Tech Forum Archive

Print a Report with MRNs?

17 postsstarted by tonynocchi 2,216 viewsoriginal topic

tonynocchi
Member
#1
For fifth Sunday, our YM/YW are doing a combined Family History lesson and I have been asked to provide the MRNs for the 30+ youth expected to be in attendance. Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs? I tried to create a custom report with just the youth but there is no field to display MRNs because that would obviously be too easy. Am I missing something? Is there a way to do this without having to look everyone up because the "Search" on the dashboard doesn't work for anyone in a leadership position in our ward so I have to go through the Member Directory and search there.
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#2
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:23 am I have been asked to provide the MRNs for the 30+ youth expected to be in attendance. Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?
I don't think that's a good idea. If the church used Social Security Numbers, you wouldn't print a list with SSNs would you? They want it because MRNs are the key to resetting accounts, and you wouldn't want that getting into the wrong hands. While it's intent is for a good purpose, I'm not sure as the Family History staff is the right hands, particularly on a mass basis.

A better plan would be to have a leader that has access to MRNs at the event or on call. I'd look into the different ways it could be looked up. It might be available in Member Tools.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
tonynocchi
Member
#3
russellhltn wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:44 am
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:23 am I have been asked to provide the MRNs for the 30+ youth expected to be in attendance. Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?
I don't think that's a good idea. If the church used Social Security Numbers, you wouldn't print a list with SSNs would you? They want it because MRNs are the key to resetting accounts, and you wouldn't want that getting into the wrong hands. While it's intent is for a good purpose, I'm not sure as the Family History staff is the right hands, particularly on a mass basis.

A better plan would be to have a leader that has access to MRNs at the event or on call. I'd look into the different ways it could be looked up. It might be available in Member Tools.
The church let's me print out date of birth, birthplace, and maiden name, which is all PII/PPI and could have significantly worse impacts on someone's life than their MRN getting out there. There are other ways of protecting the information and the plan was not to give it to the Family History Staff but for me to sit in the class with them and provide MRNs as needed and I wanted to have the MRNs handy before class. If I have to look up the MRNs for even half the class while the class is going on, not only is it going to disrupt the class, all but the first few youth are going to be left behind in the lesson.

Because the "Search" feature on the LCR Dashboard is broke and the class will be happening at 1:30 PM EDT on Sunday, the chances of me looking up even one MRN every few minutes is low.
garystroble
Senior Member
#4
Edited 1 time, last by garystroble on
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:16 pm
russellhltn wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:44 am
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:23 am I have been asked to provide the MRNs for the 30+ youth expected to be in attendance. Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?
I don't think that's a good idea. If the church used Social Security Numbers, you wouldn't print a list with SSNs would you? They want it because MRNs are the key to resetting accounts, and you wouldn't want that getting into the wrong hands. While it's intent is for a good purpose, I'm not sure as the Family History staff is the right hands, particularly on a mass basis.

A better plan would be to have a leader that has access to MRNs at the event or on call. I'd look into the different ways it could be looked up. It might be available in Member Tools.
The church let's me print out date of birth, birthplace, and maiden name, which is all PII/PPI and could have significantly worse impacts on someone's life than their MRN getting out there. There are other ways of protecting the information and the plan was not to give it to the Family History Staff but for me to sit in the class with them and provide MRNs as needed and I wanted to have the MRNs handy before class. If I have to look up the MRNs for even half the class while the class is going on, not only is it going to disrupt the class, all but the first few youth are going to be left behind in the lesson.

Because the "Search" feature on the LCR Dashboard is broke and the class will be happening at 1:30 PM EDT on Sunday, the chances of me looking up even one MRN every few minutes is low.
As a clerk you can also see MRN's on your member app for each individual youth, under membership information. For that matter, if the youth have the member app on their phone, they may be able to see their MRN right there. I know adults can see theirs in the app.

