"Send a Message" Function on LCR

[scgallafent]

I have been using the Directory with the "cut and paste" routine to send messages to the ward but decided to use the application in LCR today.... It is much easier to use, but I miss the ability to tweak the text with bold, colors, etc... Is there any way to do this in LCR other than using HTML?

No. There has been some discussion about that as a possible future enhancement, but no direction to proceed down that path.

[mtwerner]

I sent a message to stake members the other day and received two emails myself, no difference in capitalization of the address. I also heard from other stake members that they received duplicate messages.

Another observation that is interesting but no big deal: previous messages from me showed them coming from "Brother John Doe," but this time it just read "John Doe,"

[kellymab]

You're right, it is missing the brother now. Interesting. I think it's fine either way. It does have the source statement still.

[scgallafent]

I sent a message to stake members the other day and received two emails myself, no difference in capitalization of the address. I also heard from other stake members that they received duplicate messages.

I just ran a test for your stake in our test environment and only one message was sent. Could you look at the headers and see if there are any differences between them? That would give me a starting spot to look at it with the SMTP team. If you want to send the headers for both messages by PM, that would be fine.

I ran a quick scan and there are at least 13 sets of members in your stake that share an email address but have them capitalized differently on the membership record. We expect them to get duplicates with the current system. That would be the first thing to check.

Another observation that is interesting but no big deal: previous messages from me showed them coming from "Brother John Doe," but this time it just read "John Doe,"

You're right, it is missing the brother now. Interesting. I think it's fine either way. It does have the source statement still.

You're reading way too much into that. The message needed some editing because of the change to LCR, so we rewrote it instead of doing a copy-and-paste from the old code. I vaguely remember thinking that was a wasted word and dropping it when the message was rewritten. We were much more concerned with trying to keep the second paragraph of the footer from turning into a book.

[mfmohlma]

Another observation that is interesting but no big deal: previous messages from me showed them coming from "Brother John Doe," but this time it just read "John Doe,"

You're right, it is missing the brother now. Interesting. I think it's fine either way. It does have the source statement still.

You're reading way too much into that. The message needed some editing because of the change to LCR, so we rewrote it instead of doing a copy-and-paste from the old code. I vaguely remember thinking that was a wasted word and dropping it when the message was rewritten. We were much more concerned with trying to keep the second paragraph of the footer from turning into a book.

It's a bit worse than that for me. I sent a test message to our bishopric and the sender was only from my shortened first name, in both the "from" field and the text at the bottom:

You have received this email because you have made your email address available to your local Church leaders. It was sent by Matt whose calling is Ward Clerk.

I just went from "Brother Fullname Lastname" to "Nickname"

[scgallafent]

It's a bit worse than that for me. I sent a test message to our bishopric and the sender was only from my shortened first name, in both the "from" field and the text at the bottom:

You have received this email because you have made your email address available to your local Church leaders. It was sent by Matt whose calling is Ward Clerk.

I just went from "Brother Fullname Lastname" to "Nickname"

Your LDS Account "display name" controls that. Since we have the LDS Account for the sender in hand (you're logged in, after all), it seemed logical to get the sender's name and email address from the LDS Account rather than making an extra request to get the membership record associated with the account. I have been reconsidering the wisdom of that decision.

[mtwerner]

My first emails were sent using my full name, even though my preferred name was set correctly on my record. After poking around a while, I discovered that the display name on my LDS Account had my full name. After modifying that, everything was hunky-dory. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to pull the name from there, but there's no indication in LDS Account what the display name is for--so some explanation there would help, or even something in "Send a Message" to explain how to modify the sender's name. Even now, I don't know what the purpose of the display name is, other than in this particular situation.

[mfmohlma]

My first emails were sent using my full name, even though my preferred name was set correctly on my record. After poking around a while, I discovered that the display name on my LDS Account had my full name. After modifying that, everything was hunky-dory. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to pull the name from there, but there's no indication in LDS Account what the display name is for--so some explanation there would help, or even something in "Send a Message" to explain how to modify the sender's name. Even now, I don't know what the purpose of the display name is, other than in this particular situation.

I'd agree. It's nice to be able to control what the name is that is sent out, but I never would have figured that since the LDS account display name was being used. In my case, it was just my first (shortened) name. I've now fixed it. Definitely something to add to the help file.

[williamjackson]

Since we have the LDS Account for the sender in hand (you're logged in, after all), it seemed logical to get the sender's name and email address from the LDS Account rather than making an extra request to get the membership record associated with the account. I have been reconsidering the wisdom of that decision.

I wonder if the LDS Account team has considered the possibility of synchronizing the Display Name with the Preferred Name on the membership record (when the LDS Account is linked to a membership record).

I was going to suggest synchronizing the email address, too, but I just checked my LDS Account and I found this note:

Primary & Membership Email

These email fields are being merged. When you update one field, the other one will be updated automatically.

[psantangelo]

Do I really have to check off each box to send out a reminder email to the ward. I could choose send to all in the old version of send a message in LCR. There is no way I will be able to check all the boxes manually to send out an email to my entire ward or even quorums that would take forever.