Mls 2.9

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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childsdj
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#21

Post by childsdj »

This is a problem currently because of the architecture of MLS. Pushing it back to the ward will not be possible currently. We hope this will be a possiblitiy in the future.
avskip wrote:Why can't this password be entered on the Stake computer and have it forwarded to each unit's computer during a send/receive? Traveling all over the Stake and spending a fortune in gas to put in a password makes little sense to me or my wallet.

Any hope of this ever happening?
greggo
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#22

Post by greggo »

jenkinsja wrote:If I understand correctly, the developers of MLS have taken a report that was previously only available to the bishop (twice a year through an insecure USPS) and now made it available only to the bishop (through a hopefully more secure MLS) whenever they want it. As before, the report is extremely confidential, and should only be viewed by the bishop. The only way to guarantee that, is to limit the privileges of those who can view it, so that only the user who is associated with the calling of Bishop will be able to see it. I would venture to guess that no Bishop should so casually gives out his login information for MLS to get someone else to print a highly confidential report for him. This may warrant a few individuals learning some new technology, but the tradeoff in availability of the report, and cost savings to the Church in postage should more than make up for that slight learning curve. As such, it is important for the Bishop of the ward to have a login to MLS, which is only used by him in order to view this report, and that the report will not be viewable otherwise.

Can you clarify what type of information this confidential report could contain?

Unless this is referring to some other annotation to the record, the disfellowshipped date/place already shows up in the individual records when printed. So I don't know how this new report would contain any "more confidential" info than what is already available to anyone with "view membership" rights.

Back in my MIS days, I looked for this information on all member's records, because this was the only way to tell who was officially disfellowshipped. We had a situation where a member's disfellowshipment went unnoticed until we tried to update for HP ordination and CHQ replied back with the question of why we were ordaining someone who was disfellowshipped. It turned out that his re-fellowshipment in a previous ward/stake several years earlier never got recorded, and when the record was received into the current ward, there was no alert in the transmission and no one noticed the information on the printed record.
russellhltn
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#23

Post by russellhltn »

jenkinsja wrote:If I understand correctly, the developers of MLS have taken a report that was previously only available to the bishop (twice a year through an insecure USPS) and now made it available only to the bishop (through a hopefully more secure MLS) whenever they want it.
Which may result in the bishop never looking at the report. I wonder how many things will fall though the cracks now?

Keep in mind that if the ward prints out the records, anyone who does a send/receive will see it if an individual comes in with a notation. If a ward doesn't at least print preview the record, they will most likely miss any annotation.

Seems like this is making it easy for the disfellowshipped to slip below the radar.
pete_arnett-p40
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#24

Post by pete_arnett-p40 »

Just talked to headquarters and found out that my unit is part of the MLS early release process and that the MLS 2.9 general release to all units will be in the next several days
:cool: Your Fellow Servant,
Porter (Pete) Lee Arnett Jr.
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rpyne
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#25

Post by rpyne »

lajackson wrote:The other challenge we will have is with the unit that has NO membership records for those who use MLS. This is a correctional unit. All of the records are for incarcerated members. All of the leaders come from other units in the stake, and their membership records remain in their home wards.
This is exactly what "Out of Unit Member" records are for. Before my recent release as a Stake Clerk, we supported two units in which none of the leadership were members of the unit. You simply add them to MLS ad Out of Unit Members.
rpyne
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#26

Post by rpyne »

jenkinsja wrote:As before, the report is extremely confidential, and should only be viewed by the bishop.
There is nothing in this report to which the ward or stake clerk is not also privy, given the fact that the ward or stake clerk takes minutes of and completes reports of any and all disciplinary actions. Therefore, I fail to understand why the clerk should not have access to this report to be able to print it for the bishop or stake president. The clerk already has access to the information contained in the report, just not in a consolidated format.

I have served as a clerk for three bishops and one stake president who would not even touch a computer. In the last of these cases, I was even assigned to manage the stake president's church email account.
rpyne
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#27

Post by rpyne »

DJC wrote:This is not a result of a developer in a cubicle or any hidden agenda. It is most likely a result of missed code, which is why we have a beta like 2.9 is currently in and a great forum like this where people can discuss the needs and discrepencies of Church programs at a local level. It is good to hear your feedback on this and other issues. There are always various reasons for inclusions and exclusions in programs. In this case it is good to see that we found the issue in the beta.

I think we will be able to get it back in for the final release.

Thanks.
Thank you for one of the rare times that we get any indication that anyone at CHQ even listens to our (the clerks) needs and frustrations.

I don't suppose there is any chance that anyone has paid any attention to the many, many times that we (the clerks) have requested phone number and email address fields for individuals instead of only households. I now have a full ten percent of my ward that do not have a home phone but each member of the family has a cell phone.
lajackson
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#28

Post by lajackson »

This is exactly what "Out of Unit Member" records are for.
Thank you, jenkinsja and rpyne. I had not considered that. I did not realize they could be assigned user names and logins.
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mkmurray
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#29

Post by mkmurray »

rpyne wrote:I now have a full ten percent of my ward that do not have a home phone but each member of the family has a cell phone.
Geesh, my ward is probably 75-80%. Unforunately for our 2 Elders' Quorums, most families have their wives phone numbers as the primary number in MLS (very frustrating).
cherishj
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#30

Post by cherishj »

Believe me, we are aware of the ever-growing need for individual phone numbers and emails. Part of the delay is that it requires not only changing MLS, but the central membership database. It's definitely on the road map.
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