Ordinance information - who can see?

I use Apple iOS and as the bishop I have access to my ward members' ordinance and other detail information such as member number, etc.

My first counselor has a samsung tablet that runs android OS. He can't seem to get this detailed information. Is this due to his callin, or a platform limitation? My clerk,also uses apple iOS and does have access to the same detailed information I do.

Any light you can shed on this is appreciated.

bballrob wrote:My first counselor has a samsung tablet that runs android OS. He can't seem to get this detailed information. Is this due to his callin, or a platform limitation? My clerk,also uses apple iOS and does have access to the same detailed information I do.

According to Handbook 1, Section 13.6, 5th paragraph, only the bishop and the clerk are to see membership records. So the mobile and web tools are simply enforcing this handbook policy. That explains why you and the clerk can see this detailed information, but your counselor cannot.

Just to confirm. I'm an assistant clerk and I can see the ordinance information on android.

jonesrk wrote:Just to confirm. I'm an assistant clerk and I can see the ordinance information on android.

What kind of assistant? I'd fully expect the membership to see it. Possibility just "assistant". But I think we've seen cases before where "finance" is excluded.

russellhltn wrote:

jonesrk wrote:Just to confirm. I'm an assistant clerk and I can see the ordinance information on android.

What kind of assistant? I'd fully expect the membership to see it. Possibility just "assistant". But I think we've seen cases before where "finance" is excluded.

Stake Assistant Clerk

aebrown wrote:

bballrob wrote:My first counselor has a samsung tablet that runs android OS. He can't seem to get this detailed information. Is this due to his callin, or a platform limitation? My clerk,also uses apple iOS and does have access to the same detailed information I do.

According to Handbook 1, Section 13.6, 5th paragraph, only the bishop and the clerk are to see membership records. So the mobile and web tools are simply enforcing this handbook policy. That explains why you and the clerk can see this detailed information, but your counselor cannot.

I looked at the handbook and I don't see this. I see where it says membership records should nt be given to anyone besides a clerk or the bishop, but there are times when Counselors need access, and they have access on the computer in the clerks office, so why not on heir mobile devices?

bballrob wrote:I looked at the handbook and I don't see this. I see where it says membership records should nt be given to anyone besides a clerk or the bishop, but there are times when Counselors need access, and they have access on the computer in the clerks office, so why not on heir mobile devices?

Having had "access on the computer in the clerks office" will likely be something that people struggle with as MLS membership functions migrate to Leader and Clerk Resources and LDS Tools. Between the access levels in MLS being fairly coarse and permissions being set inappropriately, many users are used to having more access than policy allows.

Looking at the current data access table, it looks like bishopric counselors should be able to see the membership record number. They cannot see ordinance information.

There could hypothetically be a distinction made between "membership record" and "membership information" – the same as the distinction between "membership record" and "individual ordinance summary," the individual ordinance summary being a bit less protected (i.e. a member can have or see a copy of his own). What does the membership record include that the individual ordinance summary doesn't, anyway?

I know there's not much leverage on this thread to affect policy, but maybe IOS items could be more widely accessible, restricting just the "membership record"-unique items to the bishop and clerk(s).

sbradshaw wrote:What does the membership record include that the individual ordinance summary doesn't, anyway?

IIRC, on a normal record, it's "prior ward". But then a normal record doens't have annotations for disfellowshipment and such.

Somehow, I don't think the IOS distribution would be much better. There's still a lot of sensitive information that's probably not needed for most leaders to do their job.

aebrown wrote:According to Handbook 1, Section 13.6, 5th paragraph, only the bishop and the clerk are to see membership records. So the mobile and web tools are simply enforcing this handbook policy. That explains why you and the clerk can see this detailed information, but your counselor cannot.

I called Local Unit Support. The tech said there may be situations in which a counselor would require access to membership records in MLS. For example, if he needed information to perform an interview prior to an ordinance (baptism or ordination) while the bishop is unavailable. I think that is reaching a bit for justification, since the clerk could print an IOS or a partially-filled ordinance record prior to the interview.

Some MLS functions are available based upon privileges granted to the user. Other functions seem to be granted based upon the user's calling. For example, there are some reports (according to the LUS tech) that only bishops can see in MLS, regardless of their MLS privileges.

