Tech Forum

I notice that when searching names, including for Tithing Donors, the field is now limited to just a few within the range of the first few characters - ie. cam for Camelot might bring up just the Camelot family instead of simply showing them at the top of a continuous alphabetical ward list. Haven't really played with it yet. Tuesday I'll set up some rails and gates and put it through its hoops.

[Editor's note: I removed the other topics from this copy of the original post so that only the name search issue remains in this thread.]

WenU wrote:I notice too that when searching names, including for Tithing Donors, the field is now limited to just a few within the range of the first few characters - ie. cam for Camelot might bring up just the Camelot family instead of simply showing them at the top of a continuous alphabetical ward list. Haven't really played with it yet. Tuesday I'll set up some rails and gates and put it through its hoops.

I'd advise everyone to read the MLS 3.0 Release Notes (a shortcut to the Release Notes is automatically installed on the Desktop). It explains the big changes with MLS Message folders, name search, and callings.

WenU wrote:I notice too that when searching names, including for Tithing Donors, the field is now limited to just a few within the range of the first few characters - ie. cam for Camelot might bring up just the Camelot family instead of simply showing them at the top of a continuous alphabetical ward list.

The improved search is a really nice addition. You really have to remember the way MLS 2.9 handled search of members in order to appreciate the more intuitive abilities of the new search.

Actually, you can't really classify the old way as a "search" as many sites and programs define it today. It was more of a "jump" functionality, taking you down to a certain point in the very long scrollable list. The inadequacies of the old search were that you had to know the last name of the member you were search for, otherwise the search was no good to you. The new search allows you to type in a search string like "andy" and get all of the "Andy's" in the ward along with the couple in the ward that has the last name "Gandy."

[Editor's note: I moved this issue to the Name Search thread from the original post, which is where you can find the second issue that is referred to.]

The finance clerk in the ward that reported the update had this to say:

"Today as I was doing tithing, two things are not working right in MLS 3.0. In the past when you started to type in a donor’s name, the first person with that last name was displayed, by selecting the “spy glass” the list of all donors would appear with the cursor being on the donor that had been typed in. Now the list always starts at the top of the list so you have to scroll through the entire donor list every time."

Today as I was doing tithing, two things are not working right in MLS 3.0. In the past when you started to type in a donor’s name, the first person with that last name was displayed, by selecting the “spy glass” the list of all donors would appear with the cursor being on the donor that had been typed in. Now the list always starts at the top of the list so you have to scroll through the entire donor list every time.

Yeah I noticed this as well. It's certainly not the end of the world but it just gets to be annoying if you have a lot of donations to do.

JLRose wrote:"Today as I was doing tithing, two things are not working right in MLS 3.0. In the past when you started to type in a donor’s name, the first person with that last name was displayed, by selecting the “spy glass” the list of all donors would appear with the cursor being on the donor that had been typed in. Now the list always starts at the top of the list so you have to scroll through the entire donor list every time.

I noticed the same thing. But later I found a configuration setting to change the default behavior. I will try this before donations are entered again.

boomerbubba wrote:I noticed the same thing. But later I found a configuration setting to change the default behavior. I will try this before donations are entered again.

Are you talking about System Options > Finances > Cause donor list pop-up while entering donations? That does put you in the search mode immediately. It's a matter of personal preference, but that does require at least two extra keystrokes in the cases where you don't need the search. Once you know the members of your ward quite well, I prefer not to do the popup.

As an example, using the test data, you can type "Blan", knowing that those characters will get you to the Blankenship family, and that a single down arrow gets you to "Blankenship, David". To do the same thing with the pop-forced, you would have to type "Blan", down arrow (or tab), down arrow, Enter.

But of course, if you need the search, after having typed a few characters that don't match, you will have to click the search button, or press Enter. You are then presented with a pointless question ("<name> was not found in the list. Would you like to fix it now?") that you can click OK or Cancel or press Enter or Escape -- it acts the same no matter how you answer. Then you are in the name search field with <name> highlighted and you are positioned at the top of the list, which seems odd, since you have text in the name search field that could be used to narrow the list immediately. That positioning is what was reported above. You then have to somehow modify the contents of the name search field to get it to actually do a search.

Starting with the popup displayed on each new donation slip saves you the rigamarole described in the previous paragraph, but it costs you 2 keystrokes on every other donation. It doesn't seem worth the cost to me, unless you need to use the enhanced name search more than 20% of the time or so.

Alan_Brown wrote:Are you talking about System Options > Finances > Cause donor list pop-up while entering donations? That does put you in the search mode immediately. It's a matter of personal preference, but that does require at least two extra keystrokes in the cases where you don't need the search. Once you know the members of your ward quite well, I prefer not to do the popup.

Yes, that's the feature I mean. I would like to try it with the popup on by default.

Part of the tradeoff is error reduction. One of the more common data-entry errors is selecting the wrong donor (one with an identical last name). The extra keystrokes to confirm each entry might be worth it.

Such donor-entry errors should be caught in the Review step for the batch, but it is better not to make the error in the first place.