MLS has been disabled by the Church

Posted on LCR tonight:

"Member and Leader Services (MLS) uses technology that has become unsupportable before the expected date. As a result, MLS connections have been disabled and will remain inactive for the foreseeable future.

Please record all your donations here in Leader and Clerk Resources (LCR) instead of MLS (if you were not already doing so). If you have donations to record from prior Sundays, you may backdate the donation batch by selecting the calendar icon and choosing the correct date the donations were received.

Stakes with Recreation Camps under their stewardship should contact GSD to receive additional instructions.

We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."

Is it now the case that the only reason to have a computer in the clerks office is to access the Internet?
(And to edit an occasional LibreOffice document.)

lajackson wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:07 pm Is it now the case that the only reason to have a computer in the clerks office is to access the Internet?
(And to edit an occasional LibreOffice document.)

Pretty close. We have units in our stake that have never used MLS and the older units in the stake haven't opened it in over 18 months.

Scgallafent, Is MLS officially dead?

russellhltn wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:32 pm Scgallafent, Is MLS officially dead?

For most units, MLS is basically dead and all necessary functions have been moved online. As I mentioned, my ward hasn't transmitted since November 2020. At this point, it would take four to six hours for a successful send/receive by the ward and over 20 hours for a successful send/receive by the stake. That is well beyond "mostly dead."

Some changes made last week affected membership processing and those are probably the death knell. For units that can use LCR, it is time to migrate.

scgallafent wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 6:26 pm

russellhltn wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:32 pm Scgallafent, Is MLS officially dead?

For most units, MLS is basically dead and all necessary functions have been moved online. As I mentioned, my ward hasn't transmitted since November 2020. At this point, it would take four to six hours for a successful send/receive by the ward and over 20 hours for a successful send/receive by the stake. That is well beyond "mostly dead."

Some changes made last week affected membership processing and those are probably the death knell. For units that can use LCR, it is time to migrate.

Hopefully more computer power is available on Sunday's on the Church's end to process tithing on LCR. For months our Ward has had to fall back to using MLS for in person deposits as a viable back-up, as LCR just sits there and spins for an extremely long time until we give up. Other units in our Stake have told me the same thing. We have tried to migrate to LCR completely many times, only to be slapped back to reality on Sunday's. We also have encouraged members to donate on line, but some do not wish to, plus there is always children's tithing to process as well as check writing for Fast Offering purposes.

I'm sure I could search and find this answer embedded in some topic thread, but I'll ask here. If/When LCRF is unavailable on a Sunday, what are the options for processing donations? I know the Bishop could keep the donations with him until the next week.

But I believe I've read that you can do the bank deposit and then later enter the info into LCRF. Was this only when no internet connection was available, so MLS could be used locally to create the deposit info? A quick search of the Help Docs didn't show me anything regarding this. With MLS gone, are we required to fully process via LCRF before we can make the bank deposit?

BrianEdwards wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 3:23 pm With MLS gone, are we required to fully process via LCRF before we can make the bank deposit?

That is the preferred method. If LCRF is not available or the deposit cannot be recorded online, you still make the bank deposit and resolve the LCRF issues afterward.

What about the "Bank Copy of the Deposit Report" statement that is normally printed out and included in the deposit bag? I've never been certain if the Bank actually cares if that's included, but this sounds like it's optional?

BrianEdwards wrote: Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:42 pm What about the "Bank Copy of the Deposit Report" statement that is normally printed out and included in the deposit bag? I've never been certain if the Bank actually cares if that's included, but this sounds like it's optional?

It is a convenience that I suspect most banks just ignore. They count the cash. They scan the checks themselves. They record the deposit.

Hopefully the issues that caused LCR to be down will be gone. We've been told before it's wasn't a matter of throwing more servers at the problem.

It appears something in the infrastructure has collapsed. It sounds like rather than fixing the old system, they're going warp speed to something else.

