Meetings for Field Service in the App

A List for Everyone, a Month Grid for Planners

The Meetings for Field Service come in two views. The list shows them in chronological order across a rolling 90-day window and is open to everyone allowed to see them. The month grid is the planning view: every action in it is an edit, so only the full field-service edit permission unlocks it – and because a grid needs room, it appears from tablet width upwards; on a narrow phone CongPlan says so plainly and points back to the list.

Planning Straight in the Grid

Each day cell shows that day’s meeting points as small chips, and whatever does not fit can be expanded. A plus in the cell creates a new entry with the date you clicked already filled in. Tapping a chip opens the same editing sheet you get everywhere else, and tapping the day number opens an overview of every entry on that day – deliberately the number rather than the whole cell, so the day never gets in the way of the chip.

A Time That Fits the Congregation

When you create a meeting point, CongPlan suggests a time that fits the weekday you clicked on. The suggestion is not a fixed rule; it comes from the congregation’s own history: the times used most often on that weekday, most frequent first, the more recent one winning a tie. A time already used on the selected day is skipped, so a second entry does not land on top of the first.

Conductor, Location – or a Publisher’s Home

You pick the conductor from the congregation, or type a free-text name if the brother is not a user. The person picker opens inside the same sheet rather than as a second dialog on top, and it shows absences and previous assignments while you choose, so a conflict is visible before you commit to it. A location can be free text such as “Kingdom Hall” or a car park, optionally with a map point for the device’s maps app; alternatively you pick the publisher whose home the group meets at. The chosen location appears the same way everywhere: on the card in the app, in the printed schedule, and in the personal calendar subscription.

One Group, Two Groups, or the Whole Congregation

The group field accepts several field service groups. When two groups regularly go out from the same place at the same time, you plan that once instead of twice; names sharing a numeric pattern are collapsed on the card. With no group at all, the entry belongs to the whole congregation and is visible to every publisher.

Series for a Steady Rhythm

For a group that meets in a stable rhythm, a series creates several entries in one step – daily, weekly, or monthly, in the number you choose. The time is always carried over, location, conductor, and group only if you want, and a preview shows the dates before anything is created. Afterwards every entry is an ordinary meeting point again: a single date can be moved, given a different conductor, or deleted without touching the rest of the series.

Who May Plan

The full field-service edit permission covers every meeting point of the congregation and unlocks the month grid. Group overseers, group servants, and their assistants manage the entries of their own group, within two limits the server enforces rather than merely hiding in the interface: they must lead every group involved, the current ones as well as the future ones, and they cannot remove the last group, because the entry would otherwise become visible congregation-wide. Where the congregation switches it on, the assigned conductor may correct his own entry at short notice; everyone else only sees it.