MLS 3.1 Phone/Email changes

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

Post by aebrown »

MrRogers wrote:Boy, I sure hope that happens soon because the ward directory is now missing most of its phone numbers.
Why would the ward directory be missing "most of its phone numbers"? Nothing should have happened to the household numbers. In my experience, each ward had relatively few secondary phone numbers (less than 10% of our stake), and the secondary phone numbers didn't show up on most reports anyway, so I would be surprised to hear that any ward lost very much in this transition.
MrRogers wrote:Are all the secondary phone numbers still out there somewhere or have they simply been erased?
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.
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mkmurray
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#22

Post by mkmurray »

Alan_Brown wrote:Why would the ward directory be missing "most of its phone numbers"? Nothing should have happened to the household numbers. In my experience, each ward had relatively few secondary phone numbers (less than 10% of our stake), and the secondary phone numbers didn't show up on most reports anyway, so I would be surprised to hear that any ward lost very much in this transition.
We had over 50% secondary phone numbers populated.
Alan_Brown wrote: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.
The MLS message that everyone should have received a few weeks before the upgrade stated that if you wanted to save the secondary household numbers to be put in individual phone number fields, you would have to print out or export that data before the upgrade. I got the impression that data is no longer in the database. I printed a custom report with all primary and secondary numbers before the upgrade.

We will also be using this tithing settlement time to try to get as many emails and phone numbers that we can.
coloradotechie-p40
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Couldn't you restore to a backup?

#23

Post by coloradotechie-p40 »

Couldn't you restore to a backup (prior 3.1 upgrade), print out a custom report, then restore to your most recent backup?

I haven't tried this on the church computer, but everything seemed to work okay when I did it with the test data.
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aebrown
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#24

Post by aebrown »

coloradotechie wrote:Couldn't you restore to a backup (prior 3.1 upgrade), print out a custom report, then restore to your most recent backup?

I haven't tried this on the church computer, but everything seemed to work okay when I did it with the test data.
Yes, you can do that, but the reason I said it would be a pain is that you also have to uninstall MLS 3.1, install MLS 3.0 (assuming someone still has that installer available), restore a backup from MLS 3.0, run the custom report, reinstall MLS 3.1, and then restore the most recent backup.
coloradotechie-p40
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#25

Post by coloradotechie-p40 »

Hmmm, that does sound painful. (As a side note: I kept the 3.0 installer if MrRogers does need it).
russellhltn
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#26

Post by russellhltn »

I've got a feeling he'll need 3.0.3. There's a chance that 3.0.0 will not open a 3.0.3 file.
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coloradotechie-p40
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#27

Post by coloradotechie-p40 »

I just looked closer, I have MLS 3.0.2 Installer.exe from 9/8/2009. I have no idea if it would work or not.
lajackson
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#28

Post by lajackson »

RussellHltn wrote:I've got a feeling he'll need 3.0.3. There's a chance that 3.0.0 will not open a 3.0.3 file.

Yes, like about a 100% chance. I don't think 3.0.2 will work, either, but I haven't tried it.

For those who lost all of their phone numbers, the timing with tithing settlement has proven to be fortuitous.
RossEvans
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#29

Post by RossEvans »

lajackson wrote:For those who lost all of their phone numbers, the timing with tithing settlement has proven to be fortuitous.

Even for those who preserved the phone numbers (we did), canvassing members at tithing settlement or some other method is probably necessary.

We saved the numbers, but just like CHQ we have no way of knowing what the old Secondary Phone was meant to be: Was it the spouse's number, or a cell or work phone for the head of household who recorded a home landline for the old Primary Phone? Since we have to ask the members this anyway, we might as well ask them their phone number. And in any case we have to ask them their email addresses, and any information they want recorded for children.

So those who lost the phone numbers probably did not lose much useful information.
geek
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#30

Post by geek »

boomerbubba wrote:Even for those who preserved the phone numbers (we did), canvassing members at tithing settlement or some other method is probably necessary.

We saved the numbers, but just like CHQ we have no way of knowing what the old Secondary Phone was meant to be: Was it the spouse's number, or a cell or work phone for the head of household who recorded a home landline for the old Primary Phone? Since we have to ask the members this anyway, we might as well ask them their phone number. And in any case we have to ask them their email addresses, and any information they want recorded for children.

So those who lost the phone numbers probably did not lose much useful information.
SLC could just have saved their time by assigning the secondary phone number to one of the spouses during the upgrade. There's probably a decent chance it would have been the right spouse. There's a small probability that the secondary family number belonged to a child, particularly one under 18.

The logic of "we don't know what to do with it, so we'll just throw it away, when we've just created data structures that would logically contain it" is appalling.

At least in my ward's case, simply assigning the secondary to the personal number of either the husband or wife would have been yielded about a 40% success rate in either case.

We already have emails for both spouses. We just crammed both emails into one line and override MLS when it complains about a format.
Former membership clerk under 3 bishops, now on 2nd stint as executive secretary. Can I go back to teaching priesthood now?
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