Tech Forum

It would be nice if the Directory could do address validation when people enter addresses. In my current ward, I have found at least one address so far that is invalid. This kind of problem could be avoided if the addresses were validated at the time of entry. This a solved problem. There are numerous validation services out there. The one I am most familiar with is https://smartystreets.com. Is it possible to get a validation service integrated into the church directory?

Address validation is performed when requesting records into a ward. It's been a while since I moved a record out but I believe it is done then too. But the clerk can override the validation (and sometimes with new subdivisions or with certain rural areas it is necessary to do so). However, validation has only been available for about 3 years so records moved before that were not validated.

That is good to know. And it looks like members cannot change addresses themselves (for better or for worse). So the bad address that I found has probably be in there for more than 3 years. I will have to let our clerk know about it so they can update it. It is good to know that the church is validating addresses.

When I was called as ward clerk about a year ago, the first thing I did was login to LCR, and then validate and standardize all addresses and telephone numbers. Then I had to go to MLS and tell it to NOT print all the membership records I had just changed.
My next step was to find spouses for all the "single" members of my ward using a people finder service. Then I began locating all my lost sheep. The Ward Map helped me discover that some of their addresses were actually outside my ward boundaries. I moved out about 40 records in the first month.

eblood66 wrote:A...and sometimes with new subdivisions or with certain rural areas it is necessary to do so

I imagine the church updates info (at least in the United States) pretty quickly. The USPS needs to know how to deliver mail, so their databases are usually pretty good (although I think it's all resold through other vendors and it depends how frequently the church's vendor provides updates).

My problem is that maps don't necessarily get updated that quickly. I've found MapQuest is usually on top of new addresses more quickly than Google, and since the Ward Map uses Google Maps, it might lag behind. I've had a family be "unmapped" on the ward map for a while because it doesn't know the exact address (it does know where the street is). If I go to conventional Google Maps and look at the street, it doesn't show there are any houses on it yet (so I'm not totally sure where to manually put the pin if I manually set it). But I suspect that's a problem with Google's data provider and the church can't do anything about it.

mevans wrote:If I go to conventional Google Maps and look at the street, it doesn't show there are any houses on it yet (so I'm not totally sure where to manually put the pin if I manually set it). But I suspect that's a problem with Google's data provider

Since Google does crowdsource some of it's information (such as about businesses), I wonder what would happen if you told them they were missing information?

When I was an assist. ward clerk in my previous ward not quite a year ago, address validation was part of LCR. One of the things I did was to validate all addresses and phone numbers (much like drepouille). It did this whenever I edited an address and saved it. It would prompt me to either accept the address as entered or to accept the modified one that fit the USPS standardized format. Now that I'm ward clerk in a different ward, I went to do the same and discovered that the address validation is not active. Is there a configuration option that I'm not aware of that will allow this functionality?

acutshall wrote:Now that I'm ward clerk in a different ward, I went to do the same and discovered that the address validation is not active.

Others have noticed the same thing. See the Address Auto Format thread.

For what it's worth, last week we had a family move to a different home in our ward. I updated their address on LCR and was surprised that the pin moved on the ward map to their new address (I used to have to do this manually).