Changes to Territory Helper Integration

Depending on where you live you may be aware of a number of refinements that have been made in the UK and EU to the way we conduct our ministry. In these countries the direction has been given that no contact data of any kind be recorded in the ministry, including Not at Homes.

There is a discussion open in the Issue Tracker regarding what this means for ServicePlanner in general. I encourage you to have a read and to share your thoughts.

However … there is a more immediate impact due to changes in Territory Helper (TH) that have already been applied on the TH website and will soon be enforced at the API level. I encourage you to login to the Territory Helper website and read the latest announcements if you have not already done so. Please note that ServicePlanner is directly using the TH API and the exact data stored in TH – there is no “workaround” in place for these major changes in how Territory Helper works.

Changes made in Territory Helper…
In summary, the following changes have already been made to the Territory Helper website:

• Only 3 Location Statuses are available – “Unknown”, “Do not call”, and “Delete”. All other Location statuses have been removed.
• Visit Statuses have been removed  (Visited, Not at home, etc) with one exception … “Visited” can still be applied for a “Do not call”.
• The Language fields have been removed.
• Any Location and Unit Notes have been removed.

Resulting in the following changes for ServicePlanner…
The next update to ServicePlanner will thus follow suit and remove the following Territory screens and fields:

• The Notes field will be removed from the Location and Unit screens.
• The Language field will be removed from the Location and Unit screen.
• The Location Status and Unit Status screens will only list “Unknown”, “Do not call” and “Delete”.

Effectively ServicePlanner will be brought in line with the changes made at the Territory Helper end.

This is not a topic that is open for discussion. This post is just informing you about the changes in ServicePlanner that are being made to match what is already being implemented in Territory Helper, and to hopefully reduce any confusion. If you are using Territory Helper in your congregation and you are unsure about why these changes are being made, please speak to your local Territory Servant or Elders to obtain further details.