lds.org/leader Who has access and how can access be granted?

I am starting to get the feeling I have been uninvited from the conversation ..

In my prior calling as Stake Clerk / Stake Computer Specialist I found having access to LDS.org online facilities invaluable.

In my new calling as Stake High Council with similar responsiblities I now find that resources that I had presumed all other Stake Leaders to have access to are no longer available.

Where can I find information on just which callings have what access to which facilites?
How can access be granted as needed by Stake?

for example:

Church Directory of Organizations: cdol/lds.org .. used to be able to look up addresses for other local leaders. Recently asked to send a letter on behalf of the stake president to all stake presidents in surrounding local area. Do not have access to that information. Had to have our Stake President look up the information for me.

Leader and Clerk Resources: lds.org/leader .. used to be able to view unit statistics and member information online. In our stake, we are assigned to specific units for 6 months at a time. Getting to know names and positions is still available on lds.org/directory for units in our stake but the HT/VT statistics and other reports are no longer available..

Is there a way to get access to these online tools to all Stake High Council members, or do they need to go through Stake Presidency or Stake Clerks to manually print and distribute this information as needed?

I presume their needs to be a balance between need to know (confidentiality) and need to do (access). Unsure if EQ Presidents and HP Group Leaders have access to lds.org/leader tools. I now know Stake High Council does not, and I miss having access to it.

Roger Davies .. the computer guy
Magrath AB Stake in Magrath, AB
rdavies@ssdirect.com

ssdirect wrote:I concur .. recently switched callings from Stake Clerk / Stake Computer Specialist to Stake High Council and was quite surprised to find access to all the wonderful online tools suddenly inaccessable. Where is the list as to who has access to what. Can it be updated by Stake Leaders?

The list of who has access is called the "Access Table", which is under Help in the Leader Resources. Of course, the Access Table itself can only be seen by those with access. Currently that is only stake presidencies, bishoprics, their clerks and assistant clerks (but not financial clerks right now), and executive secretaries, and mission presidents.

ssdirect wrote:Church Directory of Organizations: cdol/lds.org .. used to be able to look up addresses for other local leaders. Recently asked to send a letter to all stake presidents in local area. Do not have access to that information any more.

On the occasions you need that information as a high councilor, you now need to work with your stake clerk to get such information.

ssdirect wrote:Leader and Clerk Resources: lds.org/leader .. used to be able to view unit statistics and member information online. In our stake, we are assigned to specific units for 6 months at a time as High Council members. Getting to know names and positions is still available on lds.org/directory for units in our stake but the HT/VT statistics and other reports are not .. anymore.

You can work with your assigned ward to get HT/VT statistics from the ward clerk (which gives you more detail than stake leaders can see, anyway) if that is something the stake president and bishop want you to see.

ssdirect wrote:Is there a way to get access to these online tools to all Stake High Council members, or do they need to go through Stake Presidency or Stake Clerks to manually print and distribute this information as needed?

There is no way to get access. Access to all these leadership tools is granted based on calling, and which calling can access which features is built into the website and cannot be changed by local decisions. There is no mechanism for granting access to individuals beyond that.

The basic answer is that not everyone can see everything, and so decisions have to be made as to who has access. That will evolve over time, but high councilors will never be able to see everything that the stake presidency can.

So my revised question is, why can not at least some of the resources available on lds.org/leader be also made available to the Stake High Council? I concur that as a high council member we don't need/want to be automatically able to see everything that the stake presidency can, but it seems counter-intuitive to expect the already busy Stake Leaders and Clerks to have to manually provide HT/VT Statistical information, Online Unit Reports, and other report data to the High Council from lds.org/leader just because they are arbitrarily blocked online access. We are being taught that our assignment as a high council is to act on behalf of the Stake Presidency and to do all we can make their load lighter. We get delegated keys and unit assignments but the online tools needed to ease the completion of those assignments must be locked away from us and only can be made available by making more work for the Stake Presidency?

ssdirect wrote:So my revised question is, why can not at least some of the resources available on lds.org/leader be also made available to the Stake High Council?

I'm sure that this will happen at some point. But there are technical challenges in creating further subdivisions of the available features, creating additional roles, and associating the features with the roles in a way that facilitates members doing their callings while preserving appropriate privacy. Those technical challenges can certainly be overcome, but it is a question of priorities -- there is a long list of features that could be implemented to move the work forward, and limited development resources to implement features at any given time.

