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Custom Reports- Have Children ?
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 10:51 am
by jhigbee
As a stake memb clerk, I’ve been asked to generate a custom report quickly for our Stake which includes a particular category of members, including whether they have children. Is anyone familiar with whether that have-children “criteria” is available in MLS?
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 11:30 am
by russellhltn
You didn't specify if this is "have children" or "have children at home". Either way, I don't see a way to do this with custom reports.
You could probably export the membership information and externally parse it to find "children at home".
For "have children", all I can think of is to create a custom field and manually populate it by looking at each adult's record. At least then the next time you run the report, you only need to check the members that have moved in rather then starting over.
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 1:19 pm
by jhigbee
They want “have children” period (even if they don’t live with them). Your proposed solution sounds do-able, albeit entailing quite a bit more work than I anticipated. I think I’ll just do the first round list, and then have the bishops or their clerks make the children determination from there. Then subsequently (especially if it looks like more than a one-time operation), I would go your suggested route.
Thanks for the feedback.
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:04 pm
by rontilby
MLS has a "Has Children" field in custom reports that you can print, but I couldn't find it in the selection criteria.
I had to use other appropriate criteria, and include and sort on "Has Children" in the output for our "Send them to the YSA ward" list.
Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:46 am
by greggo
Maybe your ward/stake is more organized/diligent than mine, but our membership records don't get much updating for less active members for marriages let along for children, so such a report would be very inaccurate in our case.
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:59 pm
by jhigbee
A belated thanks Rontilby. Yes, I found that same feature when I went to the Stake computer to create a custom list for our Stake Presidency. Even though there is no “criteria” for it, I was very pleased that there is a “format” option for having children. About half of the singles from my list in our ward had Yes for children, and the others No. That gives us what we need.
I hear you Greggo on the challenges we have in updating records of the less-active and inactive. I have neighbors whose son was just married, and so I’m anxious to try and get the necessary info to record it (for starters to find if his wife is a member or not, and if so to get her birthdate so I can get her record). But I think these membership updating efforts are worthy of our hard work, often with assistance from our bishops and other ward leadership. We do the best we can, with great reliance on the Lord thru the Holy Ghost for guidance.