Please re-enable MLS. With the recent cloud issues, we can't even process donations or expenses. When the website doesn't say "Service Unavailable" - it's stops at the spinning wheel and take 10-15 minutes to load a single page. I hate to say it but website performance was better when we had 56K modems.

Maybe building in some redundancy would help. Many of the modern systems have the ability to fail-over to backup systems. Even if it's Network, Full Stack, Hardware. There are already cloud infrastructure available to help (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).

plott wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 12:10 pm Please re-enable MLS.

This is not possible due to conditions beyond the ICS department control. They are working the known issues with web services for the church.

Maybe a page health status website would help- I'm seeing a lot of frustration from Financial clerks in the past couple weeks. Seems like some serious issues are being experiences behind the scenes and providing a little more than "Service Unavailable" or "Oops" on Sunday would help to alleviate a little bit of the stress and frustration.

Even the option of manually doing tithing like we did back in the early 80's and 90's is better than this.

jdlessley wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 12:25 pm

plott wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 12:10 pm Please re-enable MLS.

This is not possible due to conditions beyond the ICS department control. They are working the known issues with web services for the church.

Please see my post, link below, on my use of MLS today.

https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/fo ... 30#p231990

Our ward only recently started using LCR to record donations, but two weeks ago and this week we used MLS just fine when LCR was non-functional. I was surprised tonight when I saw the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled. Regardless of the dashboard's message, until they truly disable MLS we'll keep using it as a fallback.

paulw wrote: Sun Apr 10, 2022 10:16 pm Our ward only recently started using LCR to record donations, but two weeks ago and this week we used MLS just fine when LCR was non-functional. I was surprised tonight when I saw the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled. Regardless of the dashboard's message, until they truly disable MLS we'll keep using it as a fallback.

I’m curious as to which/where the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled was posted. Unless I’ve missed it elsewhere, I’ve only seen a post, in the forum, mentioning this.

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:02 am I’m curious as to which/where the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled was posted. Unless I’ve missed it elsewhere, I’ve only seen a post, in the forum, mentioning this.

It also appears that it hasn't been disabled - but perhaps is speed limited.

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:02 am I’m curious as to which/where the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled was posted. Unless I’ve missed it elsewhere, I’ve only seen a post, in the forum, mentioning this.

It is on the landing page for LCR - if/when you can get to it.

jdlessley wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:34 am

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:02 am I’m curious as to which/where the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled was posted. Unless I’ve missed it elsewhere, I’ve only seen a post, in the forum, mentioning this.

It is on the landing page for LCR - if/when you can get to it.

I've just checked the landing page on LCR and all I'm seeing, in the way of notices, is about the Quarterly Report.

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 5:52 am

jdlessley wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:34 am

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:02 am I’m curious as to which/where the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled was posted. Unless I’ve missed it elsewhere, I’ve only seen a post, in the forum, mentioning this.

It is on the landing page for LCR - if/when you can get to it.

I've just checked the landing page on LCR and all I'm seeing, in the way of notices, is about the Quarterly Report.

It's on the Finance Landing page

kd7mha wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 5:59 am

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 5:52 am

jdlessley wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:34 am
It is on the landing page for LCR - if/when you can get to it.

I've just checked the landing page on LCR and all I'm seeing, in the way of notices, is about the Quarterly Report.

It's on the Finance Landing page

I checked that and there’s no messages about MLS there. Perhaps us in Europe are on a different system?

russellhltn wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 1:03 am

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:02 am I’m curious as to which/where the dashboard note indicating MLS has been disabled was posted. Unless I’ve missed it elsewhere, I’ve only seen a post, in the forum, mentioning this.

It also appears that it hasn't been disabled - but perhaps is speed limited.

I don't know about the finance side, but the server that processes MLS requests for membership and prepares membership change to go down to the units is shut down.

jonesrk wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 9:25 am . . . the server that processes MLS requests for membership and prepares membership change to go down to the units is shut down.

Permanently?

jonesrk wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 9:25 am I don't know about the finance side, but the server that processes MLS requests for membership and prepares membership change to go down to the units is shut down.

