Stake Relief Society Presidency access to "Send a Message"

I am the Stake Executive Secretary and was notified by our Stake Relief Society President that she does not have access to the "Send a Message" application within LCR. I'm very surprised by this. It would seem like a very valuable tool for the Stake RS Presidency, the SYWP, and the SPP. The ability for the SRSP to send a message to all women in the Stake, to send a message to Ward RS Presidencies, etc. I don't see why a Stake Auxiliary level Presidency would not given access to this feature.

Don’t forget Stake Auxiliary Presidents prime duty is to support the ward Auxiliary Presidencies, not individual members. I hope someone will chime in with the appropriate Handbook references.

Biggles wrote:Don’t forget Stake Auxiliary Presidents prime duty is to support the ward Auxiliary Presidencies, not individual members. I hope someone will chime in with the appropriate Handbook references.

General Handbook 5.4

The principal responsibilities of these leaders are to assist the stake presidency and to instruct and support ward organization presidencies. They do not fulfill assignments that should be fulfilled on the ward or family level.

This would explain why they don't have access to sending messages to all sisters in the stake, but sending a message to ward RS leadership would seem to be within their responsibilities.

That would make sense, as far as general Stake membership or even Stake RS Membership. And agreed, the ability to contact Ward RS Presidencies would be a very good use of the application.

I'm wondering if the Send A Message tool has the granularity to restrict messages to groups authorized by the handbook. I'm thinking it was originally coded as an "all or nothing" deal which could explain why access is more restricted.

This might be something to send as feedback... So, for example, the stake RS presidency has access but it will only let them send messages to ward/branch RS presidency members (not general membership).

davesudweeks wrote:I'm wondering if the Send A Message tool has the granularity to restrict messages to groups authorized by the handbook.

I don't know what your definition of granularity is for this purpose, but the Send A Message lists recipient groups as Stake Callings, Ward Callings, and Members. Once one of those recipient groups is selected then there are sub groupings. What the stake organization presidencies are missing in respect to the topic of this thread is the group titled Members. They are missing the Members group since it is organized for ward communications to membership in ward organizations as well as general member lists like All Members, All Adult Members, All Women, and so on.

I would expect the stake RS presidency to have access to the Send A Message app to send messages to the ward RS presidencies as that is their responsibility. I agree that if the stake RS presidency does not have at least the LCR Send A Message app access to send messages to the ward RS presidencies then sending feedback would be a good idea since group messaging was removed from the online Directory and relegated solely to LCR.

jdlessley wrote:

davesudweeks wrote:I'm wondering if the Send A Message tool has the granularity to restrict messages to groups authorized by the handbook.

I don't know what your definition of granularity is for this purpose, but the Send A Message lists recipient groups as Stake Callings, Ward Callings, and Members. Once one of those recipient groups is selected then there are sub groupings. What the stake organization presidencies are missing in respect to the topic of this thread is the group titled Members. They are missing the Members group since it is organized for ward communications to membership in ward organizations as well as general member lists like All Members, All Adult Members, All Women, and so on.

I would expect the stake RS presidency to have access to the Send A Message app to send messages to the ward RS presidencies as that is their responsibility. I agree that if the stake RS presidency does not have at least the LCR Send A Message app access to send messages to the ward RS presidencies then sending feedback would be a good idea since group messaging was removed from the online Directory and relegated solely to LCR.

I have not had a stake calling since the tool was released. I was just wondering if the tool would know that (in our example) the stake RS president was using send a message and it allowed her to send to the ward/branch RS presidencies but not the general ward/branch membership. This would comply with the handbook and still allow access to the tool. It is possible it does - I may ask my wife to test my theory as she is the stake Primary president in our stake.

davesudweeks wrote:

jdlessley wrote:

davesudweeks wrote:I'm wondering if the Send A Message tool has the granularity to restrict messages to groups authorized by the handbook.

It is possible it does - I may ask my wife to test my theory as she is the stake Primary president in our stake.

You're going to find that your wife can't use the "send a message" application at all. This is the issue.

That is correct. She checked this evening. If it is important to someone, the only way to get a feature request to those who direct the developers is to send feedback. If one doesn't have access to the Send A Message tool, they can do it from any church page and identify it is in regards to that tool. I recommend indicating the benefit of the change they propose.

