Section 6: Assignment History

While the preview pane is a good way to keep track of who you have already assigned for previous weeks on the schedule, there is also a pop-up type dialogue box that will show a list of who has been used for the various assignments over the course of time.

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The assignment counts can be useful when assignments need to be allocated on a rotational basis. For example, this applies to assignments for the Congregation Bible Study and closing in prayer. Using the counts you can evenly share out these assignments.

Using this feature will also assist to prevent back to back assignments. Each name can be expanded to show the dates when they were previously assigned:

This is very useful as it can help you vary a brother's assignments.

Displaying the Assignment History window

You can toggle the dialogue on or off by clicking Assignment History on the View menu. This setting is remembered by the software and stays in affect until you alter it. This is not designed to be used as some kind of automatic assignment facility but will aid with balanced rotation in your selection of brothers. Assignment history is retained for 5 years; any data held which is older than this will is automatically purged when the editor is displayed. This keeps the file to a manageable size.

Full History

Click the Full History tab (see below) if you would like to see the full assignment history for the brother. It can be useful to look at this information because it can further help you in giving a brother varied assignments.

The Active Assignment mode will only list information for those listed in the drop-down list in the editor. But the Full History mode will include anyone who has previously given this assignment in the past.

Filtering

Use the filtering facility to limit the details displayed. For example, you could limit the list to show only discussions. The drop list is initially empty but you can customize it.

There is one additional benefit in using the assignment history feature! It displays all names that have previously been used within the last 5 years (unless they are not available on the chosen date). These names will include those that you manually typed in. For example, you may have assigned an exemplary brother to close the meeting in prayer by typing his name into the edit box. Such a name will never show in the drop list but will show in subsequent assignment history for re-use.

When you save a Christian Life and Ministry schedule you will be prompted to update the Assignment History feature. This history is utilized by a floating dialogue. You can resize the dialogue to make it fit anywhere suitable on the editing screen. The contents displayed will change as you click on different parts of the editor to display the most recent dates for each brother.

This feature will be become more useful as the history of each list is built. Clicking on any name will cause them to be selected for that assignment in the editor. You may continue to use the normal dropdown lists on the editor if you so desire.

Delete from assignment history

Right-click any name on the assignment history window to delete it from the list:

It gets deleted from the history data file and the operation cannot be reversed.

Under normal circumstances you would not need to remove a name from the list. The assignment history gets purged from time to time anyway so names that have not been used for a while would eventually go. But there are occasions when you might want to remove them (like if someone leaves the congregation).