Household vs Household Member email address

If an email address is only listed under the Household Member and not under the Household Information, will they still get an email sent from the Leader and Clerk Resources link? i was assuming that if the member had an email listed on the directory, they would receive broadcast emails, but now I am not sure this is happening.
It looks like I am going to have to edit each entry in the directory and place one of the member email addresses in the Household Information....

zaneclark wrote:If an email address is only listed under the Household Member and not under the Household Information, will they still get an email sent from the Leader and Clerk Resources link? i was assuming that if the member had an email listed on the directory, they would receive broadcast emails, but now I am not sure this is happening.
It looks like I am going to have to edit each entry in the directory and place one of the member email addresses in the Household Information....

It all depends on who the recipients are. If you are sending to individuals, which is what happens when you send a message to leaders using the groups under "Leaders", then the individual email address is used. If you send a message to households, then the household address is used.

If you are sending to households, and a household has no email address defined, then it makes sense that no email would be sent -- the system can't guess which individual to send to.

aebrown wrote:If you are sending to households, and a household has no email address defined, then it makes sense that no email would be sent -- the system can't guess which individual to send to.

This is the way we want it in our household.

zaneclark wrote:It looks like I am going to have to edit each entry in the directory and place one of the member email addresses in the Household Information....

I am guessing that if you do that you can expect complaints from those irritated to find that you have unilaterally decided who's e-mail address to use for the household. In other cases you will find households editing your change back to the way they want it. If I found out that the clerk had done this for my household he would hear about it but only after I changed the houselhold e-mail address back to empty or null.

jdlessley wrote:I am guessing that if you do that you can expect complaints from those irritated to find that you have unilaterally decided who's e-mail address to use for the household. In other cases you will find households editing your change back to the way they want it. If I found out that the clerk had done this for my household he would hear about it but only after I changed the houselhold e-mail address back to empty or null.

I agree. It is good that the website honors the preferences of members, who may choose not to have a "household" email address. Note that in MLS, there is an apparent bug(or misguided "feature?") that overrides those preferences, as well as the needs of leaders and clerks using MLS exports and reports, by concocting a surrogate "household" email and phone when there is none entered. The website method is correct.

aebrown wrote:It all depends on who the recipients are. If you are sending to individuals, which is what happens when you send a message to leaders using the groups under "Leaders", then the individual email address is used. If you send a message to households, then the household address is used.

Can you clarify that a bit? If I go to 'send a message' (from clerk resources) and expand 'members' and choose 'relief society members', is the household address used if a personal address doesn't exist?

I sent a note recently for the RS Pres and she said one particular member didn't get the note. I looked up their info and it shows a household email but not a personal email so it appears that the household address isn't being used.

However, if I go to membership > member list (again, under clerk resources) and change 'list by' to 'relief society', if I scroll down to the sister in question, it shows the household address in the email column.

So this is puzzling. When I view the list of sisters, it appears to be using the household address but when I actually send the note, it doesn't use it.

sasgrw wrote:Can you clarify that a bit? If I go to 'send a message' (from clerk resources) and expand 'members' and choose 'relief society members', is the household address used if a personal address doesn't exist?

I sent a note recently for the RS Pres and she said one particular member didn't get the note. I looked up their info and it shows a household email but not a personal email so it appears that the household address isn't being used.

However, if I go to membership > member list (again, under clerk resources) and change 'list by' to 'relief society', if I scroll down to the sister in question, it shows the household address in the email column.

So this is puzzling. When I view the list of sisters, it appears to be using the household address but when I actually send the note, it doesn't use it.

My bad. I should have had the RS Pres double check on this and I should have looked into it further before posting. I tried sending another note to all the RS sisters and when I look at the BCC field, it does indeed list the sister that supposedly didn't get the email using the household email address. The household address is the same as the husband's email address so he got the RS note. Apparently there was a lack of communication between the husband and the wife

FYI, the messaging app (aka the 'Send a Message' button, or the messaging function of the Leader and Clerk Resources app) is being reworked currently. So now is a great time to voice your opinion on how it should work.

(Note that just because you've shared an opinion does not mean we'll follow it. We still need to follow the policies we are given. But it is worthwhile to get feedback and try to align both to policy and general consensus as much as possible.)

jdcr256 wrote:FYI, the messaging app (aka the 'Send a Message' button, or the messaging function of the Leader and Clerk Resources app) is being reworked currently. So now is a great time to voice your opinion on how it should work.

(Note that just because you've shared an opinion does not mean we'll follow it. We still need to follow the policies we are given. But it is worthwhile to get feedback and try to align both to policy and general consensus as much as possible.)

Where do we sent comments? Via this forum (and this message)?

sasgrw wrote:Where do we sent comments? Via this forum (and this message)?

Yep, here is fine.

