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MLS Contact Info field

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:20 am
by hstocks
I hope this is the right forum for this comment/request:

In today's world, I'm having great difficulty trying to fit necessary information into the somewhat restrictive Contact Information section in membership records. The problem, of course, is that the system insists that there be only one (or two) phone numbers and one email address per household, whereas most of the homes I'm familiar with, and the ones I'm being asked to enter, have separate phone numbers and email addresses at least for the husband and wife, and increasingly for each child as well.

Is there any work being done to unlink the Contact Info from the household and make it available for each individual?

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:26 am
by calebpusey
Welcome to the Forums!

This is currently being considered by the development team for a future version of MLS. We are hopeful that we will have this information before the end of the year.

Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:43 am
by jbh001
Rumor has it that the answer is yes. There are some upgrades in the works for the Local Unit Web Site (LUWS). Part of those upgrades to LUWS will require upgrades to MLS and the CMIS database (CMIS feeds both MLS and LUWS). One component of this upgrade (of many yet to come) occurred with MLS 3.0 with the addition of standardized callings. It is reasonable to expect that as future versions of MLS 3.x are released they will lay the groundwork for the enhanced LUWS functions linked above.

However, I do not know of any timeline for when any of these improvements/upgrades will be deployed. With any luck it will be a lot quicker than the transition from Ancestral File to new.FamilySearch.org. ;)

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 4:56 am
by jltware
jbh001 wrote:Rumor has it that the answer is yes. There are some upgrades in the works for the Local Unit Web Site (LUWS). Part of those upgrades to LUWS will require upgrades to MLS and the CMIS database (CMIS feeds both MLS and LUWS). One component of this upgrade (of many yet to come) occurred with MLS 3.0 with the addition of standardized callings. It is reasonable to expect that as future versions of MLS 3.x are released they will lay the groundwork for the enhanced LUWS functions linked above.

However, I do not know of any timeline for when any of these improvements/upgrades will be deployed. With any luck it will be a lot quicker than the transition from Ancestral File to new.FamilySearch.org. ;)

Can you please give more info on these upgrades? Does this mean that changes in MLS will trickle through to CDOL and LUWS automatically now? If so, that would be a huge advantage, as it is a pain having to update everything in three different places every time a change is made (which tends to be every other week), especially as my access to CDOL appears to be read only.

+1 on the original post too. I'm not a big fan of receiving relief society newsletters and updates addressed to my wife every week. On what planet does a household have only one shared phone and email address in this day and age? Would be hugely beneficial to be able to tell whose mobile you are calling from the list instead of just having a household contact details field. And I have deliberately separated my email account onto a different computer to my wife's to avoid having stake presidency emails pop up while my wife is checking her emails. I find it defeats the purpose if I then need to get her to read through my email to sift out her ones. It seems no matter how many times we update the relief society list, it will always revert back to the mls list at regular intervals, especially with changes in leadership. And rightly so too, as the mls list should be the correct one I would think. Just my 2 cents worth

Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:26 am
by aebrown
jltware wrote:Can you please give more info on these upgrades? Does this mean that changes in MLS will trickle through to CDOL and LUWS automatically now? If so, that would be a huge advantage, as it is a pain having to update everything in three different places every time a change is made (which tends to be every other week), especially as my access to CDOL appears to be read only.

MLS 3.0 has made great strides in updating the CDOL, both through the standardized callings, and through the Stake Leader and Unit Change Request. This also has laid the groundwork for automatic updates to callings in LUWS, although that change is still in the future.

No one (except people at administration offices) has any CDOL access other than read only, so don't feel left out. But with MLS 3.0, it's a lot easier to submit many of the necessary update requests.
jltware wrote:+1 on the original post too. I'm not a big fan of receiving relief society newsletters and updates addressed to my wife every week. On what planet does a household have only one shared phone and email address in this day and age? Would be hugely beneficial to be able to tell whose mobile you are calling from the list instead of just having a household contact details field. And I have deliberately separated my email account onto a different computer to my wife's to avoid having stake presidency emails pop up while my wife is checking her emails. I find it defeats the purpose if I then need to get her to read through my email to sift out her ones. It seems no matter how many times we update the relief society list, it will always revert back to the mls list at regular intervals, especially with changes in leadership. And rightly so too, as the mls list should be the correct one I would think. Just my 2 cents worth

As this thread mentioned, changes are in the works for individual contact info. If you search this forum, you'll find that the topic has been discussed many times. As you can see in Multiple Email Address / Cell Phone Fields in MLS and various links from that thread, it's not as simple as you might think, so be patient.

