Custom Reports on LCR vs MLS

As the Membership Clerk, I have created MANY Custom Reports in MLS that I use to assist individuals in their callings. Will I be able to create these Custom Reports in LCR when MLS is retired? I do not like the idea of telling leaders, "Sorry, I cannot help you." Thank you.

RichardGamble wrote:As the Membership Clerk, I have created MANY Custom Reports in MLS that I use to assist individuals in their callings. Will I be able to create these Custom Reports in LCR when MLS is retired? I do not like the idea of telling leaders, "Sorry, I cannot help you." Thank you.

While I understand that the task is to move all of the functionality of MLS to the Web, I have not heard any mention that custom reports will be available in LCR. I have found that the information in many custom reports can be obtained through LCR with varying degrees of usefulness, extraneous data, and formatting.

But our budget allowance does not support the associated paper requirement, so we rely to a large extent on pdf files and run lots of reports because they are not accessible for sorting, updating, and parsing.

The only information I recall from a Church employee on the question of custom reports in LCR is in this post, and a follow-up post in the same topic. There's some good information there, but no definitive plans are mentioned, and that discussion is nearly a year old now.

This is very sad

RichardGamble wrote:This is very sad

I see no reason for sadness at this point. MLS is still available, with all the custom reports that you have created. We don't yet know what will happen with custom reports in LCR. For now, you can help the cause by making your voice heard. Use the Feedback link on LCR to explain how valuable custom reports are and how much you'd like to see that functionality in LCR.

As aebrown stated, MLS will still be with us. MLS will not, however, be the input source for much data. But the ability to view the same data that has always been there will still be viewable through the standard screens and reports as well as custom reports. How long this ability will stay with MLS is unknown. I doubt the ability to view data in MLS and use custom reports will be removed for quite some time - at least until these capabilities are available elsewhere, such as in LCR.

jdlessley wrote:But the ability to view the same data that has always been there will still be viewable through the standard screens and reports as well as custom reports

Just as long as your custom report doesn't touch on HT/VT. Because that data won't be there.

Will HT/VT be absent from MLS? I thought it was going to be read only...

simonawright wrote:Will HT/VT be absent from MLS? I thought it was going to be read only...

Code to sync the data between MLS and CHQ never existed. That is part of why when you move to HT/VT on LCR it is a move. The amount of work to manage syncing was more that we wanted to 'waste' rather than putting the work into moving more functionality.

simonawright wrote:Will HT/VT be absent from MLS? I thought it was going to be read only...

The LCR 3.0 Release Notes make the distinction clear: "Changes made to organizations and callings in LCR will be viewable in MLS. Changes made to home and visiting teaching in LCR will not be viewable or updatable in MLS." (emphasis added).

simonawright wrote:Will HT/VT be absent from MLS? I thought it was going to be read only...

From the Release Notes:

"Changes made to organizations and callings in LCR will be viewable in MLS. Changes made to home and visiting teaching in LCR will not be viewable or updatable in MLS."

So, yes, it will be read-only. But only the historical data - until the data ages out. (About one year.)

Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

mevans wrote:Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

It seems like percentages are kept historically, but not whether or not individuals have been visited.

EDIT: Actually, I only have access to the stake-level reports and now that I think of it I think there are more Home/Visiting Teaching reports available on the ward level. So I'm not sure.

mevans wrote:Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

They do a one time import from MLS as a unit is moved over. I believe the visit history is a part of that.

Edit: I just checked for my ward and it has visit history back to may 2014.

The following is just one example of why I am concerned about Custom Reports.

Geocoding of households.

Ward Level: Many uses including HT and VT companionships and routes for Fast Offering collections.

Stake Level: Realignment of Ward and Stake Boundaries. (I am sure there are others.)

Presently, I see no capability for entering, viewing, or printing geocodes in LCR.
I am hoping that provisions for geocoding and Custom Reports will be enhanced as LCR is further implemented. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to using LCR.

