Tech Forum

drepouille wrote:So the basic question remains as to whether bishopric counselors should be granted the View Membership or Edit Membership privileges in MLS. If so, then what is the rationale for doing so?

In MLS, counselors will end up with View Membership rights because they have Finance rights. The current online tools enforce the MLS equivalent of not giving counselors Edit Membership rights.

drepouille wrote:So the basic question remains as to whether bishopric counselors should be granted the View Membership or Edit Membership privileges in MLS. If so, then what is the rationale for doing so?

I don't know why they'd be given Edit rights. That's the clerk's job.

By the way, relevant to this discussion when it comes to MLS – the guidelines for who should have rights to functions in MLS are on this page:
https://www.lds.org/callings/melchizede ... s?lang=eng
Rights are less strict than I think they used to be with regards to bishopric counselors.

Just to follow up on that last comment, from the MLS support page https://www.lds.org/help/support/mls-us ... s?lang=eng, it says:

View Membership: Gives the right to view membership data but not the right to update it. This right should be limited to members of the bishopric or branch presidency or stake or district presidency as well as clerks, assistant clerks, and assistant clerks over membership.

This seems pretty clear that members of the bishopric (i.e. counselors) should be able to see membership information in LDS Tools. And as mentioned above, the When records are moved into the ward, for example, it's extremely helpful for me (as a counselor) to know if they were baptized recently, are a prospective elder, etc. As it stands now, I can't even tell from LDS Tools if a member is a HP or EQ or unordained.

Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?
Thanks!

sorens wrote:Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?

The question is, which one is wrong? I suspect the tables that scgallafent mentioned in this post is probably more authoritative than the MLS instructions.

russellhltn wrote:

sorens wrote:Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?

The question is, which one is wrong? I suspect the tables that scgallafent mentioned in this post is probably more authoritative than the MLS instructions.

I don't think there is much question. The MLS instructions are based on much more rough grained rights than are used in LCR and LDS Tools so any instructions on who should have what rights in MLS cannot be transferred directly to the other tools.

sorens wrote:Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?

Forum administrators and moderators are just other users of these tools like yourself and do not have any ability to make any changes.

Occasionally a developer (like scgallafent) will drop by and read and sometimes comment on things but in cases like this even the developers can't just make changes. Those decisions are made by the general authorities in the appropriate church department (in this case the Priesthood Department) and as far as we know they do not frequent the forums. The official way to submit something for their consideration is to use the Feedback link on any page of lds.org.

What russellhltn and eblood66 said.

The documentation you are reading is for MLS and does not apply to LDS Tools.

There is a fairly extensive access table that has been approved by the appropriate councils that specifies who has read and write access to everything that is part of a membership record. What you see in Leader and Clerk Resources reflects that access. Those rights may be reviewed and adjusted (and have been in the past), but that is what we go by when determining who has access to information.

LDS Tools is a different tool designed to solve different problems. In some cases, it doesn't provide information that would be available in LCR. For example, a bishop's counselor can see in LCR whether a member has been endowed and sealed (no dates) and current priesthood office (no dates). That information is not visible in LDS Tools.

MLS is from a different era. We are working on an update to the security model in MLS that better reflects the appropriate access rights. It has been named Leader and Clerk Resources.

@scgallafent, Would it be possible for this extensive access table to be published somewhere – for example, in Leader and Clerk Resources so it can be kept up-to-date? Leader and Clerk Resources has a very basic access table, but often these little things come up, and people complain, and it'd be good to know clearly what the policy is when explaining why things can't be seen.

sbradshaw wrote:@scgallafent, Would it be possible for this extensive access table to be published somewhere – for example, in Leader and Clerk Resources so it can be kept up-to-date?

I don't think that is likely to happen.