Custom Reports - Quick Call List

I am an assistant clerk in Roseville CA. My Bishiop indicated that it might be possible to put together a Quick Call list from within LDS.Org. Our members like a quick call list considerably more than having to go to a web site. My method for now is to create a CSV file of exported data and put the list together in a third party tool like WORD, Excel or Access. We have to decide who to leave on the list and who to take off as some members do not want to be contacted.

Is it possible to do something like this from within LDS.Org?

Thank You.

wsplawn wrote:I am an assistant clerk in Roseville CA. My Bishiop indicated that it might be possible to put together a Quick Call list from within LDS.Org. Our members like a quick call list considerably more than having to go to a web site. My method for now is to create a CSV file of exported data and put the list together in a third party tool like WORD, Excel or Access. We have to decide who to leave on the list and who to take off as some members do not want to be contacted.

Is it possible to do something like this from within LDS.Org?

Any member can go to the Directory on lds.org, click Print, uncheck all the options except phone number, choose the number of columns, generate the PDF and then print it. It's not a particularly compact format, but it works. It also has the virtue of excluding members who have chosen to hide their information, so you don't have to manually do those exclusions each time you generate the list (clerks and leaders can override that and include all members, but for the purpose you describe, you would leave those people off).

Thank you for responding. I had not yet explored that part of the web site. Very handy!

A couple of problems though. At least on my machine, the Save PDF does not work. When I try to save it to my own machine, nothing happens. I found a work around by emailing a file to myself, but I don't think the problem is machine specific (my machine)

Also, I see potential problems with members of the ward who may not want their names on a list. It appears that unless they explictly go to the web site and request that their names not be included, they get included automatically. This is problematic. Like all wards we have people who do not even want to be contacted, let alone to have their names on public available lists. How should this problem be looked at? It is not reasonable to think that a member who has had no real contact with the church, and doesn't want any, I say, it appears unreasonable from their point of view to ask them to go through the hassle of signing up for an LDS account etc., so they can then explicitely exclude themselves from lists. But maybe my perspective is wrong. How does the church look at it?

wsplawn wrote:A couple of problems though. At least on my machine, the Save PDF does not work. When I try to save it to my own machine, nothing happens. I found a work around by emailing a file to myself, but I don't think the problem is machine specific (my machine)

It works for me on Firefox. What browser are you using?

wsplawn wrote:Also, I see potential problems with members of the ward who may not want their names on a list. It appears that unless they explictly go to the web site and request that their names not be included, they get included automatically. This is problematic. Like all wards we have people who do not even want to be contacted, let alone to have their names on public available lists. How should this problem be looked at? It is not reasonable to think that a member who has had no real contact with the church, and doesn't want any, I say, it appears unreasonable from their point of view to ask them to go through the hassle of signing up for an LDS account etc., so they can then explicitely exclude themselves from lists. But maybe my perspective is wrong. How does the church look at it?

Any clerk or bishopric member can edit a household profile to hide it. From your original post, it sounds like you have members that you exclude from the lists you publish. So following that logic, their profiles should be edited and hidden. Since a clerk can do this, such members don't have to go through the hassle of obtaining an LDS Account.

The Church takes different positions for different countries based on privacy laws. In Europe, the Church has chosen to make the Directory an "opt-in" situation; every household starts out hidden and only those households that have explicitly chosen to be displayed will appear. Unfortunately, that makes the Directory fairly useless in most wards in Europe. In the US, the opposite approach is taken. We do need to be careful about privacy and respecting people's wishes.

>What browser are you using?

I am using Internet Explorer 9

It is good news to find that a clerk or member of the Bishopric can determine the public visibility of a record. The Bishop will be glad to hear this.

Thank you.

wsplawn wrote:My method for now is to create a CSV file of exported data and put the list together in a third party tool like WORD, Excel or Access. We have to decide who to leave on the list and who to take off as some members do not want to be contacted.

While possible, it is difficult to sustain lists maintained in "third party tools" such as this, and after a few move-ins and outs, your list is outdated. I'd stay with-in LDS.org or MLS for your lists, and as aebrown suggests, LDS.org directory gives members (and leaders) the freedom to withdraw (unlist) whatever part of their information, even right down to their name, from general distribution lists, which seems to be an increasing concern. MLS, curiously, does not yet feature this ability in it's custom reports or it's phone and address lists.