Primary presidency asked to enter attendance for adult teachers

[mpolder]

My Primary president asked if there is a way that she can take attendance for adult teachers in primary directly in the Tools app. She heard there was a way for the clerk to allow this. Anyone know about this?

[russellhltn]

The clerk can probably record it, but I don't think the clerk has any way of changing permissions. The only tool he has is to make sure everyone's calling is properly recorded as a standard position.

[janssenv]

This may be an unorthodox workaround, but it works.

I created a new Primary class called “Primary Teacher Attendance” and assigned all the adults in Primary to it. It takes the place of their Gospel Doctrine class assignment, but it allows the Primary leadership to record their attendance.

There are a few potential drawbacks to this:

• If we release someone from their Primary calling, they won’t automatically get transferred back to Gospel Doctrine for attendance recording purposes. You have to change this manually.

• I had to create the class by splitting it from an existing class. This can disrupt automatic class advancement from year to year.

• I don’t know whether this has any effect on ward budget allocation for attendance metrics.

I’m a ward clerk, by the way. I don’t know whether the Primary presidency can set this up themselves.

[garystroble]

This may be an unorthodox workaround, but it works.

I created a new Primary class called “Primary Teacher Attendance” and assigned all the adults in Primary to it. It takes the place of their Gospel Doctrine class assignment, but it allows the Primary leadership to record their attendance.

There are a few potential drawbacks to this:

• If we release someone from their Primary calling, they won’t automatically get transferred back to Gospel Doctrine for attendance recording purposes. You have to change this manually.

• I had to create the class by splitting it from an existing class. This can disrupt automatic class advancement from year to year.

• I don’t know whether this has any effect on ward budget allocation for attendance metrics.

I’m a ward clerk, by the way. I don’t know whether the Primary presidency can set this up themselves.

This is a very bad idea in my humble opinion, and probably not authorized as all. Not sure what it will do to adult attendance numbers as you have made the adults into Primary children in a class. It may also smash the correct Primary attendance. I recommend you undo this ASAP. The software is probably allowing this as there may be a case where a cognitively disabled adult would still be allowed by the bishop to attend Primary. But in no way, shape or form did the business rules of the software ever want a class of teachers created.

[tonynocchi]

This may be an unorthodox workaround, but it works.

I created a new Primary class called “Primary Teacher Attendance” and assigned all the adults in Primary to it. It takes the place of their Gospel Doctrine class assignment, but it allows the Primary leadership to record their attendance.

There are a few potential drawbacks to this:

• If we release someone from their Primary calling, they won’t automatically get transferred back to Gospel Doctrine for attendance recording purposes. You have to change this manually.

• I had to create the class by splitting it from an existing class. This can disrupt automatic class advancement from year to year.

• I don’t know whether this has any effect on ward budget allocation for attendance metrics.

I’m a ward clerk, by the way. I don’t know whether the Primary presidency can set this up themselves.

This is a very bad idea in my humble opinion, and probably not authorized as all. Not sure what it will do to adult attendance numbers as you have made the adults into Primary children in a class. It may also smash the correct Primary attendance. I recommend you undo this ASAP. The software is probably allowing this as there may be a case where a cognitively disabled adult would still be allowed by the bishop to attend Primary. But in no way, shape or form did the business rules of the software ever want a class of teachers created.

I think his idea is a great idea. As the ward clerk in a large ward with multiple split primary classes. When I look at the quarterly report, it looks like his idea would more accurately report Melchizedek Priesthood holders (or prospective elders) attending priesthood, Sunday School, or Primary meetings and "Women attending Relief Society, Sunday School, Young Women, or Primary meetings" and the young single adults question as well (questions 14-17 in the Adults section of the quarterly report). It should have no impact on the ward budget or sacrament attendance and should actually make things more accurate.

I'm also tracking the downside and I think they are are manageable, especially if you do the release from Callings/Classes tab of the Member Information because you're going to see the class assignment and asterisk denoting that it is "out of default class assignment". We have so many split primary classes that the primary presidency has to send me a document with who goes where so at the beginning of the year many primary classes are manually set up.

[tonynocchi]

This may be an unorthodox workaround, but it works.

I created a new Primary class called “Primary Teacher Attendance” and assigned all the adults in Primary to it. It takes the place of their Gospel Doctrine class assignment, but it allows the Primary leadership to record their attendance.

There are a few potential drawbacks to this:

• If we release someone from their Primary calling, they won’t automatically get transferred back to Gospel Doctrine for attendance recording purposes. You have to change this manually.

• I had to create the class by splitting it from an existing class. This can disrupt automatic class advancement from year to year.

