Stake Email Broadcast

As a newly called assistant stake clerk, one of my duties is to send email broadcasts to the entire stake membership, however on the new site, I am limited to only stake leaders. Is there a calling higher than mine, i.e., stake president, etc., that does have this ability or is this a function still to come?

zaneclark wrote:As a newly called assistant stake clerk, one of my duties is to send email broadcasts to the entire stake membership, however on the new site, I am limited to only stake leaders. Is there a calling higher than mine, i.e., stake president, etc., that does have this ability or is this a function still to come?

I know my stake president can send to the entire stake membership. I'm not sure who else can (but I know that as an assistant clerk, I also am unable to send to the entire stake membership).

So the feature exists, but for some strange reason, the developers think permission to use it needs to be extremely restricted.

aebrown wrote:I know my stake president can send to the entire stake membership. I'm not sure who else can (but I know that as an assistant clerk, I also am unable to send to the entire stake membership).

So the feature exists, but for some strange reason, the developers think permission to use it needs to be extremely restricted.

On the ward level the ward clerk can send to the entire ward membership but assistant ward clerks cannot. I'd guess that the same is true on the stake level.

eblood66 wrote:On the ward level the ward clerk can send to the entire ward membership but assistant ward clerks cannot. I'd guess that the same is true on the stake level.

Yes. I work at the stake level as Asst. Stake Clerk - Technology and Asst. Stake Clerk (long story) and I can only send Email to leadership groups and not the general membership of a ward or stake. I'm hoping that this will be fixed in a future release.

As Stake Clerk I can see the tab to email leaders or members. I have never looked at this before and when I clicked to send to members it comes back with all adult members or all members. Just for fun I clicked all adult members but it gave an error saying the group was not available now try again later. I can say it looks like a stake clerk can send such an email but cannot tell for sure with the error.

techgy wrote:I can only send Email to leadership groups and not the general membership of a ward or stake. I'm hoping that this will be fixed in a future release.

I also hope for change, and question why the permissions are so restrictive. Even the sending to leadership is restrictive. Stake assistant clerks can send to multiple STAKE leadership groups, such as the Stake Sunday School Presidency and the High Council, or multiple individual ward leadership groups within one ward, but cannot send to leaders in multiple wards AT ONE TIME!

I cannot, for example craft one email and send it to ALL BISHOPS STAKEWIDE, or ALL WARD CLERKS, or ALL HP GROUP LEADERS, etc. which is frustrating because that is exactly what I am asked to do frequently. "remind the bishoprics that we changed the location of bishopric training tomorrow." "Remind the ward clerks about the quarterly report deadline."

We still must maintain separate email lists. Lets all send feedback....

In a related subject, when I check the directory under the tools menu, ALL of the stake presidency and stake clerks have email addresses, but when I go the Clerk Resources to send a message to the stake presidency, only 3 are listed as recipients. Where does the 'Send a Message" feature get the email addresses? Evidently not from the directory....

zaneclark wrote:In a related subject, when I check the directory under the tools menu, ALL of the stake presidency and stake clerks have email addresses, but when I go the Clerk Resources to send a message to the stake presidency, only 3 are listed as recipients. Where does the 'Send a Message" feature get the email addresses? Evidently not from the directory....

Oh, I think the email addresses come from the same source. I would suspect that the people who don't show up in the Clerk Resources have chosen not to have their email addresses displayed in the Directory, but since you are an assistant clerk, you get to see the email addresses anyway. But I'm guessing that the Clerk Resources messaging system honors the request to hide the addresses (if I'm right, you'll see those names displayed in a separate panel on the Send a Message screen).

zaneclark wrote:In a related subject, when I check the directory under the tools menu, ALL of the stake presidency and stake clerks have email addresses, but when I go the Clerk Resources to send a message to the stake presidency, only 3 are listed as recipients. Where does the 'Send a Message" feature get the email addresses? Evidently not from the directory....

I think aebrown may be on to something, but those names are not accounted for on the list of members who don't have an email or have requested it not be shown. This is frustrating to me too, zaneclark! I'll do some checking, because it is truly baffling why some show while others don't. Is it that stake assistant clerks don't have the permissions, is it that they have mistakenly coded it as "private?" We must find out!

aebrown wrote:Oh, I think the email addresses come from the same source. I would suspect that the people who don't show up in the Clerk Resources have chosen not to have their email addresses displayed in the Directory, but since you are an assistant clerk, you get to see the email addresses anyway. But I'm guessing that the Clerk Resources messaging system honors the request to hide the addresses (if I'm right, you'll see those names displayed in a separate panel on the Send a Message screen).

I just logged onto the directory using my wife's login information, and all the stake presidency email addresses were showing...... So back to the drawing board...

zaneclark wrote:I just logged onto the directory using my wife's login information, and all the stake presidency email addresses were showing...... So back to the drawing board...

