NW Scheduler/Publisher - Updates, Support, and Suggestions

[foghorn]

On 7/15/2024 at 10:10 AM, computerwiz said:

I can't seem to assign any talks.

This help file explains how to add public speakers manually. You have to do that for YOUR congregation and for OTHERS you wish to share with. Later, you may wish to activate public speaker sharing, which works a little differently. 

https://nwscheduler.com/how-to/congregation/neighbor-congregations/#Add_or_Edit_Public_Speakers

[Brother Den]

Can you just "resend" a territory assignment, or all territory assignments? Sometimes, someone's territory disappears from their NWP app, so I first "delete" then reassign their territory.

[foghorn]

21 hours ago, Brother Den said:

Sometimes, someone's territory disappears

We have also encountered that situation. I believe it happens when they accidently touch the "Territory Completed" button. It is right there on the same page with the "Open Territory" button. Plus - when a territory is checked out to a "Group", all the servants in the group have access to that button. Some servants may not even realize it is there.

 

Your solution is the only one we have found. Deleting and then re-assigning keeps the territory record accurate.

[Brother Den]

2 hours ago, foghorn said:

We have also encountered that situation. I believe it happens when they accidently touch the "Territory Completed" button. It is right there on the same page with the "Open Territory" button. Plus - when a territory is checked out to a "Group", all the servants in the group have access to that button. Some servants may not even realize it is there.

 

Your solution is the only one we have found. Deleting and then re-assigning keeps the territory record accurate.

In our case, we never assign to Congregation or to a Group. Also, when we view one of those "disappeared" territories in NWS, it is still assigned to that same publisher. And, in case someone wants to know, we always make sure we all have the latest version NWS. 

[Darius]

Good Afternoon Friends,

We have been using NW Publisher for over 2 years now, and we use the territory with the addresses on there to make as at home or not at home.  Recently we have been having problems where the friends mark the whole street as home or not at  home, and a couple of days later, they look at the map, and it doesn't look like it's been worked at all.  I think this is a syncing issue, I just don't know where to verify that.  Has anyone else had this problem?

[Brother Den]

This is our latest Territory problem. Our letter writing territory 96 has 710 apartments. We decided, for several reasons to divide it into three separate territories of about 236 each. I first deleted the original 96, then added new territory 96a by entering an "a" as the suffix. So far, so good. But as soon as I try to add territory 96b, then 96a is gone and the original 96 is back. I then contacted the only other brother who works on Territory, but he was not online that day. Am I overlooking some kind of "Save" button that needs to be pressed after I make each change, or can a brother working in a different area affect my changes?

[Cruzer]

2 hours ago, Brother Den said:

This is our latest Territory problem. Our letter writing territory 96 has 710 apartments. We decided, for several reasons to divide it into three separate territories of about 236 each. I first deleted the original 96, then added new territory 96a by entering an "a" as the suffix. So far, so good. But as soon as I try to add territory 96b, then 96a is gone and the original 96 is back. I then contacted the only other brother who works on Territory, but he was not online that day. Am I overlooking some kind of "Save" button that needs to be pressed after I make each change, or can a brother working in a different area affect my changes?

 

As far as I understand, territory labels only accept numbers, no letters. We also at one point had a large letter writing territory we had to divide (LW-6). We ended up creating 2 additional territories from the one large territory (ie: large one territory, LW-6. Edited LW-6 to a smaller size, created LW-7 & LW-8). This meant he had to relabel the other letter writing territories past LW-8 to keep sequential but we didn't have many more past this, so it was an easy edit.

[foghorn]

4 hours ago, Brother Den said:

as soon as I try to add territory 96b, then 96a is gone and the original 96 is back

Cruzer is right - Territories format is <Prefix>-<Number> <Suffix>. As in T-650 (for Town H-H territory 650.) But what you CAN do for your situation is create multiple letter-writing territories using the suffix. Example: A-96-LW1, A-96-LW2, etc. You can put any text you want into the suffix field. This makes it clear that each of these Letter-writing territories is a 'child' of A-96. They show up properly in the territory list, so you can easily see them sorted alphabetically.