Ok, so MLS as far as membership is dead. But it appears the finance side is still alive.

russellhltn wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 11:25 am

jonesrk wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 9:25 am I don't know about the finance side, but the server that processes MLS requests for membership and prepares membership change to go down to the units is shut down.

Ok, so MLS as far as membership is dead. But it appears the finance side is still alive.

That is totally contrary to the message posted in LCR on the Finance Dashboard, where it states MLS has been disabled and we are instructed to use LCR only to record donations now.

Biggles wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 6:18 am Perhaps us in Europe are on a different system?

Quite likely given that you fall under a different area office, and you have forms of money transfer that we don't. For example, we still deal in checks while you have funds transfer.

I also still see the LCRF notice that MLS connections have been disabled, and donations are to be done via LCR. Perhaps the plug hasn't been officially pulled, or was pulled but then plugged back in quietly.

But I'd be a bit concerned that even if the MLS finance transmission appears to go through correctly, there might be a bug in the system that causes some data to get lost -- since the Church seems to feel very unconfident about MLS at this point, and we (the users) don't have specific details about what might be working or not working. When systems start to go down, it's common for a user to get feedback indicating things are ok, but inside the system things aren't quite right. So if somebody uses MLS Finance and it "works", I suggest double-checking later on via LCR to ensure the donation went through properly.

I'd expect if it goes through ok then things are truly good. But given the flakiness of the situation, best to be sure.

garystroble wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 11:32 am That is totally contrary to the message posted in LCR on the Finance Dashboard, where it states MLS has been disabled and we are instructed to use LCR only to record donations now.

And yet it appears some were able to process donations though MLS. What's stated doesn't seem to align with what's being posted.

BrianEdwards makes a good point that it may be failing on the backend where we can't see it.

We just got a new machine installed this past weekend and based on the MLS is dead message, MLS was not even installed on it for us.

Since the membership side of MLS is shut down there could be issues of connectivity between membership and finance when there are changes in membership that are required to complete finance operations. That is why I have directed our ward not to use MLS. An example would be a member or household moves into the ward and a donation from that new member or a member of the new household is processed. The donation transaction may not be completed due to the disconnect with membership.

Since the Church says don't use MLS that should be the end of the story. Any anecdotal examples otherwise are contrary to our very clear and precise instructions and risk creating problems for all concerned.

garystroble wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:43 pm Since the Church says don't use MLS that should be the end of the story. Any anecdotal examples otherwise are contrary to our very clear and precise instructions and risk creating problems for all concerned.

I tend to agree. To be fair, the Church also says to instead use a system that has been pretty much dead/unstable for the past 4 Sundays (and many other days in between)... So, I get the frustration and the desire by some to ignore what they are being told (since MLS was still working when LCR/Finance was not just two weeks ago).

I'm not doing it. I'm done with MLS since that was the instruction. But I understand the frustration when you can't follow the new instruction either.

garystroble wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:43 pm Since the Church says don't use MLS that should be the end of the story. Any anecdotal examples otherwise are contrary to our very clear and precise instructions and risk creating problems for all concerned.

I agree.

I am telling our clerks to prepare the deposit and try to record it in LCR/F. If they cannot record the deposit, take it to the bank anyway. When the Church calls to ask questions because they are not seeing deposit information, ask them if the website is fixed yet, although I suspect the Church is not making those calls right now.

I am also suggesting that they try to make their transmissions at less busy times during the week, whenever that might be.

My stance has changed. Since it was brought up that MLS might appear to work but fail further on in the process, trying to use MLS isn't a good idea.

lajackson wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:07 pm Is it now the case that the only reason to have a computer in the clerks office is to access the Internet?
(And to edit an occasional LibreOffice document.)

Printing checks requires a computer, correct? Some of our members have not added ACH info to allow EFT for reimbursements, but moreover we have multiple fast offering (housing, utilities) accounts that we pay via check.

Also, we still process 4-5 cash donations each week, usually from little children.