Another option is to print IOS's for the youth ahead of time, which would show their MRN, and they can then keep the IOS.
tonynocchi
Member
#5
garystroble wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:30 pm
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:16 pm
russellhltn wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:44 am

I don't think that's a good idea. If the church used Social Security Numbers, you wouldn't print a list with SSNs would you? They want it because MRNs are the key to resetting accounts, and you wouldn't want that getting into the wrong hands. While it's intent is for a good purpose, I'm not sure as the Family History staff is the right hands, particularly on a mass basis.

A better plan would be to have a leader that has access to MRNs at the event or on call. I'd look into the different ways it could be looked up. It might be available in Member Tools.
The church let's me print out date of birth, birthplace, and maiden name, which is all PII/PPI and could have significantly worse impacts on someone's life than their MRN getting out there. There are other ways of protecting the information and the plan was not to give it to the Family History Staff but for me to sit in the class with them and provide MRNs as needed and I wanted to have the MRNs handy before class. If I have to look up the MRNs for even half the class while the class is going on, not only is it going to disrupt the class, all but the first few youth are going to be left behind in the lesson.

Because the "Search" feature on the LCR Dashboard is broke and the class will be happening at 1:30 PM EDT on Sunday, the chances of me looking up even one MRN every few minutes is low.
When the search is not working, LCR > Membership > Member Directory > individual member. It's not hard, and won't take that long at all. Your chances of looking up MRN's just went up exponentially.

Another option is to print IOS's for the youth ahead of time, which would show their MRN, and they can then keep the IOS.
I've been using the Member Directory "Search" bar to look up records, it adds a couple seconds to load the page and a couple seconds to type in the name (or scroll down if they are early in the alphabet), but loading pages in LCR on Sunday afternoon is a 5-10 second endeavor if it works at all. So the solution is I'm going to use a list of youth on a Google sheet with restricted access, look up their MRN ahead of time, and copy it into the spreadsheet.
garystroble
Senior Member
#6
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:38 pm
garystroble wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:30 pm
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:16 pm

The church let's me print out date of birth, birthplace, and maiden name, which is all PII/PPI and could have significantly worse impacts on someone's life than their MRN getting out there. There are other ways of protecting the information and the plan was not to give it to the Family History Staff but for me to sit in the class with them and provide MRNs as needed and I wanted to have the MRNs handy before class. If I have to look up the MRNs for even half the class while the class is going on, not only is it going to disrupt the class, all but the first few youth are going to be left behind in the lesson.

Because the "Search" feature on the LCR Dashboard is broke and the class will be happening at 1:30 PM EDT on Sunday, the chances of me looking up even one MRN every few minutes is low.
When the search is not working, LCR > Membership > Member Directory > individual member. It's not hard, and won't take that long at all. Your chances of looking up MRN's just went up exponentially.

Another option is to print IOS's for the youth ahead of time, which would show their MRN, and they can then keep the IOS.
I've been using the Member Directory "Search" bar to look up records, it adds a couple seconds to load the page and a couple seconds to type in the name (or scroll down if they are early in the alphabet), but loading pages in LCR on Sunday afternoon is a 5-10 second endeavor if it works at all. So the solution is I'm going to use a list of youth on a Google sheet with restricted access, look up their MRN ahead of time, and copy it into the spreadsheet.
I will be very frank, that is a violation of Church security policy putting the MRN's unto another platform, restricted or not. I gave you some other ideas above.
tonynocchi
Member
#7
garystroble wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:43 pm
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:38 pm
garystroble wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:30 pm
When the search is not working, LCR > Membership > Member Directory > individual member. It's not hard, and won't take that long at all. Your chances of looking up MRN's just went up exponentially.