So the basic question remains as to whether bishopric counselors should be granted the View Membership or Edit Membership privileges in MLS. If so, then what is the rationale for doing so?

drepouille wrote:So the basic question remains as to whether bishopric counselors should be granted the View Membership or Edit Membership privileges in MLS. If so, then what is the rationale for doing so?

In MLS, counselors will end up with View Membership rights because they have Finance rights. The current online tools enforce the MLS equivalent of not giving counselors Edit Membership rights.

drepouille wrote:So the basic question remains as to whether bishopric counselors should be granted the View Membership or Edit Membership privileges in MLS. If so, then what is the rationale for doing so?

I don't know why they'd be given Edit rights. That's the clerk's job.

By the way, relevant to this discussion when it comes to MLS – the guidelines for who should have rights to functions in MLS are on this page:
https://www.lds.org/callings/melchizede ... s?lang=eng
Rights are less strict than I think they used to be with regards to bishopric counselors.

Just to follow up on that last comment, from the MLS support page https://www.lds.org/help/support/mls-us ... s?lang=eng, it says:

View Membership: Gives the right to view membership data but not the right to update it. This right should be limited to members of the bishopric or branch presidency or stake or district presidency as well as clerks, assistant clerks, and assistant clerks over membership.

This seems pretty clear that members of the bishopric (i.e. counselors) should be able to see membership information in LDS Tools. And as mentioned above, the When records are moved into the ward, for example, it's extremely helpful for me (as a counselor) to know if they were baptized recently, are a prospective elder, etc. As it stands now, I can't even tell from LDS Tools if a member is a HP or EQ or unordained.

Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?
Thanks!

sorens wrote:Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?

The question is, which one is wrong? I suspect the tables that scgallafent mentioned in this post is probably more authoritative than the MLS instructions.

russellhltn wrote:

sorens wrote:Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?

The question is, which one is wrong? I suspect the tables that scgallafent mentioned in this post is probably more authoritative than the MLS instructions.

I don't think there is much question. The MLS instructions are based on much more rough grained rights than are used in LCR and LDS Tools so any instructions on who should have what rights in MLS cannot be transferred directly to the other tools.

sorens wrote:Is there an administrator following this thread that could get this fixed?

Forum administrators and moderators are just other users of these tools like yourself and do not have any ability to make any changes.

Occasionally a developer (like scgallafent) will drop by and read and sometimes comment on things but in cases like this even the developers can't just make changes. Those decisions are made by the general authorities in the appropriate church department (in this case the Priesthood Department) and as far as we know they do not frequent the forums. The official way to submit something for their consideration is to use the Feedback link on any page of lds.org.

What russellhltn and eblood66 said.

The documentation you are reading is for MLS and does not apply to LDS Tools.

There is a fairly extensive access table that has been approved by the appropriate councils that specifies who has read and write access to everything that is part of a membership record. What you see in Leader and Clerk Resources reflects that access. Those rights may be reviewed and adjusted (and have been in the past), but that is what we go by when determining who has access to information.

LDS Tools is a different tool designed to solve different problems. In some cases, it doesn't provide information that would be available in LCR. For example, a bishop's counselor can see in LCR whether a member has been endowed and sealed (no dates) and current priesthood office (no dates). That information is not visible in LDS Tools.

MLS is from a different era. We are working on an update to the security model in MLS that better reflects the appropriate access rights. It has been named Leader and Clerk Resources.

@scgallafent, Would it be possible for this extensive access table to be published somewhere – for example, in Leader and Clerk Resources so it can be kept up-to-date? Leader and Clerk Resources has a very basic access table, but often these little things come up, and people complain, and it'd be good to know clearly what the policy is when explaining why things can't be seen.

sbradshaw wrote:@scgallafent, Would it be possible for this extensive access table to be published somewhere – for example, in Leader and Clerk Resources so it can be kept up-to-date?

I don't think that is likely to happen.

scgallafent wrote:

sbradshaw wrote:@scgallafent, Would it be possible for this extensive access table to be published somewhere – for example, in Leader and Clerk Resources so it can be kept up-to-date?

I don't think that is likely to happen.

On one hand, I can understand not wanting to publish a detailed list. It's likely to start a debate from leaders who think they should have more and a negative reaction from members who think it should be more restricted.

But on the other hand, it makes it hard to know if someone is not seeing what they should, or worse, more than they should. Without any reference, this would be a serious barrier to reporting bugs regarding exposed information.

I'm not sure as I have an answer, but perhaps some indications of what it is for some fields would be useful.