Salt Lake City, Utah (November 16, 2013) – Incline Software, LC announced today that Ancestral Quest™, its Windows®-based family tree software, was recently certified by FamilySearch™ for Tree Share, Sources, Discussions, Change History and LDS Support.
Ancestral Quest meets the rigorous standards set by FamilySearch for allowing its users to work in FamilySearch Family Tree (hereinafter referred to as Family Tree) by sharing not only data, but documentation, discussions and reasons for making changes. This not only helps users of AQ participate as good neighbors in Family Tree, but allows them to benefit from the comments and findings of others as they record their own personal family history in their AQ or PAF file.
Ancestral Quest allows users to search Family Tree for matching records and exchange facts for individuals and relationships between their own file and Family Tree. It also allows comparing of families and exchanging of family members between their personal file and Family Tree. Users can improve the data on Family Tree by sharing their research, and can learn more about their own family by looking through the Family Tree data made available by others. For LDS users, AQ handles the processes of reserving and tracking the progress of LDS ordinances.
No other personal family tree product has met more FamilySearch certification requirements than Ancestral Quest. You can learn more about these specific certifications on this FamilySearch page.
Additional Features for Sharing with Family Tree
Ancestral Quest goes above and beyond the certification requirements of FamilySearch, providing additional features that will aid users in accomplishing quality work with their personal family file and with Family Tree.
Notes
Ancestral Quest allows users to view the notes of individual records in Family Tree, and exchange notes between Family Tree and the notes they have in their personal file. Many, many users have expressed a desire to be able to upload their notes from their PAF or AQ file to Family Tree, where those notes can be viewed by other relatives researching the same family lines. AQ now provides a simple interface for that exchange. AQ is the only FamilySearch Tree Share certified program to offer this feature.
Source Details
In addition to meeting the requirements for FamilySearch Sources certification, Ancestral Quest provides exacting genealogists with an extra bonus. In most desktop family tree programs, sources are recorded with such details as the source Title, Author, Publication Facts, Repository, Page Number, Source Quality, etc. In Family Tree, sources provide this information as a formatted 'citation', but do not contain the detailed breakdown of this data. AQ allows users to send the breakdown of these details to Family Tree to be stored in the Notes portion of the Family Tree source. This allows other users of a desktop program to later import the source in such a way that the Title, Author, Repository, etc., are properly brought back from Family Tree.
Continued Access to new.FamilySearch Data
Ancestral Quest allows users to read the other opinions of the Birth, Christening, Deathand Burial facts stored in new.FamilySearch (nFS). nFS contains a wealth of information in these extra opinions that were not carried over to Family Tree, and users of AQ are benefiting every day from the ability to see these on the same screen with their own data, and with data from Family Tree. There are three situations where these extra opinions from nFS can be helpful:
- In some cases, the birth, christening, death or burial information that was moved to Family Tree from nFS is not the best data. AQ helps a user identify these situations and import the correct data from nFS to Family Tree.
- When records of different people were improperly combined in nFS, these extra opinions are often the best clue for recognizing the situation. They help users take corrective action.
- When Family Tree doesn’t have the best data from nFS, attempts to match correct records between a person’s local record and its corresponding record on Family Tree often fail. By seeing these extra opinions during the matching process, records can be matched more accurately.
As long as FamilySearch allows Ancestral Quest to provide read-only access to these facts, AQ will be pleased to provide its users with this benefit. AQ is the only FamilySearch Tree Share certified product to still offer this read-only access to nFS data.
Benefits to PAF Users
Ancestral Quest can directly update a PAF file, thus AQ provides PAF users with the ability to share data with Family Tree, including sources, notes and LDS ordinance information. Even though PAF has been discontinued as a supported product by FamilySearch, we understand that there are millions who still use PAF and can benefit from this capability. AQ is the only FamilySearch Tree Share certified product that provides this share capability for PAF users. And because the Windows versions of PAF were derived from AQ, PAF users will feel right at home as they use Ancestral Quest.
History of Ancestral Quest's Certification with FamilySearch
In July of 2008, Ancestral Quest became the first family tree desktop program to be certified by FamilySearch to match and sync data with new.FamilySearch. In March of 2009, AQ received an award from FamilySearch for Most Comprehensive Syncing. As Family Tree started replacing nFS, AQ provided its users with the capability mentioned above to move nFS data to Family Tree. In June, 2013, AQ became FamilySearch Tree Share certified in time to make sure that users could transition from nFS to Family Tree. The FamilySearch certifications changed in early November, as some of FamilySearch’s prior certifications were removed, and new certifications added. As of November 11, 2013, AQ received the current FamilySearch certifications of Tree Share, Sources, Discussions, Change History and LDS Support.
Background
Incline Software™ developed Ancestral Quest in 1994, and has been enhancing it ever since. AQ is a powerful yet easy to use, full-featured genealogy records manager, used by both beginners and professionals. Its reporting and sourcing capabilities are excellent. AQ has scrapbooking capabilities and can also generate a web page with not only the data, but the scrapbook items as well, so this information can be easily shared with family across the world on the Internet, or placed on a smartphone or tablet to be taken on the go. AQ provides many extras such as research timelines and award winning abilities for searching and sorting through ancestral records.
This announcement has focused on a relatively small portion of Ancestral Quest: those features that deal with FamilySearch Family Tree.
In addition to English, Ancestral Quest is also available in German, French, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. You can learn more about Incline Software, Ancestral Quest, andAncestral Quest Basics, by visiting www.ancquest.com or calling Incline Software at 1-800-825-8864.
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