Changing the directory visibility to Private for a household is not working

I tried this yesterday and it seemed to be working on it, but never completed. Tried again today. Same thing. Is this broken? Is there an alternative way to change a household's directory visibility?

Are you making changes for yourself or for a ward member? There is a known issue where changing the privacy level for a sister with a non-member husband is not working. That will be fixed in the next release of Directory.

Yes this is for the household of a sister with a non-member husband. She is VERY worried about her information being out there with stake visibility. When will the next Directory release be out? In the meantime, what can be done to work around this problem? If we temporarily remove her non-member husband from the household in MLS, will that workaround this until Directory is fixed?

I suppose her household records could be shipped out to "address unknown" temporarily. But hopefully there is a less drastic workaround.

You can try changing it in MLS but we don't have a work around for this in Directory.

genman wrote:If we temporarily remove her non-member husband from the household in MLS, will that workaround this until Directory is fixed?

Assuming that the non-member has a record in MLS (other then being the spouse on the sister's record), it might.

If there is no non-member record for the husband in MLS, then the clerk will have to call SLC to ask that the husband be "suppressed" from the display. Hopefully that will fix it.

RussellHltn wrote:...the clerk will have to call SLC to ask that the husband be "suppressed" from the display. Hopefully that will fix it.

The clerk called clerk support in SLC but they said they cannot do anything about it on their end. So we ended up temporarily changing the preferred names of family members to fictitious names, and temporarily deleting the address, phone, and emails. That was the quickest and easiest workaround at the moment. Seems drastic though.

I understand that end-user feedback may not affect release priorities. But this seems like an important one. Being able to change online visibility for a family needs to work. Otherwise, we have to do these witness-protection-program-like workarounds. Very awkward for all involved, and potentially confusing to other ward members.

Is there anyone with any influence reading this that can raise the flag on this one? Thanks.

When will the fix for this be included in a release?

genman wrote:The clerk called clerk support in SLC but they said they cannot do anything about it on their end.

We're run into that before. Apparently they have to pass it to the developers or something. It's not easy for them, but it can be done.

Point them to the Directory Help file FAQS:

If you are only separated and do not want the spouse's name displayed, you and clerk will need to work with Church headquarters to have the record suppressed.

So there must be something they can do at their end.

genman wrote:I understand that end-user feedback may not affect release priorities. But this seems like an important one. Being able to change online visibility for a family needs to work. Otherwise, we have to do these witness-protection-program-like workarounds. Very awkward for all involved, and potentially confusing to other ward members.

Is there anyone with any influence reading this that can raise the flag on this one? Thanks.

We've raised the issue about spouses automatically appearing with no results. The developers are fully aware of the problem. But they don't set the priorities.

I'd suggest having the stake president bend the ear of the area authority.

LisaAn wrote:There is a known issue where changing the privacy level for a sister with a non-member husband is not working. That will be fixed in the next release of Directory.

When is the next release of Directory? Even approximately?

The church seldom, if ever, gives any release dates. In the past when they have, and then they had to slip the schedule, the outcry about not meeting a schedule was ridiculous. Do not expect even an approximation. It will happen when it happens.

russellhltn wrote:I'd suggest having the stake president bend the ear of the area authority.

Good suggestion! Did that by notifying the Bishop who passed it up through his Priesthood key file leader, the Stake President, who passed it on up. And less than two days later this issue is fixed. I verified that a sister with a non-member husband can now edit the directory visibility for their household. The technical staff is amazingly responsive when given direction by one with Priesthood keys.