Family Group

dhendrickson3825724

When persons reserve a name from a family group the reserved name is removed from the family group. As Admin, it would be nice to see who, in the group, has how many names reserved from the Family Group. Thanks.

G Hull

I am not sure if I am in the correct thread but I hope someone in the software department of FS reads my feedback. I find the limit of 300 names on my reservation list EXTREMELY frustrating. We attend the temple every week as patrons so my list is an active list. We have a friend who is helping us with Initiatories, another friend who helps us with baptisms and so there is always a lot of movement as ordinances get done and as new names are added. The 300 limit is holding me back.

When I finally started learning about family groups I asked my brother today (whose list I use as back-up) to accept my invitation and I started working with this right away. To my dismay I learned that the reservations stay on both lists! My list, where they came from, and on my brother's list, where I sent them. I thought the idea was for me to free up space! Not so! Then the purpose is solely to get the names on another person's list who can simply print them. That's it. To give you an example of what I was trying to accomplish today: A YSA group just asked me for 40 names for B,C. I don't have the space to take names out of temple file, put them on my family file list and then print them because we always keep everyone until the Initiatories are done as well. So they will stay with us for a few weeks until these three ordinances are finished. I thought that I could move a few names at a time over to my brother's list through Family Group...and as I would do this they would appear on my list only momentarily but then be counted on his list. Please, rethink the way you set up this feature on FS!

Also, I wish you would bring back the color coded system. I find the one color system (blue) much more difficult and confusing. People can print off the meaning of colors (the legend) and stick them on their computers if they can't memorize them! In my opinion one color may work well for a user who only has a few names but for someone like me the other system was much easier and it helped avoid duplication.

Also, please, consider changing another feature. When I try and print something and the print function does not work, it lists the ordinances as printed! Even though they may not have printed. Does not work well for someone who has lots of names on their list...

Thank you for your time to read my post!

Gordon Collett

Your concerns have been posted fairly often since the limits were put in place. Whether or not the policy is modified in some way will probably take quite a bit of evaluation by the proper committees. If it does change, then it will take some time for the FamilySearch programmers to institute the change. So at this point it's a matter of just waiting.

As another user, all I can offer is a bit of practical advice as to how to make effective use of our temple lists using the filters which really make it possible to have our personal reservation lists empty most of the time and store everything on our shared with temple list. You mentioned that after you complete baptisms and confirmations you keep those on your personal list until the initiatory are completed. Assuming your temple follows the current policy of not returning cards, what you can do instead, is in your personal list use the filters to show just Perform Next and Initiatory. Click the box at the top of the column of boxes to select all 50 on the page and share these with the temple. You can completely select multiple pages if you need to.

Then when ready to take a batch for initiatory, do the same in reverse. Go to your temple list, set the filters (I don't currently have any shared that need initiatory):

Select as many as you want to print, and unshare them. This whole process is very quick. This also has the advantage that it resets the Not Printed/Printed flag to Not Printed.

You should find as you get comfortable with this shifting back and forth that the only names that need to be on your personal reservation list are ones you want to share with a family group and one that you have cards in hand to take to the temple that day. (I am assuming here that your list is not packed with 90 day ordinances that should have been completed months ago.)

As far as that YSA group, next time they ask you for a bunch of names, you should teach them all how to use Ordinances Ready and print their own relatives cards. If they don't want to do ordinance work for their own relatives, they might as well just get names at the temple and help out your entire temple district. If your shared with temple list is a large part of the ones waiting at your temple, they will likely get names you have submitted anyway.

Julie Melville Hite

In response to the original question, I just discovered that on MyReservations list, there are now two tabs: 1) Available and 2) Shared with Groups. In the Shared with Groups tab, I can see all of the names that are in any of the groups. If someone has reserved them, I can see their names. This is a good step forward in the programming!

SUGGESTION: HOWEVER, I would love to see a filter in "Shared with Groups" such that I can filter whether or not someone has reserved the name (e.g. "RESERVED"). I would love to have the option of sorting on "Reserved By" so that I can find a specific person and see what names they have reserved.

Thank you for continuing to improve FamilySearch and Family Groups in particular!!! THanks!