Tech Forum

simonawright wrote:Will HT/VT be absent from MLS? I thought it was going to be read only...

From the Release Notes:

"Changes made to organizations and callings in LCR will be viewable in MLS. Changes made to home and visiting teaching in LCR will not be viewable or updatable in MLS."

So, yes, it will be read-only. But only the historical data - until the data ages out. (About one year.)

Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

mevans wrote:Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

It seems like percentages are kept historically, but not whether or not individuals have been visited.

EDIT: Actually, I only have access to the stake-level reports and now that I think of it I think there are more Home/Visiting Teaching reports available on the ward level. So I'm not sure.

mevans wrote:Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

They do a one time import from MLS as a unit is moved over. I believe the visit history is a part of that.

Edit: I just checked for my ward and it has visit history back to may 2014.

The following is just one example of why I am concerned about Custom Reports.

Geocoding of households.

Ward Level: Many uses including HT and VT companionships and routes for Fast Offering collections.

Stake Level: Realignment of Ward and Stake Boundaries. (I am sure there are others.)

Presently, I see no capability for entering, viewing, or printing geocodes in LCR.
I am hoping that provisions for geocoding and Custom Reports will be enhanced as LCR is further implemented. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to using LCR.

RichardGamble wrote:Presently, I see no capability for entering, viewing, or printing geocodes in LCR.

It appears that geocodes as we know them will not be used in LCR. Ryan Jones gave us a clue in this post.

The new boundary change feature won't use geo codes like MLS does. It will let you draw on the map and uses the members locations in lds.org/maps

It would be very nice if this new method will also work for a ward to use in preparing fast offering routes, home teaching and visiting teaching routes, and for other similar functions.

Thank you for the update. I appreciate the info.

RichardGamble wrote:Will I be able to create these Custom Reports in LCR when MLS is retired? I do not like the idea of telling leaders, "Sorry, I cannot help you." Thank you.

I'm a huge fan of MLS for it's custom report ability. While I wish for the best, I also think the loss of MLS will mean a loss of customization for reports, and the ability to search membership records on custom criteria, similar to the ability to export data from MLS currently is becoming more limited.

(Added later: I don't fault anyone for this, but see that the current push is for other functionality with their limited programming resources. Developers may get around to making a "customization" option for reports in LCR later?)

mevans wrote:Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

Data is migrated from MLS. There is a brief window between when the last MLS transmission was made and when the data is migrated where data entered in MLS won't make it to LCR. For units that transmit regularly, that window should only be fairly shortly.

Related directly to this post, I would love for the custom reports to all be moved online to LCR so I can run and input data from home rather than from only the church building. (It would be ideal if the user defined data could be exported or synced so that it is in LCR.)

Currently, my custom reports that have user defined fields (which I use for keeping track of who spoke and prayed in Sacrament meeting) are all broken with an error that says "Changing the calling in organization selection invalidates the calling position"; however nothing in the reports I am trying to run use any calling fields or selectors. So there is a bug with the custom reports. Please fix this!