Changing which organization home teaches an individual

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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JacobBarlow
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Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#1

Post by JacobBarlow »

I have people on the list of "households not assigned to be home taught" in Elders who should be home taught by High Priests, how do I get them off my Elders list and onto the High Priests list? Nobody can figure it out in our Ward. Thanks!
russellhltn
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#2

Post by russellhltn »

Unless it's changed since I worked with it, there is no "Elders list" for "households not assigned to be home taught". It's just a single pool that isn't assigned to any Home Teachers. It's a issue for the Priesthood as a whole, not just the Elders.
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eblood66
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#3

Post by eblood66 »

JacobBarlow wrote:I have people on the list of "households not assigned to be home taught" in Elders who should be home taught by High Priests, how do I get them off my Elders list and onto the High Priests list? Nobody can figure it out in our Ward. Thanks!
I assume your talking about the list on the HT Statistics section of MLS. As russellhltn said that report is not specific to either High Priests or Elders. It just represents all households that haven't been assigned home teachers. There is no way of assigning a household to a specific quorum except by assigning home teachers.

You can filter the list by the priesthood of the head of household. If somebody shows incorrectly when that filter is used it probably means somebody's ordination did not get recorded and that needs to be corrected on the members record.
RossEvans
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#4

Post by RossEvans »

eblood66 wrote:There is no way of assigning a household to a specific quorum except by assigning home teachers.
Yes, this is a longstanding design flaw in MLS. It now appears that it will never be fixed. I do hope that if and when home teaching data is migrated online, this design mistake will be corrected in that new system.
scgallafent
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#5

Post by scgallafent »

It's not a design flaw.
RossEvans
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#6

Post by RossEvans »

scgallafent wrote:It's not a design flaw.
I disagree. The MLS home teaching structure and workflow reflects fundamentally poor software design, which does not align with the actual use cases of most local units. (The predecessor system, the old DOS-based MIS, was much better in this regard. It tracked each step of the process correctly.)

MLS fails to provide a method to record the bishop's assignment of each household to a quorum -- a use case that occurs in every bishopric, PEC and/or ward council. Assignment of a household to a companionship is a separate action, which typically occurs within quorum presidencies (with bishop's oversight).
scgallafent
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#7

Post by scgallafent »

RossEvans wrote:
scgallafent wrote:It's not a design flaw.
I disagree.
This could use more clarification. I confirmed with another developer that this was the design of the system and how it is supposed to operate. You may disagree with the original designer on how it should operate, but it is operating as designed. I wasn't there and don't know the history on why it was designed that way.

There is a reasonable argument that can be made based on the handbook that the assignment to the responsible quorum should be recorded separately and we can (and will) bring that up with the appropriate people.
RossEvans
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Re: Changing which organization home teaches an individual

#8

Post by RossEvans »

scgallafent wrote:
RossEvans wrote:
scgallafent wrote:It's not a design flaw.
I disagree.
This could use more clarification. I confirmed with another developer that this was the design of the system and how it is supposed to operate. You may disagree with the original designer on how it should operate, but it is operating as designed. I wasn't there and don't know the history on why it was designed that way.

There is a reasonable argument that can be made based on the handbook that the assignment to the responsible quorum should be recorded separately and we can (and will) bring that up with the appropriate people.
Thank you.

I have long assumed (after several years) that MLS was functioning per the design. That's why I raised the issue as a "design flaw," not a developer's coding bug.

Meanwhile, in our unit we will continue with workarounds to accommodate our actual use case. One can try working around the problem either by inventing within MLS pseudo-companionships for each quorum that are supposed to mean "still unassigned to actual home teachers" but not labeled as such, or by tracking the general quorum assignments outside MLS entirely. Both methods are problematical.

I still recall the now-retired MIS system, which met the needs of my ward on this matter when I was a ward clerk. In that system, the "Unassigned Home Teaching" report (or whatever it was called) distinguished between two subcategories: Those households not yet assigned to a quorum, and those in each quorum not assigned to a companionship. That way, leaders could see clearly what the situation was, what action had been taken by the bishop, what action was still needed, and who had the next action item (bishop or quorum presidency).
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