Metropoliplan

MEP was developed specifically for public witnessing in metropolitan areas. It enables the coordination of large numbers of publishers across multiple congregations. It doesn’t matter whether 100, 1000 or even more publishers are participating. It’s also suitable for organizing projects in tourist areas, such as the coastal carts or the long-distance truck ministry.

For allocating carts at congregation level, other solutions, such as Google Sheets or Excel Online, are more suitable.

The coordinator and his assistants, as administrators, can assign any number of participants to assignments. It is ensured that one participant is always assigned the team leadership. The allocation of an assignment depends primarily on the location, time, and availability of the participants. Additional information such as the publisher’s ministry privileges or special requirements for the respective area can also be gathered. In some areas, for example, a brother must always accompany an assignment for safety reasons, or a car is mandatory.

Each publisher receives their own account with which they can log in and out independently. On their personal dashboard, they will find all important information about their assignments. They can apply for assignments themselves, withdraw applications, or make themselves available as a substitute. If desired, assigned assignments are automatically transferred to their personal calendar; otherwise, they will only be notified via email.

As an additional feature, you can have automatic scheduling done most of the work. This is an optimization algorithm that creates a complete proposal for assignments based on your local criteria.

MEP ensures that team leaders prepare a short report on each completed assignment. These data will help you to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular route, plan literature needs, and prepare monthly reports for the branch office.

MEP also facilitates to communicate with your participants. News can be displayed on the dashboard, documents can be shared with everyone, and participants can report positive or negative experiences to you.

This brief overview is intended to help you decide whether MEP is the right tool for your area. Detailed explanations and step-by-step instructions for each process can be found below.

It all begins with the planner (the coordinator or one of their assistants) dedicating a period of time (e.g., a week) in the future for planning. To do this, he specifies in the planning calendar when cart shifts should take place (e.g., Monday 8:00-10:00 a.m.; Tuesday 9:00-11:00 a.m., etc.). He then approves these shifts for planning, meaning participants are notified and can apply for individual shifts. How far in advance he wants to do this is up to the planner. This could be for the next week or the next month. Just like the decision whether to plan one week or, for example, two in a row. Once that’s done, he can sit back and relax and make the most of his precious free time with his Bible reading program, because now it’s up to the participants to apply for the individual shifts.

The participating publisher receives an email and a notification on their personal MEP dashboard that a new week has been released for applications. After careful consideration, he can now apply for the shifts he would like to participate in.

The heading alone sounds boring, and to be honest, the text below doesn’t quite make up for it. Nevertheless, we sincerely ask you not to simply skim through this point. Experience has shown that this is precisely where many misunderstandings arise. The term "shift" refers only to the time period during which the cart service is to take place, e.g., Monday 8:00-10:00 a.m.. The "route" indicates where it should take place, e.g. route train station. The assignment arises from these two components. In some areas, language is added as a third component. A simple example might look like this:

The system contains two routes: the train station and the market square.

Brother Smith now applies for the Monday morning shift from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m..

Brother Smith can now be assigned either to the "Market Square from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m." or to the "Train Station from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m."

We call the combination of shift and route "assignment."

As already mentioned, this could be expanded to include language, if necessary. Then his assignment would look like this: Monday morning from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at the train station in Spanish.

Once the planner has received all applications, he can begin assigning the individual publishers to their assignments. He sees who has applied for each shift. From this list, he selects the required number of brothers and sisters to form the teams. In addition to the name, the planner finds further information about the publisher, such as gender, service privileges, and whether they can take on the role as a team leader. This is very helpful to know, because if no team leader is available, the assignment cannot take place. Once the planner has assigned assignments for each shift, he completes the process by publishing the schedule. All publishers now receive a notification on their personal MEP dashboard, as well as by email, and if they have configured it accordingly, their assignment will appear in their personal calendar.

After everyone has arrived on time and had a great service, the core process is almost complete. Now all that’s missing is the report. The team leader writes it after each assignment. In it, he mentions the literature distributed, how many carts were used, the duration of the assignment, and whether all participants were present.

