"Send A Message" only works for those with "Stake Visibility"

[eblood66]

Has this issue ever been resolved? I'm a bishop, and I find that any message I attempt to send to all ward members excludes a bunch of people who have not set their privacy settings to Stake. Anyone with a different privacy setting does not receive the email. It would be nice for us to be able to message everyone in the ward with an email on their membership. Thank you.

Bishop Russ Blood
Rose Creek Crossing Ward

Nothing's changed yet and we haven't had any word that any change is planned (but they don't usually let us know what changes are planned so that doesn't mean much).

[jayriggity]

This really needs to be fixed. We have numerous members who have their visibility on the wrong setting and consequently do not get "send a message" messages. By setting their visibility to "leadership only" I am confident that these members would want leadership to be able to send messages -- that is, these members with "leadership only" settings certainly want to receive ward announcements, etc... But with the current system, they do not.

As far as I can tell, there is no work-around for this problem, but if anyone knows of anything, please let me know.

[dpenrod75]

Not sure I understand the logic at all in restricting e-mails based on a visibility setting in the directory. The send message app should send e-mail to anyone who has an e-mail address in the system. If visibility is leadership only, bcc the person. If a person wants to op out, they should remove their e-mail address from the directory.

[aebrown]

Not sure I understand the logic at all in restricting e-mails based on a visibility setting in the directory. The send message app should send e-mail to anyone who has an e-mail address in the system. If visibility is leadership only, bcc the person. If a person wants to op out, they should remove their e-mail address from the directory.

I don't see it that way. If the sender has no right to see a person's email address, it makes sense that they would not be able to send a message to that email address. Your proposal to use BCC doesn't properly address the privacy issues. Note that any email bounces will come back to the sender, which would then reveal the person's email address that the sender supposedly can't see.

Of course, what people are complaining about in this discussion is primarily the problem that even if the sender has permission to see the email address, the message is still not sent to that person. That seems like a reasonable complaint. But fixing this problem hasn't risen to the top of the priority list yet.

[jayriggity]

Yes, I don't think anyone is complaining about the first issue you discuss. The only issue here is when "leadership" uses the "Send a Message" function. In that situation, the message should include every address that is visible and available to the leader.

A couple of other comments:

1. I think that the reason this issue hasn't risen to the top is that no one knows about it. I asked around about this recently and everyone I asked was unaware and was under the assumption that "Send a Message" message (when sent by a "leader") goes to everyone visible to that leader. I think if more people knew how this actually works, more people would complain about it.

2. My informal (and admittedly limited) poll of members in my ward last week reveals that limited visibility is almost entirely unintentional on the member's part. I asked several ward members with "Leader only" visibility settings and every one of them told me that they had not ever intentionally set their visibility in that manner. They all asked me to change it for them because they all wanted to be included on leadership emails.

With email fast becoming the primary method of communicating with ward members, this seems like a simple fix that should be made soon.

[jdlessley]

The send message app should send e-mail to anyone who has an e-mail address in the system. If visibility is leadership only, bcc the person.

I don't agree with this thought. The purpose of having a visibility setting is to limit who can see, and therefore use, the e-mail address. The user is selecting the level of privacy they want for their e-mail address. If I have my visibility setting as leadership only and get a message from someone who is not a leader then I would be upset that I got the message after explicitly making it clear I only wanted messages from leaders. I would not care if my e-mail address was a bcc addressee - I still did not want to get the message.

I also don't agree with the implementation of the send a message feature. It should resolve to the visibility setting.

If a person wants to op out, they should remove their e-mail address from the directory.

This is totally opting out - and that is an option. But that does not give the member the ability to restrict who can use their e-mail address. The current messaging system implementation does not resolve to the privacy level a member thinks they are selecting.

[dpenrod75]

I don't see it that way. If the sender has no right to see a person's email address, it makes sense that they would not be able to send a message to that email address. Your proposal to use BCC doesn't properly address the privacy issues. Note that any email bounces will come back to the sender, which would then reveal the person's email address that the sender supposedly can't see.

Only a leader can use the send message app in LCR.

[aebrown]

With email fast becoming the primary method of communicating with ward members, this seems like a simple fix that should be made soon.

It may seem simple to you, but neither you nor I sets the priorities.

FYI, an explanation for why it works this way can be found in this post.

[aebrown]

Only a leader can use the send message app in LCR.

That may be true now, but it won't necessarily always be the case. More and more callings are getting access to portions of LCR, and if the Send a Message features gets updated, it may well allow expanded access, too.

Also, every message is sent BCC (regardless of privacy settings), so your proposal to send messages with BCC if the privacy setting is Leadership Only wouldn't make any difference.

[jayriggity]

It may seem simple to you, but neither you nor I sets the priorities.

And for the record, I actually have no idea whether it is a "simple"' technological fix. I'm not a programmer. I was just assuming, but I'm probably wrong about that.

Either way though, I think it's something that should probably be on someone's radar. The Send a Message function really could be a great way to communicate information to the entire ward, but at present, we're getting to a fraction of our users.