Tech Forum

Hi Everyone,

I'm new here, and so if this is the wrong forum for this type of discussion, I apologize.

My Bishop has asked me to create a list of skills and talents for our ward members, that would be searchable and indexable for people seeking help.

I'm wondering if there are others here that have been asked similar things, and how they went about solving the problem?

Best Regards,
Stephen

A starting point is Custom fields (MLS)

RussellHltn wrote:A starting point is Custom fields (MLS)

The problem with Custom Fields is that they are almost completely removed from a members other information. They are very difficult to maintain because of this.

The only way to do anything with them is using a custom report. If they were accessible on the Individual Record screens, they might be useful.

rpyne wrote:The only way to do anything with them is using a custom report. If they were accessible on the Individual Record screens, they might be useful.

That all depends what direction you want to go. If you are looking for all the members with a particular skill, then it's great: just run a custom report filtered for the particular talent or skill you are interested in. Admittedly, having them appear on the Individual Record screen would make entering them much easier. Instead, you must go to Membership > Records > Custom Member Fields.

MLS has a default list of what appear to be mostly emergency prep fields already. You can see these under Edit > System Options > Member. The other tabs in that screen are where you can create your own fields.

It's a bit of work to get everything entered, but once it's in, it can become quite useful.

While the custom fields in MLS is far from perfect, keep in mind that any system needs to be regularly updated with the changes in membership in the ward. Using MLS makes that part easy.

It would be even easier if we could export a table of all the custom member fields for all the members, update them in spreadsheet form, then import the updated field data. Alternately, if MLS had a screen with all the fields displayed in editable form, that would be almost as good.

Perhaps I am missing something but when I do custom fields, a field update then dumps me back to the Main MLS screen and I have to go back in, find the member again, find the specific field again, then update, which dumps me back again to the main screen.

davesudweeks wrote:Alternately, if MLS had a screen with all the fields displayed in editable form, that would be almost as good.

You can see these under Edit > System Options > Member. The other tabs in that screen are where you can create (and edit) your own fields.

davesudweeks wrote:Perhaps I am missing something but when I do custom fields, a field update then dumps me back to the Main MLS screen and I have to go back in, find the member again, find the specific field again, then update, which dumps me back again to the main screen.

After the first time of selecting Custom Member fields (Membership > Custom Member Fields), you can use the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the arrows to navigate through the records while staying in "Custom Field" mode.

RussellHltn wrote:A starting point is Custom fields (MLS)

I would go with custom fields, and customize those fields to whatever you want. Either use the "talent and interest" fields, or the custom fields and define your own. You'll then see them available in your custom reports you create. We use these for our fast offering routes, talks database, prayer database, etc. It's powerful, but not very well documented, so perhaps not used like it could be. While I often "save" my custom reports to file (csv) or to the clipboard for exporting to a spreadsheet for further manipulation or display, I would definitely avoid entering the data and keeping it in another application because I hate manually updating a database or spreadsheet every time there is a move.

crislapi wrote:After the first time of selecting Custom Member fields (Membership > Custom Member Fields), you can use the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of the arrows to navigate through the records while staying in "Custom Field" mode.

Thanks for the tip. I use Custom member fields for the general Emergency Preparedness (EP) groups, but have avoided the EP skills and equipment tracking because I hadn't broken the code on how to stay in the application after updating a field. I will give it a whirl and see how it goes.

Stephen,

The LDSJobs.org website allows a person to create a profile (including skills/talents) and then determine if they want to share that information with 1) employers and/or 2) Ward/Stake leaders. The Stake President/Bishop determine (see link bellow) which leaders (counselors, HPGL, EQP, RSP, & Employment specialists) they want to give access to those profiles. I think of it as "The Lord's Storehouse" with each member determining what they will (or won't) share with their leaders. We have several stakes in Oregon that are using LDSJobs.org for that (and other) reason(s).

Hope that helps.
Richard Pedersen

Can counselors in presidencies or other ward or stake leaders be granted permission to assist individuals on LDSJobs.org?
http://www.ldsjobs.ldswelfare.org/?p=567