List of Reports & misc

Is there a list of all available reports in MLS? I'm specifically looking for a report of all households not assigned a HT .

I'm also trying to find out how to assign families to a specific quorum, without assigning them a Ht.

Finally can MLS automatically assign prospective elders to the HPG for Ht responsibility, or does this have to be done manually?

rvande22 wrote:I'm also trying to find out how to assign families to a specific quorum, without assigning them a Ht.

Finally can MLS automatically assign prospective elders to the HPG for Ht responsibility, or does this have to be done manually?

The short answer to the first question above is no. There are workarounds involving setting up dummy companionships. See discussion in this thread.

I believe the answer to the second question is also no.

BTW, I thought there was a Households Without Home Teachers report, but I can't find it at the moment. If there is not such a report, it is easy to make a custom report that would show that data. Or get the MLS Export file called HomeTeaching.csv and pull it into a spreadsheet. It has a record for each household in the ward, with columns for Quorum, District, Companionship and home teachers. It is easy to filter the unassigned families.

rvande22 wrote:Is there a list of all available reports in MLS? I'm specifically looking for a report of all households not assigned a HT .

The simple answer to this one is YES. That list is a section of the Home Teaching Statistics Report. If you want to print it by itself, you can use the "Sections to Show" selector at the top right of the HT Statistics screen to select only that report.

rvande22 wrote:Finally can MLS automatically assign prospective elders to the HPG for Ht responsibility, or does this have to be done manually?

As boomerbubba mentioned, MLS doesn't have a concept of an HT assignment to a quorum; an assignment only happens when a household is assigned to a companionship (and the companionship is of course associated with a quorum).

But aside from that minor issue, this really isn't a problem. Home teaching won't really happen until you assign a family to an actual companionship. The HPG has primary responsibility for prospective elders, so they should be home teaching them, except in particular cases where the HPGL would then coordinate with the EQ President.

As you assign a household to a companionship, you can assign a household with any priesthood to a companionship in any quorum. There is a selector that allows you to filter by Head of House Priesthood, so that you can more easily find HP, Elders, or Prospective Elders (or No Priesthood), but that doesn't limit who you can assign.

Alan_Brown wrote:... The HPG has primary responsibility for prospective elders, so they should be home teaching them, except in particular cases where the HPGL would then coordinate with the EQ President.

Just a minor additional comment ... The bishop should approve all HT assignments.

I would like to echo rvande22's 1st question:

rvande22 wrote:Is there a list of all available reports in MLS?

It would be nice if there was a good reference of all available standard reports/lists available in MLS with corresponding instructions on where to find/how to generate them with example data.

For those of us who don't use MLS everyday or regularly generate requested reports/lists, it has been my experience that much time is lost searching for the right screen, etc. I've usually been able to eventually find what I wanted, but I've had less experienced ward clerks come back and say after trying for a time that the list doesn't exist. There have even been instances when custom reports were created (or .csv files generated and opened in Excel) when a similar standard report already existed.

I'm sometimes wishing for the old MIS days when someone could bring in an old report asking for a new one, and all the clerk had to do was type the report number (ie. 3.2.1) and the list would appear on the screen.

Greggo wrote:I'm sometimes wishing for the old MIS days when someone could bring in an old report asking for a new one, and all the clerk had to do was type the report number (ie. 3.2.1) and the list would appear on the screen.

I agree that this would be nice. One of the challenges, though, is that there are different ways to get to some reports, and some reports are not available to all users because their login does not allow access.

This does not mean there is not a solution, but I have not been able to think of a good one in the small amount of time I have spent thinking about it.

Someone early in the MLS days (around 2005) prepared a document that listed every command. I will go looking for it.

Greggo wrote: It would be nice if there was a good reference of all available standard reports/lists available in MLS with corresponding instructions on where to find/how to generate them with example data.

The problem I see with this suggestion is that almost every screen in MLS can be printed, and thus is a report of some kind. So compiling a comprehensive list would basically be documenting MLS.

Fortunately, this has already been done -- it's called the MLS Help System (a parallel resource is the MLS Software Manual). Although the documentation is not comprehensive, and the search doesn't always work perfectly, still it does work pretty well.

I do a lot of MLS support, and when I am asked a question as to whether something exists, and I reply with the question "Have you looked in the Help system?" the answer is almost always "no." I'm happy to answer the question, but it's a pity that they didn't bother to look it up when the answer was probably at their fingertips.

For example, a search in the Help system for "unassigned" gives the HT Statistics Report as the very first hit. So the specific question that started this thread could have been answered easily, simply by consulting MLS Help.

Greggo wrote:I've had less experienced ward clerks come back and say after trying for a time that the list doesn't exist.

I've found that some reports look quite different in Print (or Print Preview) then on-screen. So it's possible to be looking at the very report you want and not realize it.

RussellHltn wrote:I've found that some reports look quite different in Print (or Print Preview) then on-screen. So it's possible to be looking at the very report you want and not realize it.

That's a good point. The classic example of this would be the "Tithing and Offerings Batch Summary Report", which every financial clerk is required to submit to the stake each January along with the Tithing Declaration Report. How do you print that Batch Summary Report? By going to View/Update Donations and clicking the Print button. That's so unintuitive that the Church finally decided to give explicit instructions for printing that report in the instructions they send each year about year-end financial procedures.

But I would note that once again, the MLS Help system is your friend. Searching for "Batch Summary Report" in the MLS Help system does indeed give you the answer on the number 1 hit. So it may not be intuitive, but it's easy to find if you use the Help system.

Not all references are for the user. A list of reports could be given to auxiliary leaders who may not have access the system, or the help file, so they could know what is available to request.

We set up a get around for this. We created three additional "districts" with the EQ or HP leaders as the HT. District 4 is members who do not want HT contact. District 5 is for reported move outs. District 6 is for newly assigned families to that quorum. The quorum manages district 4 and 5. The Ward Clerk (who also hears the quorum assignment in PEC) assigns the family to District 6. Then the quorum leadership need only run a report of District 6 to see who needs to be assigned in their quorum.

Side note. The Ward Clerk periodically checks District 5 (move outs) to move records out of the ward. District 4 (no contact) is readily available to discuss names with the bishop or in PEC.

This works well for us.