Interactive Voice Response System

[WelchTC]

Some ideas from my house:

Be able to reach Bishops phone number (church office)
Ward phone number (hallway)
Is Temple is open today?
Closest distribution center
Reach the missionaries assigned to that area or mission office (imagine you are traveling, meet someone interested in the Church and want to quickly pass along the referral)

I really like the missionary idea. How many of you can easily reach the missionaries in your assigned area let alone a missionary in an area that someone you would like to share the gospel with lives in. Maybe add the option of finding the contact information for the nearest mission office.

Sounds like your idea, Aaron, could mushroom!

Tom

[The_Earl]

This seems like a great idea. I really like the 'find your missionary' and 'call your <ward leader>' suggestions. Sometimes I would like to refer missionaries to out-of-state friends, and I don't want a cold call contact, or a referral card. Calling the missionaries would be a great way to let them know specifically about a friend.

I am not sure how to allow people to call other ward officers (executive secretary, EQP, RS President, Stake President) to keep the Bishop's phone from ringing off the hook. I don't think turning this into a global church directory is a good idea, but there may be other leadership that would make sense to get in touch with.

Maybe this system just forwards you to the Bishop's or SP's office phone. You wouldn't want to use this system in an emergency anyway, so leave an appropriate message.

The Earl

[russellhltn]

Some phones have GPS built-in. How hard is it to tap that to get a "closest to you" feature? May not work over a voice call, but if the feature is done via other means such as the protocol for phone browsers.

[thedqs]

Very cool ideas. As for the GPS I think that is e-911 only, though on some phones you can get your current coords. The problem I'd see and maybe other people already thought of it is if a person sets up a 1-800 number and just records peoples positions when they call in. You then can tie name and position and start stalking.

With this in mind I think that GPS is most likely unavailable for non-emergency purposes.

[russellhltn]

Some vendors went with GPS for E-911. I believe that it is available for non-emergency use if the phone is equipped, but it may take some menu selections to make it available (security issues). Some cell providers decided to get with triangulation for location information and I don't think that information is available for non 911. Still, to the extent that it's there, it would be nice to use.

[cannona-p40]

Thanks all for your great ideas! I will definitly be implementing many of them. My boss wants me to develop this proof of concept further, so stay tuned to this forum for updates.