Officer Sustaining Update

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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harddrive
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Officer Sustaining Update

#1

Post by harddrive »

I was at a ward conference helping them out. They are using the latest version of MLS. We noticed that some of the calling fields were updated and others were not.

The biggest one we noticed was that the Relief Society was not updated. Those fields on the officers sustaining report had to be updated manually. The building that I was in has a second ward, so I checked out their officer sustaining form and they had the same issue.

In the ward that I was in, I had the ward clerk select the same person to be the Relief Society President. He did that and the Officer Sustaining Form did not update.

I remember to earlier versions that when you made a change in the organization area, the fields on the officer sustaining form would get updated, but not the other way around. Has something changed since the earlier version to cause the updating of the officer sustaining form to not be populated or updated when a change is made.

Thanks for letting me and us know.
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aebrown
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#2

Post by aebrown »

harddrive747 wrote:The biggest one we noticed was that the Relief Society was not updated. Those fields on the officers sustaining report had to be updated manually. The building that I was in has a second ward, so I checked out their officer sustaining form and they had the same issue.
It's essential to use the standard callings. When you select the position, each standard calling will have a star by it. Only standard callings will populate the Officers Sustained Form.
harddrive747 wrote:In the ward that I was in, I had the ward clerk select the same person to be the Relief Society President. He did that and the Officer Sustaining Form did not update.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "Form did not update." If you have saved the form, no subsequent changes to the callings will cause the saved form to update. But in my experience (and I just tested it again on the MLS test data), the Relief Society President will indeed populate the Officers Sustained Form if you create a new form.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
harddrive
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#3

Post by harddrive »

Thank you Alan for the response. My question is then how do you create a new one? The clerk went into the officer sustaining form from the menu and for two wards the information was not populated.

I would figure if you made a change in the organization, then it should automatically update the officer sustaining form for the ward. It didn't. If it was on one, then I would agree that it was because of maybe a custom position, but when I see it on a second unit with the same version of MLS, then to me that indicates an issue with the software.

I have a version on my laptop that I will need to check out.

Thanks for your help.
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aebrown
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#4

Post by aebrown »

harddrive747 wrote:Thank you Alan for the response. My question is then how do you create a new one? The clerk went into the officer sustaining form from the menu and for two wards the information was not populated.
You create a new one simply by going into the Officers Sustained Form (in MLS, go to Reports/Forms > Officers Sustained Forms, then pick the appropriate form from the list -- probably "Officers Sustained--Ward").

I was simply trying to make sure you hadn't saved the form, and then were accessing the saved form (via Reports/Forms > Saved Forms) and hoping that organizational changes made after the form was saved would be reflected in the saved form. They will not.
harddrive747 wrote:I would figure if you made a change in the organization, then it should automatically update the officer sustaining form for the ward. It didn't. If it was on one, then I would agree that it was because of maybe a custom position, but when I see it on a second unit with the same version of MLS, then to me that indicates an issue with the software.
You need to specifically check for standard vs. custom positions. Just because two wards have the same problem doesn't mean it's safe to assume that it's an MLS problem. It's entirely possible that both wards used custom positions.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
russellhltn
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#5

Post by russellhltn »

Alan_Brown wrote:You need to specifically check for standard vs. custom positions. Just because two wards have the same problem doesn't mean it's safe to assume that it's an MLS problem. It's entirely possible that both wards used custom positions.
MLS has a wizard to help map any custom callings to standardized callings. Run that and see if the callings in question show up on it.

Some times ward use custom callings just because it's easier then trying to find the standardized one, or they dislike the wording of the standardized one. That used to be OK, but with some the changes in the church system in the last few months, that will cause problems.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
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aebrown
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#6

Post by aebrown »

RussellHltn wrote:MLS has a wizard to help map any custom callings to standardized callings. Run that and see if the callings in question show up on it.
Just to be clear, what RussellHltn called "a wizard" is called "Custom Positions Review" and it is available under Organizations > Reports/Tools > Custom Positions Review.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
harddrive
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#7

Post by harddrive »

I discovered what the issue was. I had two relief society groups and it was picking up the second group. Once, I removed the second group the officer sustaining form picked up the right people in the positions.

So I will have to check the other ward to see if they have two relief society groups and remove the second one.

I don't know if there is a way to have it select the first relief society instead of the second. I will check it out.

I discovered that when you add a second group that the Officer Sustaining Form will look at that group for who is in the positions. I think there needs to be a way to select which group shows up on the officer sustaining form. So if you have multiple groups then it will pick up the one that has the blanks.

Hope this helps someone else out.
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