I have a question or two about the Ward Family History Activity Report. What does the line chart tha
I assume it is a cumulative report, but am puzzled by the fact that the number for our ward actually went down the last couple of months of the year. Anyone know why? I am assuming that the chart shows number of individual members submitting, and it does not increase if a member submits a name in more than one month. Also, exactly what is being submitted? Names for temple work or new names on the tree? This is probably not the right forum for this question, but if someone can point me in the right direction, that would be great.
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I wonder how the report is impacted by people moving out of the ward - - - does their entire years worth of submission then get transferred to the new ward?
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https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-report-lcr/
"A submitter is defined as an individual member who prints a Family Ordinance Request (FOR) or a family ordinance card to take to the temple or who shares an ordinance with the temple."
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@Dennis J Yancey - the current report is based upon the memberships associated to the ward at the time the report is generated. So on October 31 when the October report is generated the people listed in the ward membership are used to calculate the numbers. If Bill was a submitter at that point he is counted as 1 submitter for the ward. If on November 30 when the next report is generated, if Bill has moved he no longer is a member of the ward so his previous submission no longer counts and in fact as you mentioned the new ward he is in now has another submitter.
In our ward the submitters tend to move and the non-submitters tend to move in. Grr! LOL
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@AlexRoberts AlexRoberts
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Alex
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Just a thought ...
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As all; But, Four (x4) "Temples", Around the World, continue to be "Unavailable" to do "Proxy" Work; then, "Printing" of, FORs; and, CARDS, would have diminished considerably. "Share[d] with the Temple System" may be 'on par' or slightly higher. Many may be just (ONLY) "Reserving"; thus, NOT being 'Counted'.
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[ I know that, I am doing, BOTH, "Reserving" and , for some, "Sharing" with "Temple"; BUT, certainly, NOT, "Printing" CARDS. ]
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As I said ...
Just a thought ...
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Brett
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Thank you all for taking time to answer my question. Your answers were very helpful. I think a report that actually showed the cumulative total of submitters without subtracting or adding for move in/out would be helpful. The indexing report in Family/Search does that.
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If a person moves into your ward with a current temple recommend, or if a 16 year old young man moves in but has never received the priesthood, those would be very helpful pieces of information for your branch president know by being included on the reports he sees. The same would be true in reverse: if none of the move-outs were subtracted, the charts would also reflect erroneous information involving the current makeup of your branch. As a result, leaders can't get true pictures of how well your branch is progressing and can't plan as well for future activities and resources based on true needs.
For example, if you have a small branch with one great, committed family doing a lot of family history research (two adults and four youth for example), that one family can make your branch charts look fairly decent (if a small branch has 30 people including that family, the family would show up in the FHAR as 20% of the branch's total family history activity). You won't know from the chart who they are, but if they moved out and were left in the the report, it would look like your branch was doing far more family history activity than the branch really is. The report is meant to provide a current "family history health" with a look at the trends from recent past and two previous years.
Indexing is another matter. In it, we are providing access TO records by virtue of the indexing activities, and a report is measuring the number of batches completed by your branch, even if the person(s) who completed them have moved out, so you don't lose "credit" for the number your branch actually did. And if a new family moves in, your ward would not fairly receive credit for the work they did in their previous ward or branch, but you'll start getting credit for that once they continue indexing as members of your branch. Those records are research records, and normally don't pertain to an indexers' families.
But the main portion of the FHAR is measuring how well our current membership is actually taking care of our own family members, thus dropping move-outs and adding move-ins is essential for properly understanding how a unit is progressing in that area.
--Chris
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In our ward the submitters tend to move and the non-submitters tend to move in. Grr! LOL
I feel your Grr! In our ward, some of the submitters 'graduate' from being youth to being adults and going on missions, and our youth percentages go down. It is times like these that we have to think of the church as one big team and that we are paying forward if we have proactive programs to help our members become more involved.
We are also the home ward to a military one-year school. Each July our numbers take a dip as families move out, and each August we start over again working with new move-ins to involve them in the Family History side of Temple and Family History work. Our yearly report is like a roller coaster.
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Yes. The report reflects the number of individual accounts that have submitted a name to the Temple file or printed out an ordinance card. Each individual account is only counted once that calendar year. If an individual account is moved out of your ward or stake, your total will drop. It will increase if an individual account moved into your ward or stake.
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That is not correct. It counts the number of individual accounts that submit a name. If you have 10 members in one family using only one members account. It will only count one, not 10. Each individual should have their own account for a more accurate portrayal Of family history activity in your local unit or stake.