RichardGamble wrote:Presently, I see no capability for entering, viewing, or printing geocodes in LCR.

It appears that geocodes as we know them will not be used in LCR. Ryan Jones gave us a clue in this post.

The new boundary change feature won't use geo codes like MLS does. It will let you draw on the map and uses the members locations in lds.org/maps

It would be very nice if this new method will also work for a ward to use in preparing fast offering routes, home teaching and visiting teaching routes, and for other similar functions.

Thank you for the update. I appreciate the info.

RichardGamble wrote:Will I be able to create these Custom Reports in LCR when MLS is retired? I do not like the idea of telling leaders, "Sorry, I cannot help you." Thank you.

I'm a huge fan of MLS for it's custom report ability. While I wish for the best, I also think the loss of MLS will mean a loss of customization for reports, and the ability to search membership records on custom criteria, similar to the ability to export data from MLS currently is becoming more limited.

(Added later: I don't fault anyone for this, but see that the current push is for other functionality with their limited programming resources. Developers may get around to making a "customization" option for reports in LCR later?)

mevans wrote:Will the historical HT/VT visit data be loaded in LCR, or will we have to do reports from both systems for a year if we want to see if a family has been visited?

Data is migrated from MLS. There is a brief window between when the last MLS transmission was made and when the data is migrated where data entered in MLS won't make it to LCR. For units that transmit regularly, that window should only be fairly shortly.

Related directly to this post, I would love for the custom reports to all be moved online to LCR so I can run and input data from home rather than from only the church building. (It would be ideal if the user defined data could be exported or synced so that it is in LCR.)

Currently, my custom reports that have user defined fields (which I use for keeping track of who spoke and prayed in Sacrament meeting) are all broken with an error that says "Changing the calling in organization selection invalidates the calling position"; however nothing in the reports I am trying to run use any calling fields or selectors. So there is a bug with the custom reports. Please fix this!

See the thread here about the current Custom Reports error on user defined fields:
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 13#p147413

danielgibby wrote:Currently, my custom reports that have user defined fields (which I use for keeping track of who spoke and prayed in Sacrament meeting) are all broken with an error that says "Changing the calling in organization selection invalidates the calling position"; however nothing in the reports I am trying to run use any calling fields or selectors. So there is a bug with the custom reports. Please fix this!

This issue is quite unrelated to the topic of this discussion -- custom reports on LCR -- since this is an MLS issue. It was reported here, and a fix to be in the upcoming MLS 3.8.3 release was noted in this post.

You are partially right that the issue I am having is somewhat unrelated to custom reports on LCR, but not entirely. If there are going to be bugs in MLS that happen, then that makes me want all functionality to be ported to LCR, which is what this topic is about. That's what drove me here and made me think about LCR vs MLS. Also, by only quoting part of my post, it seems like you are saying that my whole post is unrelated, but it wasn't.

danielgibby wrote:by only quoting part of my post, it seems like you are saying that my whole post is unrelated, but it wasn't.

No, by quoting only part of your post I was trying to make it clear that I was responding only to the part I quoted. I referred to "this issue", not to "your post". Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. The first part of your post was entirely germane to this topic and appropriate.

Do you see how the MLS bug is related to the discussion? Part of this discussion was about MLS and taking away functionality there and moving it to LCR, which is why the bug happened. So my point of talking about the bug in MLS on this post is to point out that we will be losing functionality if custom reports are not moved to LCR. Even if there were no bug, the functionality of the custom reports is lessened if the same data isn't available in MLS as is available on LCR (ie. HT/VT data, callings information, etc. which have been moved only into LCR). So if I no longer can run a custom report which has calling data or HT information, then that means that part of what I used to be able to do is now gone.

You could argue that custom reports aren't needed, but there are instances where it is nicer to have a simplified or a more extensive report than what is viewable or downloadable from LCR, (or from the old MLS without custom reports before things were moved to LCR). Being able to create custom reports in LCR is necessary for some leaders to save them a little time or to do things the way that they do them best.

