Tech Forum

I've noticed that as a stake clerk I have limited ability to work with membership records. Presumably, this is because it's the ward's responsibility to handle the records.

But it causes me difficulties such as not being able to preview steps before I help a ward clerk who is struggling with a procedure. It's been several years since I was a ward clerk so I'd like to be able to go through the motions to test answers for some of the questions I get, but I can't.

Have any of you found a workaround for this? I suppose I could assign myself as an assistant ward clerk in my own ward so that I'd have the access, but not sure that's the best way to go.

This is a limitation. I have found that I often train our stake clerk as much as he trains me, primarily for this exact reason. In the rare cases where the stake has brought ward clerks together to discuss challenges and share ideas it seems to have been very useful. I have found that there are areas where some are experienced and others are not (and vice-versa).

It might be useful to look over the shoulder of a ward clerk to see the ward clerk access. I believe assistant ward clerk would require approval by your stake president and am not sure training is a good reason to put someone in that calling.

This was easier to do back in the days when we used MLS for membership records. As the stake clerk and STS, I created an MLS out-of-unit administrator account for myself, which allowed me to login to any ward's MLS and see the membership interface. If I were the stake clerk today, and wanted to train one or more ward clerks, one of them would have to login to LCR for me.

It might be good to review Handbook 1:13.3.2.2. It may spark some ideas for a more formal training program for the ward clerks.