In case you missed the news yesterday, there is now an all-new version of PrayerMate. Judging by the emails in my inbox, this update has caused a great deal of confusion and anxiety amongst many of you, and I hope that this post will help clear some of that up. I would also like to apologise if the changes have come as something of a surprise, and for not communicating better how to deal with the changes in advance.
Here are some brief notes about the new scheduling and how to deal with it:
1. Firstly, the new scheduler centres around a single total number of items that you wish to pray for, and then selects cards roughly in order of priority until it meets that quota. This is what the new +/- buttons on the first “Coming up” slide are about – it defaults to five but for many of you you will be used to seeing more, and should just press the + button until you are back to a number that suits you.
2. The caveat to point 1 is that it does also try to balance things between your various lists (formerly known as categories), so by default it should only ever pick one card from each list until it has run out of lists, at which point it will circle round once again.
3. For those who want more control, you can explicitly tell PrayerMate how many items you want from any given list, and it will then prioritise those lists before filling up the rest of its quota from elsewhere. Tap on to the new “Lists” page using the button (at the top on iOS and at the bottom on Android) go to the list you want to manage (either by selecting from the “List index” or by swiping sideways) and then press the “cog”/ settings button on that list and choose “List settings”. There you can tick “Manually set items per session” and drag the slider. For example, I have this set to “1” on my “Biblical prayers” list to make sure that I always start my prayer session by focussing on God, and I have one item from lists for my wife and for my children, but then I leave PrayerMate to decide how to fill up the rest of my daily quota from all of my remaining lists (of which I have many).
4. I’m hoping to add an explicit “pray for this every time” setting very soon (a somewhat obvious feature that PrayerMate has never had, because before this update it was too hard to figure out all the complicated interactions with per-category limits / the global limit / etc). In the mean time, as demonstrated in point 3, I suggest moving that subject to a list all by itself and manually setting the items per session on that list to “1”.
5. It should still be respecting any “day of the week” or other advanced scheduling that you have set up previously. You can access these by pressing the “cog”/settings button on any of your subjects. If things are appearing on days that you do not expect then that sounds like a bug and you should hit “Send feedback” inside the app. If things are *not* appearing on days when you *do* expect them to then try pressing the “+” button to ask for more subjects in your session – and if that doesn’t fix it then it also sounds like a bug and you should hit “Send feedback”.
6. Finally, can I share an email that really encouraged me, that gives you a feel for the motivations behind these changes? This lady said “I did not use the app before because it was so hard to use, but since this update it is much better!” I cannot deny that this recent update requires something of a transition, and *especially* from users who have invested time to setting it all up and who have discovered some of these “power-user” settings such as the per-category item limits. Sadly, for every one of them, there are probably dozens more who never even discovered that those settings existed, but the mere fact that they *did* exist created complexity and confusion for them. I definitely accept that I could and should have communicated better in advance about these changes, but I want you to know that the time and energy you are having to invest to adapt to these changes is an act of service to the wider body of believers.
If you’re not already signed up to the PrayerMate newsletter, do hit the button inside the app to do so. That’s the best way to be kept abreast of any important changes or PrayerMate news.
Many thanks for your support and for all of you who have been passionate enough to email me!
Keep praying,
Andy Geers
PrayerMate Developer