When it comes to custom data, such as is used to track previous callings (which is something that is in the handbook for clerks to do, but there isn't any functionality anywhere that the church provides which makes this easy), or to track who spoke or prayed in Sacrament Meeting, then custom reports were very helpful. The church doesn't want us downloading private or confidential data (which includes people's phone numbers and callings) and keeping it in separate systems. So that means we shouldn't be exporting everything and creating new databases (in Excel or Google Docs, or whatever). Sometimes those really are the easiest tool for the job, because the church doesn't have a tool that allows this to be done without them (except for Custom Fields and custom reports.) So if something goes wrong, or functionality is taken away from custom reports, that is taking away from the clerks and Executive Secretary things that they are supposed to do as part of their calling. If the church will provide the tools and we use them, then we don't need to use outside tools, and the privacy and confidentiality of data is kept more secure. Custom reports is a big part of that.

I would love to see the day where there is no need for a computer in the clerk's office at all. The only things required there now are processing donations (which most members now do online, and which could be done through a web app in LCR), and custom data, which ought to be functionality that is added to LCR.

danielgibby wrote:Do you see how the MLS bug is related to the discussion? Part of this discussion was about MLS and taking away functionality there and moving it to LCR, which is why the bug happened. So my point of talking about the bug in MLS on this post is to point out that we will be losing functionality if custom reports are not moved to LCR.

I can see how a discussion of the need for custom reports on LCR might mention that the custom reports functionality in MLS is becoming less and less capable. I'll certainly agree with you that such a note would be quite relevant.

But reporting the particular details of an MLS bug belongs in the MLS forum, not in the LCR forum, particularly since that bug was already reported in the MLS forum. That was my main point, and the reason I linked to the relevant post over in the MLS forum. Any detailed discussion of the bug belongs in that forum.

danielgibby wrote:Even if there were no bug, the functionality of the custom reports is lessened if the same data isn't available in MLS as is available on LCR (ie. HT/VT data, callings information, etc. which have been moved only into LCR). So if I no longer can run a custom report which has calling data or HT information, then that means that part of what I used to be able to do is now gone.

Agreed.

danielgibby wrote:You could argue that custom reports aren't needed, but there are instances where it is nicer to have a simplified or a more extensive report than what is viewable or downloadable from LCR, (or from the old MLS without custom reports before things were moved to LCR). Being able to create custom reports in LCR is necessary for some leaders to save them a little time or to do things the way that they do them best.

I would never argue that custom reports aren't needed in LCR. I have always been a huge fan of custom reports, since it is impossible for MLS or LCR to add built-in reports that could ever produce all the combinations of reporting data that clerks and leaders might need. Because of that, I've created dozens and dozens of custom reports over the years. The need for custom reports in LCR is only increasing as more and more data becomes inaccessible in MLS.

Is there a report in either program that will show you the past callings a member has held?

martytag wrote:Is there a report in either program that will show you the past callings a member has held?

I wish there was, but I've never seen it. It is something a ward clerk is supposed to track, but there aren't any tools to do it with unless you copy data somewhere outside of those two systems- OR if you use custom fields and reports, but that doesn't work well for a lot of historical callings.

martytag wrote:Is there a report in either program that will show you the past callings a member has held?

There's limited support for that in CDOL. You can look up the person by their current calling and click on "Position Summery". However, I don't think the history goes back all that far. A quick look suggests maybe a little more than 5 years. And that might be deceptive - it may only record positions they were released from in the past few years - we just happen to see the calling date associated with that release.

russellhltn wrote: There's limited support for that in CDOL. You can look up the person by their current calling and click on "Position Summery". However, I don't think the history goes back all that far. A quick look suggests maybe a little more than 5 years. And that might be deceptive - it may only record positions they were released from in the past few years - we just happen to see the calling date associated with that release.

CDOL only shows bishopric members, correct? I don't see, for example, our high priests group leader there, except as someone who used to be the executive secretary.

danielgibby wrote: CDOL only shows bishopric members, correct? I don't see, for example, our high priests group leader there, except as someone who used to be the executive secretary.

