Tech Forum

I am proposing an idea that I would like to see discussed. I have found it frustrating for such organizations such a Relief Society, Young Men and Young Women, for their leaders to make
contact with them through the parents. When you have an inactive or less active Father in the
home many of the message are not passed on. I have heard of instances where visiting teachers
wishing to make an appointment with a sisters and only having the husband cell number listed on the ward list made it impossible to make contact.


The way the system is now, you have enough room to put on two phone number, but not enough room to say who they belong too.


What do you think of the idea of providing fields for each family member with phone number and e-mail address.


These numbers would only be show on the master membership report that would only be distributed to
the Bishopric and Ward Council members.


What are your thoughts on this?

This has been requested since MIS - before MLS was released.

I know some units are using custom fields to hold individual cell phone and email addresses. Then they have to create custom reports to show the fields. I know others that keep everything in separate spreadsheets in various unit auxiliaries. Either way, they're getting close to recreating the wheel. I know as an application developer that adding new fields to a record is really easy. The problem I see is that the phone numbers are part of the household contact information rather than the individual member.

Eric Werny wrote: I am proposing an idea that I would like to see discussed. I have found it frustrating for such organizations such a Relief Society, Young Men and Young Women, for their leaders to make
contact with them through the parents. When you have an inactive or less active Father in the
home many of the message are not passed on. I have heard of instances where visiting teachers
wishing to make an appointment with a sisters and only having the husband cell number listed on the ward list made it impossible to make contact.


The way the system is now, you have enough room to put on two phone number, but not enough room to say who they belong too.


What do you think of the idea of providing fields for each family member with phone number and e-mail address.


These numbers would only be show on the master membership report that would only be distributed to
the Bishopric and Ward Council members.


What are your thoughts on this?

I'd rather opt-in on a child-by-child basis for phone # and email of each of my children. At this particular time, I do give out my children's cell phone numbers to ward leaders, etc. It would be easier if the numbers were on the ward list. My minor children do not presently have their own email addresses, but I would like the option of adding that to a list, too.

I agree and would like to se more fields added to MLS for phone #'s and e-mail address. I'd also like to see more space to put info added in those fields. As you have said many households have more #'s than space available in MLS. The same with e-mail too. In our ward I've jammed two e-mail address together in the one e-mail field with a comma separating them because many of he parents have seperate e-mail. I've struggled with cell phone #'s. If I was lucky enough that the first 3 digits were the same for both of the parents cell #'s than I would type something like 307-9999 or 9998. This has worked in our ward but there is absolutely no space for any childrens #'s or if the parents beginning cell #'s were different I couldn't do it. You could do custom fields and generate something like that but boy what a hassle!

I know I've asked about this in other places, so I'll just echo it here, that each member (perhaps over the age of 12) needs to have his/her own email/phone.

[I know of bishoprics in other wards who are discovering the limitations of LUWS and MLS when it comes to contact information, and as cited above, are close to reinventing the wheel and putting together their own spreadsheets of contact info, to then post on LUWS. Redundant, to be sure, but whaddya do?]

See this forum thread
http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1025