Having problems adding members to a Sunday School Class Attendance Role

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
thutch97
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Having problems adding members to a Sunday School Class Attendance Role

#1

Post by thutch97 »

I am new to the calling of ward membership clerk and was asked by our Sunday School President if I could create an attendance role for him for a new class on Family History. When I go to the "Print Rolls and Lists category," I can see the course name, however, there are no names in the course and the roll just prints with no names. I just don't know how to add the various members to the course......anyone know how?
kisaac
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#2

Post by kisaac »

Most classes in MLS automatically populate based on "rules" of the class- such as ages and sex of members. This works very well for most ongoing Sunday School classes. Special ones you create, like family history, will need to have each person added by someone with MLS access, and the rules probably won't be able to select who you will have in the class.
Because you will not be entering any attendance in MLS, and the duration of the class may be limited to weeks or several months, realize you could use any list of names as a roll. Some wards use a piece of paper, passed around the first few weeks, with names handwritten on it by the class attendees, instead of an actual MLS generated roll.

If you decide to set it up as an actual class in MLS, you need to go to the Sunday School menu section, under "organizations." This is the general idea:
Add a class if needed, (see option on right side of "class" section,) and then add names in the "class members" tab. Don't worry about setting up "rules" for the members. Add them individually.
kisaac
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#3

Post by kisaac »

And, if you do it the MLS way, don't forget to put them back in classes as appropriate when your special class ends, if your gospel doctrine classes keep an MLS class roll!

(And this process is why some won't do it for a class that runs for just a few months...)
jdlessley
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#4

Post by jdlessley »

thutch97 wrote:I just don't know how to add the various members to the course......anyone know how?
It is not because you are new that you are having difficulty. With MLS 3.5 you can no longer just add members to an existing class. And custom classes cannot be created as before in previous versions of MLS. Instead existing classes can only be split or merged. Merging a class merges the membership of the two merged classes. Membership in a split class is determined during the splitting of the class.

The procedure in MLS 3.4.3 and earlier versions was to either confirm the class was already set up in the Sunday School organization or to create it if it did not exist. With the class set up you could add members to it.

With MLS 3.5, special Sunday School classes must be created by splitting an existing class. The split class will have the same membership rules as the class from which it was split. The only adult Sunday School class is Gospel Doctrine. To create a Family History class you have to split the Gospel Doctrine class. During the creation of the split class you can select the names of the members who will be attending the Family History class. Once the Family History class is split from Gospel Doctrine you can print the rolls which will show those members you selected during the split.

I suspect you may already have a class in Sunday School called Family History because it is displayed in the Print Rolls and Lists menu item. Go to the Sunday School Organization and check to see if the class is listed there. If it is, I am guessing there are no class members. You will have to merge that Family History class with Gospel Doctrine and then split Gospel Doctrine to create the class again and add the members who will be attending the Family History class.
JD Lessley
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jdlessley
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#5

Post by jdlessley »

kisaac wrote:If you decide to set it up as an actual class in MLS, you need to go to the Sunday School menu section, under "organizations." This is the general idea:
Add a class if needed, (see option on right side of "class" section,) and then add names in the "class members" tab. Don't worry about setting up "rules" for the members. Add them individually.
Classes cannot be created in MLS 3.5. They can only be merged or split. This includes adding members. Also the rules for classes are set and cannot be changed.
JD Lessley
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jdlessley
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#6

Post by jdlessley »

kisaac wrote:And, if you do it the MLS way, don't forget to put them back in classes as appropriate when your special class ends, if your gospel doctrine classes keep an MLS class roll!

(And this process is why some won't do it for a class that runs for just a few months...)
The new procedure in MLS 3.5 is to split a class or to merge classes. Special adult Sunday School classes must be split from Gospel Doctrine. Once the special class ends it is merged with Gospel Doctrine.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
kisaac
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#7

Post by kisaac »

jdlessley wrote:Classes cannot be created in MLS 3.5. They can only be merged or split. This includes adding members. Also the rules for classes are set and cannot be changed.
Thanks JDlessley, my ward level experience was before 3.5....
jdlessley
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#8

Post by jdlessley »

Well I got some, or a good portion, of the class situation wrong. There are more adult classes in Sunday School than just Gospel Doctrine. My previous posts were based on observations of our unit MLS and I did not check other sources. It looks like our MLS has issues and is not displaying all the classes. After checking Clerk Resources and some other posts by church employees there are at least six other adult Sunday School classes: Gospel Principles, Marriage and Family Relations, Missionary Preparation, Teaching the Gospel, Temple Preparation, & Temple and Family History.

After further testing, the method of populating those classes is to find the class the member is currently in, such as Gospel Doctrine, and remove them from that class. During the remove you are asked to enter the destination organization. But since our unit MLS is not functioning properly I can not verify this procedure. I could only get to the first step but could not identify another class/organization as the destination.

I can say that the method of creating a split class from another class as described in post #4 works to create a class that does not exist. I guess you could say it works for creating a custom class when the seven current adult Sunday School classes are not what is needed.

My edit to post #4 also includes the revision that members of classes can be moved between classes/organizations. Classes do not have to be split to get members from one class into another. Since I do not have the six other adult classes I cannot confirm the membership rules. But I suspect they may be the same as the Gospel Doctrine class. Can someone verify this? If the class rules are the same then there should be no problem moving adult members from one adult class to another.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
jdlessley
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#9

Post by jdlessley »

@thutch97,
If your MLS is showing the class "Temple and Family History" in the organization, Sunday School, you should be able to add members to the class. There should be an "Add Members" link in the Members section of the class. If the member to be added does not appear in the list of names then they are in another class or organization and cannot be added through the "Add Members" link (They may also not be list because they do not meet the membership rules for the class.). Instead you must identify the class or organization they are in and remove them and then select "Temple and Family History" as the destination. The member being moved must of course meet the destination class rules for that class to be on the destination list.

I cannot tell if someone serving a calling in another organization, say Primary, could be added to the "Temple and Family History" class without removing them from their Primary calling. Since our unit MLS only has Gospel Doctrine as the sole adult Sunday School class I could not test adding a member to the other classes like "Temple and Family History". I tried to add my wife to the Gospel Doctrine class with her serving a calling in Primary and the only way I could get her into the class was to remove her from her calling. I am hoping that is not the case for these other adult Sunday School classes. I reasonably expect an adult serving in another organization like Primary could be added to some of the other six adult Sunday School classes such as Temple Preparation without removing them from their calling in Primary.

Edit: It appears that all adults should appear in one of the seven adult Sunday School classes. It seems the issue of my wife not appearing in Gospel Doctrine because she has a calling in Primary is not a good example because of our unit MLS issues. I checked and found all our Primary presidency in Gospel Doctrine. Therefore the way I found to move adult members into one of the other six adult Sunday School classes is to remove them from Gospel Doctrine, or the current class they are in if not in Gospel Doctrine, and select the class you want them to be in in the "Select the destination organization" text box, or click the "Select" button to select from the list of destinations available.
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
jdlessley
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#10

Post by jdlessley »

I hope I haven't confused anyone reading this thread. I apologize if I have. :o :confused:
JD Lessley
Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
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