slohner wrote:As a bishop I can think of no other improvement that should have a higher priority than making the home teaching and visiting teaching assignments accessible on line and through LDS Tools to bishops, relief society presidencies, and Melchizedek priesthood group leaderships and presidencies. I just unlocked and updated my iPhone and found at the end of the process that I no longer was able to get Ward Tools as an App which had all of my home teaching and visiting teaching assignments on it.
It seems like a fair number of individuals come here after they've exhausted all other options, so all that's left to do is vent. But we, who participate in these forums, can only sympathize and write things like, "We're pretty sure someone is working on this as a high priority," and "The work to make this available online is more difficult than you think it is," and "They never give us information about their deadlines to make these things happen." So, I apologize on behalf the nameless people (whom I don't know) who haven't made this happen yet.
Although Home Teaching assignments can change often, isn't it still a month-by-month thing? So if someone (like the Ward Clerk or Executive Secretary) is in the habit of recording statistics at the start of each month, then why not add the responsibility to make PDF print-outs of relevant lists? I think they can handle doing that 12 times each year and then sending the PDF files to an email list of people who "need" them. I know this doesn't "fix" the problem of not having MLS functions fully available online but it goes a long way towards helping those who are at their wits end already. And it would allow people to have data on their smart phones.
(In my ward, while we realize that auxiliary leaders may have their own MLS accounts and multiple individuals could be changing Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching data, we find it best to let one person be responsible to organize the data and distribute print-outs to the auxiliary leaders. Nobody complains because the person responsible is, well, very "responsible" about the task. And, once the data is updated, for the rest of the month it's correct and available in an instant, whether by print-out, PDF or whenever anyone accesses MLS.)
Also, "Ward Tools" was not offered by the church but by a third party. And I can appreciate why the church would not want MLS information on a third party app which required users to enter their LDS Account sign-on information.