14 Responses to “Future of Family Tree”

1. Michael W. McCormick Says:
   July 21st, 2009 at 3:58 am

   The first thing that I think is awesome about this is not having to click the next button several times to find the people you want like on the old temple ordinance tab. Thanks!

   I like how you focus on the most important thing, making temple work more user friendly.

   I knew I could do this on FamilyTree, but as a consultant and avid researcher I found myself using new.familysearch.org regardless of its obsolescence.

   On to suggestions.
   In order to make this more user friendly you will need to change the following:

   Explain in matching green text (in the notes section above the scroll area) that printed cards can be reprinted as long as originals are destroyed.
   The old temple work tab made the division between reprinting and initial printing more clear. It is nice to have that in one place here, but for the benefit of new patrons, you should explain it before they go and select such a name.

   “Show More” link needs to be more obvious, not a simple blue link at bottom. You may try putting the link inside the scroll box at the bottom or just making it more eye catching?

   In notes section at top explain the ability to reassign temple work, seeing my name in the far right column does not shout “click here to reassign,” in fact if a new patron rushes through this they may never make that connection.

   If a patron wants to update their new.familysearch.org data for a person before doing their work (a very likely scenario I think) it would be important to make this easier. All names on the list should link to a pop-up edit window same as from such windows in the “see me and my ancestors” section. That window should then have a link to go to “See me and my ancestors view” if they want to start viewing/editing that family before submitting temple work.

   Thanks.

2. Gary Says:
   July 22nd, 2009 at 7:39 pm

   The Temple function in the beta works much better than the one in FamilyTree. The one in FamilyTree attempts to load all of the names in your temple list at once and with a large list it gets really bogged down. In the beta it is just loading one page at a time. It is not clear in the Beta version how you can assign a name to the Temple. I figured it out after reading another comment but before that I thought that feature had been removed.

   I also noticed that it does not appear that it checks for duplicates when it prints the FOR list in the beta but it does check for duplicates when you reserve a name to the list. The problem with this is that newFamilySearch did not run the temple ready check for duplicates until you printed the list so none of the names in peoples temple lists that were reserved in nFS have had that process yet and if this new process skips it there will be a lot of duplication.

3. John C. Says:
   July 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm

   I also appreciate the ability to view more than just a few generations at once.

   Another question — the labs.familysearch.org paragraph introducing Family Tree says:

   “Users of the Family Tree collectively and collaboratively organize information into its appropriate node on this shared tree. Ultimately, each node will be a folder containing or linking to all known information for an individual.”

   Does this imply that there will eventually be facility for including additional information about a person, such as a brief life sketch, or that a certain person served in xyz war, or that more photographs of a person’s medieval manor are available at xyz web address, or that the birth location was at xyz lat/long coordinates?

   I assume that the church’s web servers are not intended to serve as the “wikipedia” of family history — though I would certainly be glad if there were such a resource!

   I have been hoping that somebody familiar with the development roadmap could clarify the “all known information” statement — most likely just to confirm that my assumption is correct.

   Thank you.

4. Lorna Rice Says:
   August 1st, 2009 at 8:19 pm

   Patrons at our FHC continue to ask when the resources of Family Tree will be available to non-members. We originally thought that when newfamilysearch was fully functional that Family Tree would become available without a password. Any encouraging news for our non-members?
   Lorna Rice

5. Carol Ann Stott Says:
   August 2nd, 2009 at 2:41 pm

   My simplistic mind was grateful to see a function to clearly track the progress of the ordinances completed and to be done. I like the key but I am a little curious with it. For example, the key for green says printed, but from the ordinance status has it green only on SP. I am assuming this is what is left to do. On the key the “white” B for example on the same person according to the key says this ordinance is available. That can be very confusing. Is is available or completed. It would be great to have it change to some color that registered the completion. then this would be a great tracking devise as well as reseravation list. I hope I am making myself clear. If you don’t understand my suggestion, please feel free to write to me. I just think having a simple to read tracking devise along with this reservation list would be easy to impliment and be very valuable too. Thank you.

