New System for Temple Recommends?

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barkeraj
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#41

Post by barkeraj »

Anyone seen any documentation on this? Images of what the screens look like for bishopric and presidency? Can a clerk/secretary look them up and mark them as having completed their interview or does it have to be done by the bishopric/presidency? What the interface looks like for those printing them out? etc?

I found the "Unit Recommend Printing Preferences" and "Recommend Activations" pages with the latter having an empty "Awaiting Stake Activation" list, but as a stake clerk I'd love to see what the ward experience is like so I can help support them and even know what my experience will be like.

We have all discussed how painful this looks to be, but I'm also surprised at how little support an instructions there are relative to the experience as well.
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Biggles
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#42

Post by Biggles »

I think you will have to wait to see which option the Stake Presidency decide. From what I’ve been told there are two ways of implementing this. Digital Signatures and Physical Signatures. One of our wards is running a pilot scheme, on behalf of our SP, to see which option works best for us!
chrisgrant
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#43

Post by chrisgrant »

Can a clerk/secretary look them up and mark them as having completed their interview or does it have to be done by the bishopric/presidency?
It appears to me that as a stake clerk I can do this, but I kind of wish I couldn't. What I hope our stake avoids is having the interviewer send the interviewee over to the clerks office to tell the clerk that he/she passed the interview.
What the interface looks like for those printing them out?
One thing we learned the hard way is: Don't click the "print" button unless you really mean it. Doing so makes the system think you've printed the recommend; there's no chance to say "never mind". You do have another chance to reprint the recommend, but that chance expires at the end of the day.
as a stake clerk I'd love to see what the ward experience is like so I can help support them
Amen to that! As a stake clerk, it feels like I am regularly called upon to train ward clerks on an app or procedure that I myself have no direct access to.
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#44

Post by davemoore99 »

gwewyr wrote: Wed Dec 15, 2021 11:31 pm Thanks everyone.

I reached out to one of the counselors in the stake presidency who just got back to me and said “it’s a long story, but at this point the Church considers us switched to the new system and I’ll be visiting with bishops to let them know they do have to destroy Book 1 and use LCR…”

So, Saturday I’ll set up a wireless printer and make sure they can all print directly from their phones/tablets as they conclude interviews (to custom size/pre-cut paper).
I'm going to try and setup the same system. Does anyone know of a good printer that is compatible with Android and iOS that the SP members can print from??
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barkeraj
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#45

Post by barkeraj »

Found some docs on this
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/hel ... s?lang=eng

Re-printing is a little confusing to me
There are several ways to print a recommend. If you need to reprint a recommend, it may be reprinted by the stake within the same day the recommend was originally printed. If a recommend is marked lost, damaged, or stolen, the ward or branch can reprint the recommend if the signatures were recorded in LCR. If the recommend has digital signatures, it may be reprinted without re-interviewing the member.
So the original can only be reprinted the same day, but a week later it can be marked as lost and then reprinted anyway? If so, what is the benefit of the one day print restriction?

This process is going to be such a slow down. We do weekly open hours at the stake level for recommends and have people sometime waiting an hour for an interview. Now each interview will take even longer as the President looks the person up and does all the approving stuff. Or the President doesn’t do that and opens the door to tell the clerk they are good so they can go mark it and print it. But the clerk is managing who is next in line AND getting the approval from 3 presidents AND printing recommends out. We will now need multiple clerks/secretaries to be there to manage all that. No just handing a stack of yellow copies every so often.

Am I seeing the complexities correctly? Sure it may be a wasatch front specific scenario, but is valid none the less.
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#46

Post by russellhltn »

barkeraj wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:45 pm So the original can only be reprinted the same day, but a week later it can be marked as lost and then reprinted anyway? If so, what is the benefit of the one day print restriction?
It can be reprinted after one day ONLY if the stake is using digital signatures. If the stake is using physical signatures - it appears you'd have to re-interview.
barkeraj wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:45 pmThis process is going to be such a slow down. We do weekly open hours at the stake level for recommends and have people sometime waiting an hour for an interview. Now each interview will take even longer as the President looks the person up and does all the approving stuff. Or the President doesn’t do that and opens the door to tell the clerk they are good so they can go mark it and print it. But the clerk is managing who is next in line AND getting the approval from 3 presidents AND printing recommends out. We will now need multiple clerks/secretaries to be there to manage all that. No just handing a stack of yellow copies every so often.
Keep in mind you're constraining yourself to the idea that the member walks out with a recommend in hand. I don't see requirement anywhere. Granted, this has been the tradition, and it will be hard to change. But adopting the idea of the recommend getting to the member after there's been time to do the paperwork offers some alternatives.
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BrianEdwards
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#47

