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Thoughts on Clerk Tools subscription service?

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:54 am
by aaronrturner
Anyone else seen this?

https://www.clerktools.com/pricing.html

Not sure how I feel about a commercial offering that is designed to at least ingest and process membership data outside of the officially-provided tools.

Anyone tried this?

Re: Thoughts on Clerk Tools subscription service?

Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2016 11:29 am
by russellhltn
At those prices, I don't imagine they'll get very many customers. And I can't see how units could use that given the prohibition against loading information into third party servers.

Edit: in looking over the claimed functions, I don't see where one has to upload anything or give access via LDS Account, but I can't see how it can do some of it's functions without entering information about other members into the system. And that for me is where I'd suggest it's a "bad idea".

Re: Thoughts on Clerk Tools subscription service?

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 1:27 pm
by tanner.doug
For many years when I was in a bishopric, and many years now as a stake executive secretary we'd have to "input" member data in spreadsheets, google docs, office 365, etc to accomplish the work. The process of taking someone from a recommendation for a calling or priesthood ordination, all the way to recording properly after being sustain, and set apart has been difficult, and this would simplify that process a ton, especially at the stake level (that I'm personally dealing with right now). How is this any different from using those services? Personally don't see an issue since it's not downloading/uploading data from MLS/LCR its not in violation of policy. I love the idea of linking all of these processes centrally to an agenda that helps us follow up on assignments to coordinate the work of salvation.

Re: Thoughts on Clerk Tools subscription service?

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 1:50 pm
by russellhltn
Typically, Office spreadsheets reside on the local computer, or if confidential, on a drive that's removed and locked in a drawer. Once you start entering things into an on-line service, you're at the mercy of whatever security or motives are involved in that service.

I'm not quite sure where the line is, but for myself, I'd suggest that at the moment you're acting in the capacity of a church leader and entering data about other people into a system not approved by the church, you're entering a "gray zone". Especially when you're dealing with a system that "understands" what the data is (unlike a spreadsheet or a word processor that just deals with words and numbers).

Some of those functions on Clerk Tools are fine, but some of them require entering names of people and some information about them. The question then becomes how much information is too much?