"Send A Message" only works for those with "Stake Visibility"

When the Ward Executive Secretary uses the "Send A Message" feature, there are members showing up in the "Opted out" list who do have email addresses and who have the visibility settings set to "Ward Visibility" or " Private - Leadership Only". It appears that only "Stake Visibility" allows them to receive that blind-copy email via Send A Message. Is that a bug or a feature? It seems like a bug. Ward leadership should be able to send emails to members with email visibility set to "Ward Visibility" or "Leadership Only".

Does anyone else see this problem? When will it be fixed?

I also submitted this problem via the Submit Feedback link.

I have seen the same problem and agree that the behavior doesn't make sense.

I just tried to send an email as the Ward Executive Secretary and this issue has not been addressed. Anyone with the "Ward Visibility" setting were treated as "private" by the send a message system.

Thanks for catching this. We've investigated the issue and have put it on the list for a future release of Directory. Thank you.

In going over the code for this request, we feel like this is working properly. The ward executive secretary, considered a leadership position, has rights to see members marked as private and also has rights to change their information and their photos. It makes sense to us that the ward executive secretary would also have the rights to send these members an email. (Reference JIRA 1405). Are you seeing something different than this? Would like this feature to work differently? Please let us know. Thanks.

So, is the behavior as described in post #1 "as expected"? They seem to be reporting that they can not send to anyone whose settings are not set to "stake visibility" - even if they are in the same ward and the sender holds a leadership position.

LisaAn wrote:We feel like this is working properly... It makes sense to us that the ward executive secretary would also have the rights to send these members an email. (Reference JIRA 1405). Are you seeing something different than this?

Yes, we are seeing something different than that. I agree that we SHOULD be able to use the "Send A Message" feature to send an email to those who have their privacy settings set as leadership-limited or ward-visibility. But it is not working that way. Those with a privacy setting OTHER than stake-visibility are not receiving "Send a Message" emails.

Try it and see.

Note: This problem report is specific to the "Send A Message" feature of Leadership/Clerk Resources, and not the email feature of the Directory.

Does anyone know if this has been fixed or a fix is in the works? I don't see any other threads about this and this one hasn't been posted to in ~2 months.

Has this issue ever been resolved? I'm a bishop, and I find that any message I attempt to send to all ward members excludes a bunch of people who have not set their privacy settings to Stake. Anyone with a different privacy setting does not receive the email. It would be nice for us to be able to message everyone in the ward with an email on their membership. Thank you.

Bishop Russ Blood
Rose Creek Crossing Ward

rmblood wrote:Has this issue ever been resolved? I'm a bishop, and I find that any message I attempt to send to all ward members excludes a bunch of people who have not set their privacy settings to Stake. Anyone with a different privacy setting does not receive the email. It would be nice for us to be able to message everyone in the ward with an email on their membership. Thank you.

Bishop Russ Blood
Rose Creek Crossing Ward

Nothing's changed yet and we haven't had any word that any change is planned (but they don't usually let us know what changes are planned so that doesn't mean much).

This really needs to be fixed. We have numerous members who have their visibility on the wrong setting and consequently do not get "send a message" messages. By setting their visibility to "leadership only" I am confident that these members would want leadership to be able to send messages -- that is, these members with "leadership only" settings certainly want to receive ward announcements, etc... But with the current system, they do not.

As far as I can tell, there is no work-around for this problem, but if anyone knows of anything, please let me know.

Not sure I understand the logic at all in restricting e-mails based on a visibility setting in the directory. The send message app should send e-mail to anyone who has an e-mail address in the system. If visibility is leadership only, bcc the person. If a person wants to op out, they should remove their e-mail address from the directory.

dpenrod75 wrote:Not sure I understand the logic at all in restricting e-mails based on a visibility setting in the directory. The send message app should send e-mail to anyone who has an e-mail address in the system. If visibility is leadership only, bcc the person. If a person wants to op out, they should remove their e-mail address from the directory.

I don't see it that way. If the sender has no right to see a person's email address, it makes sense that they would not be able to send a message to that email address. Your proposal to use BCC doesn't properly address the privacy issues. Note that any email bounces will come back to the sender, which would then reveal the person's email address that the sender supposedly can't see.

Of course, what people are complaining about in this discussion is primarily the problem that even if the sender has permission to see the email address, the message is still not sent to that person. That seems like a reasonable complaint. But fixing this problem hasn't risen to the top of the priority list yet.

Yes, I don't think anyone is complaining about the first issue you discuss. The only issue here is when "leadership" uses the "Send a Message" function. In that situation, the message should include every address that is visible and available to the leader.

