As a stake indexing director you have incredible cosmic powers! Well, that may be taking it a bit far, but you do have some unique capabilities granted to you as a group administrator in the indexing system. For example, you can grant arbitrator rights to indexers in your stake—and you can take those rights away should there ever be a need. You can view and run reports on the progress of indexers and arbitrators in your stake. You can even grant others in your stake the same administrative privileges that you have.
With all this power, some stake indexing directors have wondered who else in their stake should receive administrative rights. Is it best to restrict these rights to only the stake indexing director, or does it make sense to allow others to have the same rights?
FamilySearch indexing does not have an established policy on this question but rather leaves it to the individual stakes to decide. Some stakes share this privilege freely while others choose to restrict it. How do you decide? Here are some things to consider.
- Who Gets the Call? The indexing system does not currently distinguish between a stake indexing director, a high councilor, or even a member of a stake presidency (this is something that will change in the new indexing program). They are all treated the same within the indexing system, which means they all show up in the Help menu as someone who can be contacted for support. Occasionally members may be confused about which name on the list to contact for help and may inadvertently call the wrong individual.
- Counsel with Leaders: Anyone with administrative rights can move users in or out of their stake, add or remove rights from volunteers, and have access to all indexing reports for the stake. Keeping this in mind, stake indexing directors should counsel with priesthood leaders to establish a policy for granting administration rights that works for their stake.
- Who Runs Reports? It may be desirable to allow priesthood leaders or indexing leaders in each ward or branch to run and print their own reports. The only way to provide this capability is to give each individual his or her own administrative rights. Currently there is no way to extend just reporting privileges without giving all other rights as well.
- Who Is Who? Because the indexing system recognizes all group administrators equally, when more than one person in the stake has administration rights, it is impossible to determine which one is the actual stake indexing director. This is true at FamilySearch headquarters as well, and it can make it difficult for FamilySearch Support to contact the stake indexing director should there ever be a need. This problem should go away when the new indexing system is introduced later this year, but for now the challenge remains.
Clearly the consequences of choosing to grant administrative rights to more or fewer individuals are minor. It really comes down to whatever leaders feel is right for their individual stake. It’s a power that should be respected, but inspiration and common sense can make using it a fairly simple and straightforward decision.
