Online directory says data is not available

[rickk]

I figured out the problem this evening. We have a family whose daughter returned home from school before going on a mission. When her record came into the ward, somehow it was put into a household with the same name as the rest of the family, but it was a different household in MLS. Once I placed her correctly into the household with the rest of the family, the online directory started working again.

I did discover what looks like a bug in the online directory during all of this. I noticed that when I searched in the stake for families, some of them have "null" in the place where it should list their ward (of course that was a red herring in tracking this down). It seems that this happens when you have a female member with a non-member spouse. It lists both of them, but shows null for the ward instead the correct info.

[russellhltn]

When her record came into the ward, somehow it was put into a household with the same name as the rest of the family, but it was a different household in MLS. Once I placed her correctly into the household with the rest of the family, the online directory started working again.

Good job! But I'm trying to understand this. Was she placed in a different family that had the same name but she wasn't "family"? (I'm not sure why that should be a problem.) Or were MLS and on-line somehow out of sync as to which family she was in, suggesting a change didn't sync between the two systems?

I did discover what looks like a bug in the online directory during all of this. I noticed that when I searched in the stake for families, some of them have "null" in the place where it should list their ward (of course that was a red herring in tracking this down). It seems that this happens when you have a female member with a non-member spouse. It lists both of them, but shows null for the ward instead the correct info.

I see "null" as well. I don't know the details so I can't confirm if it's related to a non-member HOH.

[rickk]

It was a completely different household. She was listed by herself on MLS and because of the problem with the online directory, I never saw her there. The household name in MLS was the same as her family (she happens to have a different last name in case that matters), but she wasn't associated with them as far as I could see. So she was in a "Van Go" household when her last name is "Smith", but the rest of the family was in another "Van Go" household. Then names are changed here of course. The family name does have a space, so I was wondering about that based on your previous response. Anyway, I placed her into the main "Van Go" household with everyone else and did a send/receive, and everything started working again. I don't know if the problem was having 2 households with the same name or a household with one person where the household name doesn't match the last name or what.

As for the "null" thing, I looked at membership info for 5 or 6 of these (being a stake clerk helps!) and every one was a sister with a non-member husband. Seems like that should be fixed for privacy reasons if nothing else.

[russellhltn]

Two households of the same name shouldn't be an issue. I've got more than one "Smith" in a ward in my stake. I'm sure it's not uncommon. But a household of one with a household name different from the member sounds like a likely candidate.

P.S. I reported both to the developers.

[rickk]

I understand about multiple Smith's but didn't know if MLS somehow did a Smith1, Smith2, etc. Maybe if I am feeling adventurous, I'll go change the household name of another single member and see what happens...

[lajackson]

I understand about multiple Smith's but didn't know if MLS somehow did a Smith1, Smith2, etc.

In olden times, every family in MLS had a family number, so you could have all the Smiths you wanted, and MLS kept track of them by the number it assigned to the family in the local database.

I have no idea if the database still works the same way, but I suspect there is something similar, since MLS also has to keep up with the Joneses.

[scgallafent]

Please don't modify membership records for testing. lajackson's description of how things work is basically correct. Each household in MLS is a distinct record in the database and you can have multiple Smiths or multiple Joneses.

The Directory developers have the report that came in earlier and have reproduced the issue and are looking into it.

[rickk]

"Please don't modify membership records for testing." - There was a smiley face on that post...

Since the developers have been able to reproduce it, please let us know what the real root cause of the problem is. I know there is at least one other stake having a similar problem according to the GSC, and I would like to be able to more quickly resolve this if it ever happens again. I was able to make the problem go away for our ward, but I still don't understand the exact issue that caused it.

Rick

[scgallafent]

There were some issues with invalid address data causing a problem with one of the intermediate services. Now that we know what to look for, we can isolate it pretty quickly when it occurs. We're working on some related fixes.

[rickk]

So were you looking specifically at my case or is the comment more general? If it was my case, I presume the bad data was in the household address or phone since that is what would have changed when I moved her under her family? I didn't really look closely at what was there and just moved her when the bishop verified that she should be grouped with the family and not be on her own.

Thanks,
Rick