• I don’t know whether this has any effect on ward budget allocation for attendance metrics.

I’m a ward clerk, by the way. I don’t know whether the Primary presidency can set this up themselves.

Have you had any issues with your membership audits since doing this? I think it's a great idea btw and other than the possibility of an issue with the membership audits I'm not sure what other issues it would cause other than a little extra management but much more accurate attendance week-to-week.

[janssenv]

Have you had any issues with your membership audits since doing this? I think it's a great idea btw and other than the possibility of an issue with the membership audits I'm not sure what other issues it would cause other than a little extra management but much more accurate attendance week-to-week.

I made the change in mid-December, right after the last membership audit. I was able to perform a mock membership audit by going through the motions of an audit, but deleting the audit without submitting it. There were no exceptions identified by the audit system.

As for quarterly reports, I am unable to go through such a mock process. However, you are correct that the attendance percentages are not affected because they are done on the basis of the individuals, i.e. adults, rather than on the basis of the class they are assigned to, e.g. Gospel Doctrine or Primary. Attendance reporting for Primary teachers was hit-and-miss before the change, but it's been 100% after the change.

[tonynocchi]

Have you had any issues with your membership audits since doing this? I think it's a great idea btw and other than the possibility of an issue with the membership audits I'm not sure what other issues it would cause other than a little extra management but much more accurate attendance week-to-week.

I made the change in mid-December, right after the last membership audit. I was able to perform a mock membership audit by going through the motions of an audit, but deleting the audit without submitting it. There were no exceptions identified by the audit system.

As for quarterly reports, I am unable to go through such a mock process. However, you are correct that the attendance percentages are not affected because they are done on the basis of the individuals, i.e. adults, rather than on the basis of the class they are assigned to, e.g. Gospel Doctrine or Primary. Attendance reporting for Primary teachers was hit-and-miss before the change, but it's been 100% after the change.

Thank you for the feedback. I sent a message out to our stake clerk and some of the other ward clerks in our stake to ask their thoughts as well. I'm going to run this by our Bishop in a week or so after I get feedback but I think it will be a big help. I like LCR for the user-friendliness of it (it's pretty easy to learn) but I also find it to be pretty limited.

[tonynocchi]

I have implemented this and taken it up a step. I assigned the YW Presidency and YW Adult Leaders into the YW classes in place of their RS class assignment. I assigned the adult leaders with the class they advise and the YW presidency gave me direction on how to assign the members of the presidency, but this allows the YW Secretary to take roll for all of them.

However, there is one issue I've run into. When ministering routes are adjusted for these sisters, I have to move them back into RS before the RS president can adjust their route, otherwise the RS president gets a message that sisters have to be assigned to RS and can't update the route. Because my wife is the RS president, this is really a non-issue. She told me about the error, I moved the sister back to RS, she reloaded the page, made the changes, and I moved the sister back to her assigned YW class. It literally took less than a minute. However, if your communications aren't immediate, this could lead to some delays/frustration, so obviously talk with your RS presidency first to find out how disruptive this might be.

I am not going to adjust for the Aaronic Priesthood quorum adults since it's the bishopric (who I account for anyway) and three other brothers I can easily account for.

[garystroble]

I have implemented this and taken it up a step. I assigned the YW Presidency and YW Adult Leaders into the YW classes in place of their RS class assignment. I assigned the adult leaders with the class they advise and the YW presidency gave me direction on how to assign the members of the presidency, but this allows the YW Secretary to take roll for all of them.

However, there is one issue I've run into. When ministering routes are adjusted for these sisters, I have to move them back into RS before the RS president can adjust their route, otherwise the RS president gets a message that sisters have to be assigned to RS and can't update the route. Because my wife is the RS president, this is really a non-issue. She told me about the error, I moved the sister back to RS, she reloaded the page, made the changes, and I moved the sister back to her assigned YW class. It literally took less than a minute. However, if your communications aren't immediate, this could lead to some delays/frustration, so obviously talk with your RS presidency first to find out how disruptive this might be.

I am not going to adjust for the Aaronic Priesthood quorum adults since it's the bishopric (who I account for anyway) and three other brothers I can easily account for.

Software is designed to work together in multiple layers. When one layer is changed in a manner not anticipated in the field other layers will not work as programmed. By design, the Relief Society secretary is responsible for recording female Primary teachers attendance although the Ward Clerk can help record it himself. It's only a manner of time until the programmers change the software so that the unauthorized workaround being created will not function. At that point everything will need to be undone in these "classes" and the attendance recorded as directed.