mass email to a given calling in each ward of the stake

[sj3vans]

I am a STS and often have the need to send an email to all the ward technology or AV specialist in each ward of the stake. There is no easy way to do this. Other leaders also need this kind of mass emailing. For example, the Stake Young Men's President would like to send an email to all the young men presidents but not their counselors and secretaries. There is no way to do that either.

Right now, I have no choice but to go look up each calling in each ward and cut and paste their email into my email program. And I have to do that every time since callings change.

Since we have all of these emails in a database, can't we have an email list builder for leadership? That way, a leader could add whatever callings they want into a saved list and when they email that list, they always have the right people. Is there anything like this in the works? Or has anyone else found a good way to do this?

Thanks

[danpass]

I am a STS and often have the need to send an email to all the ward technology or AV specialist in each ward of the stake. There is no easy way to do this. Other leaders also need this kind of mass emailing. For example, the Stake Young Men's President would like to send an email to all the young men presidents but not their counselors and secretaries. There is no way to do that either.

Right now, I have no choice but to go look up each calling in each ward and cut and paste their email into my email program. And I have to do that every time since callings change.

Since we have all of these emails in a database, can't we have an email list builder for leadership? That way, a leader could add whatever callings they want into a saved list and when they email that list, they always have the right people. Is there anything like this in the works? Or has anyone else found a good way to do this?

Thanks

I'm also an STS and recently needed to e-mail all the ward clerks in my stake. The solution I came up with was to use the advanced search feature in CDOL, exported the results to a spreadsheet and copied the column containing the e-mail addresses. This, as opposed to manually looking up each person, might not save you a lot of time the first time you do it. But you can save the search and reuse it and adapt it for other subsets of individuals in the future. Until the online MLS tools are enhanced with this kind of functionality, this method will help (at least for those who have CDOL access...).

[sbradshaw]

This feature has been brought up and is in the to-do list for the LDS Tools app, but as for a timeline, and whether this will be incorporated into the LDS.org tools – no idea

[sj3vans]

@sbradshaw, yes, I actually have found the ipad version of the LDS tools app helpful because you can assign individual contacts to a group and then send an email to the whole group. Very nice! I can reuse groups, but I still have to check to ensure no callings have changed. It would be great if the group could be based on certain callings and update automatically or have an option to update.

[curtis.rasmussen]

@sbradshaw, any updates on if/when this type of feature would be implemented? As a Stake YM Secretary regularly needing to email a bunch of people in the stake based on their calling, this would be super useful to me. Thanks!

As a workaround, we maintain a google spreadsheet with email addresses for current ward YM Presidents, Bishoprics, etc. On a second tab in the spreadsheet, we put in some logic so that the different columns are auto-updated to contain all the email addresses of common lists of people we need to email. For example, to get a column with the email addresses for all YM Presidents and Secretaries we'll use something like =QUERY(Sheet1!A1:H289,"select C where (A contains 'YM Secretary' or A contains 'YM President')",0)' where on the first tab column C contains the email addresses and A contains the calling names.

[sbradshaw]

I don't have more info. Here are the relevant JIRA issues (you need to join the LDS Tools for iOS or LDS Tools for Android LDSTech projects to see them):
https://tech.lds.org/jira/browse/MMIP-643 (LDS Tools for iOS)
https://tech.lds.org/jira/browse/MMA-961 (LDS Tools for Android)
The issues are in the backlog – no activity for several months.

I like your idea for using Excel functions – we're doing something similar in our stake.