Mls 2.9

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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pete_arnett-p40
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Mls 2.9

#1

Post by pete_arnett-p40 »

New Features and Changes in MLS 2.9

General Changes
  • Under user rights, each user name should now be associated with a member name and membership record number. This provides additional security and prevents user names from being used by more than one person. One stake administrator for a unit is also authorized. Note: There is now a field in MLS for a password for the stake administrator. The stake administrator should enter his password in each ward's copy of MLS. On Urgent Tasks, he should click Some users need to be associated with a member, then click Yes. He should select Stake Administrator and fill in his password. This will allow him to access each computer to provide technical support when needed.
  • The Recommendation for New Bishop form and Recommendation for New Counselor to Stake President form are now available in stake MLS.
Changes Related to Membership
  • A Confidential Member Information report is now available for use by the bishop or stake president. This report provides information on members assigned to a ward or stake with disciplinary council actions. This report can only be accessed and printed by the bishop or stake president, based on user rights and position information recorded in MLS.
  • When adding a child to a parent's record, MLS will now guide the clerk through the process.
  • When recording "Born in the Covenant" (BIC) or "Sealed to Parent" information on a new child's record, MLS will now guide the clerk by asking a number of questions. This should improve the accuracy of BIC or Sealing to Parent information recorded for children.
  • Exported MLS files containing address information, such as family data or individual data, have been changed from Palm file format to vCard file format, which is a more widely-used standard. Palm brand devices should be able to handle the vCard format without difficulty.
[img]file:///C:/im/a.gif[/img]
Issues Resolved in MLS 2.9
The following are some important issues resolved with this release. It is not, however, an exhaustive list of all the implemented fixes.

General Issues
  • An Urgent Task now appears when it is time to change the ward meeting schedule in MLS.
  • The Report of Church Disciplinary Action printed by MLS now contains a signature line for the stake president.
  • The Confidential Records on-screen instructions can now be printed.
Membership Issues
  • Text for Confidential Forms in non-English languages now fit correctly on the page.
  • In the Priesthood section of the Membership Audit, the High Priest and Aaronic print and preview now operate correctly.
  • In Custom Reports, MLS will now automatically size the column widths based on the average size of data in each column.
  • The record numbers for nonmember spouses, children, and parents will no longer appear in MLS or on MLS-produced documents such as the Individual Ordinance Summary. However, for this change to occur, the administration office will need to send a membership data refresh file to your computer. This will occur shortly after installation of MLS 2.9, and will require no action on your part.
Finance Issues
  • Merged donors are now listed correctly on the Year-to-Date Donor Summaries.
:cool: Your Fellow Servant,
Porter (Pete) Lee Arnett Jr.
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lajackson
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#2

Post by lajackson »

pete_arnett wrote:New Features and Changes in MLS 2.9

General Changes
  • One stake administrator for a unit is also authorized.

What if there is more than one stake administrator? We have a stake that is 150 x 250 miles. The same person is not always available to troubleshoot a problem. We have used our individual logins so there is a record of who did the work.
jdlessley
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#3

Post by jdlessley »

pete_arnett wrote:Under user rights, each user name should now be associated with a member name and membership record number. This provides additional security and prevents user names from being used by more than one person. One stake administrator for a unit is also authorized.
I have the same concern as lajackson. The statement in the quote implies that even the stake administrator will be associated with a member name and a membership record number. This unnecessarily restricts the stake administrator to one person - effectively forcing all stake administrator access to one person. Our stake has relied on several individuals, all stake clerks and stake presidency, to have knowledge of the one stake user ID and password to help with unit issues.

I am hoping that the stake administrator will be the only exception to this user name implementation. Otherwise we are going to have a big problem.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
russellhltn
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#4

Post by russellhltn »

pete_arnett wrote:Note: There is now a field in MLS for a password for the stake administrator. The stake administrator should enter his password in each ward's copy of MLS. On Urgent Tasks, he should click Some users need to be associated with a member, then click Yes. He should select Stake Administrator and fill in his password. This will allow him to access each computer to provide technical support when needed.
Like others, I'm a little troubled about a single administrator. In our case we have the Stake Clerk that does training and other high-level MLS problems and myself, the STS, that does the technical side. While I don't need access to confidential records, I do need to be able to test that MLS can print and do a send/receive. (I just replaced two machines last night - the ability to test basic functionality is important.) Since many MLS problems center around send/receive issues, the ability to do that is critical. If I were troubleshooting a higher level MLS problem, it's more likely that I'd have a ward clerk with me as we try and figure this out together.

