ward website administrator rights

I'm a new ward website administrator. It's my understanding that by virtue of my calling on MLS I have certain rights like being able to edit member profiles and approve pictures. My calling appears on the directory as website administrator but I still do not have the ability to edit member profiles or approve pictures for the directory. What could be wrong?

You will need to have your ward clerk put you in the standard position of website administrator instead of the custom one he did.

Thank your for your response. In MLS and on LDS.org it shows that I am the "Ward Website Administrator". Is this the standard calling name? If not what is the exact title of the standard calling?

hollywelch wrote:Thank your for your response. In MLS and on LDS.org it shows that I am the "Ward Website Administrator". Is this the standard calling name? If not what is the exact title of the standard calling?

No, that's a custom calling. The standard calling is simply "Website Administrator."

Thank you Alan. Tom said you would know the answer!

The wording gives it away as a custom calling. But fixing the wording won't fix the problem. It needs to be a using a pre defined position rather then creating a custom one.

Also note that Website Administrator has admin rights for photos (bulk upload and approval of photos), but does not have rights to edit member profiles.

Does this take 24hrs to replicate out from the time it is added to MLS?

jester_ag wrote:Does this take 24hrs to replicate out from the time it is added to MLS?

Once callings are added to MLS and transmitted, those callings go almost immediately to CDOL, and thus to the leadership directory on lds.org.

But when a calling also has access rights to certain websites, the update to the site access generally happens only once a day, so it can take 24 hours or so for access to be granted.

I am the Website Administrator and have kept the old Web Site Leadership Directory up to date with every calling in the Ward. I have noticed now, though, that I do not have privileges to edit and add any callings. Is that correct? Or do I and I just don't know how to use it? The new directory is out of date and not sure if MLS not going through properly or if it is because they are custom callings. For example, we have five Nursery Assistants, but only two appear in the new Site. Is that because there are only two standard Nursery Assistants? Thank you.

alicejensen wrote:I am the Website Administrator and have kept the old Web Site Leadership Directory up to date with every calling in the Ward. I have noticed now, though, that I do not have privileges to edit and add any callings. Is that correct?

The new directory gets it's information from the CDOL which in turn is updated from MLS. There are steps the clerk can do to try and resolve the issue, but as a Website Administrator, there's nothing. Unless they make you an assistant clerk and give you a MLS login, it's out of your hands.

alicejensen wrote: The new directory is out of date and not sure if MLS not going through properly or if it is because they are custom callings. For example, we have five Nursery Assistants, but only two appear in the new Site. Is that because there are only two standard Nursery Assistants? Thank you.

The new directory does display custom callings.

RussellHltn wrote:The new directory gets it's information from the CDOL which in turn is updated from MLS. There are steps the clerk can do to try and resolve the issue, but as a Website Administrator, there's nothing. Unless they make you an assistant clerk and give you a MLS login, it's out of your hands.

The sad thing is that MANY units throughout the church think that women cannot fill the position of an assistant clerk. It makes sense to use the sisters - they often have more time to attend to the updating of membership records, including callings. I interfaced with a sister in the Provo Canyon Ward years back, who served in this capacity quite well. The key is that access with this calling is limited to membership - nothing to do with sensitive materials reserved for priesthood leadership roles.

marilynhoward wrote:The sad thing is that MANY units throughout the church think that women cannot fill the position of an assistant clerk. It makes sense to use the sisters - they often have more time to attend to the updating of membership records, including callings. I interfaced with a sister in the Provo Canyon Ward years back, who served in this capacity quite well. The key is that access with this calling is limited to membership - nothing to do with sensitive materials reserved for priesthood leadership roles.

The reason many units think that women cannot fill the position of an assistant clerk is that this is actually the policy of the Church. Now, I'm not saying anything about the capabilities of women -- you are certainly correct that women can serve well in many callings. But for the specific callings of ward/stake clerk and assistant clerks, the Handbook clearly states that they must hold the Melchizedek Priesthood.

Women can faithfully serve as ward website administrators, but not as clerks. I, too, have heard of cases where women have served as an assistant clerk, but that is clearly contrary to the direction in the Handbook.

So, back to the topic of this thread: if a woman serving as a website administrator runs into issues that require a clerk to fix, her only option is to work with the ward clerk or an assistant clerk for those issues. Hopefully they will be relatively rare.

marilynhoward wrote:The key is that access with this calling is limited to membership - nothing to do with sensitive materials reserved for priesthood leadership roles.

Besides the fact that sisters are not allowed by policy to fill an asst. clerk position (as aebrown pointed out), I can assure you that information available to those with access limited to membership may contain "sensitive materials reserved for priesthood leadership roles."

greggo wrote:I can assure you that information available to those with access limited to membership may contain "sensitive materials reserved for priesthood leadership roles."

Can you give examples of this? I'm thinking about the number of times I've called Local Unit Support and reached a female employee.

RussellHltn wrote:Can you give examples of this? I'm thinking about the number of times I've called Local Unit Support and reached a female employee.

You're misunderstanding the quote from an earlier post in the thread. That post implied the women could see membership information, and that this would be okay because then they wouldn't see "sensitive materials reserved for priesthood leadership roles." Greggo was simply refuting that by stating (accurately) that membership information available to membership clerks includes such sensitive information. No one has said that female Church employees can't see confidential information.

But please, let's end this tangent. The topic of the thread is what access rights a ward website administrator needs in order to perform his or her functions.

I am the "Website Administrator" of my ward and I can upload photos in the Directory application.

When I was also the Financial Clerk, I could also verify locations (move the household icon for each ward member) for the MAPS application.

Now that I am a Stake Financial Clerk, I still have the ward "Website Administrator" calling, but I cannot verify locations for the MAPS.

It seems that a "Website Administrator" should be able to verify the household locations in the ward. It would also be appropriate for the "Website Administrator" to be able to designate which households are the emergency contacts for the ward.

Please consider adding the "Website Administrator" to the Roles & Responsibilities of the MAPS application.

Thanks,
Kyle

kyleerickson wrote:Please consider adding the "Website Administrator" to the Roles & Responsibilities of the MAPS application.

It seems to me that's properly the function of a clerk, not a Website Administrator. You can ask if you can be made an assistant clerk of your ward so you can continue to do that.

Keep in mind there's probably units out there that do NOT want the Website Admin messing with the locations. Adding another calling is a way to deal with what you need while still keeping others happy.

Where exactly does the ward clerk find the calling of "Website Administrator"? My ward clerk can not find it--he is fairly new to the calling--is it under it's own catagory or does it fall under a leadership one? Thank you so very much for your help.

sandyhess wrote:Where exactly does the ward clerk find the calling of "Website Administrator"? My ward clerk can not find it--he is fairly new to the calling--is it under it's own catagory or does it fall under a leadership one? Thank you so very much for your help.

In MLS it is under Other Callings.

Thank you Ryan--I will let my ward clerk know.