Post by BrianEdwards »

This process is going to be such a slow down
I'd also hold out hope that we are currently at an interim stage, and that at some future point recommends are available via the member's LDS Tools app on their cellphone. If this becomes the case, then for most members they'd walk out with their "recommend in their hand" (i.e. cellphone in their hand...), and the physical printing would be eliminated. The extra steps to look up members, etc., would then be more than offset by the benefit of the member always knowing where their recommend is, always having it ready whenever they travel, not getting lost, or wet, or torn. Downside is you wouldn't be able to personalize it anymore with a cool recommend holder ;)

There's been no word about whether this is on their radar (there never is), but it seems a reasonable hope to have. And then this would be an acceptable intermediate stage, even with the concerns you mention, if it gets us to that end point.
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#48

Post by lajackson »

russellhltn wrote: Keep in mind you're constraining yourself to the idea that the member walks out with a recommend in hand.
Yeah. I keep forgetting that there was a time when every temple recommend in the Church expired on May 31st each year, and that they all had to be mailed to Church headquarters for a signature from the President of the Church before they could be used. We have certainly come a long way since then.
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#49

Post by sbradshaw »

barkeraj wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:45 pm Re-printing is a little confusing to me
There are several ways to print a recommend. If you need to reprint a recommend, it may be reprinted by the stake within the same day the recommend was originally printed. If a recommend is marked lost, damaged, or stolen, the ward or branch can reprint the recommend if the signatures were recorded in LCR. If the recommend has digital signatures, it may be reprinted without re-interviewing the member.
So the original can only be reprinted the same day, but a week later it can be marked as lost and then reprinted anyway? If so, what is the benefit of the one day print restriction?
Note that the stake can only print it on the same day, but the ward can reprint it at any time when needed. This frees up the stake from needing to handle lost or damaged recommends.
barkeraj wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:45 pm This process is going to be such a slow down. We do weekly open hours at the stake level for recommends and have people sometime waiting an hour for an interview. Now each interview will take even longer as the President looks the person up and does all the approving stuff. Or the President doesn’t do that and opens the door to tell the clerk they are good so they can go mark it and print it. But the clerk is managing who is next in line AND getting the approval from 3 presidents AND printing recommends out. We will now need multiple clerks/secretaries to be there to manage all that. No just handing a stack of yellow copies every so often.

Am I seeing the complexities correctly? Sure it may be a wasatch front specific scenario, but is valid none the less.
I don't know what constraints your stake has, but if someone is waiting an hour for an interview, that seems like more of a slowdown than waiting 10 minutes for a recommend to be printed. In any case, if the stake president is doing several interviews in a row, I expect he would keep the relevant Leader and Clerk Resources page up in his browser (rather than closing it and needing to navigate each time), making it just a couple of clicks to approve and print – replacing the previous step of signing the physical recommend.
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Re: New System for Temple Recommends?

#50

Post by supermanforever »

This is is what we are doing:

- Ward interviews member and activates their portion of the digital signature
-Stake reviews the Recommend Activation List in LCR and secretary schedules interview at a specific time
-Member is interviewed by a counselor of the stake presidency
-Stake secretary activates, prints & cuts out recommend while member is being interviewed
-Stake secretary hands out recommend to member if interview is good and has member sign recommend (counselor signals secretary that all is good).

Our Stake President only interviews living ordinances which means no digital signatures for him. That means I only have to manage 2 counselors doing digital signatures. We don't have weekly open hours which cuts down on waiting time to a few minutes; everyone is scheduled to a specific time. The stake can only reprint the same day. I am not sure if the ward can reprint later after stake activation.
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