Primary teachers class access on tools

Do primary teachers have access to their class members lists on tools? Primary president asked me about that today. All teachers are assigned to their classes.

brown67 wrote:Do primary teachers have access to their class members lists on tools? Primary president asked me about that today. All teachers are assigned to their classes.

Only the primary presidency has access to organization information. Unfortunately this means primary teachers do not have access in Member Tools to see the members of the classes they teach. The only work-around is for the primary secretary to provide a paper attendance roster to the teachers.

Is this because the Church doesn't want Primary teachers to have access to this info electronically or simply technical decision not to implement that feature?

I'm a primary music director, and it would help me get to know all the children better if I had ready access. For now, I'm working through the Primary Presidency.

JonathanThomasMarshall wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 9:12 am Is this because the Church doesn't want Primary teachers to have access to this info electronically or simply technical decision not to implement that feature?

The reason for this is unknown. The development team gets their business rules from a sponsoring Church department or council. Unless those who are in the know visit here, read this thread, and then respond we are left to speculate. My speculation is the most restrictive privacy laws the Church must operate under, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are driving the Church to limit access.

JonathanThomasMarshall wrote: Is this because the Church doesn't want Primary teachers to have access to this info electronically or simply technical decision not to implement that feature?

I agree with jdlessley. In my personal opinion, it has to do with children and youth protection issues. There may also be legal requirements involved.

lajackson wrote: Tue Sep 07, 2021 11:37 am I agree with jdlessley. In my personal opinion, it has to do with children and youth protection issues. There may also be legal requirements involved.

I agree in principle with jdlessley and lajackson. My addition to the speculation pile is to point out the same issue exists for adult class.

I'm suspecting it may have to do with the "leadership only" privacy selection some members may have (and is the default for the UK). Is a teacher is a "leader" according to the privacy laws?

Class information is included in the data sent to Member Tools. You can see what classes a member is in by selecting them in the directory, including children and youth in your home unit. So the data is included in the json data sent back from the API and the app does not block you from viewing that information for a specific member. My assumption is this is a bug so I submitted a bug report for it. If it's not a bug and the intent is to block access except for leadership, Member Tools should not be receiving class information at all.

trevorlauder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 7:17 pm Class information is included in the data sent to Member Tools. You can see what classes a member is in by selecting them in the directory, including children and youth in your home unit. So the data is included in the json data sent back from the API and the app does not block you from viewing that information for a specific member.

That's fine - unless that person's privacy has been marked as "leadership only" and you're not a "leader". Then you shouldn't be able to see them at all.

But what happens if you look at a class list and notice some people are missing (because they were set to private)? You wouldn't be able to run an attendance list from that incomplete information. (Which is what this thread is about.) And the fact some are missing now becomes more obvious and may put pressure on members to "uncloak".

russellhltn wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:11 pm

trevorlauder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 7:17 pm Class information is included in the data sent to Member Tools. You can see what classes a member is in by selecting them in the directory, including children and youth in your home unit. So the data is included in the json data sent back from the API and the app does not block you from viewing that information for a specific member.

That's fine - unless that person's privacy has been marked as "leadership only" and you're not a "leader". Then you shouldn't be able to see them at all.

But what happens if you look at a class list and notice some people are missing (because they were set to private)? You wouldn't be able to run an attendance list from that incomplete information. (Which is what this thread is about.) And the fact some are missing now becomes more obvious and may put pressure on members to "uncloak".

I'll have to test it out with someone that I know has it marked as private, but I don't believe it changes anything for this. The privacy settings are for Photo, Phone, E-mail, Address and Show on Map. I believe they would still show up in the list of members and you would be able to see class information, just not the data I listed. Regardless, if there is a privacy or legal reason to not show the lists, it's moot as they send the data to the client which means it's trivial to get with a little code. I'll see what they respond back with about the bug report, if it's not a bug then they should fix the data leak.

trevorlauder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:23 pmThe privacy settings are for Photo, Phone, E-mail, Address and Show on Map.

There is also a setting called Household Visibility Limit which controls whether people in the household are visible at all. If that one is set (and the user isn't a leader) then that person shouldn't show up in the json data at all. If they do, then that would almost surely be a privacy bug.

eblood66 wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:33 pm

trevorlauder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:23 pmThe privacy settings are for Photo, Phone, E-mail, Address and Show on Map.

There is also a setting called Household Visibility Limit which controls whether people in the household are visible at all. If that one is set (and the user isn't a leader) then that person shouldn't show up in the json data at all. If they do, then that would almost surely be a privacy bug.

According to the description of that setting, that just limits how wide individuals can set their privacy settings. So a family member can't set their privacy setting wider than what the head of household set in Household Visibility Limit.

I'll find someone tomorrow to set all their privacy settings to Private and see what I can view. I'm pretty sure I'll still be able to see them in the directory, just not their photo, address and contact information.

trevorlauder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:23 pm The privacy settings are for Photo, Phone, E-mail, Address and Show on Map. I believe they would still show up in the list of members and you would be able to see class information, just not the data I listed. Regardless, if there is a privacy or legal reason to not show the lists, it's moot as they send the data to the client which means it's trivial to get with a little code. I'll see what they respond back with about the bug report, if it's not a bug then they should fix the data leak.

Yes, it certainly looks that way in the current interface. But I distantly remember there was a way to have the whole household disappear from the general membership. Looking at my own ward list, I can see one member that's missing that should be there.

trevorlauder wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:00 pm I'll find someone tomorrow to set all their privacy settings to Private and see what I can view. I'm pretty sure I'll still be able to see them in the directory, just not their photo, address and contact information.