 

Another thought, too. Our T-650 used to be T-65. So I simply added 10 to each existing territory number to allow for growth (T-620, T-630, T-640, etc). When a new territory is created, it will become T-651. Keeps them in order and in geographic proximity.

[Tonis]

Hello brothers. I have a question due to a recent event. How does one handle the death of a brother or sister in the NW Scheduler? Deleting the record doesn't seem quite right to me, as it might affect the accuracy of average calculations. Do you have any experience with this, or how would you handle it?

[AndyCase]

16 minutes ago, Tonis said:

Hello brothers. I have a question due to a recent event. How does one handle the death of a brother or sister in the NW Scheduler? Deleting the record doesn't seem quite right to me, as it might affect the accuracy of average calculations. Do you have any experience with this, or how would you handle it?

Firstly, sorry if you have had someone pass away. 

If it does affect averages etc, perhaps you could adjust their publisher record to be Inactive?  Then at the start of a new service year you could delete the record then?

Just a thought as I can't think of another way around it 

[carlos]

20 minutes ago, Tonis said:

Hello brothers. I have a question due to a recent event. How does one handle the death of a brother or sister in the NW Scheduler? Deleting the record doesn't seem quite right to me, as it might affect the accuracy of average calculations. Do you have any experience with this, or how would you handle it?

 

There is a section inthe NW Scheduler support page regarding this:

https://nwscheduler.com/how-to/members/delete-members/#Person_passes_away_deceased

[Tortuga]

2 hours ago, carlos said:

 

There is a section inthe NW Scheduler support page regarding this:

https://nwscheduler.com/how-to/members/delete-members/#Person_passes_away_deceased

"Nevertheless if you would prefer, you could mark them as Moved instead of deleting them."

 

That's what we did initially but eventually deleted them.

[Brother Den]

11 hours ago, foghorn said:

Cruzer is right - Territories format is <Prefix>-<Number> <Suffix>. As in T-650 (for Town H-H territory 650.) But what you CAN do for your situation is create multiple letter-writing territories using the suffix. Example: A-96-LW1, A-96-LW2, etc. You can put any text you want into the suffix field. This makes it clear that each of these Letter-writing territories is a 'child' of A-96. They show up properly in the territory list, so you can easily see them sorted alphabetically.

 

Another thought, too. Our T-650 used to be T-65. So I simply added 10 to each existing territory number to allow for growth (T-620, T-630, T-640, etc). When a new territory is created, it will become T-651. Keeps them in order and in geographic proximity.

None of our territories have a prefix, they are just labeled 1 through 139. I can not add any territories that start with 69. You would think that I could just add the suffix "a" to the original 69 territory, then add a 69b and 69c territories. This should be a feature update 😊 

[orodriguez]

27 minutes ago, Brother Den said:

None of our territories have a prefix, they are just labeled 1 through 139. I can not add any territories that start with 69. You would think that I could just add the suffix "a" to the original 69 territory, then add a 69b and 69c territories. This should be a feature update 😊 

All territories have a prefix.  In my case I created categories for each group and that is the prefix.

 

[foghorn]

3 hours ago, Brother Den said:

None of our territories have a prefix

Then I am guessing you may not yet have created any Categories. These are very useful for keeping track of different types of territory. Plus, this is how you color-code your territories in your maps. If you wish to use this feature...

1. At very top of territory list, click the edit pencil (FIG 1)

2. In the category list box, Click "+ NEW" to create a category entry. This consists of a Code + a Name. Example: Code = A, Name = Apt. (Fig 2)

You can add these categories to existing territories using the above steps. Later, when you create a new territory, you simply select one of these existing categories.

 

                                       FIG 1.

                                 FIG 2.

Edited July 24 by foghorn
Label the images, comment about color coding

[Tonis]

Hello dear brothers. I have a question regarding an issue I have noticed. In our public talks section in NW Scheduler, we have defined the free field as the "Watchtower Study conductor" so that in the absence of the appointed elder, the representative is informed via the app and knows when to take over the conduction of the Watchtower study. However, this field does not appear in the app. Do you have any idea what the problem might be? Is it simply not intended to be displayed, or is this a bug?