6. Ron Tanner Says:
   August 6th, 2009 at 4:27 pm

   Responses to previous posts:
   1. Printed and reprint. I agree that we need to look into a better signal that people can reprint. Possibly the button could be print/reprint or something.
   2. We thought about putting the show more right in the list but felt that this would be confusing. We can look for other places for show more.
   3. Many have struggled with clicking a name to reassign. They eventually figure it out but we need to look into this more closely.
   4. The feature to go to Me and My ancestor from the temple ordinance list is great. We wanted to wait to do this until we have the ability to not have to start the temple ordinance list over when you leave and come back.
   5. Checking for duplicates is done before the name can get on the temple ordinance list.
   6. We are looking at ways to try to enrich the ancestors in nFS. This may include being able to include pictures like life browser or reference pictures out on the internet. We are not sure but certainly would like to be able to have a place where people can put references to resources or maybe the resource.
   7. Non-member access is a goal that we have going forward. We are working to quickly get the system functioning better and add features that would be necessary and helpful for both member and non-member users.
   8. Part of our plan is to eventually allow users to see the information in nFS without an account. However, it may be necessary to require an account to be able to add information. This allows us to provide contact information to contributions.
   9. Each ordinance in the list is supposed to be colored. Therefore it should be good to “track” progress of the ordinance completion. I am not sure on your confusion. When it is done the color goes away. So you could start out with all ordinances yellow. Then you reassign to temple, for example. Then all ordinances turn blue. Then as the temple finishes each ordinance they turn white.

   Thanks for everyone’s input!! This is terrific.

   Thanks,
   Ron

7. David Coppin Says:
   August 8th, 2009 at 10:08 am

   The present NFS allows us to do (for example) baptism, confirmation, and initiatory ordinances as a family, but then after that is completed, to reprocess a submission for the temple to do the endowment. Later we can process a submission again and do the sealings as a family.

   The advantage of this is obvious, as I can baptise and confirm my grandchildren at a rate of 100 people per hour. I can do 10-12 initiatory ordinances in an hour (or 100 people in 8-10 hours), but 100 endowments will require more than 200 hours. With thousands of people in my family requiring vicarious ordinances, we can keep up with everything but the endowments. We do not have a large extended family who are LDS to help with the endowments, so the option to separate out that ordinance allows us to do what we can and involve the few church members in the family who can participate, but still get the work done.

   The Family Tree temple submission process has not allowed this separation and allocation of opportunity to perform the ordinances. I am unclear as to whether the feature to be migrated from Family Tree to the current NFS will take from us this great blessing of being able to involve the young people of our family in baptisms without creating a hopeless logjam at the endowment stage of the process.

   I hope that with a revised temple submission process, we shall continue to be able to have the temple help us with the most time-consuming ordinance, without having to deny the blessings of temple work to the young members of our immediate family.

8. johnii bothell Says:
   August 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

   I hope you are fixing this: i have indicated that i would do the temple work, then realizing it would get done faster if i had the temples do it – didn’t know how to reverse this – is this being fixed in the “new”?
   thanks. hope this makes sense. i have several names in limbo because i said i would do them, and now wish i would have let the temples do the work.

9. Ron Tanner Says:
   August 10th, 2009 at 7:19 am

   Good news!! The new features of the Temple Ordinance list coming from Family Tree project are in new.familysearch.org!!

   In this addition you can reassign or even unreserve temple ordinances. To reassign an ordinance go to the Temple Ordinances tab. Then click on your name in the Assigned To column. This will bring up the remaining ordinances and allow you to assign them to the temple.

   To unreserve a name, just click on the checkbox and select the remove button. Any ordinances that have not been completed for that name will be unreserved and available for others to reserve.

   Thanks,
   Ron

10. Lianne Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:44 am

    I really like that this feature is now attached to nFS, I much prefer it.
    However,I am wondering if there is a way to show the ordinances that I have reserved to do myself separately from the ones assigned to the temple. I find myself scrolling through many names and find I could easily miss one particularly if I haven’t printed the ordinance request yet.
    Thanks!

11. Ron Tanner Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 11:05 am

    Lianne,
    It isn’t as good as filtering the list, but you can click on the Assigned To label at the top of the list and it will sort the list. This should group all of the Temple ones together and all of yours together. May make it easier to find your ordinances.

    Thanks,
    Ron

12. John C. Says:
    August 13th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    Ron,

    (Re. my 7/23 2:55pm:)

    I have since stumbled on your “Source-Centric Open Edit” description (at http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/2009/07/top-secret-familysearch-project.html) and it is exactly what I had in mind. If for some reason – and I can see that there could be some valid ones – the Church decides not to pursue it, let the community know and perhaps someone will pick it up outside the bounds of Church sponsorship/responsibility.

    Thanks,
    John C.

13. David Reinhold Says:
    August 18th, 2009 at 7:36 am

    Just a note that the last build of RecordSearch.swf is slow to download even though its only 1.4meg and then once it downloads it locks up the browser. I have tried it on several different computers, networks and browsers. ( Safari, Firefox ) It used to work on the previous build. Just an FYI.

    David

14. AnnE Leahy Says:
    September 23rd, 2009 at 6:14 am

    Yes, the frozen [Temple] tab of Labs renders the function unusable, and for the past month it has been loading my ENTIRE submission history, even for completed ordinances. I need my report back to track progression through ordinances and reprint lost cards!