Page 1 of 2

how often is the membership list updated?

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 2:57 pm
by nayand-p40
posted for my mom:

I am a Relief Society president. I regularly check the membership directory on my home computer by going to my Ward's Web page on LDS.org.

In Ward council Meeting today, there was a question as to whether the membership directory that I access through my home computer using my LDS account, is updated regularly. There were some new members listed on my ward directory (through LDS.org) yesterday that the ward clerk said today that he hasn't yet received the records for.

So some people were thinking that the membership directory through LDS.org isn't accurate. I wondered to myself if our ward clerks just hadn't yet received these new member records on our clerk's office computer (MLS) from Salt Lake City, but that they were already automatically added to the membership directory on LDS.org.

I can't encourage ward members or those in leadership positions to get LDS account and check the ward directory list on our ward's website if they don't believe it is accurate.

Do you have any explanations or answers as to why both lists of members didn't add up today? Why I would have records for new members that our clerks said they hadn't received?

Thanks!

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 3:10 pm
by russellhltn
What you see on lds.org comes from the membership records as listed by SLC. I would not expect records that had not yet arrived in the ward to show up in lds.org. However, in most cases I wouldn't expect the move-in to take more than a few days after the clerk does a send/receive in MLS. The membership in LUWS might be off by a week or two, but shouldn't be more then that.

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 3:41 pm
by pete_arnett-p40
RussellHltn wrote:What you see on lds.org comes from the membership records as listed by SLC. I would not expect records that had not yet arrived in the ward to show up in lds.org. However, in most cases I wouldn't expect the move-in to take more than a few days after the clerk does a send/receive in MLS. The membership in LUWS might be off by a week or two, but shouldn't be more then that.

There was an issue where during a receive that some records did not make it to one of our Ward's MLS desktop. Called headquarters and they had to set a flag to cause a full reloaded of the local Ward's MLS desktop file and after the reload was completed, everything matched

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 3:47 pm
by jdlessley
nayand wrote:I can't encourage ward members or those in leadership positions to get LDS account and check the ward directory list on our ward's website if they don't believe it is accurate.
I am sorry to hear this. Paper copies of the ward directory, IMHO, have more of a chance of being inaccurate than the LUWS simply because it is a static snapshot in time whereas the LUWS is dynamic and constantly updated. There are definitely more reasons than just the membership directory to use the LUWS.

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 4:44 pm
by mkmurray
RussellHltn wrote:What you see on lds.org comes from the membership records as listed by SLC. I would not expect records that had not yet arrived in the ward to show up in lds.org. However, in most cases I wouldn't expect the move-in to take more than a few days after the clerk does a send/receive in MLS. The membership in LUWS might be off by a week or two, but shouldn't be more then that.
Do we really know for a surety that LDS.org can't update until the receiving ward does a send/receive in MLS?

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:13 pm
by russellhltn
mkmurray wrote:Do we really know for a surety that LDS.org can't update until the receiving ward does a send/receive in MLS?
Depends on what's happening. If the clerk does an update and fails to be a send/receive before going home, nothing is going to happen until next week. There's no way for the information to get outside of the ward computer.

OTOH, if another ward sends a record, LUWS could get updated before the send/receive is done.

I think the bottom line is, MLS may be slightly more accurate, but unless you get a new report every week, LUWS is going to be more accurate than a static print-out.

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 6:18 pm
by mkmurray
RussellHltn wrote:OTOH, if another ward sends a record, LUWS could get updated before the send/receive is done.
This is the situation I was thinking of.

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 6:44 pm
by aebrown
A record that a ward requests can also be processed at CHQ and show up on LUWS before the ward does a Send/Receive to actually receive the record they may have requested days earlier.

In my recent experience, LUWS is updating pretty quickly these days -- I requested a record one evening after 6:00pm, and the early the next morning (6:00am) I saw on LUWS that it had arrived.

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 9:33 pm
by russellhltn
Alan_Brown wrote:A record that a ward requests can also be processed at CHQ and show up on LUWS before the ward does a Send/Receive to actually receive the record they may have requested days earlier.
But doesn't the requested record show up in various lists (like RS rolls) before it comes in? If so, then for the interests of this thread, MLS gets it first.

Of course if the request was for a family and only the male head-of-household was entered, then you have to wait for the records to arrive.

Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:32 pm
by mkmurray
RussellHltn wrote:But doesn't the requested record show up in various lists (like RS rolls) before it comes in? If so, then for the interests of this thread, MLS gets it first.

Of course if the request was for a family and only the male head-of-household was entered, then you have to wait for the records to arrive.
That's not how I remember it behaving (or would guess it behaving), but I really have no evidence.