Edited July 25 by Tonis

[Floyd]

12 hours ago, Tonis said:

Hello dear brothers. I have a question regarding an issue I have noticed. In our public talks section in NW Scheduler, we have defined the free field as the "Watchtower Study conductor" so that in the absence of the appointed elder, the representative is informed via the app and knows when to take over the conduction of the Watchtower study. However, this field does not appear in the app. Do you have any idea what the problem might be? Is it simply not intended to be displayed, or is this a bug?

 

 

It shows up on mine right above Hospitality. Did you forget to Send App Data?

[Tonis]

Hello, I had sent the data, but it still didn't work. Now, all of a sudden, it does work. No idea what was going on!

Thank you

[BigMAC]

Does anyone know if there is a way of having two different email addresses in NWS?
I do not know what this is in English but I am the one who schedules public talks. We have a specific e-mail for that. But I do not wish to use that address when communicating with people in our own concregation. Like sending CLM part and other stuff. But I have not figured out how to use dual addresses. Maybe it's not possible? How do you do when emailing with different from addresses?

Have a great day!
/Mark

[foghorn]

5 hours ago, BigMAC said:

way of having two different email addresses in NWS?

Actually, it looks like you can. Prepare the information you want to send via email. Then click the "FROM" button. The left side of the box contains your "normal" email address, but if you click the grey arrow (circled) it allows you to select 1 alternate address. See Figure.

 

[Brother Den]

Lately, I can't save changes that I make to any of our territories. I wonder if it is because we are in our 2024 Convention campaign, which will be over today. I can still assign new non campaign territories, but for now, I can't edit notations that give our publishers additional information about a territory.

[Indapipe]

Hi bros, I'm in a Spanish congregation in Canada. Our service overseer made this observation to the service committee:

 

"Hi brothers. I have re-evaluated the territory function on NW Scheduler. A number of improvements have been made and it is better now than before. 

The biggest difference between the two is that we use Alba to keep track of calls that have latin last names but that we have confirmed do not speak Spanish. This is important so that we don’t keep going back to the same calls asking whether they speak Spanish. This ability is not yet possible with NW Publisher. Perhaps it will be added in the future."

 

We have never used NWS for territory although we use it for practically everything else. So we don't have experience with the territory feature, yet it would be nice to use just one software. How accurate is his observation, or is there a workaround in NWS that we may not be aware of? 

[foghorn]

13 hours ago, Indapipe said:

we use Alba to keep track of calls that have latin last names but that we have confirmed do not speak Spanish.

Here is one possible way to use NW Publisher to track non-spanish-speaking homes. This assumes that your goal is to mark such addresses so that your publishers do not call on them.

 

The territory settings page allows you to create several custom buttons that appear for each address. You could assign one of these buttons for the purpose. In the figure, we added two buttons: "Vacant" and "NoTress/PrivProp". Once one of these buttons is tapped, it stays with the address. You might call yours "NoEspanol". Once a publisher locates such a house, he taps the "NoEspanol" button. The next time the territory is worked, those houses will be marked "NoEspanol" and will have a special color on the map.

 

[jayrtom]

How do you use NWS to work with territories?

At the moment we use an excel file that I created that delivers and collects the territories on the fly during meetings, which is the moment when publishers ask for a new territory and/ or delivers the old one

 

We're changing everything to NWS and I know how to finish a territory on the app (deliver) and how to assign using the PC

But I don't know how to assign a new territory without the territory servant carrying a laptop to the hall and use the NWS software... 

Do we need to still use the excel file or a paper block to annotate everything and at home pass it all to the NWS software? 

This is a time-consuming task and prone to errors. That was how the territory servant used to work and there were several errors and lost territories...
 

What's your suggestion?

[Tonis]

When we upload a document (PDF) to the Information Board under "Letters" or "Documents," the PDF opens directly when you click on the letter or document. However, when we upload a pdf in the "Announcement" section, you have to select the uploaded file again to open it. Any ideas?