Setting up YSA FHE Groups

[sambryner]

Hi,

We just formed Family Home Evening Groups in my YSA ward. I would like to use the MLS to set up our different groups and was wondering if anyone had a good suggestion for how to do so. My thought was creating a custom list for each group and than using the "add custom field" to each member and assigning them to groups by doing that.

Would I be able to create a custom field that would be called "FHE Group 1", "FHE Group 2", and so on and than use those to create custom reports? Or is there an easier way? I know that could easily create a spreadsheet or report outside of the MLS but I am trying to keep as much as possible within the MLS system. Thanks

[aebrown]

We just formed Family Home Evening Groups in my YSA ward. I would like to use the MLS to set up our different groups and was wondering if anyone had a good suggestion for how to do so. My thought was creating a custom list for each group and than using the "add custom field" to each member and assigning them to groups by doing that.

Would I be able to create a custom field that would be called "FHE Group 1", "FHE Group 2", and so on and than use those to create custom reports? Or is there an easier way? I know that could easily create a spreadsheet or report outside of the MLS but I am trying to keep as much as possible within the MLS system. Thanks

You can certainly use a custom field to accomplish this. Instead of multiple custom fields, I would think it would work out much better to create a single custom field named something like "FHE Group" and then the value in that field would specify for each member which group they are in. Then you could easily create a single custom report to show all the members with their groups, sorted by group.

[sambryner]

Thanks for your reply. I am fairly new to the MLS and clerk calling so I hope you don't mind this follow up question. I have never actually created a custom field but are you saying that when I create a broad custom field titled "FHE Group" I could than further distinguish that by assigning a number along with the custom field called "FHE Group".

[aebrown]

are you saying that when I create a broad custom field titled "FHE Group" I could than further distinguish that by assigning a number along with the custom field called "FHE Group".

A custom field is not just a name; it can also have a value. So you could create a custom field called "Singing part" and it could have values of "Soprano", "Alto", "Tenor", or "Bass". In this case, if you create a custom field called "FHE Group" then for Sally Jones that field might have the value "Group 1" and for Bob Anderson it might have the value "Group 2".

See the wiki article Custom fields (MLS) for details.