Monday, May 25, 2009

New FamilySearch Coming Soon to All Family History Consultants

NOTE: Corrections to this article from FamilySearch
May 26, 2009

Renee,

We read your blog posting regarding the meeting with Randy Bryson with some interest and feel that there needs to be some clarification on a couple of points.

The first bullet point about “All registered” consultants having access within days is not completely true. We hope to begin providing access to some consultants soon but this effort will be spread over several weeks’ time. Encouraging the consultants to register, if they haven’t, is great!

Points 2 & 3 are not completely accurate. On June 9th, the Timpanogos Temple will switch over to a new process for recording ordinances. The temple can still accept and process a TempleReady disk but it is more difficult for them to do so. Consequently, we want to encourage patrons to take their TempleReady disks to the family history center and have them processed into new FamilySearch and have FORs printed. However, the temple can still process the disks in situations where the centers may be closed or otherwise unavailable to the patron.

Regarding the last bullet, the website is for consultants/directors, not for use by members. The website will most likely only confuse and possibly frustrate members.

Finally, please remove the information about Family Tree replacing the existing new FamilySearch interface. Nothing regarding the Family Tree has been finalized at this time.

I’m hoping you can modify your post to help with these clarifications. Thanks again for all you do to help get the word out about family history.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Terrific news on your blog.

One added insight for you re: tracking forms and the FOR.
When you bring the FOR to the Temple - it is your default tracking form. Every person is clearly spelled out.
You get back the FOR and the printed cards. The Temple does not keep the FOR.

The Temple submission list on the Family Tree site is ok - but you can't "search" it by name. Just scroll through the list. Since my list ranges from 2,800 to 3,400 names - that is a lot of scrolling.

Over the last 2 years - it has averaged 4 to 8 months for a "name" submitted to the Temple File to be completed in nFS. I am looking forward to how this speeds up/or slows down - as Provo, Mt Timpanogas etc. come online. On the one hand - the UT Temples complete an enormous amount of Temple work - but on the other hand - 60% of the names submitted (per your article) are from that same area. So - it will be interesting to see how this nets out.

One huge tip you can give your readers is that as soon as they have nFS access: Be sure to double check all of the Temple cards that they have printed at home. Double check to see if their work has already been done. The flow of names has been huge - they will be amazed that the work has already been done for some of the cards they have in hand waiting for the work to be done. Also - critical observation - nFS is more adept at pulling out possible matches then the old Temple Ready. So - names that easily cleared in the old system - are presented with a more accurate display of possible name matches. Having everyone double check the names/cards they already have printed out will go a long way to saving time and avoiding duplication.

Many thanks,
Tom

Thomas.J.Kemp@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

Please make sure that whenever possible, we all put multiple names on a single FOR and that we don't take stacks of single-name FORs to the temple. This wastes a lot of time and paper in the temple. I'm pretty sure FamilySearch Support sent out an email about how to do this.

Anonymous said...

From the information shown about how to add a Temple Ready Disk it does not appear that newFamilySearch checks for duplicates when adding a Temple Ready Disk. Did Bryce say anything about that? It is not going to prevent duplication by adding Temple Ready Disks to newFamilySearch if it does not check for duplicates.

Mark E. Gower said...

The release to Consultants of nFS is NOT new or different. As soon as an announcement is made it is available so that Leadership and Consultants will be trained to help everyone else.
Family Tree will NOT be released as a replacement to nFS, as stated-- it will not be until next year, so we all will just have to learn another way of doing things. There is little functionality to Family Tree at this time.
These people from FamilySearch like to show that they are "in-the-know" but often do NOT know everything.

Anonymous said...

What is new in this announcement is that consultants in the Utah and Idaho temples districts will all get nFS accounts even before their temple district dates will be announced, not just 90 days before the live date. And, the consultants will then use the helper function in nFS to assist members to clear names for the temple even before their temples go live. Temple ready will be discontinued before all of the temples are live on nFS. In other words the temples will switch over to nFS before the membership in Utah and Idaho get personal accounts. Some of the temple district membership may not get accounts until the end of 2009 but all of the temples will be using nFS long before that.