Setup New Ward In MLS

[dobrichelovek]

I just wanted to share the timeframe of what has happened with a newly created ward in our Stake, in hopes that it might help others know what they can reasonably hope for... even though "past performance is not always a good indicator of future results."

Our new unit was created on January 9th in a Stake meeting. The unit name showed up about midday in CDOL on January 10th, and the name of the new unit then showed up in the online directory and maps system on the 11th. Obviously lacking were map data (both in the maps on CDOL and in the maps tool) and membership data, along with a number of other things that are identified in this thread.

This morning, January 12th, the CDOL map of the Stake was updated to show the boundaries of the new ward and the realigned boundaries of the rest of the stake. It's wasn't reflected in the maps tool this morning when I checked, but the new unit is now showing up in the maps tool on lds.org along with the rest of the boundary changes.

I am assuming that it would be safe at this point for the ward clerks to get on MLS and use the boundary realignment tool (as discussed here and on the wiki) to move the households from their wards to the new unit (and between existing wards also) at this point, and they will be ready for the new ward system whenever it is set up.

Hope this gives those going through this in the future an idea of what to plan for, as long as everything goes smoothly and is submitted correctly.

[crislapi]

I will add that, based on the experience I had with a new ward being set up in May 2010, your setup is moving extremely quickly.

[dobrichelovek]

It is probably quicker than it used to be, but that's a good thing, right? I am guessing that the process they now have in place that puts the official maps on CDOL and feeds the system that maps.lds.org uses, all integrated with the MLS database, really helps this process move along more quickly than in the past.

Just wanted to follow up to say that as of this morning (Jan 13th, if you've followed the timeline from my last post) it looks like just about all of the records affected by the boundary changes have been moved into the correct units (wards). I doubt that this was done by the various ward clerks, all at once, so it looks like it was done at the stake level. Since I don't have access to MLS at a stake level, I can't say how this would be done from there. *Edit: I think it was actually done at the ward level, it was just coincidental that most of the records moved at the same time, but it looks like one ward missed a group that didn't go to the new ward, but instead goes to another existing ward. I'm sure it will be taken care of soon enough, but it makes more sense now.

One final note, though, it looks like the lds.org map tool didn't try to find the location of the moved members in any unit, so they all remain unmapped households. It looks like these households moved in the boundary change (which used to be mapped just fine before the unit change) skipped the step to auto locate their addresses. Either that, or I'm following and reporting this process a little too closely.

In our unit it was only a handful of new households to correct, but in the new unit and other units there were many more changes. Is there a way to trigger an attempt to auto-place the households on the map tool, since that will greatly reduce the amount of manual effort that will need to be done to successfully utilize the maps tool? I didn't see it, if there is.

[jonesrk]

Just wanted to follow up to say that as of this morning (Jan 13th, if you've followed the timeline from my last post) it looks like just about all of the records affected by the boundary changes have been moved into the correct units (wards). I doubt that this was done by the various ward clerks, all at once, so it looks like it was done at the stake level. Since I don't have access to MLS at a stake level, I can't say how this would be done from there.

Within the ward MLS there is a boundary change tool that lets you pick a list of members and which unit they are moving to. Then MLS bulk moves them, so everything shows up all at once.

As far as the experience I had with our boundary change, the only holdup on getting members moved was me (the new ward clerk of the existing ward) getting access to the computer. For the new ward I was told to wait to send their records, until they had their computer setup.

[dobrichelovek]

Within the ward MLS there is a boundary change tool that lets you pick a list of members and which unit they are moving to. Then MLS bulk moves them, so everything shows up all at once.

As far as the experience I had with our boundary change, the only holdup on getting members moved was me (the new ward clerk of the existing ward) getting access to the computer. For the new ward I was told to wait to send their records, until they had their computer setup.

Thanks, Ryan, for sharing. I saw the boundary change tool on the Ward level, but it looked like everything within the stake had been moved all at once, for all wards... an unlikely coincidence in my mind. It turns out that there are a few households that aren't moved yet, so I would go back to thinking that the wards did it using the tool to which you refer.

