Gospel Living needs serious work in 2023

[sammythesm]

Compared to all the excellent mobile apps the Church develops, Gospel Living is a frequent disappointment. I've tried to reach out via "Feedback" and have not received responses from the development team. If there is a product manager on this forum, I would love to connect and share more and understand the priorities that are driving this app.

Here are the defects we've encountered:
1. People just showed up in our Ward Council circle today without any administrator adding them. When me or my counselor tried to remove them, they would not be removed. We tried individually and as a group. Nothing seemed to work. This exposed a lot of private communication to many ward members who didn't need to know, and honestly will probably drive me to stop using the app entirely.
2. One of our quorum's circles just disappeared for all the leaders. All the administrators were kicked out of it. No one could figure out how to add them back. When I go under "Circle Administration" I can see nothing (As the bishop). Had to call Church support to restore an administrator to the circle, I think.
3. Multiple people have fallen into the "Leave all Circles" trap. I don't know why this button exists, as there is no reason to kick yourself out of all circles.
4. Multiple notifications come through for the same messages if you are a parent or leader.
5. Sometimes notifications don't come through at all / App unknowingly logs you out and you just stop receiving notifications.
6. Notifications for replies-in-threads don't deep-link you into the threads.
7. Unread status dots never turn off for some threads, despite reading all the content in the thread.
8. There is a huge performance lag for viewing threads. Nobody uses them because they are so slow.
9. There's a huge usability problem with threads. No one knows how to long-press a message to reply in a thread.

Feature-wise, the lack of these features make the app really hard to use:
1. No reactions. Nobody knows if anyone engages/reads the content unless they have something to say in replies (and replies are unusable)
2. Lack of proper threading (see above)
3. Unable to create circles for very useful things (e.g. primary teachers, sunday school teachers, adult youth leaders, etc.)
4. Parents unable to engage in circles their kids are in. (view ability is nice, but sometimes we want replies/reactions from the parents as well)
5. Lack of 2-way integration between Church Calendar and Activity Calendar (never clear whether the room is reserved, creating duplicate calendar items, creating inconsistency between Tools and Living apps)
6. No web or desktop app, which makes typing/sharing a lot of content very painful on mobile.

[lajackson]

For all of the reasons you mentioned, and others, I do not use the app.
When I last contacted the GSD about an issue, I was informed that they do not yet support the app. This may have changed since I called.

It was an easy decision.

This app has the potential to be of great value, but until it is improved to a more functional state, for me it has more challenges than benefits. Because I spend too much time dealing with other app and website issues, Gospel Living has not made it far enough up my problem list for me to begin dealing with it.

Sadly, there are only so many days in the hour.

[sbradshaw]

When I last contacted the GSD about an issue, I was informed that they do not yet support the app. This may have changed since I called.

Gospel Living feedback that's sent through the in-app feedback form is reviewed and tracked, but I think the GSD team that answers phone calls (mainly from ward and stake leaders) is separate and doesn't have the resources/training to support the mobile apps.

[cozzensjon]

Almost 2 years later, these same problems exist. Im done.

[faithy]

I echo a lot of the sentiments expressed in the original post. In theory the app is a great idea, but we really struggle to get ward members (and leadership, sometimes) to even want to try using the circles function because there are so many issues.

Also, it is incredibly ironic that the “submit feedback” option continues to have errors and you cannot inform of issues. Most people are not going to search online to figure out how to submit feedback.

[brandonrichey]

I’m in the same boat. We need Circles to function to be more affective at moving the work along in our wards. But as it is, we’re having to look for other solutions. Would be nice to just get a simple reply from the church to this thread or a notice out to the members with the plan…just give us a little hope.