Summer 2023 Blog (9-3-23)

09/3/23

A blog about events at TA over the 2023 Summer.

As mentioned before, we wish to thank you for your patience. We understand the concern when it appears there is no news or updates to the site for some time. Here we hope to make a brief update on events at TA over the summer.

A quick step back

As you may remember from the past blog about the event last September, the site experienced a large outage and loss of data. Our first item of order at the time was to restore what was possible and stabilize the site as quickly as possible.

In a large way, this was accomplished the best it could be given the circumstances. Still, however, a lot of work remained to really bring back a lot of functionality that was lost. At the same time, other fundamental changes had to take place to the project and the team to allow things to move forward more quickly in the long term.

What we were working on

Without getting into too many details, here are just a few experiences of what was accomplished in the last few months.

1. Originally the site was maintained by one brother, for nearly 10 years. Soon after the outage, he was receiving thousands of emails. Fortunately, a team eventually formed out of this. It’s taken time to get organized, but at this current time, it is comprised of about 2-3 application developers, 1 infrastructure developer, and 8-10 support volunteers.

   It has taken time to organize, form procedures, structure, share work. It has been a huge blessing to see how a close hard-working team has formed over the past several months. Especially since before this, many of us did not know one another. There are those in various types of congregation service, full time service, young, and old, now assisting with TA.

2. Historically, the site had really been designed to be maintained by one person. Now it needed to be developed by a team. This called for changes not only in the organization of the work, but also in the app itself. Just to adjust the app to accommodate multiple developers took a solid month of dedicated effort. But it has paid off. Now multiple developers have been collaborating and simultaneously contribute to the project on a regular basis, allowing future development to progress much faster.

3. We’ve had to change hosting providers a few times. Moving the site from one hosting provider to another by itself is a time consuming process.

   In one recent case, the tool we are using to store our project data and handle our ticketing system was changing it’s pricing model. It was going to go from free to over $600-$700 a month. Territory Assistant does not charge a fee, so you can imagine that was a “big deal”.

   They gave us one month to find an alternative. It was decided to host this tool ourselves on our own servers. We had to set up the servers, configure the tool, and transfer all the data before the deadline. All in a way this did not interrupt the site or the ticketing system which the congregations use to communicate with us. We managed to finish this within the month given and avoid the charges.

4. Besides this, the support team has faithfully assisted with several thousand correspondences with other congregations over the last several months. A huge backlog has been caught up, and in most cases, we can now answer and complete a correspondence within a week.

These are just a few of the experiences of what has been accomplished over the summer. We’ve also focused on performance improvements in the app, security improvements, automation to speed up development, improvements in backup and redundancy. All of these things have taken time.

In all, I’d estimate that everyone’s combined effort easily equates to many full-time positions worth of labor over the summer.

Besides this, we were supporting campaigns, attending theocratic schools, conventions and assemblies, handling congregation duties, family matters, and other matters that take priority. This along with other types of service many are involved in on a month-to-month basis. There were also cases of illness experienced by members or by their family that affected us.

Concluding Thoughts

Regarding posting updates and news items:

It can be difficult to share what is always going on. Especially committing to timelines. Our team of volunteers is small and very involved in theocratic activities. The slightest change in a school, event, case of illness, etc. can easily mean that something we had planned to be done quickly, can suddenly be delayed by two weeks. And then, something we expected to be easy to change in the app, may turn out to be hard. Rest assured we are working. However, we must be careful and reasonable about making promises.

Regarding costs: TA does not charge for this service and does not plan to. Nevertheless, especially since after the outage, certain costs have increased. The brother who started this site those 10 years ago carries this load. Donations Territory Assistant receives greatly help in this regard.

We recognize how important Territory Assistant is for many. There are other apps out there that can assist with territory. And we understand that some need to move on. For others though, Territory Assistant has had certain features that other apps have not yet replicated- such as the contact system. The friends here- volunteers- work hard to support the congregations that depend on TA and to be able work their territory.

We thank these volunteers deeply for their efforts. And you for your patience. We feel the challenges keenly as we depend on TA ourselves. From time to time, we receive kind words, and the team here find these very encouraging. As always, although it is not a branch-directed project, we always welcome prayers.

Territory Assistant