Preferred names not showing in directory in Europe?

Have been trying to find out why preferred names aren't showing in our stake directory in Sweden. I found this thread https://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?6691-Official-name-vs-Preferred-name where the same problem seems to be apparent in the UK.

Is there any solution or answer to why it is this way?
It's really annoying and makes it sometimes hard to find the right person in the directory when full names are showing in the directory.

Thanky you for your help.
Mark

markbentham wrote: Is there any solution or answer to why it is this way?
It's really annoying and makes it sometimes hard to find the right person in the directory when full names are showing in the directory.

As we now are working in the Stockholm Sweden Stake also to have (all) members use the online directory and calendars this problem must be solved a.s.a.p.

Can we get some sort of feedback from an administrator or technician working with this?

/Sven

To make things even more puzzling the calling information that can be viewed on LDS.org uses the preferred name and yet, as you say, we don't get preferred names on the directories. I would have hoped that a consistent approach would have been adopted.

I have asked our local office for a reason and haven't had a reply so far, there might not be a simple answer.....

This forum is primarily user-to-user help. While we do have some church employees who visit (and we really appreciate the ones that do), there's no guarantee that your concerns will be seen by someone in a position to do anything about it.

I'd suggest using the "feedback" link on the main lds.org site. Information submitted that way will eventually get to the right people. If you have the opportunity, sending the information up the "chain of command" or via your area office couldn't hurt.

The directory app should only be using the preferred name, unless it is not available. I'm not sure why that would be any different based on location.

If one of you can send me some additional information, I can look into why you are not getting the preferred names.

Send me the info I need by:
- Logging in to the directory
- Go to this URL: https://lds.org/header
- Copy the information on the resulting page and paste it into a private message to me (click on my username on this post, and select 'Private Message')

Also, along with the info from the above URL, if you can also send me the name of a household as a specific example where you don't see the preferred name.

Thanks to those who sent their info on this. Sure enough, the service that provides household info to the directory is sending along the full name in the preferred name field. But only for users in certain countries. We are working with the developers of that service to find out what the issue is. A fix will be in place as soon as we can get it in the pipeline.

Bump. Still only full names displaying. Any information on a fix?

Hello,
If you print the directory it shows your full name. With full name i mean Sören David Johann Müller. Lots of our members don't want that on that list there is their whole name but just Sören Lex. Is there a way to set it up that i can just print it like that?
Thank you!

[Moderator note: I moved this post to the existing topic for the issue.]

soeren wrote:If you print the directory it shows your full name.

As you can see from the other posts in this topic, this problem only affects certain countries in Europe. Although it was reported in 2011, it appears that it continues to be a problem. I'll see if I can get an engineer to look at it.

aebrown wrote:[Moderator note: I moved this post to the existing topic for the issue.]

soeren wrote:If you print the directory it shows your full name.

As you can see from the other posts in this topic, this problem only affects certain countries in Europe. Although it was reported in 2011, it appears that it continues to be a problem. I'll see if I can get an engineer to look at it.

That would be much appreciated, by all of us affected, by this annoying anomaly!

Currently there is no way to store a Household Preferred name. One of the other issues is many people have no "preferred name" It does show the preferred name when you click on an individual but yes when you generate the PDF it uses the household name.

One option might be to generate the PDF but click individual Details. I am trying to figure out if that changes the name we pull It might not. Just a thought I just had.

Currently there is no way to store a Household Preferred name. One of the other issues is many people have no "preferred name" It does show the preferred name when you click on an individual but yes when you generate the PDF it uses the household name.

I am sorry if this is a stupid question but why is it an issue for some locations and not others? I thought the format for the records was the same wherever you live.

simonawright wrote:I am sorry if this is a stupid question but why is it an issue for some locations and not others? I thought the format for the records was the same wherever you live.

Privacy laws are different depending on where you live. As such, the directory's actions (opt-out vs. opt-in) is different. Why there's a difference on preferred names, I'm not sure.

Then again, it may have to do with the area office. For the Americas, the "area office" is CHQ. As having done some software work myself, I know that it's all too easy for a bug to slip though testing and only show up in odd ways.

Privacy laws are different depending on where you live. As such, the directory's actions (opt-out vs. opt-in) is different

In my simple world the privacy laws would only affect whether you could see a record, not what was displayed.

Of course in my simple world everyone would be a member of the church, its a pity that things don't work out how we would like them.

Household Preferred name does not equal Individual Preferred Name
Individuals do not always have preferred names

So since Household Preferred name is not stored.
We would have to concatenate the Individuals preferred names.
This doesn’t always work everywhere in the world.

At least this is my understanding of the problem currently. Will it change maybe One thing I can think of is to allow the print out to be households by individual name.

jeffevannelson wrote:We would have to concatenate the Individuals preferred names.
This doesn’t always work everywhere in the world.

I'm glad someone at the church is paying attention to things like this. Historically, a lot of software that stores peoples names tends to be US-centric with First Name / Last Name and maybe Middle Name or initial and there is a specific format to put them together.

I remember a work project where we "fixed" everyones names in Active Directory who were in one country. Some people there were known by their last name, others by their first name or another given name or a nickname. There was no real formula we could come up with, so we ended up telling them how how the last and first name fields would display in email, etc. and asked them what information they wanted in the first name and last name fields. That worked for our needs, but the church has a different and more difficult problem in that it needs to maintain the given names as well as the preferred names and figure out when to use which name.

I'm encouraged by jeffevannelson's response. It makes me think we'll eventually get a correct solution, but it might take a little longer.

Hi all,
We've shipped a major directory release in the last few weeks which includes new uses of preferredName and localized householdFormattedName. Could you check this again and advise as to if the situation has improved or changed for you?

Thanks,
-Vard Lott
Local Unit Apps Development

vlott wrote:Hi all,
We've shipped a major directory release in the last few weeks which includes new uses of preferredName and localized householdFormattedName. Could you check this again and advise as to if the situation has improved or changed for you?

Thanks,
-Vard Lott
Local Unit Apps Development

Unfortunately no change for me, still showing Full name in the Directory listing and my first 2 names in the individual section!

Same for me, Directory is still showing full name, clerk resources is showing preferred name.

Just checking in on this issue again. We are not seeing exactly where names are displayed incorrectly. Here is how names are displayed:

2nd column in household listing: <Localized Formatted Couple Name as stored in the Church Membership Database> - in most standard alphabet countries this is represented as <Surname>, <Preferred HofH first name(s)> & <Preferred Spouse first name(s)>
Example for John Paul Smith and his wife Jessica Ann Smith: Smith, Paul & Jessica

Ward Leaders and Ward Organizations: <Preferred name including surname>
Example: Paul Smith

Household Detail Family Name: <Surname>
Individuals on household detail page: <Surname>, <Individual's Preferred first name(s)>
Example: Smith, Jessica

Keep in mind that all name formatting is subject to the localization rules of each user's local unit. There is actually a lot of logic behind the scenes to represent all names localized to the user's correct locale and language.

If you feel this is in error, please reply via private message with specific examples/screenshots. In that case we will likely request some additional identifying information in order to research your specific case.

I've just checked my Directory entries and they are now displaying my preferred name!

Many thanks for that!

To clarify, my preferred name doesn't include my middle name. Up until recently the full name was displayed in the Directory entries.

I have just checked the directory and clerk resources and they all have the preferred name.

Thank you

There are some locales that have not supported preferred names in the past. We received approval to make a change today so that preferred names are supported worldwide. You should see the change effective as of this afternoon, and that appears to be the case.