familysearch insider tips and tricks - presentation
DESCRIPTION
There are many powerful tools available on FamilySearch.org. Many features of these tools are not well documented in manuals or easily discovered in the products themselves. This presentation shows some tips and tricks from a FamilySearch engineer to be more productive in using the resources on FamilySearch.org. I gave this presentation at the 2014 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. While there are some portions of the presentation that are not yet complete, I decided to upload the presentation as is and plan on updating it in the near future with additional information.TRANSCRIPT
© 2013 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.
FamilySearch Insider Tips
and Tricks
BYU Conference on
Family History and Genealogy
July 29, 2014
Ben Baker
My Background
• 4½ years as Software Engineer at FamilySearch
• Currently work on Family Tree, but tries to use all of our
products
• Not an expert at everything, but feel an engineer’s
perspective can help others
• Way too much to present everything in an hour, so want
to know what items are of most interest
• Review syllabus and presentation later for items not
covered
Essential TipsEveryone Should Understand These
Purpose of FamilySearch
The purpose of the Family History
Department is to help Church
members fulfill their divinely
appointed responsibility to discover
their families and submit their names
for temple ordinances
Key Indicator Reports
Ask your• Family history consultant(s)• High priest group leader• Bishop• Stake presidentabout this report for your stake/ward.
Share Your Knowledge
As shown from the purpose statement and key
indicator report, increasing participation among
all members is paramount.
Share what you know with:• Your family, from immediate family to distant cousins
• Your friends, from ward members to those not of our faith
Why Youth Are Needed
Elder Neal L. Anderson challenged the youth at RootsTech 2014 “to set a personal goal to help prepare as many names for the temple as
baptisms you perform in the temple.” https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history/temple-challenge
Why?
Because temples shouldn’t have to provide names
when your own family needs your help and
Experiencing “both halves” of the blessing builds faith
NO MORE TEMPLE WELFARE!
Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 1
Where you can help the most
1. Find your relatives in indexed records and link them to persons in Family Tree
2. Upload photos, stories and documents of your relatives and link them to persons in Family Tree
3. Help index historical records
4. Clean up data in Family Tree
5. Reserve temple ordinances for your family
Family Tree
Digitized Images
Indexed Records
Historical Records (Microfilm and
original documents)
Living Memory
Photos, Stories, Documents, Audio
Completed LDS Temple
Ordinances
Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 2
The best way
to find people who need LDS temple work is
to find people who are NOT in the tree yet
The best way
to find people not in the tree yet is
to find them in a historical record with
someone who is already in the tree
Embrace Change
Embrace change, don’t be afraid of it
Click on new things to see what they do
I don’t think you can mess up anything in a single
click, but be sure to read warnings.
Keep up to Date
Read the FamilySearch blog at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/ for updates on new features and other happenings.
Subscribe to the blog via RSS
Google “how to subscribe to an rss feed” for helps – I use Outlook and feedly
Use the categories and search for information you’re most interested in
Family Tree Specific Tips and Tricks
Family Tree is “Our Tree”
• Freely available to anyone worldwide
• Reduces duplication of effort
• Increases collaboration to arrive at the best information
• Information added outlives contributors
• Link person profiles to additional information
• More on this topic in tomorrows presentation “Finding ‘My Tree’ Within FamilySearch Family Tree’s ‘Our Tree’”
We can all go further faster by working together
Record Hints are Awesome!
• Searches indexed records for you
• Will find records based on all information, including maiden and married names
• Often overcomes errors in records
• Only presents high confidence matches
• 4x increase in sources attached since rollout
Congratulations!
You have just found someone in a record that is not in the tree
Record Hints in the Descendancy View
Search Records Link
Starting point
Search section for how to refine
Starting Point for Further Refined Searches
Example Search Refinement
Use Other “Tree” Views
Descendancy View
Fan Chart View
Portrait Pedigree View
Use Underused and Powerful
Features of the Watch List
• Navigation to distant relatives
• Filtering by various criteria
• Sorting by various criteria
• View latest changes over the past 30 days
• Filter and sort latest changes
Navigation
Filtering on Names
Filtering on Places
Filtering on Dates
Filtering on Deleted Persons
Sorting – Part 1
Sorting – Part 2
Changes to People I’m Watching
Changes to a Specific Person
Changes by a Specific User
Changes of a Specific Type
Printed Charts from a Person Page
Printing Charts from a Tree View
Fillable Pedigree Charts and
Family Group Sheets
• Same as official LDS paper forms
• Can save and modify later
• Easy to share with others
Insider Techie Tips
• If you are LDS and want to print without LDS temple ordinances, change show_ords to false in the URL
Ex. https://familysearch.org/tree-data/pedigree/K2V7-PV5/spouse/K2V7-P92/pdf?show_ords=false&locale=en
• If you’d like to print without Family Tree person IDs, add &showPIDs=false to the URL
Ex. https://familysearch.org/tree-data/pedigree/K2V7-PV5/spouse/K2V7-P92/pdf?show_ords=false&locale=en&showPIDs=false
Difference Between Family and
Family With Sources Options
7-Generation Fan Chart
Portrait
Pedigree
Printing Pages Without Defined Forms
3 Ways to Initiate Browser Print
• Right Click and Select Print…
• Select Print from main or File menu
• Ctrl + P
Synchronize With a Desktop Manager
GEDCOM Upload is Not Evil
Process to Submit Tree
1. Upload GEDCOM to FamilySearch
2. Compare each person with those in Family Tree
3. Add persons not already in Family Tree
Editing Relationships
Visualize Relationships
Parent Child Relationship
Father Mother
Child
Mother
Child
WifeHusband
Parent Child Relationshipwith Single Parent
Couple Relationship
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
Tips
• Visualize or even draw out the relationships when trying to decide how to fix something
• Pay attention to person IDs
• Remember how to edit and delete relationships
M
C
WH WH
WH
…
…
Managing Your Settings
Make Your E-mail Public
Use the History List Dropdowns
• Use Tree and Person Lists to Jump to Tree View or Person Page View
• Use the Go To: textbox to jump directly to a person ID
• Click on your own name to go back to you
• Click on your starting person ID to jump to that person
• Click on a person in the list to jump to that person
• Select Add Unconnected Person to add a new person to the tree that isn’t connected to anyone else with relationships.
Viewing Changes of a Particular Type
Sort Sources With Arrows or
Drag and Drop
Memories
Search
Temple
Sort By Vitals
Sort By Ordinance Type
Sort Into Family Groups
Sort By Date Reserved/Modified
Sort By Two Columns
Filter By Name
Print Your Reservation List
3 Ways to Initiate
• Right Click and Select Print…
• Select Print from main or File menu
• Ctrl + P
Share or Unreserve Work You Can’t Do
Indexing
Develop Your Skills
Provide Feedback
Family History Resources on
Lds.org and Mormon.org
Other Useful Tips
Attendee Suggested Tips