The Local Unit Website allows for separate e-mail addresses and for individual subscriptions based on organization, which should meet the need you are expressing here.

From a previous post of yours, it appears you are in Australia (your location really should be in your forum profile, by the way), where LUWS has not been available, but apparently is starting to become available (see thread: Getting started with a brand new site). But since you mentioned LUWS above, perhaps you already LUWS in your stake, and you just need to set up your individual profiles correctly with the proper e-mail addresses, subscribe to the right notification groups, and make sure the ward web-site administrator uses the notification groups to send out information such as a RS newsletter.

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 4:49 am
by jltware
Yes, I am in Australia, and we do have LUWS here now. Not all stake presidents have leaped at the chance to be involved the way we have though, so some stakes and therefore some people posting here may not have access. It is up to the individual stake presidents whether they participate.

The mailing lists I am referring to though are not generated via LUWS. It is just a simple email list generated by the ward clerk off MLS. This is why I keep getting RS emails. Relief society presidents aren't on the list of likely candidates to be given admin privileges to LUWS any time soon and there doesn't appear to be any other level of privileges besides member and admin, so it is likely that their emails will continue to be done this way for some time.

How do you request the changes to CDOL via MLS? When I have needed changes in the past, I have contacted the area office directly. I didn't know there was an option to make such a request via MLS. I know the change certainly doesn't happen automatically with contact details changes on membership records, as I updated my contact details with a new address and phone number a couple of months ago, and they are still the old ones in CDOL.

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:09 am
by aebrown
jltware wrote:The mailing lists I am referring to though are not generated via LUWS. It is just a simple email list generated by the ward clerk off MLS. This is why I keep getting RS emails. Relief society presidents aren't on the list of likely candidates to be given admin privileges to LUWS any time soon and there doesn't appear to be any other level of privileges besides member and admin, so it is likely that their emails will continue to be done this way for some time.
I understand that you were referring to MLS. But I mentioned LUWS because it appears that your ward is not taking advantage of the subscriptions and notification options by organization built into LUWS. Plus LUWS has the added advantage of one e-mail address per individual right now (no need to wait for MLS to change this at some date in the future).

RS presidents don't need administrative privileges -- they just need to work with the website administrator a tiny bit each month. That seems pretty easy to do -- our wards and stake do this kind of thing all the time, where an auxiliary president or activities chairman or someone else will prepare a message and ask the website administrator to send it to an organization's subscribers.
jltware wrote:How do you request the changes to CDOL via MLS? When I have needed changes in the past, I have contacted the area office directly. I didn't know there was an option to make such a request via MLS. I know the change certainly doesn't happen automatically with contact details changes on membership records, as I updated my contact details with a new address and phone number a couple of months ago, and they are still the old ones in CDOL.
There are two ways: for certain standardized callings at the stake level, contact information is automatically sent from MLS 3.x to CDOL. For certain other callings, the stake can fill out a Stake or Ward Unit Change Request form in Stake MLS 3.x, to request updates to contact information.

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:58 am
by jltware
Thanks for that. I found the unit and leader change request form. Obviously stake clerk isn't one that trickles through automatically, because I just checked again and it definitely hasn't updated. I'll send it through soon, and update everyone else at the same time. Thanks again.

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 8:38 am
by mkmurray
jltware wrote:Obviously stake clerk isn't one that trickles through automatically, because I just checked again and it definitely hasn't updated.
Alan mentioned one key aspect that you didn't address in your response. I'm only reiterating it to help ensure you aren't overlooking something in order to make this new functionality work. That key factor is that must use the standardized stake clerk calling, and not a custom calling, in order to have CDOL automatically updated.

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe the Church hasn't enabled this feature for units outside the US & Canada?

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 3:20 pm
by jltware
It is the standard calling in mls, not a custom calling, but good idea. The only other thing I can think of is maybe it needs to have the calling changed, not just the contact details. If I removed my name from the calling and then send/received then readded it and send/received, it might detect the new calling and update. But it's easier to just use the form. Thanks again.