Completely independent of the team leader’s assignment report, publishers have the opportunity to report positive or negative experiences to the coordination team at any time. If, for example, problems with shopkeepers or government officials repeatedly occur on a particular route, the coordinator can take the necessary steps. It goes without saying that positive experiences are always preferred.

You’ll initially have a completely free week. Now you can specify when shifts should take place. This only concerns the time period, i.e., which day, what time, and how long each shift should take place. Each shift must be created individually. To do this, go to the calendar, click on the starting time, and drag it down to the desired duration, e.g., Monday 10:00 a.m. - 13:00 a.m.

The successfully created shift is now shaded in orange. In this state, it’s in draft mode, meaning no one can see it except the planner. The entire week is planned in this way until it looks something like this:

Once you’re satisfied with the plan, you release the week for application. To do this, click on the context menu in the top right corner of the blue bar (the three dots on top of each other (⋮)). The field "Publish the week" appears.

As soon as you click this, all publishers will be notified by email that a new week is available. The shaded area will now disappear, and the shifts will be uniformly colored orange. This means they are visible to all participants, and they can apply for them.

You’ll see: after doing it a few times, it is really quick and effortless.

Usually, the best comes last, and that should also be the case here. Because if the shifts always take place at the same time (and they usually do), it’s not necessary to redo all this work every week. You can use the previous week as a template with one click and copy it into the current week.

To do this, however, the previous week must have been created. Now that you have the new white week in front of you, go directly to the context menu in the top right and the "Import Shifts" field will appear.

Now, the whole week is planned. You can publish the plan directly or, if necessary, make manual changes, e.g. due to a holiday, or a demonstration, etc..

Now let’s briefly switch perspectives to see what’s happening on the publisher’s side. He was notified by email that a new week has been released for application.

In the application calendar, the publisher finds the available shifts, which are still colored in gray at this point. To apply, the publisher clicks on "Apply" in the respective shift. The color now changes from gray to shaded green.

His work is now done and all he needs to do is waiting patiently for the planner to assign him to the assignments.

If he wants to withdraw his application because he made a mistake, or simply because the cat walked across the keyboard, he can just click on the "Withdraw application" field in the shift in question.

The round prohibition sign on some shifts means that they are in the past or have been closed by the planner. No action is possible for these shifts.

In the meantime, all applications have been received by the planner, and he can now begin scheduling and planning assignments. This process takes a bit of time and requires some concentration. It’s best to find a quiet spot, have some snacks ready and, if desired, playing some motivating music. Original songs have proven effective here. Songs like "Let’s Take the Leap", "Do Not Be Afraid", or "Take Your Time, Choose Wisely" are recommended for the beginning. To maintain motivation and a positive mood, we recommend "We Won’t Stop Now" and "Be Courageous and Strong." And for the final push, songs like "Just Around the Corner" and "Imagine the Time" are recommended. The full playlist is, of course, available at jw.org.

In the weekly planner, the planner can see at a glance how many publishers have applied for a shift, as well as the number of planned assignments (which, logically, is set to 0 at the beginning, as this work still lies ahead of him now).

Each shift must be planned individually. He clicks on the shift in question (e.g., Monday 8:00 - 10:00), and a detail section for that shift opens on the right. There he will find the application status, the assignment status, the number of applications, the routes on which assignments are possible and the option to cancel this shift.

First, he selects the route where the assignment is to take place.

As soon as he clicks on it, a window appears with the information that the assignment is still deactivated. To get started, he has to activate it and the assignment view will appear.

On the left side, he finds the applicants grouped according to the three route preferences:

This feature is optional and can be turned off if not needed.

To create a plan that is both efficient and fair, the planner receives the following information about each publisher:

The publisher is assigned to the assignment by clicking on the gray arrow at the end of the line. Now he is moved to the right side and is part of the team for this assignment. To remove him, click on the "x" on the far right and he will move back to the left side. This does not mean that his application will be deleted. If you want to move all publishers back to the left side at once, simply click the "Unassign All" button. You can find this button in the top right corner.