Please keep in mind it may take some time for the change to ripple though the system. You may need to give it a couple of days if it doesn't appear to work.

So the Household Visibility Limit does more than just set the upper limit, it also acts as a master switch that makes them disappear from the directory. I confirmed in Member Tools and the raw data, that if you set Household Visibility Limit to Private I can no longer see the household at all.

If Household Visibility Limit is not set to Private, I can see them in the directory in Member Tools (and the raw data) and it still includes class and calling information which means I can build a class list with them in it from the raw data. It doesn't matter if the other individual or household items are set to Private, they will still be in the directory and it will include calling and class data but will exclude that specific information that is marked as Private.

I'm waiting to receive a serious response to my bug report. They responded with a canned email basically telling me to try resetting my app to see if it fixes the problem which leads me to think they didn't actually read or understand my bug report. I sent a more verbose response detailing the issue.

Either it's a bug and they should fix Member Tools to let non-leaders see class lists or they should remove the class information from the data sent to Member Tools for non-leader accounts.

trevorlauder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 8:21 pm Either it's a bug and they should fix Member Tools to let non-leaders see class lists or they should remove the class information from the data sent to Member Tools for non-leader accounts.

I think you're missing my point. The issue isn't whether the class information is private. The issue is that non-leaders would end up with an incomplete class list.

An incomplete class list create problems - especially if it's used for taking roll. Not big problem. Little ones like "why isn't the Brown family listed here?" Or people feeling left out. I think CHQ decided rather than make available an incomplete list, they opted to not hand one out at all except to leaders.

If you (as a non-leader) would like to have an incomplete list, then I'd suggest submitting that in your feedback.

Having an incomplete class list is fine. LCR is used to print attendance lists, which a teacher could get through the presidency. Having the class list in Member Tools has other uses and is not used for tracking attendance. Being able to see the member of the class, their names, the family they belong to and any picture their family or they may have attached would be useful for learning class members. If CHQ isn't concerned about the data being sent but not displayed in Member Tools that's fine, I wrote my own program to spit out a class list for any class passed in as input and I can just us that on my phone. It just seemed odd that they send the information but don't use it rather than exclude the information for non-leadership accounts. I was just trying to bring visibility to that part of it, in case there is a privacy reason why non-leaders aren't given class lists in Member Tools. If it's just about not providing an incomplete list, that's not a big deal.

I wonder though how this relates to the privacy settings. If a member has opted to have their information not in the directory, doesn't an organization presidency giving a class list, with all members listed, to a teacher violate the users privacy setting? I would think in that case you would want to provide an incomplete list to the teacher since the member is under the impression that only leaders have access to see them in the directory.

trevorlauder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:29 pm I wonder though how this relates to the privacy settings. If a member has opted to have their information not in the directory, doesn't an organization presidency giving a class list, with all members listed, to a teacher violate the users privacy setting?

I'm not sure. I do know that electronic systems play by much stricter laws than paper records.

For example, at the Federal level, electronic systems with personal information have to go though a Privacy Impact Assessment. (Like an Environmental Impact Statement, but for privacy). But paper-based records are exempt. Even if both contain the same information. In fact, digitizing paper records can trigger a PIA.

I'm not sure how that impacts the church, but I'd expect some of the same thinking about paper verses electronic.

I guess my point here is that if the reason is due to not giving teachers an incomplete list, the logic doesn't add up. It creates one of these scenarios:

• Teacher has no list in Member Tools, receives attendance list from Organization Secretary including those marked as Private

• Teacher has no list in Member Tools, receives attendance list from Organization Secretary which does not include those marked as Private

• Teacher has list in Member Tools but doesn't show those listed as Private

• Teacher has list in Member Tools which shows all members including those marked as Private

All of these scenarios create the same issue. If the attendance list from the secretary doesn't include everyone and respects the members privacy setting, then what is the point in blocking teachers access to it in Member Tools? If the attendance list from the secretary does include those marked as private, there is no point in blocking the class list in Member Tools at all. In the end it just makes it harder on teachers and doesn't actually prevent what they might be attempting to prevent.

If there is a difference between how electronic access and paper are treated by privacy laws, just give the teachers an incomplete list in Member Tools with the understanding that it may be incomplete and they should refer to their attendance list for more details.

The one caveat to all of this is I don't think Member Tools currently has the ability to differentiate between who that classes teacher is vs anyone else in the ward. It only knows to treat leadership callings differently when pulling down the data. So if they were to show the full class list in Member Tools, including Private records, they would need to add another layer of permissions.

trevorlauder wrote: Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:04 pm The one caveat to all of this is I don't think Member Tools currently has the ability to differentiate between who that classes teacher is vs anyone else in the ward. It only knows to treat leadership callings differently when pulling down the data. So if they were to show the full class list in Member Tools, including Private records, they would need to add another layer of permissions.

Since Member Tools shows the teachers in the class they know the association between teachers and members in the class. If they were given permission to do it they could show the class members just to the teachers of the class.

Trevor, I'd just re-emphasize that we're all working on an incomplete set of information regarding why this is implemented this way. So we can follow the different logic threads of available info to their conclusions, but this may or may not have a correlation to the reason for the implementation.

Not to say that forum users aren't able to reason things out that the dev teams haven't fully considered, but I'd imagine there's other unknown considerations for the implementation (which we may or may not think are valid, if we ever were able to peek inside that process!). It's frustrating for sure, but sometimes we just can't reason these things out with our "best guesses".