MLS 3.1 Phone/Email changes

[jdlessley]

Reports
For reports that list households (such as the Directory of Members), only household phone numbers (and household e-mail addresses, where applicable) will be shown. Individual phone numbers and e-mail addresses are never shown on such reports (which seems entirely appropriate to me).

For the Directory of Members report there is a "Customize..." feature that lists an option to "Show secondary telephone number and e-mail address (if available)." This option is now inaccurate and confusing. A person not familiar with what was available before the telephone and e-mail address changes may become confused. The secondary telephone number no longer exists. With the e-mail changes a user may wonder if there is a secondary e-mail address or which e-mail address is being referred to in this option. After testing, the e-mail address referred to in this option is the household e-mail address, the same as before the changes.

The text for this option needs to be updated (clarified). A suggested change to the text would be "Show household e-mail address (if available)."

[aebrown]

For the Directory of Members report there is a "Customize..." feature that lists an option to "Show secondary telephone number and e-mail address (if available)." This option is now inaccurate and confusing.

I reported this issue on November 13 during the 3.1 beta, but I guess it still hasn't gotten high enough on the priority list to get fixed.

[adavidw]

I don't know for certain, but I would really doubt that the secondary phone numbers are "out there somewhere" in your MLS 3.1 data. The only place they would still exist is in a 3.0 backup, but if you neglected to save them before the upgrade to 3.1, getting to them would be a pain.

I stumbled upon a discovery. It appears that the secondary phone numbers actually are still in the 3.1 data, at least for the time being. It's just that there's no place in MLS to access them.

I happened to be putting together a baptism form (in the "Ordinance Record Forms" section), and I noticed that when you select a member to fill in the "Household" section of the form, there's a primary and secondary phone field that populate automatically. I pulled up a couple of members from my ward that I know had a recognizable secondary phone number before, and sure enough, that field was populated with their old secondary phone number.

Now, in my case, I printed out all the secondary numbers before the upgrade to reenter them, so I wouldn't care if they were all gone for good. However, if anyone out there still needs to see what someone had for a secondary number, this is a pretty quick way. If you lost the whole ward, restoring a backup to an old version of MLS might be faster than plugging names in one by one into a form, however, for a handful of names, this is easier than reinstalling MLS.

[aebrown]

I stumbled upon a discovery. It appears that the secondary phone numbers actually are still in the 3.1 data, at least for the time being. It's just that there's no place in MLS to access them.

Good find! I'm sure it's an oversight and will be corrected at some point. But for now it's one way to get at those secondary phone numbers if you neglected to save them before the 3.1 upgrade.

Following up on your lead, I found an even easier way to get at the secondary phone numbers. Just create a custom report to generate the complete list. The only trick is that you have to import a custom report modified in a text editor, since the user interface no longer allows the secondary phone number field to be included. But that field is still supported in the custom reports if you can get it into a report, which importing does allow.

So just unzip and then import the attached custom report, run the report, and you will have a complete list of the secondary phone numbers.

[dwterry-p40]

You guys are so creative.

[geek]

We're at 3.1.4_16999 + the undocumented Thursday (1/7) patch.

During our primary activity today, I was playing with custom reports and individual phone numbers.

I did not see any option for phone numbers and emails for my report *except* "Contact Phone Number" (or email). [Note, I'm doing this from memory, I don't have a report in front of me.] I did not see any option for a Household phone number.

The resulting reports show the individual phone number/email for those who have them entered into MLS, and for the rest, it defaults back to the household phone number. There is no option, that I could find, to include both contacts for a member.

It was suggested earlier that rather than complaining about the directories, we should create custom reports. However, this is an inadequate solution.

Any options here? Anyone have a working custom report that shows both? Or should we just grin and bear it?

[aebrown]

I did not see any option for phone numbers and emails for my report *except* "Contact Phone Number" (or email). [Note, I'm doing this from memory, I don't have a report in front of me.] I did not see any option for a Household phone number.
...
Any options here? Anyone have a working custom report that shows both? Or should we just grin and bear it?

Perhaps you were not looking for the right names, or your memory needs a bit of refreshing, but this is really quite straightforward. There are three relevant fields that are available in custom reports:

• Household Phone Number
• Individual Phone Number
• Contact Phone Number

If you want both household and individual phone numbers, simply include both fields in your custom report. If you want just the individual number if present, but the household phone number if there is no individual phone number, use the "Contact Phone Number" field.

[russellhltn]

• Household Phone Number
• Individual Phone Number
• Contact Phone Number

One minor issue I've had with custom reports is trying to find the field you want. It's natural that if you're looking for a phone number, you're going to scroll to "p" in the alphabetical list. But because of the way the fields have been named, you have to look all over to find it.

[aebrown]

One minor issue I've had with custom reports is trying to find the field you want. It's natural that if you're looking for a phone number, you're going to scroll to "p" in the alphabetical list. But because of the way the fields have been named, you have to look all over to find it.

That could be an issue for some people, but the post I was responding to said "I did not see any option for a Household phone number." Since the field is named precisely "Household Phone Number", that doesn't seem to be the issue here.

[mkmurray]

One minor issue I've had with custom reports is trying to find the field you want. It's natural that if you're looking for a phone number, you're going to scroll to "p" in the alphabetical list. But because of the way the fields have been named, you have to look all over to find it.

This was suggested by Mikerowaved a few months back, and I still think it should be implemented. It would make more sense all around and make things easier to find.

Here was the original post, in this very thread:

Can I PLEASE make a request to the MLS developers, hopefully before this gets put in stone? Anytime I've had to produce a custom report that included a Phone Number, I find myself searching the alphabetical lists (both Criteria and Format) for something that started with "Ph" for "Phone", but I could never find it. I then have to look at each line item until I would finally stumble on "Primary Phone Number". Now that I can almost remember where that is in the list, they are going to move it to the "H's". Now that's just not fair!

Since they already have the following...

1. Address - City
2. Address - County
3. Address - Postal Code
4. Address - State
5. ...and so on

Why not...?

1. E-mail - Contact
2. E-mail - Household
3. E-mail - Individual
4. Phone Number - Contact
5. Phone Number - Household
6. Phone Number - Individual
7. Phone Number - Secondary

And if you're so inclined...

1. Name - Maiden
2. Name - Maiden2
3. Name - Preferred
4. Name - Spouse

...And so on.

This probably wasn't an issue when MLS was first released, as there were far fewer things to select from, however now the list is getting quite long and difficult to navigate, especially for first-time users, and I see this upcoming release making it even more difficult to use instead of easier.