A couple of other comments:

1. I think that the reason this issue hasn't risen to the top is that no one knows about it. I asked around about this recently and everyone I asked was unaware and was under the assumption that "Send a Message" message (when sent by a "leader") goes to everyone visible to that leader. I think if more people knew how this actually works, more people would complain about it.

2. My informal (and admittedly limited) poll of members in my ward last week reveals that limited visibility is almost entirely unintentional on the member's part. I asked several ward members with "Leader only" visibility settings and every one of them told me that they had not ever intentionally set their visibility in that manner. They all asked me to change it for them because they all wanted to be included on leadership emails.

With email fast becoming the primary method of communicating with ward members, this seems like a simple fix that should be made soon.

dpenrod75 wrote:The send message app should send e-mail to anyone who has an e-mail address in the system. If visibility is leadership only, bcc the person.

I don't agree with this thought. The purpose of having a visibility setting is to limit who can see, and therefore use, the e-mail address. The user is selecting the level of privacy they want for their e-mail address. If I have my visibility setting as leadership only and get a message from someone who is not a leader then I would be upset that I got the message after explicitly making it clear I only wanted messages from leaders. I would not care if my e-mail address was a bcc addressee - I still did not want to get the message.

I also don't agree with the implementation of the send a message feature. It should resolve to the visibility setting.

dpenrod75 wrote:If a person wants to op out, they should remove their e-mail address from the directory.

This is totally opting out - and that is an option. But that does not give the member the ability to restrict who can use their e-mail address. The current messaging system implementation does not resolve to the privacy level a member thinks they are selecting.

aebrown wrote: I don't see it that way. If the sender has no right to see a person's email address, it makes sense that they would not be able to send a message to that email address. Your proposal to use BCC doesn't properly address the privacy issues. Note that any email bounces will come back to the sender, which would then reveal the person's email address that the sender supposedly can't see.

Only a leader can use the send message app in LCR.

jayriggity wrote:With email fast becoming the primary method of communicating with ward members, this seems like a simple fix that should be made soon.

It may seem simple to you, but neither you nor I sets the priorities.

FYI, an explanation for why it works this way can be found in this post.

dpenrod75 wrote:Only a leader can use the send message app in LCR.

That may be true now, but it won't necessarily always be the case. More and more callings are getting access to portions of LCR, and if the Send a Message features gets updated, it may well allow expanded access, too.

Also, every message is sent BCC (regardless of privacy settings), so your proposal to send messages with BCC if the privacy setting is Leadership Only wouldn't make any difference.

aebrown wrote: It may seem simple to you, but neither you nor I sets the priorities.

And for the record, I actually have no idea whether it is a "simple"' technological fix. I'm not a programmer. I was just assuming, but I'm probably wrong about that.

Either way though, I think it's something that should probably be on someone's radar. The Send a Message function really could be a great way to communicate information to the entire ward, but at present, we're getting to a fraction of our users.

aebrown wrote:

dpenrod75 wrote:Only a leader can use the send message app in LCR.

That may be true now, but it won't necessarily always be the case. More and more callings are getting access to portions of LCR, and if the Send a Message features gets updated, it may well allow expanded access, too.

Also, every message is sent BCC (regardless of privacy settings), so your proposal to send messages with BCC if the privacy setting is Leadership Only wouldn't make any difference.

If you send a message to leaders, it goes in the "To" field. If you send a message to members, it goes in the "Bcc" field. I use this application on a weekly basis, and this is how it works for me.

I don't see the church ever allowing non leadership to broadcast messages to a stake or ward.

Again, if only a leader can only use this app and a leader can see e-mail addresses with the highest level of all the visibility restrictions placed on an e-mail address in the directory anyway, it doesn't make since why a "leader" cannot use the send message application to send a message to a member who's privacy setting is "Leadership Only". Besides, that same leader can copy and past that members address in their own e-mail program and send that person a message.

If the members address is in the Bcc field, no-one else will see it except the leader who sent the message and the member. That in no way violates the members preference to have "Leadership Only" visibility for their e-mail address.

Again, if they don't want e-mails from the church, then they should remove the e-mail address from the directory.

dpenrod75 wrote:If you send a message to leaders, it goes in the "To" field. If you send a message to members, it goes in the "Bcc" field. I use this application on a weekly basis, and this is how it works for me.

True. However, my response assumed that your post was continuing the discussion, which as far as I can tell was only about sending to members. If you intended to change the subject to discuss messages to leaders, then my assumption was incorrect.

dpenrod75 wrote:I don't see the church ever allowing non leadership to broadcast messages to a stake or ward.