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The answers to your question are found on the membership reports he gets. The leaders are able to get the information they need to assess the level of Family History activity in their units. If everyone who is doing family history had their own individual account and used their own account, the numbers reported would be precisely accurate. To get a "member" account you need to submit your membership number. The membership number goes with the member as they move from unit to unit and so does the data associated with that member.
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Even before the pandemic, names shared with the temple often had a multi-year delay because so many patrons were bringing their own family names - Ordinances Ready feature helped this immensely. As pointed out, names submitted now has much less relevance to actual family history work being done because proxy work is not being done except in 4 temples. In our ward, our focus is on the four generations completion, members logging on, and members participation in activities. Since, again as was pointed out above, the numbers reflect unique individuals, it is essential for all to have their own individual account and not log on using a parent's account. Now that parents can set up and manage children's accounts, this should increase activity.
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Each individual is only counted once a year if they submit or take a name to the temple.
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@RoyRaymondAllisonJr RoyRaymondAllisonJr -- Actually, @Amy Archibald gave the quoted definition for a "submitter" straight out of the article describing the report and its contents. The computer system has no way of knowing that someone else may be using another person's FamilySearch account, thus it is "correctly" counting the number of individual members who submit a name for ordinance completion, based on the named accounts used. And that points out the issue that has also been addressed, namely that it is important for each FamilySearch user to have their own account and use it.
https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-report-lcr/
--Chris
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if we log in as a helper and submit names does that get counted for the person we are helping?
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Hey Brett, I appreciate your answers to many people's questions. Until your response above, I always thought that just reserving a temple ordinance counted, now I see you actually have to Print to get a submission counted.
I also understand that if I print 10 times, it only counts as one. But what about other parts of the report. For example where the report indicates "Members Logging-in" or "Members Participating in Family History Activities" (not sure what Participating Means??) - does that also only count me once or does it count every time I login or every time I "Participate" in FH Activities"? Thanks in advance, Bob
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help the people to find names . Let them submit the names themselves in their own account.
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I am pretty sure it does.
the helper mode simply allows you to access their account (with various limitations)
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there will always be people that just plain dont know how to use the technology (and never will due to various reasons)
like people that cant even use a mouse. . . and trying to teach them would be a project in itself.
there is always a need to use helper mode for certain people.
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my understanding has always been - one person counts only once - no matter how many actions they take.
and for all the metrics
in other words the goal is to get as many people involved - and not just have the numbers skewed by one or two people that do an incredible amount of work.
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@robertleelathen1 robertleelathen1 You probably missed it above in a previous post. There is a complete explanation of the FHAR here:
https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/family-history-report-lcr/
If you look closer at the portion titled, "Members Participating in Family History Activities" that you asked about, you'll see that it's measuring three specific things: the number of people who have added someone to their tree in Family Tree on FamilySearch, the number of people who have added a Memory on a "Person Page" in FamilySearch, and the number of people participating in Indexing. And each of those is just like the number of submitters - whether you've completed 100 indexing batches or just one, it's counting the number of PEOPLE who have done that activity at least once. The number of times per person is not counted in that report.
What the report is designed to give you is an idea of how many people in a ward or stake are participating at least at some level in family history activities using FamilySearch. In other words, it's giving you the percentage of people participating, just sometimes without the % sign (i.e. 75 people out of 300 instead of 25%). And since names are submitted for temple work through FamilySearch (or other FamilySearch activites), the extent to which Church members are using it reflects the "health" of the unit being measured (a ward or stake).
An interesting one to me is the "First Four Generations" measurement. That's ourselves (1), our parents (2), our grandparents (4), and our great grandparents (8), for a total of 15 people. Until we've entered at least our first four generations starting with ourselves, we're unlikely to get ANY hints about additional family members via email or when we log into FamilySearch, because until we get deceased ancestors in FamilySearch, there is no way to connect to what other people may have already researched about your family. But once people start entering deceased generations of their family into FamilySearch, the chances that someone else has also done some connecting to the same family are increasing, and the FamilySearch computer system will often find possible family links for you and notify you of them. I remember the thrill just a few years ago when I finally got back one more generation on one grandmother's line and suddenly multiple lines opened up literally for thousands of years, all the way back to Adam and Eve along four different lines that I've found so far. Of course "research" back past perhaps 1500 AD is not considered very reliable generally, but that at least give you an idea of the power of putting enough of our own family into FamilySearch to connect to what research others have done, and suddenly huge lines of research can open up to your view that you are directly connected to. The thrill is immense once it happens!
