Getting Slapped

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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Eric Werny-p40
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Getting Slapped

#1

Post by Eric Werny-p40 »

I thought this incident would be of interest to many of you concerning MLS.


I was asked to move in two membership records of a married couple who records were not
tied together as husband and wife due to recent marriage, and the previous clerk did not
make the connection.


As I was in the process, I found a temporary membership record that was misspelled and only had the name and no other details. Who put in that record, I have no idea. I tried to merge the odd record to the correct members name and the system would not let me make the merge. I looked into terminating the marriage and rebuilding it, but I didn't not have +a correct marriage date.


So I was stuck with not being able to terminate the odd record, and not being able to tie the
couple together.


Now to take this to the next level. The stake membership clerk also serves as the ward membership clerk in the other ward in your tri-clerk office, looked at it and was confused too. So we asked Church office to help us solve the problem.


What I got back was a basic slap in the face. I was told to contact my Stake clerk, and to go to www.lds.org / serving in the church and review the clerk training, which does not cover this problem.


But what was interesting is the problem magically got fixed. In my original e-mail I asked that they let me know how they resolve the issue, but no info was given.


Here is my take on this. If they always complain about being buried with work in there communications to us in their occasionally updates....hire more people. Also they are on a pay roll and getting paid to help us as volunteers to solve problems. I know this could be considered a rant. Or are my feeling valid about this?


I just want everyone's take on this. I want to react to this properly.
russellhltn
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#2

Post by russellhltn »

Since this was about MLS, I took the liberty of moving the thread to the MLS support section.
Eric Werny wrote:As I was in the process, I found a temporary membership record that was misspelled and only had the name and no other details. Who put in that record, I have no idea. I tried to merge the odd record to the correct members name and the system would not let me make the merge.
I'm not near MLS at the moment, but I don't remember any merge function. If the record has only a pseudo membership number (I think it will have your unit number in it if it is), then you should just be able to delete it. If it does have a membership record, then you'd have to communicate to SLC the problem and give them the two membership records. There may be a function to do that in MLS.

Eric Werny wrote: What I got back was a basic slap in the face. I was told to contact my Stake clerk, and to go to www.lds.org / serving in the church and review the clerk training, which does not cover this problem.
I hope that was just a general boiler plate reply - something along the lines of "try this and see if you can fix it yourself."
Eric Werny-p40
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Re: The Slap

#3

Post by Eric Werny-p40 »

The message I received back was to contact my stake clerk and visit lds.org / serving in the church review the online training.

I was not happy with the response. Somebody wasn't thinking.
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terrysackett
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#4

Post by terrysackett »

I've gotten four of those types of messages in the eight months I've been a ward clerk. It gets frustrating, especially when you're sitting on issues for minths that have not been resolved. One minor issue got magically fixed like yours did, but the other three have not, and I'm really not inclined to worry about whether they get corrected at this point. On some things you don't have that luxury, and at some point I'll have to worry about one of them, but until then...
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kh_design
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Church unit leadership is volunteer time

#5

Post by kh_design »

Church unit leadership is volunteer time. From time to time the volunteer time is mishandled when new technology is implemented. For example, in fall of 2004 when MLS was deployed it did not import unit leadership, temple recommend information and so on. Stake Presidencies, Bishoprics, Executive Secretaries, Clerks, High Priests, Relief Society, Elders (I mention again, they volunteer their time) then spent an average of about 5 hours (it was more, I am being conservative) re-entering information into MLS that did not import from MIS. Multiply this by a conservative number of 10,000 ward and stake units is 50,000 man hours (obviously much more than this, I am now being very conservative). More than 50,000 man hours of volunteer time could have been more prudently used for the benefit of mankind if data from MIS would have imported to MLS.
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childsdj
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#6

Post by childsdj »

Eric Werny wrote:The message I received back was to contact my stake clerk and visit lds.org / serving in the church review the online training.

I was not happy with the response. Somebody wasn't thinking.


The response to check with your stake clerk and to visit clerk.lds.org is an automated response or attached to an MLS message that will come back with an analyst. We certainly try to be as accurate as we can with the limited resources we have here at CHQ. We realize that we are asking a great deal from clerks and leaders who are giving of their time voluntarily. Sorry if there was any frustration. Any suggestions are appreciated.
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Mikerowaved
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#7

Post by Mikerowaved »

Last week I asked a question to CHQ via MLS message that we couldn't answer here and after receiving the answer saw a tag line at the bottom suggesting I try http://tech.lds.org in the future. I thought that was rather humorous.
So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
jbh001
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#8

Post by jbh001 »

So is that answer something that you can share, or have you already posted it to the appropriate forum?
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Mikerowaved
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#9

Post by Mikerowaved »

jbh001 wrote:So is that answer something that you can share, or have you already posted it to the appropriate forum?
It was promptly posted...
http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?p=10495
So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
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