Schedule Public Witnessing Carts

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New World Scheduler can schedule Public Witnessing carts, locations and shifts. Approved publishers can use the NW Publisher app to quickly and easily reserve any Public Witnessing shift.

Our Public Witnessing Cart scheduler has been designed to be easy to setup, simple to use, and flexible.

For example, elders can easily create a Public Witnessing schedule suitable for your congregation, including Locations, Carts and Shifts, and then publishers can reserve Cart Shifts themselves directly using NW Publisher app.

To schedule Public Witnessing, click Schedule > Public Witnessing

New World Scheduler Schedule Public Witnessing Carts Menu Public Witnessing

Public Witnessing Locations

Physical Locations

Public Witnessing Shifts

Public Witnessing Schedule

Public Witnessing Templates

Public Witnessing Cart Reservations

Sync App Reservations

Common Questions and Problems

Public Witnessing Locations

  • Note: Before you can schedule Public Witnessing, first add some Public Witnessing Locations.
  • Note: A Public Witnessing Location has a physical Location, multiple shifts, and optionally a cart number or notes.
  • Note: The list on the right shows all your Public Witnessing Locations and their Shifts. This list can be Filtered by Cart or physical Location.
NW Scheduler Schedule Public Witnessing Carts Public Witnessing Locations

Add a Public Witnessing Location

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Locations
  2. Click New
  3. Optionally, enter a Cart Number
    • Note: See Literature Carts
  4. Select a Location
  5. Optionally, enter any Notes
  6. Add some Public Witnessing Shifts to this public witnessing location
  7. If you have enabled Show Public Witnessing on the NW Publisher app, click Send App Data

Remove a Public Witnessing Location

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Locations
  2. Select a Public Witnessing Location to remove
  3. Click Delete
  4. If you have enabled Show Public Witnessing on the NW Publisher app, click Send App Data

Physical Locations

Locations are used when scheduling Field Service Meetings, Group Field Service Meetings and the Circuit Overseer Visit.

NW Scheduler Schedule Field Service Public Witnessing Locations

Add Locations

  1. Click New
  2. Enter the Name
  3. Enter the Address
  4. Optionally, enter a Link

Remove Locations

  1. Select the location
  2. Click Delete

Public Witnessing Shifts

  • Note: Each Public Witnessing Location may have multiple shifts.
  • Note: To help you add multiple shifts quickly, if an existing Shift is selected and you press + (add), the new shift will have the same Day, and the Start Time will be set to the End Time of the selected Shift.

Add a Public Witnessing Shift

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Locations
  2. Select a Public Witnessing Location from the list
  3. Click + to add a new Shift
  4. Select the Day
  5. Select the Maximum Persons for this Shift
    • Note: Once this limit is reached, publishers won’t be able to make more reservations for this shift
  6. Select a Start Time and End Time for this Shift

Remove a Public Witnessing Shift

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Locations
  2. Select a Public Witnessing Location from the list
  3. Select the Shift to remove
  4. Click – to remove the Shift

Public Witnessing Schedule

  • Note: The Public Witnessing Schedule provides an overview of all Public Witnessing Locations, Shifts and Reservations, and allow allows you to add or remove Public Witnessing Reservations.
  • Note: If you have enabled Allow Public Witnessing Reservations on the NW Publisher app, before you can make changes to the Public Witnessing Reservations you must click Sync App Reservations
  • Note: It is quicker and easier for publishers to make their own reservations via the NW Publisher app
New World Scheduler Schedule Public Witnessing Carts Public Witnessing Schedule

Create a Public Witnessing Reservation

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Schedule
  2. Select the Week, Day and Time of Day from the right Schedule
  3. Select a Public Witnessing Location
  4. Select a Shift
  5. Under Publisher, select which Publisher should be added to this shift
  6. Click + to make a Reservation for this publisher on this shift.
  7. If you have enabled Show Public Witnessing on the NW Publisher app, click Send App Data

Remove a Public Witnessing Reservation

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Schedule
  2. Select the Week, Day and Time of Day from the right Schedule
  3. Select a Public Witnessing Location
  4. Select a Shift
  5. Under Publishers, select the Publisher to remove
  6. Click – to remove this reservation for this publisher
  7. If you have enabled Show Public Witnessing on the NW Publisher app, click Send App Data

Enable or Disable Public Witnessing Location

Generally speaking, it is recommended that Public Witnessing carts are setup at the same location and at the same time each week. New World Scheduler Public Witnessing Cart scheduler has been designed with this recommendation in mind.

