Maintain Databases
Congregations
Time Changes Manager
Some congregations don't always have their Public
Talk meeting at the same time. This is generally due to the
fact that they might be sharing a Kingdom Hall, and thus alternate
between a set of different times. The Time Changes Manager
allows you to set up this information in a straightforward
manner.
Once the details have been setup, there should be
no need to worry about changing them again, as the program will
automatically keep the time change details up-to-date.
Why would you want to set this information?
Why not just set the current time on the Congregations maintenance
page? Well, there is one big drawback if you do things like
that. Imagine that you have arranged some Away talks to a
particular congregation, let us say in December and January of the
next year. If that congregation changes time on 1st January,
then when you generate your Away talk assignments, they would show
just the current time that you had. It would not have
realised that the times should have changed on 1st January.
So by setting these details up, you can make your reports more
intelligent and they will thus show the correct times.
The example above shows you how you would set it up
for a congregation that has it's current meeting time at 10 AM
(which began on 1st January 2004) and then changes every year,
firstly to 2 PM and then back to 10 AM.
It is important to realise that you only have to
set these details once. So even if it seems a lot of work,
please do it! Besides, this is a powerful feature of the
program, so it might be worth printing out these instructions.
A detailed description of each option of this
dialogue is provided below.
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Switching off
this option enables all of the remaining controls on the
dialogue. If you find that a congregation no longer changes
their meeting times (maybe they now have their own Kingdom Hall)
then just set this option back on and press OK.
When this option is off, you will find that the
usual meeting time control on the Congregations maintenance page
will be disabled. This is because you have decided to
override that time and let the Time Changes Manager take control of
the meeting time.
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Use this dropdown list
to select how many times this congregation alters it's meeting
time. The default value is 2, but you can choose from 2 to 5
time changes. As you change this setting, the remaining
controls will get enabled accordingly.
For example, if this congregation meets at 10 AM this year, and
then 2 PM next year, that means there are two time
changes. |
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This represents the
current meeting time for this congregation. This value is the
same value as will be displayed on the Congregations maintenance
page. It is in 24 hour format.
For example, if this congregation is currently meeting at 10 AM,
then enter the time as 10:00.
Once set, the program will automatically keep it up-to-date for
you. |
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This represents the date
when the last meeting time changed. It is important that you
enter the correct date here because this date is used in working
out when the next time change will occur.
For example, if this congregation changed to having the meetings
at 10 AM on the 1st of January 2004, then that is the date you
enter in there. So you must find out from this congregation
the date that they change meeting time. For the majority of
congregations, it is January 1st.
Once set, the program will automatically keep it up-to-date for
you. |
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These controls allow
to set up all the meeting time changes information. The
number of controls that are enabled depends upon how many time
changes you have selected, which will be between 2 and 5.
Just work down the table, from top to bottom, selecting how many
months it will be to the next meeting time change. You can
choose from 1 to 36 months. The default is 12. Then
enter what the meeting time will change to. The time is
specified in 24 hour format. Then proceed to the next time
change.
Understand that each time change is relative to the previous
time change. So in this example, time change 2 occurs 12
months after time change 1.
Once set, the program will automatically keep it up-to-date for
you. This will mean that whenever the date for changing a
congregation's meeting time arrives, the program will alter the
order of the time changes accordingly. |
