Tech Forum

I am a stake clerk. If I go to "Clerk Resources", then under "Membership", "Confidential" and "Actions In Process", I see "There are no confidential actions".

I just learned that the stake president does not see the same thing. In fact, he sees nine confidential actions (eight from one unit) that are partially complete. Most of these were entered by the clerk in July. I contacted the clerk and he indicated that after he entered them, he can no longer see them. His bishop has to follow up on them.

I work with a very busy neurosurgeon stake president. He relies on clerks and the executive secretary to follow up on everything. The bishop in question is similarly overloaded, but his clerk (and presumably his executive secretary) have no knowledge of what has been done and can't follow up on it, either.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to handle this? I think I will have to tell the bishops and branch presidents not to use LDS.org, but to print administrative action forms from MLS and submit those as they have in the past.

Several things come to mind that are less extreme than going back to "print and snail mail" methods.

First, the SP should be having stewardship interviews with the Bishops periodically and that would be a perfect time for counsel on timliness of Confidential Actions. Bishop training sessions are another option.

Second, just because the Clerk can no longer see the action (he has submitted it to the Bishop) doesn't mean he cannot follow up with the Bishop to ensure the action is completed. A good Clerk and Exec Secretary will help the bishop remember some of these details that could get missed in the crush of other things competing for his time. An easy thing would be for the action to be added to the Bishopric Agenda and stay there until the Bishop indicates he has submitted it to the SP - that way it won't be forgotten.

Just a couple of "low-tech" solutions to a "high-tech" problem that quickly come to mind. I'm sure the brainiacs on the forum who are much more experienced than I am will have other ideas.

I have the same problem. In our stake the clerks have been asked to do what we can to enable the bishops to spend more time helping members. Since the name removal process takes 30 days after the notification letter is sent, and since there is no built in 30 day delay, I simply planned to save but not submit a name removal. Also, when I was processing the request I hadn't digitized the name removal request. When I hit save, don't send the whole thing disappeared from my view. I tried to send a letter to the email address the page on lds.org linked but it got bounced back.
I don't mind the low tech methods mentioned, but it defeats the idea of take on the administrative tasks so the bishop can focus on the ministrative tasks. I sure wish they would fix.

We need to understand the Workflow of the System for the Discussion

Formal Probation - all done with paper
Ward Level
Disfellowship / Excommun - Ward/Branch Clerk enters the data, submits to the Bishop. The Bishop Submits the data and sends it to the Stake President.

Stake Level
Disfellowship / Excommun - Stake Clerk enters the data, submits the data and sends it to the Stake President.

I don't know how an item is sent back, the process is a mystery and is not covered in any help files that I've seen.

The missing piece, to me, is a review by the Stake Clerk prior to it going to the Stake President. One thing the current flow is helpful on is that minimal number of people know about the situation (a stake clerk now is out of this group where with paper forms he typically is) I see this as good, however, the SP assumes that the clerk is in the loop (in my experience).

I think the Church has basically said here that if the process has gone through the Local Clerk and the Local Bishop, that the papwerwork should be find by the time it comes to the Stake President.

Does your Stake President have the same problem with paperwork piling up that he doesn't respond to? Each of those submissions prompts an email to the Stake President. If he does not ignore a piece of paper on his desk, why is he ignoring his email? Maybe there is a different problem to fix at this point? The SP should be responsive to his email. If the SP logs into https://leader.lds.org there are confidential records items listed there as well that would indicate a need to do something.

Maybe the problem is that the Leader and Clerk resources has not been used as it was indicated. If information were there that drove Bishops and Stake Presidents to use it, then those workflow items would not go unnoticed. (In my opinion most SP and Bishops use their mobile tools to access what they need, and see no real value in going to the leader and clerk resources page.

I filled out the Name Removal form and hit the save button so I could come back to it later to finish. Now the form is gone and I cannot access it. Nobody can see it. When anyone tries to submit a new Name Removal for the same person, they get an error that says the stake clerk has the next action. I am the stake clerk and the form is gone from any of my views.

I would call the help desk.