Tech Forum

Our ward has two families of five members each (the dad, the mom and three kids, respectively) whose phone numbers don't show up in our LUWS even though they appear in our ward's MLS system. Is there a glitch that causes a member's phone number to not appear on the LUWS if there are too many people in his household?

Make sure a LUWS admin hasn't checked off "Do not show telephone number" for that family.

I believe LUWS will only show the primary number. Has that been left blank in MLS? One of the complaints about MLS is that it doesn't allow for individual numbers, so I'm wondering how you're storing them in MLS.

Is there a way to post both h & w cell phone numbers on the LUWS membership directory? Seems like all the calls are going to his phone, the one that's listed, and she isn't getting her messages. She wants her phone listed too.

Primary telephone numbers only appear on the local unit website. When you enter the contact data on the membership, you must decide if the primary number is a land line or cell phone.

I tell Registered Users that they can add their personal portable
phone number just to the right of their Preferred Name
within Update Profile. All 10 digits display well and additions,
deletions and changes are almost immediate.
If these same Registered Users prefer, I can delete their
home phone from MLS. This deletion is ported on Tuesdays
to LUWS Membership Directory. This leaves this family with only
their individual personal cell phone listed next to each of
their Preferred Names.

H. Forth wrote:I tell Registered Users that they can add their personal portable
phone number just to the right of their Preferred Name
within Update Profile. All 10 digits display well and additions,
deletions and changes are almost immediate.
If these same Registered Users prefer, I can delete their
home phone from MLS. This deletion is ported on Tuesdays
to LUWS Membership Directory. This leaves this family with only
their individual personal cell phone listed next to each of
their Preferred Names.

Thanks...great idea...I'll definately pass this on!

H. Forth wrote:I tell Registered Users that they can add their personal portable
phone number just to the right of their Preferred Name
within Update Profile. All 10 digits display well and additions,
deletions and changes are almost immediate.
If these same Registered Users prefer, I can delete their
home phone from MLS. This deletion is ported on Tuesdays
to LUWS Membership Directory. This leaves this family with only
their individual personal cell phone listed next to each of
their Preferred Names.

I strongly recommend you not do this. Putting phone numbers in fields designated for preferred names will wreak havoc not only with the phone list prints having some numbers mingled with names, but also with people who try to download the CSV or vCard formats of the list. Remember, the LUWS is visible to anyone in your stake and I don't think some of them will appreciate having bad or missing data in some of the fields.

Further, if you choose to delete phone numbers from MLS, you are compounding the problem. People rely on those numbers being there for reports and contact info. How will the executive secretary call people to make appointments for the Bishop? Suddenly, Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching assignments will have phone numbers missing. And that's just the beginning.

The way it's currently setup may not be perfect, but we must work within the guidelines given. I know CHQ is aware of the phone number dilemma and is probably working on a solution for future versions. We need to be patient and give them a chance.

To counter such expected, but missing, phone data,
we've added Custom Member Field, Telephones.
Note plural form of noun, Telephone.
With this field, each individual can now have their individual
cell phone(s) listed as well as other "land line" phone numbers.
We use Custom Reports to "tell the whole story" about such
missing data. This goes for families who have multiple E-mail Addresses.
We've created Custom Member Field, E-mail Addresses.
Again note use of the plural form of the noun.
Here we can also stack multiple E-mail addresses.
To provide other registered ward & stake members with this
data, we've posted 2 PDF files within News & Information:
Members with and without E-mail Addresses.PDF and
Members with and without Telephone Numbers.PDF.
For benefit of our less affluent members, we can even
include their 900 MHz frequency hopping spread spectrum
eXtreme Radio Service TSX300 freq and
access code. See http://www.trisquare.us/tsx300.htm.
Within small geographically bound units, this system
should work well. It's better than Family Radio Service (FRS)
which is free, but channel limited and better than GMRS, which requires
a fee to buy FCC license.