Tech Forum

Hello Everyone,

I have a question regarding MLS. Is there a way to set a number as private within MLS so that it will not print when custom reports are printed for auxilliaries.

I know how do it within the new Directory. I have made such designations.

Thank you very much,

Robbie DeYoung
Ypsilanti Ward
Membership Clerk

No, there is no such setting in MLS. Plenty of people have wished MLS had such a feature, but that's only a wish at this point.

The best you can do is tag it somehow such as adding an asterisk to signal that you need to blank it out.

RussellHltn wrote:The best you can do is tag it somehow such as adding an asterisk to signal that you need to blank it out.

But if you add some character, note that it will be transmitted to the Directory and other tools on LDS.org that way, as well as to mobile apps such as LDS Tools. You may think that it doesn't matter, since this is a number that will be hidden there anyway, but it will be visible to leaders. Extra characters may interfere with the automatic dialing from LDS Tools.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, or that I have a better one, but make sure you're aware of the side effects of such a strategy.

I know that if you use LDS.org and place a phone number as private that the only people who can see it are in the bishopric, Ward and Executive clerks. I have not check reports that others print out if it is blank there or not. As the ward clerk I caan edit anyone's contacts at LDS.org, and have made sensitive phone numbers private. We alos recently found that if a member selects to hide their account that again only the bishopric and the two others can see it. This occured in the last warc council, someone was wondering if a family moved out since they could not see them on LDS tools, the bishopric said no that they could see the family. That is how we found this out.

You could blank out the household and individual fields and store the private number in a custom field. This would keep the phone number off of auxiliary reports, but it would also remove it from the online directory for leaders to see.

ecotim wrote:I know that if you use LDS.org and place a phone number as private that the only people who can see it are in the bishopric, Ward and Executive clerks.

That is almost correct. When a visibility option is set to "Private - Leadership Only" the ward leadership that can see the data is the bishopric, all ward clerks (this includes assistant clerks), and executive secretary. Outside the ward the stake presidency, stake executive secretary, and all stake clerks can see the data.

ecotim wrote:We alos recently found that if a member selects to hide their account that again only the bishopric and the two others can see it.

When the household visibility is set to "Private - Leadership Only" those who can see the household data is the same as mentioned above. All others will see nothing as you described.