So until there is more direct access, high councilors should work with stake clerks (rarely if ever should they need to take any time from the stake presidency) to gather the information they need. For high councilors who serve as ward advisers, the ward clerk or his assistants can also be a great resource. I'm an assistant stake clerk and I'm happy to help high councilors with whatever information they need; it doesn't take long. I just wish more of our high councilors were as energetic and proactive as you clearly are in gathering information to assist the stake presidency and bless the lives of members of the stake.

Have been mulling this over. I do not wish to rock the boat, but wonder if anyone has ever asked the question yet. Since very few high council members have had access to lds.org/leader resources yet, there is really no way for them to know what they might be missing. I do not see a great distinction between stake clerk vs high council positions in terms of responsibility and access to information. The former is to assist the Stake President in all his duties while the latter to assist under direction of Stake Presidency. I suppose I would put the question as: why is there a need to restrict access for the one vs the other? Could they not both be granted the same access?

I served for about 8 months as both assistant stake clerk (while a replacement was being found) and as a new high council member. I had access to lds.org/leader information through my calling as assistant stake clerk / stake technology specialist during that time and had presumed all other high council members had similar access. It was a bit of a surprise to find that after my release from my former stake clerk position I no longer was permitted access to lds.org/leader resources.

While we had access to lds.org/leader resources we found them to be invaluable. For example, after playing with the online HT/VT charting functions we noted that average sacrament meeting attendance across our stake had been dropping over the past several quarters and were able to correlate that to a parallel drop in reported HT statistics over the same periods. Our stake president was then able to present the lds.org/leader charts pinpointing the problem and address the trend in our high council and at bishopric training with recommendation to focus on improving our home teaching quality to help address the corresponding negative trend in sacrament meeting attendance. Access to the wonderful new online tools at lds.org/leader allowed us to identify and recognize and start to address this problem much earlier than might have been possible before.

ssdirect wrote:While we had access to lds.org/leader resources we found them to be invaluable. For example, after playing with the online HT/VT charting functions we noted that average sacrament meeting attendance across our stake had been dropping over the past several quarters and were able to correlate that to a parallel drop in reported HT statistics over the same periods. Our stake president was then able to present the lds.org/leader charts pinpointing the problem and address the trend in our high council and at bishopric training with recommendation to focus on improving our home teaching quality to help address the corresponding negative trend in sacrament meeting attendance. Access to the wonderful new online tools at lds.org/leader allowed us to identify and recognize and start to address this problem much earlier than might have been possible before.

As an assistant stake clerk collecting and analizing date was part of the responsibilities.

As a member of the Stake High Council the responsibililty is one of representing the Stake Presidency through advising and instructing assigned Wards and Stake auxiliaries.

Therefore there is no need for Stake High Council members to have access to the systems that provide the data. If a High Council member needs the data he should talk to the clerk who is responsible for maintaining the data system, as thats the clerks responsibility.

I have been asked to train the HP and EQ leaders in how to use the leader resources, yet have no access myself to same. Just a little counter-intuitive.

ssdirect wrote:I have been asked to train the HP and EQ leaders in how to use the leader resources, yet have no access myself to same. Just a little counter-intuitive.

That is particularly odd, since the HP and EQ leaders also have no access to Leader Resources on LDS.org. It baffles me what you are supposed to train them in, even if you had access yourself. Whoever made that request of you doesn't understand who has access.

aebrown wrote:

ssdirect wrote:Is there a way to get access to these online tools to all Stake High Council members

There is no way to get access. Access to all these leadership tools is granted based on calling, and which calling can access which features is built into the website and cannot be changed by local decisions. There is no mechanism for granting access to individuals beyond that.

There is one way to get access. If the Stake Presidency is tasking a particular Stake High Council member in a way that really overlaps with clerk-type functions, then that member could also be called as an Assistant Clerk too. That would give access, and may be appropriate if that really is how the Stake Presidency wants to task a particular High Council member. It is a little irregular having two callings like that, but I'm sure there are cases of it, and it would give Leader and Clerk Resources access. Now that LDS.org is much more inflexible to access rights than MLS was, that kind of thing will probably happen when a priesthood leader wants to tailor access.

That solves the access problem but creates problems in other areas such as the Directory. High council members will begin to show up having callings in the Directory for which they have not been called. Plus this creates confusion for members using the Directory to find who is filling a position. Imagine the stake having 13 or more assistant stake clerks. And let's not forget the default administrator rights granted to that position for other online sites and tools.

jdlessley wrote:High council members will begin to show up having callings in the Directory for which they have not been called.

I'm not suggesting anyone make changes in MLS that do not reflect actual callings by the one holding priesthood keys. I'm just suggesting that some Bishops and Stake Presidents may selectively choose to have a few more called Assistant Clerks than they have in the past, in order to work around the LDS.org access limitations. The calling of "Assistant Clerk" is kind of tailorable anyway, with the tasking being up to the Priesthood leader who issued the call.

