Request Records functionality now available in Clerk Resources

Clerk Resources 1.9 Released

We are pleased to report that a new update to Clerk Resources functionality was made to LDS.org. The major addition to Clerk Resources with version 1.9 is the ability to request records into the unit.

Release date: Tuesday, 22 May 2012

System requirements: Supports current Internet browsers versions (e.g., IE, Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari). There is no support for IE7 or earlier versions.

Help and instructions: See the General Help pages found under the Help menu in the top right of menu bar.

Available languages: The new content is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The following languages will be added as soon as they are available: French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

New Features

• Request Records functionality was added in Clerk Resources to the Membership>Records menu.
  
  Membership records can now be requested for members who have moved into the unit. The move is immediate.
  
  NOTE: The ability to move membership records out of the unit is NOT part of this release but will be added in a future release.

• A Unit Settings link was added to the Other menu. This setting allows the default paper size to be changed. It is initially set based on the location standard for the country of the unit.
  
  In the future additional settings items will be added such as meeting times and unit name abbreviations.

Slight problem maybe.... It could be that I am missing something, but the default ward that shows is the first ward, alphabetically in the stake, and the only way to get to my ward is to click on the Callings by Organization and then use the pulldown menu to get to my ward. There is no pulldown menu on the first screen.

Can Stake Clerks request member records or just Ward Clerks and leaders? The request membership option does not appear as an option on my LDS.org screen.

cfitch wrote:Can Stake Clerks request member records or just Ward Clerks and leaders? The request membership option does not appear as an option on my LDS.org screen.

According to the access table only bishops, ward clerks and assistant ward clerks have that option. That's consistent with MLS. The Stake MLS can't request records either.

It would be helpful to give Stake Clerks the option to request records. Occasionally Bishops give first-time recommends to students, originally from their ward, but the students still have their records in their student wards. After the Stake President completes his interview and the member leaves, the Stake Clerk tries unsuccessfully to activate the recommend. The Stake Clerk then has to contact the new recommend holder and tell him his recommend is not valid (He/she may want to attend the temple the next Tuesday). The Stake Clerk then has to contact the Ward Clerk to request the new recommend holder's membership. Then the Stake Clerk has to watch for the membership records to arrive. When they do arrive, he can activate the recommend and contact the member and tell him the recommend is now valid. The obvious answer is to better train the Bishops. This is somewhat effective. Giving Stake Clerks the option to request membership records would eliminate the need to call the member and tell him his recommend is not valid and eliminate the call to the Ward Clerk.

cfitch wrote:Occasionally Bishops give first-time recommends to students, originally from their ward, but the students still have their records in their student wards. After the Stake President completes his interview and the member leaves, the Stake Clerk tries unsuccessfully to activate the recommend. The Stake Clerk then has to contact the new recommend holder and tell him his recommend is not valid (He/she may want to attend the temple the next Tuesday). The Stake Clerk then has to contact the Ward Clerk to request the new recommend holder's membership. Then the Stake Clerk has to watch for the membership records to arrive. When they do arrive, he can activate the recommend and contact the member and tell him the recommend is now valid. The obvious answer is to better train the Bishops. This is somewhat effective. Giving Stake Clerks the option to request membership records would eliminate the need to call the member and tell him his recommend is not valid and eliminate the call to the Ward Clerk.

Training the bishops is by far the best answer. A bishop has no keys of authority regarding someone who is not a member of his ward, and so he has no right to issue a temple recommend to them. If the student is returning home and the records need to be requested anyway, then the bishop needs to make sure the records are requested before he interviews that member.

If the student is still attending the YSA ward, then the bishop and stake president should not be issuing the temple recommend. That just creates a situation where the bishop has to do one of two things:

• Tell the student that he or she will just have to start the interview process again in the YSA ward and stake; or
• Pull the record from the YSA ward temporarily until the stake can activate the recommend and then send it back.

But that second option is not a good choice. It has far more negative effects than the home ward and stake often realize. When they do this, it has these effects:

• It releases the member from all callings
• It removes the member as a home or visiting teacher, and removes them from being home and/or visiting taught.
• It clears out the contact information (address, phone, email).
• It removes any custom fields associated with the member.
• It removes the member from the ward, so that any reports that are printed during the time the membership record is temporarily gone will be inaccurate.

That creates a significant administrative burden for the YSA Ward. All that work has to be redone when the record comes back. It's much better not to do that at all.

Modifying the Leader resources to support a process that shouldn't even be happening doesn't seem to me to be a helpful course of action.

cfitch wrote:The Stake Clerk then has to contact the Ward Clerk to request the new recommend holder's membership. Then the Stake Clerk has to watch for the membership records to arrive. When they do arrive, he can activate the recommend and contact the member and tell him the recommend is now valid. The obvious answer is to better train the Bishops. This is somewhat effective. Giving Stake Clerks the option to request membership records would eliminate the need to call the member and tell him his recommend is not valid and eliminate the call to the Ward Clerk.

