Where Have All The Students Gone?

Several users have asked the following question after they upgraded Meeting Schedule Assistant to version 21.2.5 or higher:

I just updated to the latest version Meeting Schedule Assistant and I lost all of the publisher information to make meeting assignments. Please advise.


What Happened?

The 21.2.5 Newsletter has a section under the heading Publishers Database — Finetune Student Assignments.

After you have upgraded, and run Meeting Schedule Assistant for the first time, it will show you the following popup window:

Upgrade Publishers Database popup message
Upgrade Publishers Database popup message

If you look at the bottom of this popup window it explains why the database needs to be upgraded. The Student assignment has been replaced by:

  • Student — Bible Reading
  • Student — Discussion
  • Student — Talk

Thus, the database has to be upgraded because of these new refinements to the list of assignments.


What To Do

As you can see, there are two options available to you. It appears that a few users have been accepting the default option (Manual) and possibly not realised the impact of that decision. I’ll try to clarify what both of these options do:

Manual

Choose this option if you want to review the Publisher Database manually yourself.

What Does This Mean?

Meeting Schedule Assistant 21.2.5 Feature Image
New Student Assignments

It means that you will need to:

  1. Display the Publishers Database.
  2. Go through each publisher in the list.
  3. Review the three new Student assignments for the selected publisher.
  4. Press the Apply Changes button.

It might take you a while to go through each publisher to update the settings.

Automatic

Choose this option if you want to automatically upgrade the Publisher Database.

What Does It Do?

The software will update the database by using a set of assumptions. These are:

  • It will set the Student — Discussion for everyone.
  • If the publisher is a Brother, it will also set:
    • Student — Bible Reading
    • Student — Talk

It is suggested that you then review the upgraded database and make any further refinements.