INTRODUCING INTERVIEW SETTER
Easy. Smart.
MAKING SETTING MINISTERING INTERVIEWS EASIER
Paving the Way to an Easier Life
Easily coordinate your elder's quorum presidency ministering interviews via Google Sheets, and easily compose text messages to be sent to the members of the quorum to set the appointments.
FEATURES LIST
ENABLES COORDINATION
Coordinate ministering interviews via Google Sheets, making it easier for you and the members of the elder's quorum presidency to set and execute ministering interviews.
COMPOSES TEXT MESSAGES
Reducing time to set and confirm ministering interviews.
USAGE INSTRUCTIONS
FIRST, SETUP A GOOGLE SPREADSHEET
Create a Google spreadsheet named whatever you want. Inside the spreadsheet, one of the sheets must be named 'Upcoming Interviews.' In the 'Upcoming Interviews' sheet, it must contain columns in this order and these data types:
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Date
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Time
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Last name of the member of the EQ presidency that will be conducting the interview
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Type
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can be left empty and will default to ministering interview. Must be one of: Stewardship, Chgs, Comp chg, Family. If it's Stewardship, then the text message will be composed for a stewardship interview. If it's Family, it will be composed for a family visit that will be sent to the first person listed in the 'Companionship' column, and the location will be at their house.
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Companionship. The text message for ministering interviews will be sent to the people listed in the companionship. ​If the format matches the format of a family visit, then the text message will only be composed to the first name listed.
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Format: Last name, first name ​/ last name, first name
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In case of one member of the companionship: last name, first name
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In case of a family visit: last name, first name & spouse's first name
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Location. Only used for ministering interviews. It will be inserted to the text message as is.​
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Stage. One of: ​​Initial Contact, Awaiting Reply, Set, Tentatively Set, Confirmed.
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If the stage is Initial Contact or Awaiting Reply, the app will compose a text message to ask if the companionship can meet at the time and place, and the companionship will be listed in the 'Tentative Appts' screen in the app.
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If the stage is Tentatively Set, the app will compose a text message to verify that the companionship can still meet at the time and place that was previously tentatively set. The companionship will still be listed in the "Tentative Appts" screen. This stage can come in handy when setting an appointment a few weeks in the future as it will allow for composing a text message a few days in advance to verify the time still works.
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If the stage is Set, the companionship will be listed in the 'Appts to Confirm' screen in the app, and a text message to confirm the appointment will be composed upon clicking on the companionship.
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If the stage is Confirmed, the companionship will not be listed in the app in any screen.
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See a sample here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i4IfFpMc9O_gv2TVgEODs0kledcOhDcTw4F1ssEnrxw/edit?usp=sharing
FILL IN THE SPREADSHEET WITH PROPOSED APPOINTMENTS
Fill out the rows in the 'Upcoming Interviews' sheet with the dates and times of the proposed ministering interviews. As people respond, update the stage accordingly. The app will only read rows 2 through 100, so old appointments that have already happened must be deleted or moved.
CONFIGURE THE APP TO READ FROM YOUR SPREADSHEET
Click on the settings button on the top of the app and enter the URL of your Google spreadsheet (which can be copied from the address bar of your web browser).
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That's it! Your proposed interviews should show up in the app. If it's not working, read through the instructions again and check the example spreadsheet. If it's still not working, feel free to send me an email - I should respond that same day, although I can't always guarantee timely responses.
COORDINATE WITH YOUR ELDER'S QUORUM PRESIDENCY
Share your Google spreadsheet with your elder's quorum presidency. You can create additional sheets that can be used for whatever you want - the app won't look at them, so you can create customized sheets for each member to show them their interview schedule using standard Google Sheets functions to setup a view of the 'Upcoming Interviews' sheet - see the help sites for Google Sheets for details on how to do that.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
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If any of the entries on the list of people in the Interview Setter app have a red background, it means that the app detected that the same people are scheduled elsewhere in the list of appointments. This aids in finding duplicate appointments so the erroneous one can be removed.
Known Issues
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Crashes if any appointments set in the past are in the spreadsheet
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Notifications to remind the user that appointments need to be set or confirmed are not working
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If you know how to write Android apps and want to help out since my free time has been too limited to fix these issues or add more features, feel free to submit a PR at https://github.com/stephenkittelson/interviewsetter