Well, I have determined that one additional factor is that the definition of "stake presidency" is different in the two contexts. In the "Send a Message" under leader and clerk resources, there are no assistant clerks listed (and I would guess that an assistant executive secretary is also omitted, but our stake doesn't have one, so that's just a guess). So if my analysis is correct, there would be at most 5 people listed (President, two counselors, stake clerk, and executive secretary). That list might be further reduced by people who have opted out or don't have an email address (but people in that category are specifically noted in a separate panel on Send a Message).

But in the Directory, the Leaders section includes all members of the Stake Presidency organization -- from looking at other organizations, I'm guessing it would even include people with custom callings in that organization. So when you email from the Leadership Directory, you get many more people included. What's more, the list of email addresses includes everyone with an email address, even those who have asked to hide it on the ward directory. That might make sense for privileged senders, such as stake presidency, bishoprics, and clerks. But I just discovered that this is true even when members with no special permissions (such as my wife) send email using the Leadership Directory. The private email addresses don't show in the Households section of the Directory, but they do show in the Leaders and Organizations section. That must certainly be unintended behavior!

So I don't know that I can completely explain why people see different lists, but I think we're getting closer. In every case I have examined in my stake, this does explain every difference I see between Send a Message from Leader and Clerk Resources, and Send Email from the Leadership Directory.

I am a stake clerk, I've been asked by the president to send an announcement about a stake event to all Bishops, YM Presidents, and YW Presidents. I thought for a moment this would be simple using LDS tools, send email. I can see the option to send to all Bishops, but nothing for other leaders. I can manually go to each ward and send to their auxiliary leaders one at a time, but that means I have to send the message out 8 seperate times. Grrrrrr

Here are my questions:

1. Under the current system, does anyone know a more efficient way? (I don't want to manage a separate distribution list)
2. Is this the place to log such feedback/suggestions?

Another side note: It sure would be nice to add attachments to these messages too!

I am still waiting for the policy to change so that someone besides the stake president can send broadcast emails to the stake members on the new tools menu.. I have sent this to feedback but haven't heard from them. I'm not sure I understand the problem. It seems like a simple policy change, without too many ramifications. Since a web administrator has full authority to send broadcast email to the stake on the Classic site, this would not be much of a change in policy. Now, with all that said, I will admit that I know nothing about how all these policy decisions are made and there is probably a very good reason for the delay.

zaneclark wrote:Now, with all that said, I will admit that I know nothing about how all these policy decisions are made and there is probably a very good reason for the delay.

Rumor has it that a General Authority once said something that I'm trying to find. It was "The Church moves slowly, if at all."

I submitted a feedback request on 2/11. I got a response on 8/6. All it said was that the suggestion was being forwarded to the right people. All I was asking for was to add the Satellite Broadcast schedule to the STS's "leaders portal" area. No policy change required.

The bottom line is that you don't have this ability. You probably won't be getting this anytime real soon. I'd council with your Stake President about the situation.

zaneclark wrote:I am still waiting for the policy to change so that someone besides the stake president can send broadcast emails to the stake members on the new tools menu.. I have sent this to feedback but haven't heard from them. I'm not sure I understand the problem. It seems like a simple policy change, without too many ramifications....

I could be wrong (as I often am,) but I would guess it's not a policy change we are waiting for, but a programming change or software update. This is probably down the list someplace, or not even on it. One problem is that your president can do things with his messaging account you can't do, but he doesn't know it's far more difficult for you to send emails to your stake then for him to do it himself. We can keep hoping and suggesting....

nbarss wrote:Is this the place to log such feedback/suggestions?

Yes, and no. We can talk about it here, but the real way to send feedback is still through LDS.org "feedback" links. And then we hope the developers are listening to the users out here in the world......

The last communication on this topic was in December and I STILL have to go to the Classic site to send email to all stake members... Very frustrating... in fact I hadn't used the Classic site for so long that I had to dig around to find it... If as someone suggested, it is more of a programming problem than a policy change, can we somehow send the right programmer a box of See's or something to speed up the process?

zaneclark wrote:If as someone suggested, it is more of a programming problem than a policy change, can we somehow send the right programmer a box of See's or something to speed up the process?

I don't know if this issue is quite at the level of a "policy change," but it's not just a matter of motivating the "right programmer" to make the change. A change like this does require approval from at least the product manager, and perhaps above that. Then if it is approved, the change has to be prioritized with all the other work the team could be engage in. I really doubt that bribes of candy will affect those priorities -- not everyone is as susceptible to chocolate bribes as I am. It may seem obvious to you that an assistant stake clerk should be able to send an email to all stake members (I personally completely agree with that), but it may be that those in charge of making these decisions are very cautious about giving that power to too many people.

Since this thread was started, the Directory added a new feature called "Ward Organizations" which includes a section for "Adults". That section lets you send an email to all adults in a ward. It's a bit tedious, but you could cycle through each of the wards in your stake and use that feature to broadcast a message to all the adults in the stake. At some point the classic site will be retired, and that may be your best option if the restrictions on the messaging system are not adjusted.