In-person donation entry in LCR

[chriswoodut]

Our stake was selected as a trial/beta group for the new donation entry in LCR. I wanted to share a couple of thoughts after 2 weeks trying it. Week 1, no problems at all. Week 2, could not finalize the batch approvals.

1. It is simpler and will be a good thing when it works reliably.

2. It is buggy with how it handles the two approvals. The first person logs in and does the donation entry and when they get to the approval stage, it logs out the first person and the second person (one must be a bishopric member) logs into LCR to perform the second approval on the batch.

3. The system is trying to use local browser cookies to enforce the requirement that both people are in the same place using the same computer. Both approvals must be done in the same browser due to the use of cookies.

4. In our case, the cookies can get messed up and you can get stuck with the second person unable to approve the batch. If this happens support suggests clearing the cookies or switching browsers. However, switching browsers doesn't work if the 1st approver did their step in a different browser. Both approvals must be in the same browser so you have to go back to approval one and start from that point in a different browser (e.g. firefox rather than chrome).

5. In our situation, we got stuck and the 2nd person could not approve the batch. There was no error -- the "Approve" button would switch to "Approving..." and then revert back to "Approve" waiting for the user to click it (again). There is nobody to call on a Sunday for support. We deposited the funds in the bank and left the batch open. Today, support would not close the batch for me and wanted me to get the two original people working on the batch to get together in person on one PC and they would walk them through trying to close the batch. (We have camps this week, so that isn't an option until Sunday.)

6. Note that whichever login the donations are entered under is now tied to the batch -- somebody else can't step in and try to finish it (like a financial clerk versus a ward clerk). Yes, this makes sense but from a trouble shooting step and trying to fix this after the fact it adds a hurdle so I just mention it as an FYI.

7. Even though we're a beta testing ward, support could not escalate the issue to the developers without us first getting the two approvers together and going through support steps to close the batch. Support is simply setup to try to get the batch closed (but would not close it on their end for us). So, it's not really like a beta test where our ward is helping the developers squash specific bugs and because of that lack of a tie to the devs I'm going to revert to using MLS. If I felt we were actually helping squash bugs, I'd be all for helping them out. After talking to support, it seemed pretty clear that we're not furthering the developers efforts -- it's just adding to our own headaches. Back to MLS for now.

Please don't take this post as complaining. This is a beta/trial. I'm providing this mostly as help for others that may get in a jam on a Sunday when support is closed. It will be good when it's reliable.

Update: I got a call back from support stating there have been more calls this morning from other units reporting the same problem. They have escalated the issue.

[chriswoodut]

Update: I got a call back from support stating there have been more calls this morning from other units reporting the same problem. They have escalated the issue.

[russellhltn]

I cringed as soon as I read the part about cookies. I knew what was coming.

As a thought, you might try starting each session using incognito mode. That always gives you a fresh set of cookies. Just don't close the window until everything is complete.

The cookie issue is a long standing problem. It's bigger than this project. I wouldn't be surprised but what it requires a complete overhaul of church websites to fix it.

[sbradshaw]

I cringed as soon as I read the part about cookies. I knew what was coming. … The cookie issue is a long standing problem. It's bigger than this project. I wouldn't be surprised but what it requires a complete overhaul of church websites to fix it.

I had the exact same reaction when I saw the word "cookies." Fingers crossed that this is the straw that breaks the camel's back so it can be prioritized to be fixed!

[marketbroiler]

"File the Unit Copy of the Deposit Report in the ward or branch files with the Tithing and Other Offerings forms and the Donation Batch Report. Place the Bank Copy of the Deposit Report in the envelope with the money for deposit in the bank."

Currently on LCR there appears to be no "Bank Copy of the Deposit Report", only a church copy. Also I am not aware of any " Tithing and Other Offerings forms" unless that is merely the folder in which the church Deposit Report and Donation Batch Summary are supposed to be filed.

[davesudweeks]

"File the Unit Copy of the Deposit Report in the ward or branch files with the Tithing and Other Offerings forms and the Donation Batch Report. Place the Bank Copy of the Deposit Report in the envelope with the money for deposit in the bank."

Currently on LCR there appears to be no "Bank Copy of the Deposit Report", only a church copy. Also I am not aware of any " Tithing and Other Offerings forms" unless that is merely the folder in which the church Deposit Report and Donation Batch Summary are supposed to be filed.

I'm not involved in the beta and am no longer a clerk, but I would interpret "Tithing and Other Offerings foms" as the individual donation slips submitted by the members with their donations. The paper deposit method includes a hand-written copy to provide with the bank that is specifically noted as the "bank copy" - I don't think the bank will care what copy of the documentation they receive as long as it is accurate to the deposit.

[BrianEdwards]

I wonder if this is a true "Beta", or more of an "Alpha". Could be that there are more items still being worked on, but they put the "Alpha" out for beta testing. To me a Beta means "this is exactly what we intend to deliver, let us know if there are bugs", as opposed to "this is a snapshot of where we're at, please help with testing the current code". Besides the omnipresent issue of cookies, a few other items listed seem like that's (hopefully) not the way they intend for the final version to behave. Again, hopefully...

[chriswoodut]

I tried their resolution steps yesterday on the stuck batch and still had the same issue. I talked with support today and they were told the issue was resolved with a June 16 release but that did not fix it for us. They are now asking us to re-enter it in MLS to get the batch closed (they can't close it).

I'll wait a month and maybe try it again hoping some improvements happen between now and then. With no real communication from the developers as to release notes, bug fixes, etc, it's really hard to try to help with testing.

[nitzmahone]

We had the same issue last week- the final submission from the second approver was just timing out. We logged out and back in a couple times as the second approver- each time we got the final approval screen, but the actual submission of the approval timed out (I was watching it in the developer console- an unfulfilled promise). The third try, the batch showed up as already submitted and approved, so we just had to go back into it and manually print the deposit and batch reports (I assume we would've been prompted to do so if the interactive approval had succeeded properly).

Other than the hassle with the final approval, I much prefer the new streamlined process over doing donations in MLS. It'd be nice if the second approval could be done inline without actually switching identities, but with the more complex 2FA options that have been added through the church SSO, I'm betting that's never going to happen.

Fingers crossed that they've got the issue nailed- guess I'll find out on Sunday. Looks like they got the ServiceNow SSO issues cleared up too, so at least I can file a bug report now if there are any further issues...

[nitzmahone]

Even worse this Sunday- LCR Finance (both Expenses and Donations) was jacked up for most of the day, just hanging at various places while loading the UI. When we were finally able to get our donations entered, it just continually hung during the second approval (no interesting errors in the dev console this time either). After flogging it for a half hour or so, we ended up just re-entering the batch in MLS and I deleted the half-approved LCR batch later.

I hate going back to MLS, but I'm also wondering what's supposed to happen when that's no longer an option- someone's going to have to take home an unsealed deposit bag, which is a huge no-no.

Sounds like it's time to hire some more non-members for Sunday support on the LCR SRE team, or maybe outsource it to a team in Israel- IIRC the Sabbath is on Saturday there even for us.