Another option is to print IOS's for the youth ahead of time, which would show their MRN, and they can then keep the IOS.
I've been using the Member Directory "Search" bar to look up records, it adds a couple seconds to load the page and a couple seconds to type in the name (or scroll down if they are early in the alphabet), but loading pages in LCR on Sunday afternoon is a 5-10 second endeavor if it works at all. So the solution is I'm going to use a list of youth on a Google sheet with restricted access, look up their MRN ahead of time, and copy it into the spreadsheet.
I will be very frank, that is a violation of Church security policy putting the MRN's unto another platform, restricted or not. I gave you some other ideas above.
And none of those ideas are 'good' given the situation. I can almost guarantee wards across the church are either violating church policy or they aren't 'ministering' to their members very effectively because LCR is so limited in its use.
garystroble
Senior Member
#8
I do know that even the Global Service Department will not give out MRN's to anybody. Maybe they are working on a new way to do things in the field, I have no inside information on it though, but have just heard rumors.
davesudweeks
Senior Member
#9
I don't understand why MRNs are needed at the class at all. If they are needed for youth to set up their own FamilySearch account, why not have the parents ensure that is done prior to the class? I have done this several times before with youth in Family History activities and we always set the expectation with the youth and parents that they must have a FamilySearch account set up prior to the class. One might say that some of the parents won't do it (which may be a true statement) but that is the parent's responsibility, not the ward's. For youth under 12, parental intervention is required to set up a FamilySearch account anyway so having the MRN at the class will do no good for those youth if their accounts are not already set up. Youth who fail to get their account set up will have to watch others participate - perhaps that would be a good life lesson for them to learn earlier rather than later in life.

If this activity is planned for this coming 5th Sunday, the bishopric may have delayed too long to get all the youth to set up their FamilySearch accounts. In my mind, though, that still doesn't justify ignoring church policies. Even if the church doesn't always follow their own policies, that doesn't justify me in not following church policies. But this is my opinion, others may disagree. And it is wonderful that we don't have to agree to still worship the Savior in His church!
kd7mha
Member
#10
If you can't get the accounts set up ahead of time. Individual IOS's would be better than a single list as you wouldn't need to look anything up, you could just distribute the IOS's at the beginning of the meeting
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand Gray Code and those that don't.
tonynocchi
Member
#11
davesudweeks wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 1:10 pm I don't understand why MRNs are needed at the class at all. If they are needed for youth to set up their own FamilySearch account, why not have the parents ensure that is done prior to the class? I have done this several times before with youth in Family History activities and we always set the expectation with the youth and parents that they must have a FamilySearch account set up prior to the class. One might say that some of the parents won't do it (which may be a true statement) but that is the parent's responsibility, not the ward's. For youth under 12, parental intervention is required to set up a FamilySearch account anyway so having the MRN at the class will do no good for those youth if their accounts are not already set up. Youth who fail to get their account set up will have to watch others participate - perhaps that would be a good life lesson for them to learn earlier rather than later in life.

If this activity is planned for this coming 5th Sunday, the bishopric may have delayed too long to get all the youth to set up their FamilySearch accounts. In my mind, though, that still doesn't justify ignoring church policies. Even if the church doesn't always follow their own policies, that doesn't justify me in not following church policies. But this is my opinion, others may disagree. And it is wonderful that we don't have to agree to still worship the Savior in His church!
I agree 100% with your first paragraph, but having been the YM's President just before the calling went away, I can tell you we'll have plenty of youth show up that don't have an account set up and if they end up watching others participate, they'll probably be more of a distraction than anything else.

As for the bishopric delaying too long to get the youth set up, I can tell you that the bishopric has been pushing this specific topic since at least January 12th.

As the Ward Clerk who is married to the Relief Society President of my ward, and having been in various 'Ward Council' callings the last 15 years, I will add that the 'administration' of the church has a negative effect on the 'ministering' efforts of the church. Just about everything I have seen done in Ward Council in the five wards I've attended over the past 15 years (I retired out of the military recently) was driven by non-church systems (e.g. Google Sheets, Google Docs, text groups, external forums, etc...) and LCR (and previously MLS) is a supplement to those systems. If someone feels they are effectively 'ministering' in their ward with only church provided/approved systems, I'd love to see what they are doing because they have accomplished something that numerous other bishoprics are unable to do.
russellhltn
Community Administrator
#12
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:16 pm the plan was not to give it to the Family History Staff but for me to sit in the class with them and provide MRNs as needed and I wanted to have the MRNs handy before class.
Ah, that detail was missing from the original post. It sounded like it was going to be handed over to a consultant.

Still, I'd be a bit concerned about securing that page and using it in such a way that no one gets to see someone else's MRN.