Never mind, the UI was just hard to figure out. I eventually found a link that shows other people.
I couldn't search for the relief society president and get results, so I assumed that she wasn't in the system.
I had to go to the ward, then click 'Show all positions'.

russellhltn wrote:There's limited support for that in CDOL. You can look up the person by their current calling and click on "Position Summery". However, I don't think the history goes back all that far. A quick look suggests maybe a little more than 5 years.

CDOL didn't track callings at all (except for bishops and stake presidencies) until about 5 years ago so I don't think that indicates the history is time limited.

However, I am pretty sure that the history is limited to positions in your current ward (and maybe stake). My ward is new and nobody has any historical information at all.

eblood66 wrote:However, I am pretty sure that the history is limited to positions in your current ward (and maybe stake). My ward is new and nobody has any historical information at all.

Taking a quick look, I think you're right.

russellhltn wrote:

martytag wrote:Is there a report in either program that will show you the past callings a member has held?

There's limited support for that in CDOL. You can look up the person by their current calling and click on "Position Summery". However, I don't think the history goes back all that far. A quick look suggests maybe a little more than 5 years. And that might be deceptive - it may only record positions they were released from in the past few years - we just happen to see the calling date associated with that release.

CDOL has history for bishops and stake presidencies going back quite a ways (I believe they are still trying to fill in some of the older (20+ years) ward info. We started keeping history for bishopric counselors, clerks and executive secretaries about 5 years ago.

We would like to start keeping all calling history, but so far the business side hasn't given us that requirement. The best way to help with that is to pass the request up the chain through your priesthood leaders.

jonesrk wrote:We started keeping history for bishopric counselors, clerks and executive secretaries about 5 years ago.

I'm seeing more positions covered then just that. For example: Relief Society.

russellhltn wrote:

jonesrk wrote:We started keeping history for bishopric counselors, clerks and executive secretaries about 5 years ago.

I'm seeing more positions covered then just that. For example: Relief Society.

Occasionally some don't get deleted correctly, but in general when the positions that don't show on the main organization page in CDOL normally get deleted when they are released.

jonesrk wrote:
We would like to start keeping all calling history, but so far the business side hasn't given us that requirement.

Several years back I know a call was extended to a brother, who actually had just been released from it a few years before in the previous bishopric. Calling histories would be fabulous for high turnover bishoprics, and keep some awkward moments from happening.

I'll just add in my $0.02 here. I am also a huge fan of custom reports and have used them extensively over the past decade or so so. LCR absolutely NEEDS custom report functionality.

I also agree with the idea of keeping calling history back at least a few years. That would be very helpful.

This topic, custom reports, seems to have migrated to calling histories. So commenting on the latter, calling histories would be nice but am not sure they should be used to determine whether someone should be called to a position or not. The bishop has keys and if he feels inspired to call someone, and that person was recently released from a similar call, perhaps from a different ward, it shouldn't matter. Inspiration is inspiration. The individual has the agency to decline the call.

This post is for any Church employee with knowledge of Custom Reports. Is there an update on the availability of Custom Reports on LCR? Thank you very much.

RichardGamble wrote:Is there an update on the availability of Custom Reports on LCR?

The Church very rarely provides schedules pertaining to software updates, and rarely even provides information on the direction of software projects. It is most likely we will discover when Custom Reports are available in LCR by noticing that the link has appeared.

That assumes, of course, that the developers even have Custom Reports on their development radar. I believe they do, but I do not believe it has a very high priority. This is my own personal opinion.

We do know that the goal is to have MLS Membership functionality moved to LCR by the end of this year. Since Custom Reports was a part of the MLS Membership software, and a valuable part, I might add, my hope is that this capability will appear in LCR by the end of 2016.

Again, no promises, and no insider knowledge. And the developers do not frequent the Forum except on rare occasions. They receive their instructions and priorities from departments internal to Church headquarters, not from us.