Error in display for Officers Sustained form

We have ward conference in a couple of weeks and the "prep screen" for the Officers Sustained form does not show any of the Young Women class presidencies, but states that the position is vacant:

Laurel Class Presidency
President: Vacant Calling
First counselor: Vacant Calling
Second counselor: Vacant Calling
Secretary: Vacant Calling

Mia Maid Class Presidency
President: Vacant Calling
First counselor: Vacant Calling
Second counselor: Vacant Calling
Secretary: Vacant Calling

Beehive Class Presidency
President: Vacant Calling
First counselor: Vacant Calling
Second counselor: Vacant Calling
Secretary: Vacant Calling

The data is however visible in CDOL and when the "Print" button is clicked, the presidency members show on the resultant form. It just seems to affect the screen where you enter the location and date and number of missionaries for input to the form.

Is anybody else seeing this?

We saw this behavior in our ward last night. I am not the clerk any more, but was trying to help the bishop get it ready as the clerk is out of town at a funeral. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for which individuals were listed in their callings and which were not.

Newly filled callings, individuals who have been in their calling for over a year, some adults, some youth. We saw all examples on our form. In some cases, the entire presidency was missing, but in most cases 1 or 2 members were missing. For example, the RS President and the RS 2nd Counselor were missing while the RS 1st Counselor and RS Secretary were shown (all are correctly recorded in MLS and have been for some months). About half of the callings in our ward did not show up on the Sustaining form so we had to enter them manually last night.

I suspect it is an unintended bug from some of the MLS 3.5 programming changes.

davesudweeks wrote:We saw this behavior in our ward last night.
...
I suspect it is an unintended bug from some of the MLS 3.5 programming changes.

It would be interesting to see if CDOL ("Show all callings") showed the missing callings, since it is the database of record. Maybe you can get the current clerk to check. In my case, they were there and ended up populating the form correctly using the online tool.

mfmohlma wrote:The data is however visible in CDOL

What color is the text in CDOL? If it's orange, then they've been entered as a custom position and that would explain a lot.

Otherwise I'm tempted to say the problem has to do with the linking of class information. Is the problems all in Sunday School classes?

russellhltn wrote:What color is the text in CDOL?

It was black, so the callings were standard ones.

russellhltn wrote: Otherwise I'm tempted to say the problem has to do with the linking of class information. Is the problems all in Sunday School classes?

It just occurred for the YW class presidencies. The adult YW presidency was fine. As I noted, this only affected the "preview page" (URL: https://www.lds.org/mls/mbr/form/office ... d?lang=eng) and not the eventual printed form that gets generated when using the "Print" button on that page.

Since the YW classes are at the end of that page (and the form) perhaps some parsing in the data for the page got confused.

FYI, I'm referring to MLS, not the online tools.

For us, the errors were scattered throughout the report. Some youth presidencies were partially missing, some adult presidencies were partially missing. The presidency usually had at least one individual showing. Sometimes only one showing, sometimes only one missing. As I am now the HPGL, I cannot see CDOL and my clerk is not available.

Almost every organization in our ward was affected with at least one adult leader dropped off (except the bishopric). About half of the youth presidencies were affected.

The form in MLS matched the printed page - individuals not showing in the form also did not show when the form was printed. With our Ward Conference this Sunday, the Bishop's stress level jumped up a bit, but we now have it all manually entered and saved at this time so no worries.

When viewing all of our stake's wards' online "Officers Sustained"lists (found in the Clerks Resources "Membership" menu), none of the Young Women class presidencies are shown on the screen.

The names appear if we select "Print" and get the PDF.

All the names also appear if we look at the "Callings by Organization" screen.

I was looking at that last night, and wondered why all the YW presidency positions showed "Vacant". Our stake YW president has been asking me for a list of all unit YW presidencies, and creating a custom report for it in MLS looked too complicated to me.

[Moderator note: I merged two posts made this morning to a new topic "YW Class Presidencies not shown on Officers Sustained page" into this existing topic that discusses the exact same issue so that we can keep the discussion in one place.]

aebrown,

As some of these posts refer to the MLS version and some refer to the lds.org version, are we sure this is the exact same problem? I can't tell as I don't have access to the lds.org version anymore. If they are, that's fine - I was just curious.

This will be fixed in our next release later this month

This is fixed now.

Yes, it appears correct for me now. Keep up the great work with this site. It is very helpful to a busy ward clerk.

