Why prompted to print?

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
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chriswoodut
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Why prompted to print?

#1

Post by chriswoodut »

MLS likes to prompt me to print a lot of things. I understand some of them (move ins, move outs) but often it prompts me to print a member's record and I can't tell why it is wanting me to print it. It doesn't seem to indicate that anything changed -- it just wants me to print it out. Then the bishop asks why I printed it.

Is there any way to tell WHY MLS wants me to print certain things? Some are obvious, but some are just membership records with no known change (no ordinance change, no address change, etc).

(We no longer maintain paper membership records since everyone has LDS tools and can look things up that way.)
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sbradshaw
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#2

Post by sbradshaw »

Most of the changes I see are when a member updates their phone number or email address on LDS.org. In the days before anything was online, keeping a binder with up-to-date membership information would have been handy. Nowadays, it's not as useful.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
chriswoodut
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#3

Post by chriswoodut »

I guess my confusion is why it prints things without indicating WHAT has changed. Without telling me what has changed, the print out is meaningless. I was hoping someone would point out that maybe I'm just missing an asterisk next to the changed items or something visible like that for me to understand why MLS thinks I want this info.
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sbradshaw
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#4

Post by sbradshaw »

If I remember correctly, I think there's a transmission report that lists all the changes that MLS sent or received, that it prompts to print.
Samuel Bradshaw • If you desire to serve God, you are called to the work.
chriswoodut
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Location: Utah

Re: Why prompted to print?

#5

Post by chriswoodut »

sbradshaw wrote:If I remember correctly, I think there's a transmission report that lists all the changes that MLS sent or received, that it prompts to print.
Yeah, I've seen that sometimes but I don't always see that doc. That's when I get stumped.
jirp
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#6

Post by jirp »

You will notice the ones that print with no reason are all long term inactives and what you are prompted to print is nearly always an IOS. My best guess that it is the programs way of encouraging you to work with them and that it chooses them because their record hasn't been opened in X time frame.
wasserbaech
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#7

Post by wasserbaech »

I agree completely that it would be helpful to receive an indication of the reason the record is being printed. When this happens for no apparent reason, I suspect the reason is that one of their family members (e.g., parents or children that aren't in the same ward) had an event (e.g., ordinance or death), which may or may not appear on the record summary that's printed.

But if we can't figure out why the record was printed, it isn't really helping us.
cheney77
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#8

Post by cheney77 »

I agree. Printing out paper without indication does not help us understand why the membership papers were printed out. For financial records, it does indicate what has changed. Please make it so that the membership records that are printed out has a quick summary of what has changed.
russellhltn
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Re: Why prompted to print?

#9

Post by russellhltn »

I think the long term plan is to phase out MLS - at least from membership duty.
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