When Temple and Family History Leaders and Consultants know how to use the FHAR, they have a better idea of how well the members in their ward or stake are doing. The report only gives overall totals of individuals who've used FamilySearch, not the names of those individuals because it's not to be used for either rewarding or embarrassing people of course.
--Chris
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Thanks Chris and Dennis!
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Roy is right on - consultants should guide and help people have the discovery/gather/connect experience themselves. Don't worry about counting numbers, just get people engaged in doing something/anything to gather their relatives and the numbers will follow.
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Totally agree - teach people to fish and not just give them fish. thats the mentality to have.
On the other hand - the helper mode is there for a reason and there will always be some people that just plain cant do it on their own and need someone to do it for them via helper mode.
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Makes no sense to me. If it was a legal liability why is it still there after being there since the beginning of Familysearch. Why wasn't it disabled ?
It continues to be is asked for on every feedback support submission.
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@Chris Schmink - while it is true the Church doesn't want missionaries, while serving, to not use the helper feature to make changes while helping patrons, that is not the norm for patrons helping patrons. Here is a copy and paste of the main article on the Helper Feature stating what you can do as a helper. I work with a sister I minister to who doesn't use a computer and can't even seem to be able to consistantly use Tools, etc. as she can't handle UN & PW situations, etc. Those people are out there.
What does a Helper do?
Article Id: 1648, Published September 11, 2020
When you help someone else with the Planner or the helper feature, you can use most of the FamilySearch website as if you were that person.
What you can do
- Preview the person's information in Family Tree in order to prepare a personalized lesson plan.
- View information about living people in the person's tree.
- See, add, and correct information in Family Tree.
- Upload, tag, link, and manage memories.
- Open a memory, and see any comments others added.
- Manage family names for the person, including the following:
- Request and reserve temple ordinances (including with the Ordinances Ready tool).
- Print family name cards.
- Share family names.
- Unreserve family names.
What you cannot do
- Access the account holder's personal information in Settings.
- Use the FamilySearch messaging service on behalf of the person. The messages you send show as from you.
- Sign in to help a deceased member.
- Add comments to memories.
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Ive been using the helper option for years - never had a single problem.
and I believe Most Family History Center leaders are also using the same function.
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I'm not trying to hijack this discussion entirely. I love these Article ID:xxxx and notice that they seem to be the way to update the 2015 Family History Center Operations manual. Several have been published in the last four months. Does anyone know where we can find them chronologically in Family Search or elsewhere in the churchofjesuschrist website? I have come upon them serendipitously when searching for answers, but I would like to be proactive and read them without realizing that I have unasked questions that they answer. Like, "What does a Helper do?" This one is great to use for training TFH consultants and for explaining to people why they may wish to grant a consultant or friend helper access.
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@Robert Givens @Dennis J Yancey @Family Bible Very interesting - and thank you Robert Givens. I was specifically told by a support missionary that we are also not permitted to use the Planner tool to actually make changes. It came about because of a specific glitch in the system that I'm trying to get corrected with respect to preferred parents, and that's going to take some higher level correction, apparently. But two different support people told me the same thing - that not only are they not allowed to make changes in our trees themselves, but that we also aren't supposed to be making changes in other users' trees ourselves, using the Planner tool. I searched quite a bit to find a definitive article, and didn't find that article.
I'll stand corrected, with thanks, based on the posted article that's just dated 4 months ago. I'm also deleting my previous message on the subject so as not to further confuse the situation.
--Chris
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@Chris Schmink - I have been a support or full-time missionary for FS for the past 13 years. Support missionaries are asked not to make changes because the Church doesn't want FS blamed for mistakes the missionaries make. Support missionaries should be walking people through making the changes on their own when they call in for help. Data Admins (like I used to be) are the ones that can make changes in the Tree and it will leave a FS footprint not a personal one. They are allowed to do this as they have tools that let them do things that normal patrons can't do.
Your support friends are wrong as to people using the Helper feature to make changes for others. The article I pasted in this thread was last changed in September 2020 and is the current policy. This same policy has been in effect since FamilySearch first put the helper function in Tree. Whether you go to Help Others or to Helper Resources you can make the changes mentioned in the article as long as your patron has told you it is OK to do so. This feature has had one big change fairly recently - it used to be you could actually help someone who had never actually created an account. That has been changed so it they have never actually activated their FS/LDS account you can't be their helper.
Many people out here either don't have computers or can't deal with working with one. This is why the system has been set up this way. Ron Tanner is speaking tonight - I'll try to get him to address this - got to hear it from someone above.
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and boundary changes...
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