That depends on the definition of "leadership." To this point, the term "leadership" in the privacy setting "Private -- Leadership only" includes only bishoprics, stake presidencies, clerks, and executive secretaries. But the term "leader" in Leader and Clerk Resources is now much broader, as it includes quorum and auxiliary presidencies. I could certainly see the possibility that a member of that broader set of leaders might eventually be able to broadcast messages to the ward, but still not be allowed to see email addresses set to "Private -- Leadership only." Of course, that's just my speculation, but it certainly seems possible.

dpenrod75 wrote:Again, if only a leader can only use this app and a leader can see e-mail addresses with the highest level of all the visibility restrictions placed on an e-mail address in the directory anyway, it doesn't make since why a "leader" cannot use the send message application to send a message to a member who's privacy setting is "Leadership Only". Besides, that same leader can copy and past that members address in their own e-mail program and send that person a message.

I don't think anyone disputes that it should work that way. It's just a question of when it will become a high enough priority to fix.

dpenrod75 wrote:If the members address is in the Bcc field, no-one else will see it except the leader who sent the message and the member. That in no way violates the members preference to have "Leadership Only" visibility for their e-mail address.

Agreed. My comment was based on my assumption that you were talking about using the BCC for sending messages to members whose email addresses the sender would not have access to see. You clarified that this is not the case.

dpenrod75 wrote:Again, if they don't want e-mails from the church, then they should remove the e-mail address from the directory.

Agreed, but there is an additional capability that your statement doesn't cover. As has been noted previously, the privacy setting exists precisely so that members have the option of allowing leaders to see their email address, but not the general membership. That assumes (and I certainly know of cases where this is definitely true) that there are some members who want to receive emails from the Church (meaning leaders) but not from the church (meaning the general membership).

dpenrod75 wrote:Again, if only a leader can only use this app and a leader can see e-mail addresses with the highest level of all the visibility restrictions placed on an e-mail address in the directory anyway, it doesn't make since why a "leader" cannot use the send message application to send a message to a member who's privacy setting is "Leadership Only".

The problem lies in defining "leader". In many of the tools, "leader" in the context of a ward is the Bishopric, Executive Secretary and clerks. And in the beginning, that's all who had access to LCR. But that's now changed. Should a Primary President be able to see your "Leadership Only" family if you have no children? If so, why? They have no stewardship over you. And they do have access to LCR.

This is a great discussion of viewpoints and hopefully something will be developed to make everyone happy. From my perspective, when my stake president asks me to e-mail all the bishoprics in the stake and a handful of them have a setting for "Leadership Only" visibility I can't use the "Send Message" application to get the word out to them, but I can get their e-mail addresses from the directory and use my personal e-mail program. Some of you may think that makes since, but to me it doesn't. If I can see their e-mail address in the directory and use my personal e-mail program to send them a message, I would expect the "Send Message" application would recognize that and allow me to use it to also send them a message.

dpenrod75 wrote:...when my stake president asks me to e-mail all the bishoprics in the stake and a handful of them have a setting for "Leadership Only" visibility I can't use the "Send Message" application to get the word out to them, but I can get their e-mail addresses from the directory and use my personal e-mail program. Some of you may think that makes since [sense], but to me it doesn't.

I have yet to see anyone who thinks that makes sense. Everyone I've ever heard from on this topic agrees with you. It's simply a question of priorities and timing for an eventual fix.

It makes sense the LCR has the logic. But the current functioning doesn't make sense. But it's a outgrowth of changes over time. The current function was never the intended function.

I am still having problems with the email.

We have an aging ward and want to send out the ward newsletter via a link or email.

As a member of the bishopric I can see and enter email addresses for the entire ward, but when I use the adults function under the Directory/ward organizations, I only get email addresses for members who's privacy setting is set to stake. If they are set to ward or private leader only their email address does not show up in the list that is created. There has to be a bug in this. If I'm not leadership, then who is? The only way I could make it work was to enter their account and change the setting to stake.

smorris wrote:... when I use the adults function under the Directory/ward organizations, I only get email addresses for members who's privacy setting is set to stake. If they are set to ward or private leader only their email address does not show up in the list that is created. There has to be a bug in this. If I'm not leadership, then who is?

It's not the way anyone expects it to work, but the reason is explained in this post. Apparently fixing it has not become a priority compared with everything else that needs to be done.

smorris wrote:The only way I could make it work was to enter their account and change the setting to stake.

Please note that you should only change members' privacy settings with their permission.