other words, instead of houses, we just have one address for each block of houses. An average territory has around 15 blocks.

The conductor is responsible for marking the block as completed once all the homes have been visited. The status of each house is kept by the publisher who went there. For now, that's what we're doing.

For us its more about the need for visualising the block boundaries. It helps the overseer work out how many publishers are needed and for the publisher to know where they are going. Having just one polygon map is difficult especially when you can't  mark off individual homesites due to legal constraints in Australia. We just use territory notes to record what blocks are completed.

[drd217]

Is there a way to create a custom schedule for the Service Overseer to visit each group? Our SO schedules a group to visit by the month and not by the date. Suggestions? Thanks

[Tortuga]

3 hours ago, drd217 said:

Is there a way to create a custom schedule for the Service Overseer to visit each group? Our SO schedules a group to visit by the month and not by the date. Suggestions? Thanks

I think you can create a Congregation Event for the entire month and sent it to just the group he is visiting. I'm not sure why you want to do it this way but it would show up as an Event for the FSG for the month.

[Floyd]

11 hours ago, drd217 said:

Is there a way to create a custom schedule for the Service Overseer to visit each group? Our SO schedules a group to visit by the month and not by the date. Suggestions? Thanks

The last column is the group name that is being visited and it only shows on their NWP.

[Brother Pete]

On 8/27/2026 at 6:18 PM, carlos said:

 

Hey Pete, welcome to JWTalk!

 

Instructions vary from country to country. In Europe we cannot record anything at all, not even the contact data if we meet an interested person. We give them our contact information and pray that they call us, or try to memorize the address. In the US, on the other hand, privacy laws are a lot more permissive.

 

In any case, I think the NW Schedule territory system could still be adapted to most situations. Instead or recording not at  homes, we could use two states: done or pending. Houses that are already worked can be marked as done until the territory is finished. 

 

In case laws do not even allow that, maps can be used without marking individual houses.

 

This is why for us having the map divided into blocks also addresses the issue of knowing what has been completed. Each block size is enough to complete first round. Any block that is started on we make sure its completed. Then we just put in the notes the block numbers that were done.

[Brother Pete]

On 8/25/2026 at 6:01 PM, Brother Pete said:

Our committee would like to use the new Auxiliary Pioneer feature in NW Publisher except it doesn't appear to make it easy for the committee to process straightforward application i.e. the publisher has met the criteria for the privilege. Currently we use the official pdf forms and these are uploaded to a central folder and each committee member has access to initial the application if there are no objections. Any unsigned applications are discussed before any further action is taken. If all three have signed off the pdf application then secretary then marks the publisher in NW Scheduler as an Auxiliary Pioneer.
A suggestion to improve of what has been implemented so far in NW Scheduler would be to create a new task for the secretary to mark the Publisher as an Auxiliary Pioneer when all 3 members have ticked the their task. 

Further to this I just discovered in the NWP App Settings menu the Notification Emails icons are buttons that allows you to edit the email template. For Aux App the default reads:

Dear Brothers,
A publisher in your congregation has just submitted the following request:
[DETAILS]
Please open NWS to view and process this request.
Kind Regards,
NW Publisher app Notifications

It would be great if the process included a way for the comittee to view each other's approvals.

[BigMAC]

Hello,

I'm having a problem with Public Speaker Sharing.

On August 18, I received a request for public speakers. Unfortunately, none of our speakers were available on the requested dates, so I declined the request. To do that, I replied to the request without selecting any speaker or date. NWS then displayed the message:

"You have not approved any of their Public Speaker requests. Are you sure?"

I selected Yes, since none of our speakers were available.

The request then disappeared, but after a few days it showed up again with the exact same requested dates (August 16). Today, September 14, it appeared again for the sixth time.

I can't find any way to permanently dismiss or close the request.

I have also contacted the requesting congregation by email and explained that none of our speakers are available on those dates. I asked them to send new dates later, or we can arrange something further ahead.

However, the same request keeps reappearing. Is there a way to permanently decline, delete, or reset a Public Speaker request? At this point, I think I've declined the same request about six times.

Thank you for any advice.