Missionary Portal - direct data access?

[mweaver]

I am a Stake Executive Secretary and we have a lot of missionaries coming and going (especially in the last few months). I try and keep track of all of the pertinent information (dates, missions, etc.) so I can assist the Stake President (when missionaries need to be set apart, released, etc.). The Missionary Online Recommendation System is great - but accessing the data directly can be difficult. It is also difficult to know when a missionary is reassigned to a new mission, new departure dates, etc.

I am a software developer and would like to have access to the data that populates the portal. Is there any API that could be accessed directly? Or some way to export all of the data for our stake as JSON or XML or CSV or some other structured data format? It would be very helpful if I could access all of our data in some structured format so I can do some things with it (queries, create calendar entries, detect changes, etc.)

I have tried "Print all lists" (with the possibility of parsing the HTML), but that does not include all of the data (such as reassignments to new missions).

Any other suggestions?

[lajackson]

Is there any API that could be accessed directly?

The Church does not allow access to APIs and has pretty much done away with any method of downloading due to data privacy concerns. It sounds as if you already have been given access to the best system I know of to gather information, the Missionary Online Recommendation System.

With all that is going on right now, I believe the best you will be able to do is to manually keep track of each missionary and use MORS to augment that information. With that basic information, you would then need to contact each missionary (or his family) for specific information, dates, etc.

I do not know what emails/letters the stake president receives in this electronic era, but I believe even he only knows mission assignments and sometimes reporting dates. And I do not know how close to real time MORS is being updated. But it is still the official reference place for missionary information.

Hopefully, MORS will give you the best information available for now. If you really feel it is insufficient, you might wish to call the Global Services Department and ask them if anything more is available than the information already at the Online System. But I doubt there is anything better, other than any direct communication to the missionary.

It has been quite a while since I needed to have access to MORS. Is there any kind of a report capability in the system? I know there never was before. It was what you saw on the screen and that was it.