Printing IOS sounds like a good idea. You can distribute them ahead of time (ideally folded) and you don't become a bottleneck for youth needing the lookups.

Just a FYI, a member can use either a FamilySearch account or a Church account (just click the church logo first). I'm not sure if it's worth creating a FS account if a church account can be used. I haven't heard where there's any difference.

In the past, the two accounts used to be the same, but in 2021 they split. Depending on when they created the church account (before or after September 13, 2021), they may already have a FS account that's the same as the church account at the time the split happened. However, changes to passwords won't sync between the two. (Convoluted enough?) It's not likely to affect youth, but not impossible either. But certainly recent enough to confuse adults who may give wrong advice.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
lajackson
Community Moderators
#13
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 12:56 pm And none of those ideas are 'good' given the situation. I can almost guarantee wards across the church are either violating church policy or they aren't 'ministering' to their members very effectively because LCR is so limited in its use.
The clerk will have instant access to every needed MRN in Member Tools. No LCR, no WiFi required (assuming Tools is recently refreshed). That would be the easiest method to help those youth and parents who are not as willing to help themselves, although I doubt that much more than temporary gain will result from those efforts.

And as for ministering, we use ministering interviews. They seem to work quite well for us whether or not the Church servers are up on Sundays.
BrianEdwards
Senior Member
#14
One approach we've often done for circumstances like this, is to set a pre-date for a Youth activity (preferably) or Sunday class (if needed), where all the Youth had the opportunity to come prepared to validate their account status. So if we had a Family History youth event scheduled, then we would tell all the youth and parents that anyone wanting to participate in that event, should have their accounts active by that pre-date (registration as well as remembering what their username and password are). And on that pre-date, the youth leaders would simply verify with each youth, that the youth can access their accounts. And for the inevitable youth that are unprepared, the leaders determine case-by-case how to help them resolve that. Some will benefit from a stricter approach where the leaders just repeat what was already told to the youth about what they need to do, others may need ongoing encouragement and one-on-one support.

The advantage of this is that it gives time for the Youth to work things out for themselves (they really are quite resourceful if we give them time and guidance). And avoids a crunch-time situation where everything is dumped on the leaders or clerks to try and resolve during the activity itself.
ambldsorg
Member
#15
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:23 am Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?
The MRN is printed on their temple recommend. Why not just ask the youth to bring those? Then you need only worry about those who don't hold current recommends.
tonynocchi
Member
#16
BrianEdwards wrote: Wed Mar 26, 2025 9:02 am One approach we've often done for circumstances like this, is to set a pre-date for a Youth activity (preferably) or Sunday class (if needed), where all the Youth had the opportunity to come prepared to validate their account status. So if we had a Family History youth event scheduled, then we would tell all the youth and parents that anyone wanting to participate in that event, should have their accounts active by that pre-date (registration as well as remembering what their username and password are). And on that pre-date, the youth leaders would simply verify with each youth, that the youth can access their accounts. And for the inevitable youth that are unprepared, the leaders determine case-by-case how to help them resolve that. Some will benefit from a stricter approach where the leaders just repeat what was already told to the youth about what they need to do, others may need ongoing encouragement and one-on-one support.

The advantage of this is that it gives time for the Youth to work things out for themselves (they really are quite resourceful if we give them time and guidance). And avoids a crunch-time situation where everything is dumped on the leaders or clerks to try and resolve during the activity itself.
The bishopric has been pushing this since the second Sunday in January but inevitably we're going to have several youth show up who have had plenty of opportunity and encouragement but have not completed the task. It's the youth leaders that are worried about this the most and since they work with the youth way more than I do, I'm sure their concerns are well founded.
tonynocchi
Member
#17
ambldsorg wrote: Wed Mar 26, 2025 11:54 am
tonynocchi wrote: Tue Mar 25, 2025 11:23 am Is there a way to print a report that shows MRNs?
The MRN is printed on their temple recommend. Why not just ask the youth to bring those? Then you need only worry about those who don't hold current recommends.
We are, but since we end up re-printing youth temple recommends on a regular basis because they get misplaced and we have youth who show up to the Temple without them...we're going to have more than just those who don't hold current recommends to worry about.