I just tried to print the Sustaining Form in prep for next weeks Ward Conf. The YW organization shows no adults leaders, just vacant callings. Callings are standard in MLS and show in CDOL. A new problem?
MLS 3.5.1

showseason wrote:I just tried to print the Sustaining Form in prep for next weeks Ward Conf. The YW organization shows no adults leaders, just vacant callings. Callings are standard in MLS and show in CDOL. A new problem?
MLS 3.5.1

This is an old problem in MLS that has not yet been solved, unless something happens when MLS 3.5.2 is released.

Does the data look correct in Clerk Resources? https://www.lds.org/mls/mbr/form/officers-sustained You should be able to print it from that screen.

jkitterman wrote:Does the data look correct in Clerk Resources?

I can't answer for showseason, but in the case of our stake, it appears we need to redo the data that was sent from MLS around the year-end that is missing.

But we will probably not use the online version for our stake anyway, since we prefer to sustain the high councilors in alphabetical order by last name, not first.

jkitterman wrote:Does the data look correct in Clerk Resources? https://www.lds.org/mls/mbr/form/officers-sustained You should be able to print it from that screen.

Yes, the online report does show the YW. My main concern was that earlier in this list I understood someone to indicate the issue had been fixed. Thanks for the update.

Printed out the Sustaining Officers form for our Ward Conferance this morning and when it printed the form, at the Sustaining the Bishop of the Ward, the word "WARD" is missing from the line.

We wrote it in.

This is still a problem. I prepared the form for our Ward conference last week and the word "Ward" is omitted twice now. Once in the header which says "The conference of the ___ ___ , the word Ward is missing and it is still missing in the paragraph where the Bishop is sustained.

Also, on MLS it includes full names, first, middle and Last and on LDS. Org, it just has first and last names. Our Stake requires middle initials. So it requires a ton of editing.

strange.

jspector wrote:This is still a problem. I prepared the form for our Ward conference last week and the word "Ward" is omitted twice now. Once in the header which says "The conference of the ___ ___ , the word Ward is missing and it is still missing in the paragraph where the Bishop is sustained.

This is from the on-line tool?

jspector wrote:This is still a problem. I prepared the form for our Ward conference last week and the word "Ward" is omitted twice now.

It works fine for me. I'm wondering if the word "Ward" is omitted from the actual name of your ward. All the wards in my stake have the word "Ward" in them, so it would be something like the "Anytown 1st Ward". If your ward's name was instead entered as "Anytown 1st" then the word Ward would of course be omitted from the Officers Sustained Form.

To check if that is the case, you might go to the Member List in Clerk Resources and print the report (you don't have to actually print it; just click on the Print button and a PDF will be displayed in your browser). Look in the upper right corner. It should say something like "Anytown 1st Ward (1234567)". If instead it says "Anytown 1st (1234567)" then you now know the source of the problem -- and it isn't the Officers Sustained Form.

I think I've located him in the CDOL, and his ward does say "Ward".

That's why I asked if this was on-line. If this comes from MLS, then I think the unit name field in MLS is probably at fault. I don't know if name comes down from CHQ or not. I know for our training databases it is all free-form.

russellhltn wrote:If this comes from MLS, then I think the unit name field in MLS is probably at fault.

Check the name of the unit in MLS. It is free form for the real unit, too, not just the training unit.

jspector wrote: ...
Also, on MLS it includes full names, first, middle and Last and on LDS. Org, it just has first and last names. Our Stake requires middle initials. So it requires a ton of editing.
...

It looks like Clerk Resources is using the "Preferred Name" of the individuals on that form. I checked on the official policy for how the names should be displayed and read in a conference. I was told that general practice and internal policy is to use the complete member name (no initials). I will change that for our next release.

jkitterman wrote:I was told that general practice and internal policy is to use the complete member name (no initials).

Interesting. Normally we refer to the Brethren with a middle initial, but you're right in that during sustaining for General Conference, it's the full name.

russellhltn wrote:

jkitterman wrote:I was told that general practice and internal policy is to use the complete member name (no initials).

Interesting. Normally we refer to the Brethren with a middle initial, but you're right in that during sustaining for General Conference, it's the full name.

No, that's not generally true. Full names are used only for the First Presidency and the president of the Quorum of the Twelve. Everyone else uses given name and an initial. See The Sustaining of Church Officers from the last conference for an example.

However, for the local Officers Sustained form, we don't have the option of a given name and initial. It has to be either the preferred name or the full name (those are the only two names available on the membership record). So I guess the full name is a better choice.

Although it takes a bit of time and effort, before printing I edit the form to trim the middle names down to an initial with "." (or first names for those that use their middle names).

We use the "full name", because that's what it says to do at the top of the form.