I agree 100% with aebrown's comments but I will add that if the records do indeed need to be requested, the new tools already provide a significant improvement. When you call the clerk he can request the records while still on the phone and they will be available immediately. No need to watch for them.

I can't wait to move someone's records in so I can test it out!

While it may be more convenient for stake clerks to be able to move membership records around the responsibility of doing so has been delegated by the Lord to the member's Previous and new bishops. Ward Clerks only help to facilitate that process under the direction of the Bishops. Eliminating the Bishops from the process by allowing Stakes to request membership records seems to me to be contrary to the established ecclesiastical responsibilities. This is not merely an administrative function.

zaneclark wrote:Slight problem maybe.... It could be that I am missing something, but the default ward that shows is the first ward, alphabetically in the stake, and the only way to get to my ward is to click on the Callings by Organization and then use the pulldown menu to get to my ward. There is no pulldown menu on the first screen.

That is because you are a Stake assistant clerk which tells the system to act differently then if you were just a ward assistant clerk. Acting in a stake role there isn't anything more significance about your own ward than the first ward in the list.

Note: For someone with just a ward calling they only see their own ward anyway.

I understand now..... I have run into this conflict before between my stake and ward assistant clerk callings. I hope this is something that is being discussed by the people who would have the authority to change this.

zaneclark wrote:I hope this is something that is being discussed by the people who would have the authority to change this.

May I ask you your opinion about how you envision it working?

PartridgeRM wrote:May I ask you your opinion about how you envision it working?

I would just like to be able to have the full functions available to both my positions as assistant clerk in ward and stake and not let my stake function cancel out some ward functions..

zaneclark wrote:I would just like to be able to have the full functions available to both my positions as assistant clerk in ward and stake and not let my stake function cancel out some ward functions..

Thank you. In this case we will be responding to this need. The problem is a defect in our system now which we are planning to resolve soon.

PartridgeRM wrote:Thank you. In this case we will be responding to this need. The problem is a defect in our system now which we are planning to resolve soon.

Thank you! I always hoped there was someone reading these posts that could actually make a difference!

The Request Records functionality on Clerk Tools is, in my opinion, much better than the existing functionality in MLS. I will probably only use the Clerk Tools to request records, even when I am in the clerks' office, from now on. Here are some benefits, if you have not tried it yet:

* Can request records with name and date of birth OR membership record number. In MLS date of birth is always required. In Clerk Tools, name and membership record number are sufficient.

* Instant feedback BEFORE requesting records. When you enter a name and date of birth, the tool performs a lookup before requesting records. You are presented with the full names of all members in the household that matched the information you requested. You can then check a box for each record you want to request. Perhaps more importantly, you can see right away if you entered incorrect information and choose to cancel the request.

* Contact information persists. When you request records using this tool, individual and household contact information (phone number and email address) come along for the ride. All I needed to do was compare the information to what the member gave me to make sure it had not changed. I did not have to re-enter anything. This will cut down on data entry errors.

I found that after using the Clerk Tools to request records, it took at least 15 minutes before a send/receive in MLS would bring down the new records.

The only thing I can think of right now that would improve this process is to build in some sort of address verification step. Calling out to usps.com (for the United States) or a similar service in other countries to make sure the entered address is correct and in a standard format would be wonderful.

This reply relates to my earlier post regarding the conflict when you have both a ward and stake clerk calling. I find I cannot use the Request Records function on Clerk Tools because of this problem. If my ward was the first alphabetically, I could do this, but unfortunately it is not. I can get into all the other features for my ward with a little manipulation, be not the Record Request. I am hoping that the promised fix will occur soon.

I can think of a scenario where it would be advantageous for the stake to move records, and that is a boundary alignment. It is a large, complex maneuver at times to coordinate with multiple wards, with less consistent results than if the stake could implement it. I think the current tool in ward level MLS is actually really good, but can be implemented inconsistently, causing a lot of follow up work.

Originally Posted by zaneclark
I would just like to be able to have the full functions available to both my positions as assistant clerk in ward and stake and not let my stake function cancel out some ward functions..

PartridgeRM wrote:Thank you. In this case we will be responding to this need. The problem is a defect in our system now which we are planning to resolve soon.

zaneclark wrote:Originally Posted by zaneclark
I would just like to be able to have the full functions available to both my positions as assistant clerk in ward and stake and not let my stake function cancel out some ward functions..

Originally Posted by PartridgeRM
Thank you. In this case we will be responding to this need. The problem is a defect in our system now which we are planning to resolve soon.

PartridgeRM wrote:Thank you. In this case we will be responding to this need. The problem is a defect in our system now which we are planning to resolve soon.

This is a reply to my query on your stake clerk calling canceling the functions in your ward clerk calling. This was on May 24th. I hope they resolve it soon. I am out of town for the summer without access to MLS and this would be very handy.

Just a reminder that the stake clerk function still cancels out ward clark functions....when I reported this on May 24th, PartridgeRM reported that it was defect in the system and they would be resolving it soon.....I guess "soon" is relative...-:)