workflow for requesting patriarchal blessings for listed deceased ancestors?

[adamteichert]

I was excited to see the following message (and corresponding links for several deceased ancestors) listed on https://pb.churchofjesuschrist.org/pbre ... ome/family :

We have identified direct-line family patriarchal blessings for you and added them to your account. Due to the sacred nature of patriarchal blessings, they should not be shared publicly. If there are other family blessings you would like researched, please select "Request Family Blessing."

At first I expected to be able to simply read those blessings without needing to specifically request them, but when each link just gave an endless loading loop, I reread the following instructions and figured that perhaps I actually did need to make requests even for these ancestors:

Request a copy of a deceased, direct-line family member's blessing. When the request is fulfilled, click on the name to view the blessing.

However, the form for requesting access seemed to require a lot of data to enter manually when that info is already available for those accessors (I was/am on a cell phone, which impacts my confidence in my data entry skills ).

Finally, an online article: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/ins ... g?lang=eng suggests the ability to "select" which blessings to request, which sounds much easier than retyping (although not nearly as convenient as entirely skipping the months of wait suggested as the timeframe for manual requests).

So the questions: 1) Is something temporarily malfunctioning with the current system or is it working as intended? 2) If it is working as intended, where would be the right place to suggest that the user interface be improved to be less cumbersome (e g. avoid the error-prone free text entry and instead just select the blessings to request from the provided list) and/or at least less misleading (reword so that it is clear that even those blessings listed need to be specifically requested---and, if the data must be typed rather than selected, perhaps point that out specifically, since it seems counter intuitive; also do not include links to pages that are not intended to load)?

Thanks for any suggestions! (And for anyone involved in making these blessings available, thank you very much for such an awesome resource!)

-Adam

[BrianEdwards]

So the questions: 1) Is something temporarily malfunctioning with the current system or is it working as intended? 2) If it is working as intended, where would be the right place to suggest that the user interface be improved to be less cumbersome (e g. avoid the error-prone free text entry and instead just select the blessings to request from the provided list) and/or at least less misleading (reword so that it is clear that even those blessings listed need to be specifically requested---and, if the data must be typed rather than selected, perhaps point that out specifically, since it seems counter intuitive; also do not include links to pages that are not intended to load)?

Thanks for any suggestions! (And for anyone involved in making these blessings available, thank you very much for such an awesome resource!)

-Adam

That's a great question. For your awareness, most everyone on the Forum is a regular church member like yourself, and we're not connected to anyone involved in the Church's planning or development teams. So it's always challenging to determine if something is working "as-intended", since most often we are not really certain of what the intention was, or if the functionality rollout is still in-process, etc.

The way to get suggestions/questions to the Church's team, is using the Feedback functionality. If you look at the very bottom of either of the webpages you shared, you'll see a link for "Feedback". This will get your request into the Church's system for their consideration.

[kd7mha]

I was able to see my ancestors blessings without needing to request.

[russellhltn]

I followed the instructions, and the request form was straight forward. The instructions seem to be fine, but the link to "Family Blessings" wasn't immediately obvious as it was in the upper right corner and presented in such a way it didn't look like a link.

[adamteichert]

Thanks everyone for the replies! It turns out that the mobile Chrome browser on my phone works as expected (without needing to request the ones that are already listed on my account--yay!), while mobile Edge gives a never-ending spinner rather than downloading the file.