In this way, a team can now be put together for this shift. It is important that a team leader (Brother or Sister) is always present. If this is not fulfilled, the assignment cannot take place. The team leader must be clicked again in the right column, after which the check mark turns dark blue.

The "Issues" field at the top left shows whether all necessary planning requirements have been met. The impact ranges from simple information to warnings to errors that would prevent the plan from being published. The severity of the issues can be adjusted in the settings.

The "Deactivate Assignment" button in the top right corner is there in case you realize during planning that this assignment will not take place. There are many reasons for this, perhaps there is no team leader available or you just remembered that there is a circuit assembly that day. Fortunately, no one will find out because you are still in planning mode, meaning the plan hasn’t been published yet and no one will be notified.

However, once the outreach is scheduled and published (meaning all publishers have already received their assignments), you will find the red "Cancel Assignment" button at this location instead. If you click on it, all participants of this assignment on this one route will receive a notification via email of the cancellation.

Once the mission is fully planned and the team is complete, he returns to the weekly planning. As soon as the planner clicks on the "mark as planned" field, the shift changes to blue. Every single shift of the entire week is now planned according to this mode.

If assignments are to take place on different routes in one shift, these must also be planned individually.

Allocations can only be published once every shift is properly planned and marked blue. In the top right corner of the context menu you can find the field: "Release Week"

If a shift has been forgotten, an error message will now appear so that the necessary changes can be made.

In cases where no assignment can be made for a shift, it must still be marked as planned and shown in blue. Otherwise, the allocations won’t be published.

Once you have published the weekly assignment, all publishers who have applied at least once will be notified via email. This completes the planner’s work and, as a reward, all shifts in the weekly schedule will change to green.

We switch to the publisher’s side one last time. He received an email with the following information: when and where he was assigned, but also which applications he was not considered for.

He can see in his calendar when the planner allocated him to an assignment, as the respective shift is colored green. If he has set this up previously, his assignments will also appear in his personal calendar.

From now on, he can no longer withdraw his application by simply clicking the"Revoke Application" button. In the case, that he is unable to attend his assignment, he has no other choice but to contact the planner personally.

These terms are well known, so you won’t find any major surprises here. Every publisher belongs to a congregation, and every congregation to a circuit. There are a few details for each area that you need to know to make the most out of MEP.

The depot where the carts are stored has a name and an address. When a new route is created, the corresponding depot is allocated. Therefore, it is necessary to first create the depot and then the route.

By a route we mean the way taken during an assignment. A route has a name and a meeting point where the team meets the next team for handover. Furthermore, you can specify the minimum and maximum number of participants and whether one or more brothers should be present for safety reasons. A depot should be specified where the carts are stored. One or more languages can be specified for a route. If multiple languages are specified, it is possible to create a separate team for each language, each on the way on the same route and time.

For those using automatic planning, there are a few additional settings: whether the number of participants should always be even and whether the route should be occupied throughout the day. This is useful if the depot is not nearby, so the carts only need to be picked up once in the morning and returned in the evening.

In some cases, it may be advisable to limit the number of participants, e.g. if there are very early or very late shifts and it is difficult to maintain the same team size throughout the day. By limiting the number of participants, the planning requirement allows smaller teams to be allowed for the early and/or late shifts instead of canceling the shift altogether.

If the Circuit Overseer would like to get an overview of participation in the public witnessing in metropolitan areas or long-distance trucking service, they can request the desired information from the coordinator. The coordinator selects which quarter from which year they want to see and finds the following two options.

This option is for when the responsible branch office requests a monthly report on submissions and time spent. Clicking the "Copy Report" button provides a summary of all publications submitted, videos shown, and discussions held. You will also find information on the time spent and the number of participating publishers and pioneers.

If you received an Excel form for this report from the branch office, you can copy the data to the clipboard using the "Copy Report" button and paste it directly into Excel.

Here, too, you can select the year and month in question.

It essentially contains the same information as the report for the branch office. Using the "Download Report Data" function, you will receive an Excel file with all deployment reports for the selected month. Unlike the branch office report, where a late report is added to the next month, this report always provides the most recent figures.

These settings should generally not require any changes, as they are correctly preset by the friendly support team on the other side.