Organize Members into Custom Lists, Make Notes

Thanks for all the recent dev efforts and additions to the LCR. Our ward absolutely loves the reports and many features that make our meetings and callings more efficient so that we can focus more on helping the members of the ward and less time on administrative tasks.

Our Ward Council and Bishopric currently use a plethora of Google Sheets for keeping track of everything from activation efforts to Young Single Adults to Single Mothers and unassigned families (and much much more). This works great for having a centralized place to collaborate and take notes that can be seen/edited by everyone. However, a big downside is that there is no way to dynamically update these Google Sheets when members move in/out. The maintenance on dozens of Google Sheets quickly becomes an administrative nightmare.

It would be great to have the ability in LCR to create custom lists, control access to the lists, and have functionality to add comments/notes next to names in the lists. Even better if it is accessible and editable via mobile device, but the web browser would be a great starting place. I doubt there is an easy way to connect Google Sheets (or another similar third party platform) directly to LCR via an API, but that might also be a better option than developing all this functionality in-house. This feature will address a big pain point that I'm sure many many wards face.

gorgando wrote:Our Ward Council and Bishopric currently use a plethora of Google Sheets for keeping track of everything from activation efforts to Young Single Adults to Single Mothers and unassigned families (and much much more).

The ward leadership may want to review the Meetinghouse Technology Policy:

4.9.3 The use of MLS data and membership information in third party software is prohibited, whether obtained from within or outside of a meetinghouse.
4.9.4 The use of cloud-based services for storing and/or backing up MLS or any membership related data is prohibited.

gorgando wrote:It would be great to have the ability in LCR to create custom lists, control access to the lists, and have functionality to add comments/notes next to names in the lists. Even better if it is accessible and editable via mobile device, but the web browser would be a great starting place.

The development priorities are set by the Priesthood Department, but you can submit a suggestion via the Feedback link in LCR.

Second this request. Will post it in the Feedback.

thefluxster wrote:Second this request. Will post it in the Feedback.

You are seconding a post that is nearly 3 years old. LCR has the ability to generate custom reports. I believe it is restricted to the bishopric and clerk. Ward council members who need a custom report can request it from their ward clerk. The additional functionality (generate a live list that can be later edited) is not available. That would be something to send feedback on if it is important to you.

I've been searching for a similar function. We would like to have an "Area Book" where we could save information about members, especially less actives. I doubt I need to explain why this is useful. I have seen the technology policy mentioned earlier so I hesitate to start using an app for it but it's absolutely critical that we have something online where we can share notes with specific people securely. The people who have access to those notes would change over time. I realize this isn't the feature request forum but if anyone has solved this problem already, I'd love to hear what they did. During this pandemic it's even more critical that it's cloud based so it would be so great if the church could create something...

I tried to figure out how to suggest a feature in the Member Tools app but it wasn't working for me.

mmickelson wrote:I tried to figure out how to suggest a feature in the Member Tools app but it wasn't working for me.

In the Tools app, what happens when you choose Help -> Contact Us ?
Your device should open a new message using your default email app.

mmickelson wrote:We would like to have an "Area Book" where we could save information about members, especially less actives. I doubt I need to explain why this is useful.

I'm sure it would be useful. Here's a scenario where it could go really wrong:

A less-active family lives in a ward and is antagonistic toward the Church. The missionaries knock on the door and a family member sends them away rather abruptly. The missionaries talk with a member of the elders quorum presidency, who puts a note in about the less-active family that says "Not interested -- missionaries stopped by and they were extremely rude and told them to leave."

A couple of years later, the family has a change of heart and begins participating with the Church again. They progress to the point where callings would help them continue to grow. The husband gets extended a calling to serve as secretary in the elders quorum. It is a great opportunity for him to grow because he interacts regularly with the elders quorum president and quorum members.

Everything is fine until the day he is looking at notes on member records and decides to look and see if there are notes on his family....

It would be very useful to expand the current custom list capability to include all fields. Currently It is impossible to print a list of names only for an organization. It also would be great to have more output options and not just .pdf. I spend hours copying and pasting, time that could be used to interview and minister rather than organize.