I'm also interested in how a change in the stake person is implemented. Would this require the new stake person to visit every computer along with the ward admin to make this change?

Confidential Member Information report is now available for use by the bishop or stake president. This report provides information on members assigned to a ward or stake with disciplinary council actions. This report can only be accessed and printed by the bishop or stake president, based on user rights and position information recorded in MLS.
Some Bishops aren't all that computer literate and prefer that others run the reports for them. Being this restrictive could end up encouraging the bishop to share his MLS login with someone else.
rscorse47
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Mls 2.9

#5

Post by rscorse47 »

The MLS website refers to the new release as a 2.9.0 Beta 2 version, with
its accompanying warnings and guidelines. Does the automatic (assumed)
download or the running MLS opening screens say anything contrary to that ??
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mkmurray
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#6

Post by mkmurray »

rscorse wrote:The MLS website refers to the new release as a 2.9.0 Beta 2 version, with
its accompanying warnings and guidelines. Does the automatic (assumed)
download or the running MLS opening screens say anything contrary to that ??
Could be...

Our unit just downloaded 2.9 this morning as well. The release notes that came with the download didn't mention anything about Beta. However, maybe we are on the list of Beta units...?
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aebrown
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#7

Post by aebrown »

jdlessley wrote:I have the same concern as lajackson. The statement in the quote implies that even the stake administrator will be associated with a member name and a membership record number. This unnecessarily restricts the stake administrator to one person - effectively forcing all stake administrator access to one person. Our stake has relied on several individuals, all stake clerks and stake presidency, to have knowledge of the one stake user ID and password to help with unit issues.

I am hoping that the stake administrator will be the only exception to this user name implementation. Otherwise we are going to have a big problem.

Actually, the way I read the quote is the way it actually works -- everyone in the ward should be associated with a record number, but the Stake Administrator is not. As you enter the user information in MLS 2.9, if you select the Stake Administrator radio button, the user name and member name fields become disabled -- the user name must be "Stake Administrator" and there is no way to associate a member name with that user name.

However, this means that the stake administrator password would have to be shared among any stake personnel that would need to give support from the stake. In your stake, it sounds like that is what you have been doing it, so the only minor change is that there is a special stake administrator account, unconnected to a person.
RussellHltn wrote:I'm also interested in how a change in the stake person is implemented. Would this require the new stake person to visit every computer along with the ward admin to make this change?

According to the MLS 2.9 release notes, the initial setup of the Stake Administrator account requires a visit to each ward's computer: "The stake administrator should enter his password in each ward's copy of MLS." But after that, it's really a matter of password policy. At the change of an STS (or any other stake personnel who know the password), good policy would dictate that the stake administrator password should be changed, which would again require a visit to each computer. Tedious, I know. But it's not really much different from the situation now, where a stake person has an account in his own name -- there still needs to be a visit to set up the new person.
jdlessley
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#8

Post by jdlessley »

Alan_Brown wrote:Actually, the way I read the quote is the way it actually works -- everyone in the ward should be associated with a record number, but the Stake Administrator is not. As you enter the user information in MLS 2.9, if you select the Stake Administrator radio button, the user name and member name fields become disabled -- the user name must be "Stake Administrator" and there is no way to associate a member name with that user name.
By making this statement I presume you have MLS 2.9 installed and have followed the procedure described in pete_arnett's post, correct?
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
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mkmurray
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#9

Post by mkmurray »

By the way, as a note to all clerks and to the developers of MLS...

The reminder feature for setting the ward block meeting time and the Sacrament Meeting time at the beginning of a year are really helpful. However, please be advised that the default date for the reminder is set in the past (Jan. 1, 2008). Be sure to change that to 2009 so that you get reminded next year!
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aebrown
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#10

Post by aebrown »

jdlessley wrote:By making this statement I presume you have MLS 2.9 installed and have followed the procedure described in pete_arnett's post, correct?

Yes, my stake participates in beta testing MLS, so we got 2.9 downloaded automatically. I also downloaded the full 2.9 and installed it on my own computer with the test data.
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