NW Scheduler/Publisher - Updates, Support, and Suggestions

[Quillbeast]

12 minutes ago, AndyCase said:

I don't think doing it faster is necessarily right. We should be thinking about who might give the assignment best, who has experience in a particular subject, who handles a particular part in the best way for the congregation.

I normally have the CLAM open on one device and NWS on another so I can check the content of each part before assigning someone.

 

I know this, so I would manually adjust according to the brother suitable for the assignment

[Landon1285]

Is there a way to create a group for Midweek group or a publisher with the same name just to assign territories to it?

 

It would be similar to the circuit overseer publisher in the nw publisher app. 

 

[Aja]

6 hours ago, Quillbeast said:

Do you have any programs to assign assignments faster other than NW?

Maybe you can clarify what you mean by doing it faster? 

[Floyd]

14 hours ago, AndyCase said:

We should be thinking about who might give the assignment best, who has experience in a particular subject, who handles a particular part in the best way for the congregation.

 

While that is true only about half of the parts do we really have to think about. Parts that can be auto are chairman, prayers, CBS conductors and readers. Let the auto assign do its thing and then verify the parts that need some thought.

[Quillbeast]

10 hours ago, Aja said:

Maybe you can clarify what you mean by doing it faster? 

NW has the auto assign option I was wondering if there was another program like this just for auto assign.

[BigMAC]

On 11/23/2024 at 3:15 PM, Floyd said:

I noticed that ones who are simply marked as "Child" do not show up in the NWP app under publishers. Maybe that is by design. And I get that they are not actually publishers. But this true of adults that are studying and attending meetings and actually participate with student parts on the CLM meeting. Its seems like they should be listed on the app somewhere in case of emergency.

I agree totally. It would be great if I could manually give someone permission to the app, even if it would be with less features. But the whole point of a app for CLM tasks looses it's meaning if a student cannot see what he is supposed to.
Now we can do the opposite, remove access. I wish it could be the other way around also.

One family solved it by using the adults account for the child. Not optimal but that was the only way their child could see his coming CLM tasks.

[Aja]

3 hours ago, Quillbeast said:

NW has the auto assign option I was wondering if there was another program like this just for auto assign.

Sorry, I don't. I think for many of us, the simplicity of having one program that does just about everything your congregation needs is a benefit. We're not looking to override or over complicate things. I'm not sure I even really see the benefit in what you're asking for, but of course that's just my personal opinion. If you do end up finding something useful, please come back and share with the rest of us and maybe it will help somebody else.

[Aja]

I had an observation about the Territory function in the program: we really love the Territory function. It has simplified things and allowed us to be much more efficient about how we're covering our territory. We are running into one challenge though. By allowing friends to mark off houses as they're completed, we typically get a much better idea of territory being worked in the moment. But, if the friends or the brother taking the group out isn't careful, it can lead to some. Pretty confusing results. I was out working with my group this past weekend and found several streets worked with 80% of the houses marked as either "at home"  or "not at home". Sadly though, there are several houses and or apartments that are left unworked in the middle of these streets. Enough to create confusion as to whether or not they were worked. I would love it if, even if it was visible just for the appointed Brothers, there was a little more information given about when and who worked the houses in the app. This would allow you to notice who worked a certain street and go back verify with them what was worked and what wasn't if there are issues. Has anyone else run into this issue or know of any solutions?

 

To be clear, the territory functionality is a win for us and overall a huge net benefit. We would continue to use it even if they couldn't fix this problem. This is just a relatively minor annoyance, but one I think they could fix relatively easy.

[molnarj]

1 hour ago, BigMAC said:

One family solved it by using the adults account for the child. Not optimal but that was the only way their child could see his coming CLM tasks.

If you add a Child as Person (Child) and tick Life and Ministry Meeting Student under Assign a Personal Pin is created and he/she can connect with the app. If assignments are ticked he/she can see his/her assignemnts and receive notifications. That is, of course, when they have a device to connect with. 

[Landon1285]

14 hours ago, Landon1285 said:

Is there a way to create a group for Midweek group or a publisher with the same name just to assign territories to it?

 

It would be similar to the circuit overseer publisher in the nw publisher app. 

 

Does anyone know if this is possible? And if so how is it done? 

[foghorn]

27 minutes ago, Landon1285 said:

create a group for Midweek group...

    I don't see how that could work. Suppose you did create a group name "Wed Group". Further, suppose a territory could be assigned to that group. How would the program know which publishers to connect to that group for a given day? Would you really want to add everyone manually? 

    What works great for us is to simply assign the territory to the group conductor with "Congregation" scope. Then, everyone who shows up on Wed can work in that territory and have access to the territory addresses.

[Landon1285]

25 minutes ago, foghorn said:

    I don't see how that could work. Suppose you did create a group name "Wed Group". Further, suppose a territory could be assigned to that group. How would the program know which publishers to connect to that group for a given day? Would you really want to add everyone manually? 

    What works great for us is to simply assign the territory to the group conductor with "Congregation" scope. Then, everyone who shows up on Wed can work in that territory and have access to the territory addresses.

I PM'd you. 

