Group email options

One of the wards in my stake is asking if there is a way to send out an email to groups of ward members like there was on the classic site. Theold websites had the ability to send an email to different groups (primary leaders, relief society, etc) but this functionality doesn't seem to be present on the new site. Am I just not looking in the right spot?

Thanks

jaredhallows wrote:One of the wards in my stake is asking if there is a way to send out an email to groups of ward members like there was on the classic site. Theold websites had the ability to send an email to different groups (primary leaders, relief society, etc) but this functionality doesn't seem to be present on the new site. Am I just not looking in the right spot?

If you go to the Directory (Tools > Directory) and sign in, you will see links on the left side for "Ward Leaders" and "Ward Organizations". Click on either one of those, and you will have a variety of options listed in the middle panel. When you click on any of those, you'll see displayed in the right panel the set of people who are leaders or members of the respective organizations. At the top of that panel will be an E-mail link that will let you send e-mail to all of those people (depending, of course, on their privacy settings, and whether they have an e-mail address in the system).

Got it, thanks for your help.

Ward / stake Leaders can also use the "send a message" feature in the "Leader resources" or "clerk resources" tools section for group emails, which has many more leadership and membership groupings than the directory, depending on your calling. The directory uses your email client, while the Leader or Clerk tools sends them from the church servers in your name, which works far better for me. Your wards should try both options.

kisaac wrote:Ward / stake Leaders can also use the "send a message" feature in the "Leader resources" or "clerk resources" tools section for group emails, which has many more leadership and membership groupings than the directory, depending on your calling. The directory uses your email client, while the Leader or Clerk tools sends them from the church servers in your name, which works far better for me. Your wards should try both options.

I have been trying out the "send a message" feature as ward clerk and the member's privacy setting only lets their email add to the group message if they have it set to stake, it hides them if they are set to ward or private and doesn't add them to the email. Is it a bug or am I doing something wrong?

troyjensenfox wrote:I have been trying out the "send a message" feature as ward clerk and the member's privacy setting only lets their email add to the group message if they have it set to stake, it hides them if they are set to ward or private and doesn't add them to the email. Is it a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Are you talking about from the directory or the leader tools? When the member has their privacy set to "Ward", are you in the same ward (so the email should be visible to you)? Do you have a stake calling?

In leader tools. "send message" When I select <all members> it gives me a list that are not included because of their privacy setting or no email address. As I go through the ones that have an address their privacy setting is set to <ward> or <private>, so it should work for me as ward clerk but it is blocking them. If I change their setting to <stake> it then works? In the directory it seems to work fine except I cannot do an email to the whole ward at once.

troyjensenfox wrote:As I go through the ones that have an address their privacy setting is set to <ward> or <private>, so it should work for me as ward clerk but it is blocking them.

I can't check it now as I'm not in a ward calling with leader rights, but it has been in the past that if they set an email to "don't show in the directory," (before the newest release with the expanded privacy settings) it wouldn't let it show in the clerk or leader "send a message" and the calendar notifications functions.

This was really misunderstood by many, as they put the email in the system for some reason, but then basically wouldn't let it ever be used for anything of use to them or their leaders, and then would wonder why they didn't get that notification about that mid-week funeral, or that reminder about the party, etc. I don't think it was working as intended, and still might not be, but there have been new versions of almost every app recently, but I can't check. I just know now that I still tell people, if you want our emails, type in your address and and allow all visibility options. If you want privacy, or you are deathly worried about spam, get a free email (gmail, yahoo) or take your email right out of the system. While the developers are making great strides, and I certainly have patience to let them figure it out, I think I'd still describe the email functions of LDS.org "very glitchy."