However sometimes flexibility is needed. For example:

  • The Public Witnessing Schedule needs to be temporarily changed for one week only
  • A certain Public Witnessing location is only used every 2nd week, or once a month

In such cases, you can use the Disable button to disable a specific location on a specific date.

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing > Public Witnessing Schedule
  2. Select the Week, Day and Time of Day from the right Schedule
  3. Select the Public Witnessing Location that should be disabled
  4. Click Disable
    • Note: This will remove any current Reservations at that time, and remove the option to reserve shifts at that location on that day.

Public Witnessing Templates

Similar to Field Service Templates, Public Witnessing Templates allow you to quickly and easily use New World Scheduler to schedule the same publishers to the same shifts each week.

Public Witnessing Templates can be used together with NW Publisher app Reservations. For example, some shifts could be pre-allocated to certain publishers, and other shifts could be reserved by publishers.

Save a Public Witnessing Template

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing
  2. Add the regular Public Witnessing Reservations
  3. Under Week Template, enter a Template Name
  4. Click Save

Load a Public Witnessing Template

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing
  2. Select the desired Week
  3. Under Week Template, select a Week Template
  4. Choose how many weeks to apply this template to
  5. Click Load
    • Note: Any existing Public Witnessing Reservations for those shifts only will be overwritten.

Edit an existing Public Witnessing Template

  1. Click Schedule > Public Witnessing
  2. Load a Public Witnessing Template
  3. Make changes to the Public Witnessing Reservations for that week.
  4. Save the Public Witnessing Template
    • Note: If you use the same Template Name, the existing template will be overwritten. Otherwise a new template will be created.

Public Witnessing Cart Reservations

Once the Public Witnessing schedule has been created by the elders, approved Publishers can quickly and easily make Public Witnessing reservations using the NW Publisher app.

To make a reservation using the NW Publisher app, the following must be true:

  1. App > App Features > Show Public Witnessing is Ticked
  2. App > App Features > Allow Public Witnessing Reservations is Ticked
  3. Publisher has Persons > Assign > Public Witnessing Ticked.
  4. Publisher is using the latest version of NW Publisher.

To prevent all publishers from making Reservations using the NW Publisher app, Untick App > App Features > Allow Public Witnessing Reservations

To prevent certain publishers from making reservations using the NW Publisher app, Untick Persons > Assign > Public Witnessing

NW Publisher app Public Witnessing Schedule Cart Reservations phone

Sync App Reservations

As is explained in Receive or Import App Data, when a publisher sends data back to the congregation, it is not automatically received by New World Scheduler. It must be manually imported by an elder into New World Scheduler.

Additionally, as explained in Send App Data, any data created or edited inside New World Scheduler must be manually sent to the NW Publisher app.

While manually sending and receiving data creates an extra step, this method greatly enhances the security of New World Scheduler.

Receiving or Importing App Reservations to NW Publisher app

If you have enabled Allow Public Witnessing Reservations, the Sync App Reservations button will immediately import all Public Witnessing Reservations made by any publisher on the NW Publisher app into New World Scheduler.

It will overwrite all Public Witnessing Reservations currently in New World Scheduler with the new data.

You must first click Sync App Reservations if you want to either:

  1. Print the Public Witnessing Schedule, including reservations, OR
  2. Make some manual Public Witnessing Reservations from within New World Scheduler, OR
  3. Disable a Public Witnessing Location

Generally speaking, unless you are doing the above, there is no need to click Sync App Reservations.

Sending App Reservations to NW Publisher app

After making any manual Public Witnessing Reservations in New World Scheduler, the brother must click Send App Data. He should do this as soon as possible after making changes, to avoid any publishers reservations being lost.

Important

If a congregation Allows Public Witnessing Reservations, and also wants to create manual Reservations from within New World Scheduler, it is important to understand how to keep the data synchronised.

Put simply, immediately before making any Public Witnessing Reservations or Disabling any Public Witnessing Location, the brother should click Sync App Reservations. This ensures he is editing the latest schedule. He should then promptly make any changes, and promptly click Send App Data. This ensures publishers see the latest schedule.