[Floyd]

On 11/25/2024 at 12:35 PM, molnarj said:

If you add a Child as Person (Child) and tick Life and Ministry Meeting Student under Assign a Personal Pin is created and he/she can connect with the app. If assignments are ticked he/she can see his/her assignemnts and receive notifications. That is, of course, when they have a device to connect with. 

 

I appreciate that. But it still doesn't help with my original problem of elders being about to see everyone associated with the congregation even if they are not publishers. It seems we can only see ones who are actual publishers in the list of publishers.

[carlos]

12 minutes ago, Floyd said:

I appreciate that. But it still doesn't help with my original problem of elders being about to see everyone associated with the congregation even if they are not publishers. It seems we can only see ones who are actual publishers in the list of publishers.

 

The instructions for elders regarding the information board are that only active publishers should appear in the service group list. Maybe NWP is following the same criteria.

[jwhess]

15 minutes ago, Floyd said:

 

I appreciate that. But it still doesn't help with my original problem of elders being about to see everyone associated with the congregation even if they are not publishers. It seems we can only see ones who are actual publishers in the list of publishers.

Elders don't depend on an app to track the congregation.  In the 'old' days we used printed Record Cards.  These only showed publishers as well.  Nothing new here.  If the elders wanted to know some un-publisher or pre-publisher or non-publisher they would have to invetsigate.  They might know that Br. and Sr. Jones have 2 children, Sally and Johnny.

 

If a new family moves in (and the elders receive their publisher cards), the non-publisher children still won't be known.  In fact, they are 'less' known that the local non-publishers.  So  to get to know them does not require a more in-depth computer app, it requires that the elders go an visit them.  Where would yo write down the  names and activity of a non-publisher?  Where would you use that information in the congregation operation?

Edited November 26 by jwhess

[Floyd]

On 11/26/2024 at 6:13 PM, jwhess said:

Where would yo write down the  names and activity of a non-publisher?  Where would you use that information in the congregation operation?

 

Their names are in NWS and previously they were in KHS. Not only is it useful in an emergency but also useful when letting the congregation know about a meeting cancellation for bad weather or covid outbreak and we are going to meet on Zoom.

 

Yes before when we used cards we didn't have their names and they often got missed when we had to notify the congregation of something. Now we have something better. 

 

On 11/26/2024 at 6:13 PM, jwhess said:

If a new family moves in (and the elders receive their publisher cards), the non-publisher children still won't be known.

 

Their names are listed in NWS. I have everybody listed at attends meetings on a regular basis whether they are publishers or not. I also have all of the children listed in NWS. I just though it would be nice to have them listed in NWP as well. 

 

 

On 11/26/2024 at 6:12 PM, carlos said:

 

The instructions for elders regarding the information board are that only active publishers should appear in the service group list. Maybe NWP is following the same criteria.

 

NWS lists the children in the group.

[drd217]

I have a question about NWS. When submitting a Congregation Event to the app for all Regular Pioneers there are 2 newly appointed pioneers in September that aren't listed, even though they are setup as pioneers in their profile. They also have notifications turned on in the app, but no notifications coming to them. Ideas? Thanks

[molnarj]

You should make a group called Pioneers. There you can add and remove Pioneers. When you make an event select the Pioneers group. They will be notified.

When you did that and nothing happened, make a small adjustment in the event. Add a dot somewhere and send app data. This should fix it.

Edited December 7 by molnarj

[drd217]

Okay, that worked.  Strange it didn't populate that Group with those 2 names already. Oh well, it worked, thanks so much!

[Sooner Guy 89]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered in the past but here goes. We have several winter visitors in Arizona that spend 4-5 months each year. They are not appointed brothers but are exemplary (we did get a letter from their home congregation stating that fact) and want to be assigned student parts and do public witnessing. Does anyone have an idea or a current way of getting them into NWS even though their records are in their home congregation?

 

It feels a little odd to add them to a FSG or leave them unassigned. Which are the only options I can think of.

[molnarj]

We have 8 LDC Servants at the moment because of a renovation. They are in the same situation. We didn't assign them tot a fieldservicegroup. They are only here to work and they go home on Saterday and return on Tuseday. They only visit the midweek meeting.

 

Add all the Names and info of the publishers under Persons. 
Select the publisher and then select the tab Spiritual. On the right side below there is the following option:

 

 

If you tick the box it will solve your problem. Go to the Assign tab and tick all the assignments he/she can give. 

There is also an option to connect him/her with the congregation through the app. The name is in the list and there is a personal pin. 

 

Edited December 9 by molnarj

[Sooner Guy 89]

Thank you so much. I felt like I had heard this before, but I cannot remember what I had for lunch yesterday. 😀

[carlos]

I reported today a minor issue we are having with NW Publisher. Even though publishers are sent and received, they still show as not sent for publishers. This had never happened before. Some friends are sending their reports several times since it keep showing not sent (although it's not a problem if they send it several times).

 

I opened a ticket with support today, I expect to have a reply in a few days.

 

Is this happening to anyone else?

[jwhess]

no, our reports went through and were acknowledged.

[carlos]

6 hours ago, jwhess said:

no, our reports went through and were acknowledged.

 

Thanks, John. So this is something specific to us.

As usual, I received a non-answer reply from Support. "Check Help&Support".  Not useful at all.

I am not suggesting we switch to another app because I don't want to confuse publishers, but I would happily change to a different app with better customer support.