Wish list for the Skills and Activities module

[John Dykema]

1. Once you have located the person you want to add skills to, then click the Add button the Add Activity screen come up. All you can view are 4 skills. It sure would be nice if the box would enlarge to touch the top to bottom of the monitor screen. I've been dragging the bottom line down each time so I can see at least 9 skills to choose from. When I'm keying in 200 members' skills this becomes a major issue.

2. This also applies to the Maintain Activities and Skills screen. We have people that volunteer for 12-15 different activities but the screen show up to 9 or so.

3. Another little quirk is that once I highlight a skill and double click it for a person, you have to move the mouse off of that skill before you can scroll down any further to another skill. I know this is a bit petty but when you enter over 500 of these skills another 500 mouse moves becomes a bit much.

4. Otherwise, all is well and we use our Skills Bank all the time.

[NeilZ]

1. Once you have located the person you want to add skills to, then click the Add button the Add Activity screen come up. All you can view are 4 skills. It sure would be nice if the box would enlarge to touch the top to bottom of the monitor screen. I've been dragging the bottom line down each time so I can see at least 9 skills to choose from. When I'm keying in 200 members' skills this becomes a major issue.

2. This also applies to the Maintain Activities and Skills screen. We have people that volunteer for 12-15 different activities but the screen show up to 9 or so.

3. Another little quirk is that once I highlight a skill and double click it for a person, you have to move the mouse off of that skill before you can scroll down any further to another skill. I know this is a bit petty but when you enter over 500 of these skills another 500 mouse moves becomes a bit much.

4. Otherwise, all is well and we use our Skills Bank all the time.

One quick tip and a question on your points:

1. You should be able to type the number of the skill you want to add to get to that skill so you don't have to scroll. FWIW ... this is only a problem when you're first setting up the system, after that you should only need to scroll through like that when you're adding a new member.

2. Why is this an issue? Most times I will use the reports to get a list of people in certain activities, or pull a Master List I can print, or save to disk as a PDF.

3. See my answer to #1.

[Jeff]

Are you editing many activity & skills for one person, or adding a bunch of people to one activity? If you are adding a bunch of people to one activite, try using the maintain attenders screen instead. It might be faster. This screen is often overlooked but is designed to be used when you need to add/edit people to one activity.

[Jeff]

I have updated the forms for the Maintain Activities & Skills to be 80% of the screen height by default. This will be available in the next MR for version 10.

[NeilZ]

I have updated the forms for the Maintain Activities & Skills to be 80% of the screen height by default. This will be available in the next MR for version 10.

Cool ... !!

[NeilZ]

Are you editing many activity & skills for one person, or adding a bunch of people to one activity? If you are adding a bunch of people to one activite, try using the maintain attenders screen instead. It might be faster. This screen is often overlooked but is designed to be used when you need to add/edit people to one activity.

DOH ... I had forgotten about that because its under the Attendence Module !!

[Jeff]

Actually starting in version 9, the Maintain Attenders screen is available in both Attendance and Activity & Skills. We made it available in SK because many people couldn't find it in AT and in some cases, people had rights to SK but not AT.

[NeilZ]

Actually starting in version 9, the Maintain Attenders screen is available in both Attendance and Activity & Skills. We made it available in SK because many people couldn't find it in AT and in some cases, people had rights to SK but not AT.

DOH !!

I have to admit, I didn't see it there, mostly due to the fact that I hadn't had to do a mass 'Add' in a long time, just update individual members .

[John Dykema]

Jeff: that's good news about the MR10 coming up.
To answer your ??? Every couple years we delete all Activities & Skills. We survey the congregation with a several page form and then key in all their responses. So, we are adding many skills for each person so the Attendance idea was a good idea but not for our process. Also, the skill number is not on the form so we can't just type in a number. Maybe we should change the form for next time. But anyway, on the Maintain Activities and Skills/Add/Add Activity screen I cannot just type in a number there. I have to scroll to find a different skill to add to a person. Am I missing something here?

[NeilZ]

Jeff: that's good news about the MR10 coming up.
To answer your ??? Every couple years we delete all Activities & Skills. We survey the congregation with a several page form and then key in all their responses. So, we are adding many skills for each person so the Attendance idea was a good idea but not for our process. Also, the skill number is not on the form so we can't just type in a number. Maybe we should change the form for next time. But anyway, on the Maintain Activities and Skills/Add/Add Activity screen I cannot just type in a number there. I have to scroll to find a different skill to add to a person. Am I missing something here?

FWIW ... add the number to the skill sheet, it makes it alot easier to enter activities.

I'm not sure what how you're doing it, but what we used to do was take each members sheet, go into Powerchurch, go over the list on the sheet with what's in the system, delete what's no longer valid, and add what is.

Having the numbers on the sheet (in ascending order according to department or area), makes this job much faster, and easier than a mass delete, and mass entry.

[Jeff]

John,

I brought up the Maintain List of Attenders because often when we hear about problems with this screen people are trying to enter many individuals to an activity. This is not the case here.

If you do not have the activity number on the form, in version 9 & 10 you can click the description column header, this will sort the list by description. Now just start typing the skill description and it should search through the list. When the correct activity is selected, hit tab and then enter to add the activity for that person.

[Zorak]

If you do not have the activity number on the form, in version 9 & 10 you can click the description column header, this will sort the list by description. Now just start typing the skill description and it should search through the list.

Just a note, this is something that is common to all of the Locate or Lookup lists. A lot of people find this an easier way of doing things, instead of watching the scroll bar zoom past the entry they are trying to get to.

[John Dykema]

Thanks much. Were starting this project soon.

[John Dykema]

I've run into this just recently during data entry:
I go to Maintain activities and skills
Key in a number code, it goes to it, click Tab, then Enter. At this point all is well. When I key in the next Activity code I cannot make it find that code. It's like it doesn't recognize my key strokes. If I reach for the mouse and click on one of the codes then it seems to work. That's a pain though to reach that mouse each time.
Another problem I see is that if I mistakenly hit Enter before tabbing, all the code disappear. Maybe that's a good thing though because it shows me what a bad data entry person I am.
Comments?