Agreed. That's why I was surprised that this apparently hadn't been given visibility yet. "Send a Message" has been around for many years. I have submitted feedback about this and I was notified that it has been elevated for consideration.

This confirms my statement that the Send A Message tool is not granular enough to be useful for someone who should be allowed to send messages to a subset of members (such as a stake RS presidency trying to communicate with ward RS presidencies, without making the stake clerk send the message for them). It appears to have been implemented as an "all or nothing" approach so those who should not send to all are not given access to send to anyone, even those the handbook indicates they should be reaching out to.

davesudweeks wrote:This confirms my statement that the Send A Message tool is not granular enough to be useful for someone who should be allowed to send messages to a subset of members (such as a stake RS presidency trying to communicate with ward RS presidencies, without making the stake clerk send the message for them). It appears to have been implemented as an "all or nothing" approach so those who should not send to all are not given access to send to anyone, even those the handbook indicates they should be reaching out to.

Well, not exactly true. I had different "Send a Message" options (more limited) in the EQP than I do now as SES.

bsquared04 wrote:Well, not exactly true. I had different "Send a Message" options (more limited) in the EQP than I do now as SES.

"All or nothing" at the unit level, with "all stake" and "all ward" being supported, but no subsets.

russellhltn wrote:"All or nothing" at the unit level, with "all stake" and "all ward" being supported, but no subsets.

I'm pretty sure that when presidencies were originally given access to Send A Message they did not have access to all ward mailing lists. For example, I don't believe the EQP could email All Adults but the bishopric and clerk could. But the EQP could email all elders. With the changes to the quorums and with the emphasis on the EQP being more responsible for the entire adult membership of the ward, the EQP may now have more access. But I'm quite sure the system has the ability to control which groups someone has based on calling.

But I don't know if they have groups that are of the right granularity for a stake organization leader, specifically 'All ward RS presidency members' and the like. And even if they do, they may not have had the time to do the configuring and testing to make it available to them.

eblood66 wrote:I'm pretty sure that when presidencies were originally given access to Send A Message they did not have access to all ward mailing lists.

I remember an early version that worked that way. But as I recall, the groups may not have pulled from MLS but were based on age/gender and had some inaccuracies. That one was scrapped and re-done.

I think there was also a version that just pulled all the individual emails into the user's email client - which tended to run into spam filters due to the large number of people be addressed. Not to mention that not everyone has a email client installed.

russellhltn wrote:I remember an early version that worked that way. But as I recall, the groups may not have pulled from MLS but were based on age/gender and had some inaccuracies. That one was scrapped and re-done.

I think there was also a version that just pulled all the individual emails into the user's email client - which tended to run into spam filters due to the large number of people be addressed. Not to mention that not everyone has a email client installed.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the email lists available from the old online directory in both cases. I don't believe that Send A Message in LCR ever had either of those flaws (it was integrated with the organizations in CDOL from the start whereas the directory was created before CDOL maintained full organization information). But I could be wrong. Various parts of LCR have been rewritten. But given how all other aspects of the LCR are very concerned with only giving necessary rights to each calling, I'm not sure why they would remove that feature during a rewrite. But maybe they were too pressed for time.

eblood66 wrote:I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the email lists available from the old online directory in both cases.

Yeah, that was probably "Local Unit Website (LUWS)", back when wards were allowed a public-facing photos and message.

I've never had access to LCR, just going by what's been posted here. Some factors may have been lack of time or the need to re-write sections of code in a newer language/package. (It seems code gets outdated as fast as computers.)

davesudweeks wrote:I'm wondering if the Send A Message tool has the granularity to restrict messages to groups authorized by the handbook. I'm thinking it was originally coded as an "all or nothing" deal which could explain why access is more restricted.

It wasn't originally built to provide much granularity for message recipients -- the intended users were bishoprics and stake presidencies -- so we didn't build in a lot of controls to try to limit who had access to email whom.

If a stake organization president is not able to use Send a Message, they would certainly be able to send a message to the stake clerk or even the stake communications specialist and ask them to forward it. The granularity is there for those allowed to send. I can easily select all ward RS presidencies, for example, and could easily select only the presidents if the message was only to them.

I had occasion yesterday to send a message to all the bishops and ward clerks in the stake. The options were there to select each list, add the stake presidency, and send.

Yes, it would be nice if the stake RS of Primary president could send to her respective ward counterparts. But as a workaround, they should enlist the support of the SCS.