A couple wants and needs with Faithlife/Feature Request
I have been using Faithlife for a few years now and I love it. However, as a pastor I am not ready to get my church involved. In my previous parish I had tried and run into a few issues I will lay some of them out below. Many of them may have fixes that I have not seen yet, if that is the case, could someone help me out and find them.
-Newsfeed is cluttered: I find that my newsfeed is cluttered with (what seems) like every book review ever done, I know that it is simply the people in the other groups writing reviews, but I would like to slim this down if not be able to hid this completely. I need a way of seeing the news I want to see and avoiding the news I don't want to see. Trying to move people from a FB like environment will pick up on this immediately and not like it.
-Integration with other calendars: As a church leader, I can only maintain so many calendars. If Faithlife were the center of everything, this would work, however, I find Google Calendar more versatile and so it is what I use. If I were to point people here, however, I would need to be able to ensure that they are also receiving the correct calendar.
-Ability to utilize PBB's as book for reading: This one is by far more personal. I absolutely love the idea of reading as a group and doing Bible Study as a group. However, I also, absolutely believe, that the best Bible studies for a particular audience come from people involved with that audience. I need the ability to create Bible studies and share them with the congregation, integrating them with the, "Today's Reading" sidebar would be about the best thing on the planet. That being said, this is not a necessity, but boy would it be really cool to get it.
Anyway, allow me to end on a positive note. I have been on Faithlife for years now, and I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't love it. I love so much about it, so many different aspects and I hope that all the people involved in its creation and continuing improvement know how much the people on the other end, the ones always wanting something more, really appreciate them and all they do. Keep up the great work.
Comments
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Thank you for your feedback! I agree that reviews can be overwhelming at times. I've put in a feature request to turn that volume down.
Also agreed that calendars need improvements and we're actively working on that feature. Can you elaborate on the versatility that Google Calendars offer, what do they offer that Faithlife does not?
Thanks for the suggestion on personal books custom reading plans. I'll look into that.
I'm curious, have you had an opportunity to try out the new messages interface? I'd love to know what you think.
https://faithlife.com/messages
And please keep the suggestions coming!
Jim
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Google Calendars at this point offers several features, the largest is that they make it shareable. I can sync up my Google Calendar across several different platforms. If I could make my Google Calendar sync with Faithlife, or Faithlife sync with Google, that would account for the largest portion of what I need. (Note: I am not talking of downloading the calendar file and uploading it for a one time sync, the calendar is constantly adjusting, I need to be able to sync all the adjustments.) However, I can also do appointment slots on Google Calendar for those that need to see me (not necessary on Faithlife, but a good feature to have for me.) I have also been able to add a little HTML into the description pane which is nice when trying to add a button for such things. I can also add an event to allow people to add the event to their calendar.
I have not done much with your chat interface, as I don't do much chatting on Faithlife at this point, I would do more, but I need to migrate people over, which I will not do until a few of the kinks are worked out (mainly calendar syncing and the newsfeed) Thank you for your reply, I will continue to keep an eye on it.
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the main reason i can't roll it out to be used with my congregation is i can't seem to get any notifications in the mobile app making the groups a bit useless
I agree with the fact that Google is more versatile etc. Plus i think the reality is generally people are not going to move to Faithlife for the ecosystem in which they do all of their tasks, online presence, etc. They are already part of existing ecosystems like Google etc so integration in to that makes it far more useful in the long run.. There's only so many platforms you can practically manage at one time.
No disrespect, but to provide another answer to the very odd question from Jim, there are about a billion apps on every OS that integrate with google calendar, and none that i know of besides the faithlife apps that would utilize your calendar platform.. so the difference is pretty massive.
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Jim I agree that Google Calendar integration should be a top priority. I honestly believe more churches would adopt this if that were to happen. From what I understand the API's are not difficult to work with, and FL already has a top notch development team so I wouldn't think it would be too difficult. Just my .02.
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This experimental feature has been added to beta.faithlife.com/calendar.
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Thank you. This experimental feature of the calendar is working well.
Elder/Pastor, Hope Now Bible Church, Fresno CA
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I may be understanding this wrong, but an "export" ical function will still only produce one-way syncing, correct? I agree with the others here, that two-way syncing between google and faithlife would make the faithlife platform much more compelling!
Thanks for your hard work, Logos/Faithlife/Proclaim folks!
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I have a feature request related to reading plans as well. I'd like to be able to edit them after they have been created and shared, without having to start completely over with a new one. For example, I posted a reading plan for Galatians and Ephesians based on my original lesson plans for teaching in Sunday school, but due to some circumstances changing, I need to modify the reading plan to allocate more time for each chapter. At this point it looks like I need to scrap the current reading plan and start over with a new one, but it would be more elegant if I could simply modify the existing one to spread it out over more time.
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Geoff Johnson said:
I need to modify the reading plan to allocate more time for each chapter. At this point it looks like I need to scrap the current reading plan and start over with a new one
You should be able to create a private copy of your shared plan: Go to "Manage Document sharing" in the resource menu of the plan
this will lead you to the documents.logos.com sub-page of your shared plan - in the top righthand corner you can see your options
You can duplicate the plan and change it, then share the edited version with the group. Thus, some may continue with the old plan - or convert their checkmarks of completed readings to the new plan and then drop of the old one.
Alternatively, you can end collaboration which will disconnect all current members of the plan. This will make the original plan an editable private plan, which you can change and share again, but it will nuke everyone's progress (and potential messages written in the plan as well).
Have joy in the Lord!
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These are helpful tips as workarounds. But I may have to change up the reading plan almost weekly, because I usually don't get as far through the text as I plan each Sunday. And I'm never exactly sure where I will have to find a stopping point to pick up the following week. Recreating the reading plan every time I fail to finish at the expected point will get tedious at best.
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