Ordinance Ready Search Limits Need to be GONE
Eliminate the 4 names limit for Ordinance Ready. Eliminate the inability to search more names until after the current list shows done. Have a list view option with filters by gender, ordinance, and expiration date
Problems this solves:
- Going to more than one temple appointment in one day or over several consecutive days
- When the temple takes too long to record the names in order for the next ordinances to be ready to be printed
- Needing to log into each family member's account separately and wasting extra paper in order to get names for the entire family to go to the temple together
- Making it incredibly difficult to sort names already reserved by type of ordinance
- Not getting ordinances done by the expiration date because some ordinances were done, but different names are getting pulled by Ordinance Ready
Since it is painfully obvious that somebody with control issues created this limit thing, it really just needs to be removed. I really doubt that it is a bigger pain for the temple to tell us "you only have time for 4 names today" than it is to take an extra 40 minutes to get up to 4 names per person for an entire family. You'd think the Church's priority would be more temple work getting done, not less.
Comments
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Ordinances Ready is.a great tool and works just fine as designed which is to provide one person a name or set of names for one temple trip. It, along with the restriction of only being able to have 300 names on our personal reservation list and have all other reservations we have found be on our shared temple list, works great to fulfill the Church's priority to get more temple work done because users cannot keep thousands of names locked up on their reservations lists but have to put them onto their shared with temple lists where other family members can quickly find them through Ordinances Ready.
But it is not, as you are finding, always the best tool to use. And from your complaints, it sounds like you need to start using the correct set of tools to accomplish what you want to do.
The first alternate tool you should take a look at is your homepage Hints list:
Turn off Records an turn on Temple and you may find a bunch of ordinances to reserve. Even more importantly, you will find a bunch of people that Ordinances Ready will never find for you, people with orange icons who may only need minimal additional research to turn the icons green so you can reserve them.
The other tool is to use a combination of the fan chart and descendancy charts. Go to a grandparent and open a seven generations fan chart for him or her:
Go around the outer rim and open a 4 generation descendancy chart for each person in the seventh generation. You will usually find ordinances that need to be done:
Another tool that can be used is Puzzila whose premium version will show you where ordinances are needed:
When you have collected the large number of ordinances you are looking for, then work directly from your reservation page where the filters allow you to select out just the ordinances you want to do and easily sort them in all sorts of ways, including by expiration dates. If you set the filters like this, for example:
You will get everyone who is ready for endowments to be done and see at the top of the list which reservations are going to expire first.
Now I realized that there are two broad groups of people in the Church. Those who generally just go to the temple and those who generally just do Family History Research. So have the people in your family who do the research also make all the reservations and put them in a Family Group so that all that rest of you can just go to the Family Group to get names to complete the work for using the filters to find and sort out the types you want to do. Then you will never need to use Ordinances Ready again.
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Just on a historical note, let me mention that there used to be a lot of third party programs and mobile apps that would troll through Family Tree following your family lines to find just as many available ordinances as you wanted. As I understand it, they were banned because they took up so much bandwidth and bogged down the entire system so much that they caused too much performance slow down for the rest of us users.
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It can be helpful to look at how Ordinances Ready finds names to see why you never need to use it and that the best way accomplish your goals is to not use it. Here is the information from the help center on how Ordinances Ready works and my commentary as to why you don't need it at all:
Your family names list (or "temple list" or "reservation list"). These are family names that you have reserved in Family Tree. They are on your family names list.
If they are already on your reservation list, don't bother with Ordinances Ready. Just go to those lists and pull them from there. Then you can use the filters and sorting capabilities to get full number of names you want and exactly which names you want.
Family names that you shared with a family group. These are names that you reserved and then shared with a family group.
Likewise, if they are sitting right there in the family group where you can access them with ease just go to the group and pull as many as you want and make sure you are getting the ones closest to expiring.
Family names that have been shared with a family group that you belong to. These are names that someone else shared with a family group that you belong to.
You can print as many as you want to from that family group and choose exactly who you want to print by going directly to the group.
Your family names that you shared with the temple. These are names that you reserved in Family Tree and then shared with the temple. They are on your family names list. As long as a temple has not yet printed a shared name, the Ordinances Ready feature can un-share the name so you can print the card.
You still have full access to every name on your Shared-With-Temple list that has not been printed by a temple. Find as many as you want, un-share them back to your Reservation list, and print them out.
Names of people who are related to you that have been shared with the temple by someone else. These names are in your tree and were reserved by someone else and then shared by that other person with the temple.
"Green temples" from your tree. These are names that Ordinances Ready find by scanning 10 generations of your ancestors and 5 generations of their descendants for incomplete ordinances. The ordinances have not yet been reserved by anyone. If you were to look in Family Tree, the name would have a green temple icon. Before giving you one of these ordinances, FamilySearch makes sure no possible duplicates exist for the record.
These two categories you can find by using the fan chart and descendancy charts as I explained about. Doing this scanning by yourself, you will also find all the people with yellow icons you can research, add information, and reserve; all the people with red error icons that you can fix and reserve; and all the people with hints that you can attach and potentially use to add new people to Family Tree to reserve. Ordinances Ready could be missing a whole lot of people that need work done. Also, while Ordinances Ready will not given you anyone with a possible duplicate, if you find this name on your own, you can reconcile the possible duplicate by researching then either merging or marking as not a match then go ahead and reserve it.
Your ward. These are names that members of your ward shared with the temple.
Your stake. These are names that members of your stake shared with the temple.
These two categories are so far down the list that it is unlikely Ordinances Ready will ever present them to you, but it you get to this point, just ask around church if there is anyone who has so many reservations that they need help getting them done. You will probably find someone more than happy to give you dozens of cards to take care of.
Names not related to you that have been shared with the temple. If no ordinances are available from other sources, Ordinances Ready will retrieve available ordinances that have been submitted to the temple by any patron. These ordinances from temple inventory will be provided in the same order they were submitted to the temple. You can perform ordinances for these individuals to whom you may or may not have a direct relationship.
You don't need Ordinances Ready for these. Just go to the temple without any cards at all and use the ones the temple has printed out.
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@chelsealeighwoodruff1 , the Temple Department set the limits on how many ordinances are provided by Ordinances Ready. FamilySearch simply implements the policy set by the Temple Department. Those limits have been adjusted over time. Although I certainly don't know all the factors that go into those decisions, I trust that those decisions are made carefully and prayerfully.
One comment I would make about your point #3: "Needing to log into each family member's account separately...." One of the fundamental principles of FamilySearch is that each person will be blessed by having their own account and having their own experiences. Certainly most children will not always be living at home, so it will be wonderful for them if they learn how to use Ordinances Ready themselves. Then they will have skills that will free them up both now and in the future to have their own experiences without being dependent on their parents.
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@Gordon Collett Thanks for sharing the idea of using the fan chart in conjunction with descendancy views to find temple opportunities. I've been doing that for years.
For some people, using the mobile Family Tree app can be a great way to do this. The Descendants with Tasks feature is focused on just the record hints and temple opportunities for the 3-5 generations of descendants of a particular person. And you can filter to show only temple opportunities if that's your focus. This can be quite a bit quicker than sifting through long lists of descendants to find those opportunities, especially if there are just a handful of available opportunities for each of your ancestors.
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Thank you for sharing these suggestions. The Ordinance Ready feature is such a blessing for those of us still young in the process of discovering new family names to take to the temple and these suggestioned really help me discover and come to know the people I'm going to do work for. I have felt their nearness.
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