LCR - Two persons with the same name

[tannerr]

In several parts of the system, particularly in the VT companionships, the RS VT Coordinator was selecting a sister to be visit taught. In our ward we have two Audrey Nelsons. One that is 82 and another that is 18. When she selected the name from the Drop down she could not distinguish which one was which. We need some other identifier in the list. Maybe age in parens like you do in other areas?

Thanks,
Ron
Edgewood Ward Clerk

[mevans]

That's a great edge case. Be sure to submit it through the feedback link so that the right people see it. The product manager, scgallafent, has been pretty active in this forum and will likely see your post, but it's best to submit it through Feedback. There really ought to be a workable solution for this. I've seen this situation arise in wards sometimes.

[tannerr]

Thanks. I looked all over Leader and Clerk Resources and could find no feedback. When I clicked the feedback at the bottom of lds.org it is trying to talk about content on lds.org. I went through Help looking for feedback and it send me to contact phones and not online feedback. So please tell me where I can submit feedback within LCR.

[tannerr]

Ahh. I think I see the Feedback on this page link. Sorry - right in my face!!

[lajackson]

You can submit Feedback from any page at LDS.org as long as you specify the area for which you are providing feedback. If you find a link on the page itself, Feedback populates with the current information, but still you have selection options and can always add remarks as needed from any Feedback link.

Some pages at LDS.org don't have feedback links, but you can still send feedback by using the link on another page.

[scgallafent]

That's a great edge case. Be sure to submit it through the feedback link so that the right people see it. The product manager, scgallafent, has been pretty active in this forum and will likely see your post, but it's best to submit it through Feedback. There really ought to be a workable solution for this. I've seen this situation arise in wards sometimes.

I agree that's a great case. Submitting it through feedback is the proper route and I can see it in the queue.

I'm not the product manager -- I'm a developer.

You can submit Feedback from any page at LDS.org as long as you specify the area for which you are providing feedback. If you find a link on the page itself, Feedback populates with the current information, but still you have selection options and can always add remarks as needed from any Feedback link.

If you're submitting feedback for Leader and Clerk Resources, feedback sent using the feedback link inside LCR goes directly to the LCR team rather than into the general queue where it has to make its way back to us.

[russellhltn]

In our ward we have two Audrey Nelsons. One that is 82 and another that is 18. When she selected the name from the Drop down she could not distinguish which one was which. We need some other identifier in the list. Maybe age in parens like you do in other areas?

There may be a issue of disclosing age to the Visiting Teaching Coordinator. I tend to suspect they don't have the expanded access to the membership information the RS presidency has.

I'm guessing that "Audrey Nelson" is the preferred name for both sisters and the VT list is only showing preferred name. As such, you might want to see if there's a way to modify the preferred name to distinguish the two that's acceptable to both. Because the problem isn't just limited to VT. It would appear in rolls and everywhere else the preferred name is used. Because even if the person selecting the name could tell the difference, what about the poor sisters who get the printout and wonder which "Audrey Nelson" they're supposed to VT? A possible modification could be the inclusion of a middle name. Or perhaps adding "Jr" to the younger one.

[mevans]

I'm not the product manager -- I'm a developer.

Over all your helpful participation, I'm not sure where I got the idea you were the product manager, so I stand corrected.

If you're submitting feedback for Leader and Clerk Resources, feedback sent using the feedback link inside LCR goes directly to the LCR team rather than into the general queue where it has to make its way back to us.

I didn't realize until your comment that there's a separate feedback to LCR. You're talking about the separate link that goes to lds.qualtrics.com, right? It would be nice if there was a uniform feedback mechanism for all of LDS.org, but that might require more coordination that someone cares to undertake. Thanks for pointing out the link. You might want to make it look the same as the Feedback link at the bottom of many other pages. I've completely missed it because I'm looking for the standard feedback link.

FWIW I just noticed that the main lds.org feedback site has changed. You no longer have to select a category (which categories haven't been updated in a long time and were rather confusing).

[mevans]

In our ward we have two Audrey Nelsons. One that is 82 and another that is 18. When she selected the name from the Drop down she could not distinguish which one was which. We need some other identifier in the list. Maybe age in parens like you do in other areas?

There may be a issue of disclosing age to the Visiting Teaching Coordinator. I tend to suspect they don't have the expanded access to the membership information the RS presidency has.

I'm guessing that "Audrey Nelson" is the preferred name for both sisters and the VT list is only showing preferred name. As such, you might want to see if there's a way to modify the preferred name to distinguish the two that's acceptable to both. Because the problem isn't just limited to VT. It would appear in rolls and everywhere else the preferred name is used. Because even if the person selecting the name could tell the difference, what about the poor sisters who get the printout and wonder which "Audrey Nelson" they're supposed to VT? A possible modification could be the inclusion of a middle name. Or perhaps adding "Jr" to the younger one.

I wonder what the best way is to distinguish the names in the system if both want the same preferred name? I've seen the situation arise with parent/child, but also with completely unrelated individuals. Maybe show parts of the church record in a popup, like address and birthday (without year)? That minimizes the chances of a collision, but won't eliminate them. Maybe show the last few digits of the record number?

I haven't run into this situation too often, but I suppose in other countries there could be a greater likelihood. One company I worked at had an office in Vietnam and it was much more common for people to have the same name there than in some other offices.

[mstauff]

You can click the arrow to the left of the name and it will expand to show contact information (including email and phone). I would think this would allow you to differentiate in most cases (you would need two people with the same name, living in the same household with no individual phone or email to not be able to differentiate).