In terms of your experience and being asked to wait to send records until the computer is setup, is there any good reason to have to wait in your opinion (knowing that the records will show up online in the proper ward even before MLS is set up, or at least I believe it would) or was that just a request based on a personal opinion but no real technical reason? I don't want to leave this here in the forums implying that the records should be pushed by an on-the-ball clerk the moment he sees that the unit has been created in CDOL and has the unit number if there is a real reason to hold off a bit.

And I sent a message of feedback regarding the maps tool (even though it's not my unit, I guess I'm just деловой that way) and the households not being automatically mapped... and now looking again a few hours later I see some of the households have been automatically mapped, so either I just wasn't patient enough, or my feedback made a difference. If it is the latter, then it begs the question as to why these households that were moved due to a boundary change didn't get automatically placed according to address in the first place. What is the trigger? I know, not really for this forum, but it would be nice to know... or at least know that it has been fixed if it was a problem, so that going forward new units will not have this issue, or they will learn to be patient, if it was the former case.

[crislapi]

Thanks, Ryan, for sharing. I saw the boundary change tool on the Ward level, but it looked like everything within the stake had been moved all at once, for all wards... an unlikely coincidence in my mind. It turns out that there are a few households that aren't moved yet, so I would go back to thinking that the wards did it using the tool to which you refer.

In terms of your experience and being asked to wait to send records until the computer is setup, is there any good reason to have to wait in your opinion (knowing that the records will show up online in the proper ward even before MLS is set up, or at least I believe it would) or was that just a request based on a personal opinion but no real technical reason? I don't want to leave this here in the forums implying that the records should be pushed by an on-the-ball clerk the moment he sees that the unit has been created in CDOL and has the unit number if there is a real reason to hold off a bit.

The stake MLS does no have the ability to do this (request/move records). So either they went to the ward computer and did it, or you had on-the-ball clerks. The records cannot be sent until the unit exists (appears in CDOL), but that's the only thing you have to wait for to send/request them.

[jonesrk]

In terms of your experience and being asked to wait to send records until the computer is setup, is there any good reason to have to wait in your opinion (knowing that the records will show up online in the proper ward even before MLS is set up, or at least I believe it would) or was that just a request based on a personal opinion but no real technical reason?

My understanding of the reason they asked us to make sure the computer was setup is that if they didn't have it by the next Sunday we would still process their tithing.

I don't want to leave this here in the forums implying that the records should be pushed by an on-the-ball clerk the moment he sees that the unit has been created in CDOL and has the unit number if there is a real reason to hold off a bit.

Actually the unit is created in CDOL before the notice is sent to the stake that they can create the unit. It just isn't 'active' which means that most people can't see it. Part of the reason for it being there is that the members records can be moved to that unit even before it goes active. It will go active as soon as the paperwork comes back from the stake with the date the unit was created.

[lajackson]

In terms of your experience and being asked to wait to send records until the computer is setup, is there any good reason to have to wait in your opinion (knowing that the records will show up online in the proper ward even before MLS is set up, or at least I believe it would) or was that just a request based on a personal opinion but no real technical reason? I don't want to leave this here in the forums implying that the records should be pushed by an on-the-ball clerk the moment he sees that the unit has been created in CDOL and has the unit number if there is a real reason to hold off a bit.

When we divided two wards into three, the stake clerk went into the computer with each of the ward clerks that day and moved the records between units using the boundary change option.

The only reason you might want to hold on sending records to the new unit is that the records themselves are not available in the old unit (they just sent them) and they are not available in the new unit (they have not yet received them). This would only be a problem if the new bishop needed the actual membership record for something, but this would be rare.

The CDOL trigger to activating a new unit is notice that the new bishop has been sustained. Our stake president faxed in that form the Monday morning after the division. The unit was showing in CDOL that afternoon and membership records were downloading to the new unit within a day.