If any publishers make any reservations in the time in between the brother clicking Sync App Reservations and Send App Data, their reservations will obviously be lost.

Sync Problems

If Public Witnessing Reservations are going missing or disappearing, please carefully check the following:

  1. Ensure all publishers are using the latest version of NW Publisher.
  2. Ensure all Shared Persons are using the latest version of New World Scheduler.
  3. Ensure all Shared Persons and those who edit the Public Witnessing schedule have carefully read Sync App Reservations and fully understand how this works, and what they need to do.
  4. Carefully check the App Logs > Public Witnessing to see when the data was overwritten, and by whom. Provide additional training to that person.
NW Publisher app iOS & Android App Logs

Literature Carts

Congregations manage Literature Carts in many different ways. Some congregations have lots of literature carts, some have just a few.

Some have a central “storage” area for carts, others assign Field Service Groups to care for carts, and still other congregations have different brothers and sisters to care for different carts.

Some congregations assign a specific cart to a specific location, whereas other congregations let the publishers choose which cart to use.

New World Scheduler has been designed to be as flexible and easy-to-use as possible. You may choose to specify a specific cart for a Public Witnessing Location, or choose not to.

Common Questions and Problems

Please see Persons > Assign Privileges and Duties

To see a list of those approved for Public Witnessing, click Print and select either:

  • Persons > Persons List and change Assign to Public Witnessing, OR
  • Persons > Assignments and Duties by Person

See Persons Reports for more information.

Only publishers who have Assign > Public Witnessing ticked are able to make reservations using NW Publisher app.

Please see Persons > Assign Privileges and Duties

Additionally, once making this change, you must Send App Data

No. It is not reasonable for a computer program to limit how many reservations a publisher can make, the same way Zoom does not limit how many times a publisher can raise their hand in the Watchtower.

Instead, publishers should be trained by their local elders to be loving, unselfish and considerate when making reservations.

If elders wish to make rules about how many reservations a publisher can make, they can simply tell the publishers these rules.

Additionally, New World Scheduler allows elders to quickly print the Public Witnessing schedule, which shows who has reservations. If elders notice that some publishers are reserving too often, they could offer private counsel.

Publishers are able to make multiple reservations per shift using NW Publisher app.

They should do this if they are making a reservation for one of their delegates, another person who doesn’t use the NW Publisher app, or a visitor from another congregation.

If publishers are doing this incorrectly, they should receive training from their local elders.

Yes, publishers are able to make multiple reservations per shift using NW Publisher app.

They should do this if they are making a reservation for one of their delegates, another person who doesn’t use the NW Publisher app, or a visitor from another congregation.

No, Public Witnessing has been designed so that approved publishers can make their own reservations.

Alternately, elders can use New World Scheduler to make manual Public Witnessing assignments, or even use Public Witnessing Templates to make regular assignments.

In New World Scheduler, Public Witnessing can be scheduled for this month and the next 2 months. This cannot be adjusted.

Publishers using NW Publisher app may make reservations up to 4 weeks in advance. This cannot be adjusted.

All dates will automatically update as time passes.

Manually adding Public Witnessing Reservations to the Public Witnessing Schedule will send Notifications via the NW Publisher app to those who have been scheduled.

There are no reminders for Public Witnessing.

Public Witnessing requires a Congregation Premium license.

Individual and Congregation Standard licenses are able to add 1 Public Witnessing Location to test this feature before upgrading.

Please carefully re-read Sync App Reservations, including the Sync Problems section, and ensure all brothers editing Public Witnessing Reservations understand this information.

Please also ensure all publishers are using the latest version of NW Publisher.

Public Witnessing has been designed for use by your congregation only. It would be both a security and privacy issue to share data between congregations.

It is also unnecessary. If multiple congregations share the same Public Witnessing Locations, then the elders should simply discuss and determine which days/times each congregation will have. You can then create Shifts for those days/times only.

Alternatively, if multiple congregations combine certain cart witnessing locations (e.g. publishers from multiple languages) then you simply need to limit the Maximum persons your congregation will schedule for those locations and shifts. If necessary, you could send a PDF of your Public Witnessing schedule to the other congregation.

In either case, it is both right and proper for you to schedule publishers in your own congregation only.

This ensures everything is done “decently and by arrangement”.

Sorry, New World Scheduler is not designed for Special Metropolitan Witnessing and cannot be used for this purpose.

Additional Help

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