Marian JOhnson wrote:It seems to me that if you only enter information into nFS about the members of the family for whom you are ready to do ordinance work, and leave out information about the other members of the family, you can submit only those you want to do, and avoid having to remove the others. Then when you find additional information about the other members of the family and are ready to do the temple work on them, you can add those to nFS and do the temple work on them. I figure that if I am not ready to do the temple work on someone, I have no reason to put his or her name in the database. If I put the information in nFS and then don't reserve the name, someone else might reserve it and do the temple work with incomplete information. nFS assumes that however many names you put in it constitutes a family - it doesn't know if there are other members of the family if you don't add the names.
Marian Johnson
I believe that at a major part of the new Family Search was the collaborative nature of the research, being able to share data with others researching the same lines, sharing notes, combining efforts to advance a family line past a roadblock that others may have already surmounted...
...I can't do that if I only enter "complete" and/or "temple ready" data.
Personally I think doing things in the cloud is generally a bad idea. However, being able to collaborate with other people researching the same family line strikes me as one of the better uses of cloud computing. Designing such a system to encourage people to either not enter data, or engage in hacks to compensate for system "features" is fail.
One of the original reasons for the nFS program was to elimiate duplication of effort with regard to temple ordinances. When we reserve "whole families" it should only be done when "we" have satisfied ourselves that we have eliminated the duplicates by having chosen the correct name if duplicates are shown. We are human and will make mistakes. Others can contest the choices we have made and I'm sure that will happen. As for how to let our cousins do there ancesters work and we do ours, communication seems to be in order. Our deceased relatives are not as likely to be as concerned as we are about who is doing their work for them. They are busy and waiting for us is something they are probably use to.
While clearing names for our upcoming Youth temple trip, I discovered two advantages of the new approach:
1. One family in nFS had their ordinances complete. Then we discovered several additional children, which I added. It was quick and easy to clear these children all at once.
2. While clearing ordinances for another family, I discovered a sealing that wasn't done which I thought was done. Having that "birds-eye" view of the whole family was helpful.
But I also ran into some fresh snags:
1. When providing names for Youth baptisms, I like to give them cards cleared for only the baptism and confirmation. That way, if the cards are lost or misplaced, I can still print cards for the additional ordinances without being concerned about duplicates. However, the new approach makes that impossible.
2. In one instance, I added a child to a family in nFS, knowing the work for the rest of the family was done. I cleared the added child's name, only to discover the mother (Alvania Scott, KP91-MVX) was automatically added to the request as needing all ordinances—apparently there was a duplicate record somewhere. Okay, I thought, the duplicate check will catch this. But it didn't. So I had to manually remove her from the reservation list. Turns out the duplicate record (MZTG-B1D) didn’t have enough information for the system to consider it a duplicate. Had someone been clearing these names who didn’t know Alvania’s work was done, it would probably have been done twice.
3. In another instance, I added some missing children to a family, then cleared their names. With the new approach, the parents’ sealing was forced into the reservation list. However, in this instance the family does not want the children sealed to the biological parent, but to the adoptive parent who was apparently much more of a true parent to the children. But the adoptive parent isn’t yet in nFS (we need to find documentation on the adoption). I needed the option not to have the sealing done at this time.
4. Not only that, the sealing of the parents was forced onto the FOR, even when I didn’t select it in the reservation list! Because it wasn’t practical for me to get to the temple myself and have the cards printed before the Youth temple trip, I gave the FOR to the YM president on Sunday. I would rather he’d just been able to print baptism & confirmation cards without having to worry about an extra (erroneous) couple sealing card.
Tangent (issue not related to the new approach): When the incorrect FOR came up in Adobe Reader, I tried to cancel it but got thrown into a loop ("Did it print correctly?" > I answer no > I get sent back to the incorrect FOR). I finally closed the browser to cancel it. When I signed back in, all the cards were marked "Printed" even though I'd not printed them and had never said they printed okay. There needs to be a way to cancel an FOR before printing if errors are discovered, and names should not be marked “Printed” until the user clicks the button saying they printed okay.
Conclusion: forcing all ordinances for a family to be cleared at once will likely increase errors and duplication, especially for those who are new to family history. I recommend strongly that this approach be modified. When users select a name to reserve, by all means allow them to reserve all ordinances for that person and their family if appropriate. But don’t force it. Doing effective family history work is not a black-and-white “clear the whole family at once” proposition. In fact, I suspect most researchers would agree that the "exceptions" I've described above are more the rule than the exception.
Users should be able to do easily what is best for their particular family and situation.
I have been using nFS in Mexico for the past year and a half and have loved the program. I am loving it less, however, since the institution of reserving entire families at once. For me it is counterintuitive and unnecessarily inflexible.
I also just noticed a quirk. My uncle was born in the church and baptized and confirmed. However he never had his initiatory or endowment ordinances performed. He is dead and the work could be done but there appears no way for the program now to allow it. Clicking on the Readys doesn't work and clicking on the sealing doesn't either since he is listed as Born in the Covenant and no option appears to perform these ordinances. But perhaps I am doing something wrong
eyepill wrote:I also just noticed a quirk. My uncle was born in the church and baptized and confirmed. However he never had his initiatory or endowment ordinances performed. He is dead and the work could be done but there appears no way for the program now to allow it.
IIRC, he needs to be dead for a year before proxy work can be done. Is he recorded as deceased in nFS and has it been a year?
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.
So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
Heard that 260,000 users were using it as of this spring, before the beginning of the Utah/Idaho segment of the rollout.
Of those, about 20,000 were logging in every day. It can be assumed that it was not the same 20,000 each day, but that was how many unique users were logging in.
Each day, they were getting about 1.8 million pageviews from those users.
Have heard nothing since the out-of-metro temples started coming on in April, we are just two temples away from starting the Wasatch Metro (Ogden to Provo) part of the rollout.
Yes, my uncle has been dead for 10 years and he is listed as deceased. The option is still unavailable to do his initiatory and sealing. You can check if you wish at his number KWCV-YCP
eyepill wrote:Yes, my uncle has been dead for 10 years and he is listed as deceased. The option is still unavailable to do his initiatory and sealing.
If you are ready to do the work, I would send a request through the feedback channel and ask that you be given the ability to prepare the ordinance request and to do the work.
This appears to be an unforseen glitch in the process that was not considered. It should be resolved quickly. There will be many more in these same circumstances.
eyepill wrote:Yes, my uncle has been dead for 10 years and he is listed as deceased. The option is still unavailable to do his initiatory and sealing. You can check if you wish at his number KWCV-YCP
Try the following:
Pull up your uncle and go to the "LDS Ordnances" tab.
Note the message "To select these ordinances select either sealing to parents or sealing to spouse links below." in the right hand side.
Click the link below "This individual's temple ordinances are completed. Click for details." (Yeah, not very intuitive.)
On the next screen, click "Continue"
A few screens later, I was presented with a screen reminding me of church policy for doing work. I stopped at that point. But I think this is the route to get what you're looking for.
BTW, it appears there is a duplicate record for this individual. And the work is "in progress" for that duplicate.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.
So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
Actually I had not planned to do the work, since his family has not given permission. I was just checking to see what effect the new policy would have and noticed the glitch.
