Tech Forum

From the release notes for MLS 3.8.1 (dated June 30th):

Removed the Export option from the File tab of the MLS menu bar to better ensure that membership data is kept secure.

russellhltn wrote:From the release notes for MLS 3.8.1 (dated June 30th):

Removed the Export option from the File tab of the MLS menu bar to better ensure that membership data is kept secure.

It seems that as MLS is being moved online some decisions are being made that some features will not be ported, and those decisions are flowing back as updates to the MLS program. Other things are going away, also.

It's a connected world.

One of the original purposes of the export was to import the data into Palm Pilots. But that was back in the days before so much was on-line. Now, LDS Tools replaces the intended use. And the risk of improper use (uploading to other sites) has increased.

I'm an assistant stake clerk. One of my tasks is to produce a monthly report containing information as requested by my stake president. I used to be able to export the organization data from MLS to a cvs file but that was taken away in January. Now I see that MLS membership export will also being taken away soon.

Instead of importing a cvs file and having formulas grab and calculate all the necessary data, I estimate I will now have to visit about 8 pages per ward, times 10 wards, equals 80 pages on LCR and hand copy anywhere from 2 to 10 pieces of information from each page into my spreadsheet. What used to take about 15 minutes will probably now take about 10 hours.

I would really like to have organization and membership exports back.

GStringham wrote:Instead of importing a cvs file and having formulas grab and calculate all the necessary data, I estimate I will now have to visit about 8 pages per ward, times 10 wards, equals 80 pages on LCR and hand copy anywhere from 2 to 10 pieces of information from each page into my spreadsheet. What used to take about 15 minutes will probably now take about 10 hours.

I suggest you discuss this with your stake president. He has three options: have you spend 10 hours a month, discuss the matter with his area authority to escalate the issue, or drop the request.

This doesn't sound like something the developers made up on their own. Most likely it was handed down or at least agreed to by the Priesthood department. If I'm right, they'll have to revise their decision before anything will change.

I also have made heavy use of the export and am going to miss it tremendously. The tools available online for callings (when that was removed) are great. However, I don't see a replacement or believe there can be a replacement for the other reports and systems that were produced from member data that was exported. I found out when I went to update my database of members available for speaking in sacrament meeting. It will now take much more work to maintain.

I pushed back every time, as a stake clerk, that there was a request for information like this. Many times it was requested by Stake Presidency counselors who didn't have access to the data online (by design), many other things were just micro-not-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things and it was my responsibility to counsel the stake president in matters of records, finances, technology, etc... It was his decision after that and I did as directed after all I could do to dissuade

The amount of personal data I've seen left in a stack of papers on a chair, on a bench in the chapel, above a coat rack, lists of people - traumatized me at times, now they are not left in those places, but sent via email to anyone and everyone. Even if someone has authorization to the data, they pass it along like it's their's to control... I'm glad the church is cutting much of this off, by design, to enforce (IMHO) better privacy protection and casual use of private data.

calvidean wrote:I also have made ... use of the export ... to update my database of members available for speaking in sacrament meeting.

You may be able to copy/paste the table from the Leader and Clerk Resources Member List to a Microsoft Excel document, for something simple like this.

It'll also be interesting what happens as the Ward Council takes on the recent change of having more involvement of Sacrament Programs.

Our ward used the the export feature heavily. I won't go into detail on how we used it but now that it is gone, we would love to suggest features for LCR to get some of our functionality back.

Perhaps you wouldn't mind if I recommended features that can be added to the online LCR. Is the best way to do this by clicking the "Feedback" button on the screen where I think it would belong?

Do bishops have access to JIRA and the projects contained there in? Would you take feature requests there or elsewhere?

Thanks