I have followed the opposite path of the original poster as I was on the HC and I am now an Asst Stake Clerk over Tech.

I served under two different stake presidents. Both stake presidents made requests to the church technology department to give those on the HC access to the unit statistics and other key information that I now have access to by virtue of being a clerk.

It has been stated that because the HC represent the stake president that there is no specific need for this information, but just recently our stake president came back from training, and he was told that if home teaching was failing in a specific ward/branch that the member of the HC assigned to that ward bore some of that responsibility. If I am to have responsibility for it, then I need good access to data to measure progress.

Also as the representative if the stake president, we were also the messengers of the bishops/branch presidents back to the stake president. We were there to facilitate the communication and help goals that had been established between the bishop and the stake president. We were then asked to monitor the progress of these goals. How can you monitor progress when you have limited access to the information?

I would go further than the original request in that this information is not only valuable to those that are on the HC, but to all other Aux Leaders in the ward. I do not advocate giving access to all data, but an Elders' Quorum President/High Priest Group Leader/RS President would gain by understanding how many members have a current recommend, and how many are endowed but without a recommend. They would also benefit from seeing the trendlines in specific meeting attendance, HT/VT percentages, and overall sacrament attendance. I was able to look back at the time that I served as EQ President and see some trends that were wonderful as well as some that had we been aware of we may have dedicated a bit more focus on.

In the end, the question really is not if we should give this information to these callings as it is available through the clerks, though limited and usually not timely, but if there should be ready access to this type of data through their online tools?

Adam

aeroengineer1 wrote:We were then asked to monitor the progress of these goals. How can you monitor progress when you have limited access to the information?

By asking for the information from whose who do have access to it. And it's not like the information in the on-line tools automatically populated. It's flowing though the very people that are being supervised.

At any rate, you're preaching to the wrong group. We have no ability to change these things. Ask your stake president to take up your cause with the area rep. This kind of change will not come from LDSTech, but from the Priesthood leaders.

aeroengineer1 wrote: I would go further than the original request in that this information is not only valuable to those that are on the HC, but to all other Aux Leaders in the ward.

I agree with you Adam, I think access to some of the reporting features would be very useful to other members of the ward council. One not mentioned but I feel also very important is the ward mission leader with respects to the New Member Report and Members Moved-In for example.

I realize per the church employees responding to this request that they don't have power to change this policy, but I wanted my voice to be heard. I will also mention this to my Stake President.

schaefman00 wrote:One not mentioned but I feel also very important is the ward mission leader with respects to the New Member Report and Members Moved-In for example.

That would indeed be helpful. However, while we're waiting and hoping for access to be extended to leaders such as the ward mission leader, clerks should respond to requests for data and even better should be proactive in supplying needed information on a regular basis.

schaefman00 wrote:I realize per the church employees responding to this request that they don't have power to change this policy, but I wanted my voice to be heard.

People responding to this discussion (at least here on this forum) are just community members -- other clerks or leaders -- and not Church employees. There's some remote chance that a Church employee might see this discussion, but I wouldn't count on it. So if you want your "voice to be heard," you should send feedback using the Submit Feedback link at the bottom of the LDS.org home page.

schaefman00 wrote:I will also mention this to my Stake President.

That's the other route (and most likely a more effective one) to get the suggestion heard; your stake president can pass this on to the area seventy.

schaefman00 wrote:

aeroengineer1 wrote: I would go further than the original request in that this information is not only valuable to those that are on the HC, but to all other Aux Leaders in the ward.

I agree with you Adam, I think access to some of the reporting features would be very useful to other members of the ward council. One not mentioned but I feel also very important is the ward mission leader with respects to the New Member Report and Members Moved-In for example.

Why all of the sudden do HC members and others feel a need to have direct access to these reports just because they are on line? When most stake and ward leaders have never had direct access or even wanted direct access through MLS.

All these reports asked for though out this thread are readily available for the asking through the Stake and Ward Clerks. This is their stewardship which will not change just because everything is moved to on line. Please don't come on here and make it sound as though one does not have access to the reports they need for their callings, its simply not true.

It might be a good recommendation to setup an email type system so that the ward clerks can have a checklist of reports to print to PDF and send via email to the stake so that the stake can then push out those reports to the high council. Online tools such as Dropbox and other cloud storage sites will allow for secure online storage that multiple users can access updated reports on a regular basis. I think there would even be a way to have the ward clerks email to a particular shared folder. So really after the setup the maintenance is just making sure it is done.

I'm not well versed in Church policy with the setup described above so it would require a check.