Tech Forum

Occassionally, when I come into the clerk's office I find member record printouts just sitting on the desk. Usually they are the result of downloads of new members in the ward. Someone is being prompted to print them out, which they are doing, and just setting them aside.

First, when will the MLS request the user print the records out? If the user does not have access to membership, does it still prompt? My concern is that other users outside of the bishopric may be prompted to print out the records.

What I would really like to see in the footer of evey page printed is the username of the person who printed something out. That could really help me train the person who is printing these things out to be more careful with confidential records. At least we would know who was responsible.

- Garrett
A concernes ward clerk

gdow wrote:
First, when will the MLS request the user print the records out? If the user does not have access to membership, does it still prompt? My concern is that other users outside of the bishopric may be prompted to print out the records.

These records print when there is a Send/Recieve that generates membership transactions to or from headquarters. A likely culprit is the Finance Clerk, who routinely does such a Send/Receive for donation batches and any other financial transaction such as check-writing. But it could also be the Membership Clerk or a bishopric member. It sounds like these parties need training about what your own procedures are for handling these printouts. (In our ward, we give them first to the Ward Clerk for dissemination.)

I was thinking it was probably the finance clerk. He does the tithing after i leave and does a send/receive. We don't have a function membership clerk right now (I'm doing it), so I think it is just the finance clerk and I who are doing the send/receive.

I still think it would be nice to have a "printed by" on the footer.

gdow wrote:What I would really like to see in the footer of evey page printed is the username of the person who printed something out. That could really help me train the person who is printing these things out to be more careful with confidential records. At least we would know who was responsible.

One possible source of the information you seek is the MLSLOG.TXT file, which is located in the C:\Program Files\LDS Church\MLS folder. It records every user who logs in. Just search for the last entry that looks like "#### 0000108 ####" (where 0000108 will be replaced by your ward's unit number). The last such entry will correspond to the most recent login. The text immediately after that will be the username of the person who logged in, and the date/time stamp is included as well. If they printed items, then there will be log entries that look like "P.1" or "P.2" (for the pages of a 2-page report) -- it doesn't say exactly what they printed out, but this may give you some clues.

gdow wrote:Someone is being prompted to print them out, which they are doing, and just setting them aside.

One thing that helps in most of our clerks offices is that there is a specific place where all MLS printouts should be placed if the person printing gets something he is not expecting. It is usually one of the mailboxes, often for the ward clerk.

That way, at least confidential information is not laying out on the desk for anyone to see who walks in the office.

Another practice that can mitigate this problem is for the ward clerk or membership clerk to do a send/receive first thing Sunday morning. This not only accelerates the attention paid to any new membership transactions, it also makes it much less likely that there are any such transactions in the queue when the routine donations batch is processed later that day by the finance clerk.

gdow wrote:Occassionally, when I come into the clerk's office I find member record printouts just sitting on the desk.

A little research is always helpful:
Who has a clerk door key? (These can get spread far and wide.) Who has login access to your MLS computer, and are login permissions on MLS current and correct for your ward's callings? If you are not the SYS ADMIN for your MLS, sit down with him and check so you know that only those who need access to sensitive data have access to it.

As others have said, if the login authorities are set correctly, it probably will be a clerk who does the send/receive.

It sounds like all you need is to have a mini-training session at an "expanded bishopric meeting," (with all the clerks and the bishopric,) and implement a process to get the printouts to the right people.

We all should have similar discussions at ward council on occasion, stressing the personal nature of membership data from your MLS computer, because all leaders work with sensitive data. After all, you don't want a YW phone directory posted on facebook...