On the old ward website, there was more flexibility as to who could post emails to the ward. The RS Pres could send a note to all sisters, the primary pres could send a note to all parents, etc. On the new site, only the bishopric or ward clerk can send a note. Will that be updated with the upcoming changes? Will be able to grant some kind of admin rights to other people for posting emails? Similar to the calendar where we can add 'view and edit' rights to certain callings.

Caveat, I'm a new ward clerk (3 weeks) and haven't held this calling before, so I may not be absolutely correct in my statement above, but I think it's pretty close.

sasgrw wrote:On the old ward website, there was more flexibility as to who could post emails to the ward. The RS Pres could send a note to all sisters, the primary pres could send a note to all parents, etc. On the new site, only the bishopric or ward clerk can send a note.

Actually anyone can send messages to groups listed in the directory. By selecting Ward Organizations in the left column pane and one of the ten organizations listed in the middle, "Filter Results, column pane there will be an "Email all <group name>" group e-mail link. The same can be done for "Ward Leaders" groups.

There are some groups to which only the bishop and clerk can send messages. For example only the bishop and clerk can send a message to every ward member with a registered e-mail address.

Unfortunately there is no "Primary Parents" e-mail group list.

jdlessley wrote:Actually anyone can send messages to groups listed in the directory.

And the groups are the system's "best guess" based on the age and gender of the person, not the actual groups in MLS. So using the directory will likely reach the 18yo High School senior, but miss the 17yo who has graduated.

There appears to be one difference. If I use the ward organization and 'email all', if an individual doesn't have a personal email address but does have a household address, the household address is *not* used. That is, that person won't get the email.

On the other hand, if I use the clerk resources > send a message > members > relief society members, it *does* use a person's household address if they don't have a personal address.

sasgrw wrote:On the old ward website, there was more flexibility as to who could post emails to the ward. The RS Pres could send a note to all sisters, the primary pres could send a note to all parents, etc.

They could? All I see in the classic LUWS is the ability to email all leaders of a given group. The broadcast abilities were limited to the website admins.

RussellHltn wrote:They could? All I see in the classic LUWS is the ability to email all leaders of a given group. The broadcast abilities were limited to the website admins.

Don't forget to include my original caveat

sasgrw wrote:Caveat, I'm a new ward clerk (3 weeks) and haven't held this calling before, so I may not be absolutely correct in my statement above, but I think it's pretty close.

jdlessley wrote:There are some groups to which only the bishop and clerk can send messages. For example only the bishop and clerk can send a message to every ward member with a registered e-mail address.

One of the organizations is 'Adults'. Does that category only show up for me because I'm a ward clerk? Will the RS Pres not see that category?

sasgrw wrote:One of the organizations is 'Adults'. Does that category only show up for me because I'm a ward clerk? Will the RS Pres not see that category?

Every member of the ward (actually the stake) will see the category under Ward Organizations called "Adults".

There are a few limitations of the 'mail all' feature available to everyone compared to the 'send a message' on the clerk's resource. Will any of these issues be resolved in the new 'send a message' interface?

1. 'mail all' uses your default mail client. If you are a yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc user, then clicking on 'mail all' won't bring up the related browser based mail program. It will bring up outlook express (or some such thing on a PC) with the BCC field filled in. Not everyone is computer savvy enough to know to copy/paste the BCC line to their browser's mail program.

2. receiving a message from 'mail all' will look like 'regular' email from someone. It won't contain the footer stating:[INDENT]You have received this email because you have made your email address available to your local Church leaders.
It was sent from: Brother John Doe
Whose calling is: Ward Clerk

To un-subscribe from future email messages from ward or stake members follow https://lds.org/directory
click on "My Family" then click on "Edit Profile" and remove your email address from your profile.
If you are not a head of household you may ask your parent/guardian to edit your profile or
you may also contact your ward clerk and ask him to remove your email address from MLS
[/INDENT]3. There are only a limited number of categories available to 'mail all'. For example, if I want to send a note to all Elders and Prospective Elders (since our PEs usually meet with EQ), I have no way of doing that with 'mail all'. Only 'Elders' is available.

Thanks for letting me post my ideas on this forum. Hopefully it can make it to the developers. In general, it would be nice to have the 'send a message' features available to more than just the bishopric and clerks. Other leaders would find it useful too.

Is the 'send a message' redesign part of a community effort? That is, as a web developer myself, can I help with the project? I helped with the iphone development work in the past. I looked at the projects on tech.lds.org and didn't see anything related to the redesign other than possibly the Interaction Framework project.

sasgrw wrote:1. 'mail all' uses your default mail client. If you are a yahoo, hotmail, gmail, etc user, then clicking on 'mail all' won't bring up the related browser based mail program. It will bring up outlook express (or some such thing on a PC) with the BCC field filled in. Not everyone is computer savvy enough to know to copy/paste the BCC line to their browser's mail program.

Also, once the mail client is used, the member now has a mail list they can continue to use. If it went through the church mail system, then local leaders would have a shot at cutting the member off from future emailings.

Also, having all those addresses in the local user's email system means that it could get stolen by malware.