Tech Forum

Our bishop requested that all of the phone numbers be standardized to a new format. When i did so in addition to a long list of updates , it also printed the records of every person who has a church judgment on their records:mad:. I think MLS should be updated so that it won't print those records unless there is a real change not just a new phone number.

1historian wrote:Our bishop requested that all of the phone numbers be standardized to a new format. When i did so in addition to a long list of updates , it also printed the records of every person who has a church judgment on their records:mad:. I think MLS should be updated so that it won't print those records unless there is a real change not just a new phone number.

If you change anything on a membership record, then when the updated record is transmitted back to your ward, you are prompted to print the record. This seems like the correct behavior to me. If you keep a printed copy of membership records on file, then you would want the option to print an updated record; otherwise your printed copy will be out of date. The fact that there may be some other information on the record doesn't seem like it should change this.

If you don't keep printed membership records, then when you request a huge batch of membership record changes such as phone numbers, I would think that when the updated records arrive you should choose not to print the records at all. You can always look at the report of the changes and decide if for any particular record something changed besides the phone number change you requested, and explicitly print that record.

Alan_Brown wrote:If you change anything on a membership record, then when the updated record is transmitted back to your ward, you are prompted to print the record. This seems like the correct behavior to me. If you keep a printed copy of membership records on file, then you would want the option to print an updated record; otherwise your printed copy will be out of date. The fact that there may be some other information on the record doesn't seem like it should change this.

If you don't keep printed membership records, then when you request a huge batch of membership record changes such as phone numbers, I would think that when the updated records arrive you should choose not to print the records at all. You can always look at the report of the changes and decide if for any particular record something changed besides the phone number change you requested, and explicitly print that record.

Actually, 1historian might be right on this...

I did the same thing just a week ago, changing 98% of households to a ten-digit phone number format. When the updated records were transmitted back to our ward, there were only a subset of records that got reprinted and it was a small minority. I don't know what they had it common, but it very well could be the same thing as 1historian saw. I'll check it out and report back.

mkmurray wrote:Actually, 1historian might be right on this...

I did the same thing just a week ago, changing 98% of households to a ten-digit phone number format. When the updated records were transmitted back to our ward, there were only a subset of records that got reprinted and it was a small minority. I don't know what they had it common, but it very well could be the same thing as 1historian saw. I'll check it out and report back.

Thanks for the clarification. I seem to have misread the initial post and didn't understand that the report was that ONLY the annotated records were reprinted.

So it will be interesting to see if you can confirm this, because it does seem like something that should be corrected, as those records should not be casually printed.

Alan_Brown wrote:it does seem like something that should be corrected, as those records should not be casually printed.

Perhaps the idea is to make sure the annotation is brought to someone's attention?

RussellHltn wrote:Perhaps the idea is to make sure the annotation is brought to someone's attention?

Perhaps, but the topic at hand regards making a fairly insignificant update (phone number or address standardization). The annotation should have been brought to someone's attention when the annotation appeared. A minor record change doesn't seem like the right time to single out these records, if indeed that's what is happening.

Question, is there any record as to why the update occurred? Perhaps the database is lacking the information necessary to distinguish between a "insignificant update" and the annotation being placed on the record.

Problems that can be fixed by programming logic alone can be done quickly, but things that involve changing the database will take more time.

Sorry the only records it printed were those that said restoration of blessings needed at the top or dis-fellowship printed at the bottom. I have been in the clerks office long enough that I am familiar with all of these cases but since the only way to get a print out of all these brothers names is to log in as the bishop, Mls shouldn't (in my opinion) just print these unless the physical address changes, or perhaps the makeup of the members family. IE wife or husband separate, kids are removed, something that a priesthood leader would want to be made aware of so that he could minister appropriately to the individual. I was hoping a employee in the membership department could clarify how the criteria to print these records was made and whether or not it is changeable.

1historian wrote:Sorry the only records it printed were those that said restoration of blessings needed at the top or dis-fellowship printed at the bottom. I have been in the clerks office long enough that I am familiar with all of these cases but since the only way to get a print out of all these brothers names is to log in as the bishop, Mls shouldn't (in my opinion) just print these unless the physical address changes, or perhaps the makeup of the members family. IE wife or husband separate, kids are removed, something that a priesthood leader would want to be made aware of so that he could minister appropriately to the individual. I was hoping a employee in the membership department could clarify how the criteria to print these records was made and whether or not it is changeable.

Yes, I can now officially vouch for this as well. Records that printed either had an annotation, disfellowship, or restoration of blessings required note. These were the only records that printed after changing every household's phone numbers to 10-digit format.