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Meeting Points

A meeting point is a field service meeting: the short gathering before going out in the ministry, with a date, a conductor, a place, and usually a field service group. In longer texts CongPlan calls it a field service meeting; on buttons and cards it is simply a meeting point.

Meeting Points is one of the three workspaces of the Field Service area. This page describes how meeting points are planned there.

List and Calendar​

The workspace lists the meeting points in chronological order, in the same continuous 90-day window used by the overview. Everyone who may see meeting points gets this list.

The month grid for planning is now part of the Calendar. Open calendar in the ⋮ menu opens it with the chip Meeting points selected.

Planning in the Calendar​

In the calendar, each day cell shows the meeting points of that day as tiles, next to meetings, public witnessing, events and tasks.

  • Create — on today and on any later day, the + in the cell corner opens a menu; Create meeting point opens the creation sheet with that date already filled in.
  • Open — tapping a tile opens the meeting point.
  • Day sheet — tapping the day number opens a sheet with every entry of that day as a full card.

The Suggested Time​

When you create a meeting point, CongPlan suggests a time that fits the weekday you clicked on. The suggestion is not a fixed rule but comes from the congregation's own history: the times most often used on that weekday, most frequent first, with the more recent one winning a tie. A time already used on the selected day is skipped, so a second meeting point on the same day does not land on top of the first. If the congregation has no history for that weekday, the form simply keeps its default.

Conductor and Location​

Both are chosen in the same sheet.

  • Conductor — a publisher from the congregation, or a free-text name if the brother conducting is not a user. The picker opens as a sub-view inside the same sheet rather than as a second dialog on top, and it shows absences and previous assignments while you choose, so a conflict is visible before you commit to it.
  • Location — a free text such as "Kingdom Hall" or "Supermarket car park", optionally with a map point so the card offers a link into the device's maps app.
  • At a publisher's home — instead of a text location you can pick a publisher whose home the group meets at. The card then reads at that person's name.

Both person pickers open on Designated. For Conductor, that means active publishers marked for the field-service assignment Conductor; for At a publisher's home, it means active publishers marked for Location. Switch to All to choose another active publisher. These marks guide planning; they do not block saving.

The chosen location — including a publisher's home — is shown the same way everywhere it appears: on the card in the app, in the printed meeting-point schedule (time, location, conductor), and in the personal calendar subscription.

Partner Groups​

A meeting point does not have to belong to exactly one group. The group field is a multiple selection:

  • One group — the card shows that group's name.
  • Several groups — the groups are shown together; where their names share a numeric pattern they are collapsed into a short form such as Groups 3 + 4. This is the case when two groups regularly go out from the same place at the same time and you want to plan it once instead of twice.
  • No group — the meeting point is congregation-wide. It shows no group line and is visible to every publisher.

Recurring Meeting Points​

For a group that meets in a stable rhythm, a series creates repeated meeting points in one step. You choose the interval — daily, weekly or monthly — and how many entries to create, and you decide which fields the copies carry over: the time is always carried over, while location, conductor and group are optional. A preview shows the dates that will be created before you confirm.

Every generated entry stays an ordinary meeting point afterwards: a single date can be moved, given a different conductor, or deleted without touching the rest of the series.

Details and Change History​

Opening a meeting point shows its date, conductor, location, groups, and map link where available. The footer shows when it was last modified. A person who may edit that meeting point also sees who changed it and can open View all changes in a sheet without leaving the detail page.

Who May Manage Meeting Points​

  • Full field-service edit permission (fieldServiceMeetings.edit) — may create, change and delete every meeting point of the congregation, and also gives access to the Calendar.
  • Group overseers, group servants and their assistants may manage the meeting points of their own group. Two limits apply, and both are enforced by the server, not just hidden in the interface:
    • They must lead every group involved — the groups the meeting point is in now, and every group it would belong to afterwards. A group leader cannot quietly add a group they do not lead.
    • They cannot remove the last group, because a meeting point without a group is a congregation-wide one and would become visible to everybody.
  • The assigned conductor may edit their own meeting point if the congregation switches that on. It is meant for the short-notice correction — a different time, a different place — not for planning.
  • Everyone else with the standard view right (fieldServiceMeetings.view) sees meeting points but changes nothing.

Whether the brother taking the lead in a group is titled group overseer or group servant follows from his appointment: group overseer only if he is an elder, otherwise group servant. See Field Service Groups for how groups, leads and assistants are maintained, and Permissions for how the permissions themselves are granted.