💬FamilySearch Chat is Now Live!!!
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The new chat tool has effectively killed collaborative messaging. It seems to be patterned after X, with limited ability to communicate other than very short bursts, and increased non-intuitive, non-user friendly restrictions. To add a line, one has to shift + enter, as clicking return sends the brief message - even though there is a send arrow clearly visible. There is insufficient space to convey more than 2-3 sentences. Yet, multiple lines often are required to convey questions and information. Since users are world-wide, real-time chatting is often unrealistic. Please ask users what they want or would like before arbitrarily cramming somebody's trendy ideas down our throats. I wonder if the developers have ever used messaging or even use FS. ☹️
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Sending a message by only entering a "Return" or "Enter" key is problematic and IMO the wrong thing to do. It is very difficult to format multi-paragraph messages in a readable form.
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There was a (blessedly short) period where the old messaging system changed for some inexplicable reason to "send on enter", and it was miserable.
I really don't understand why they changed to a chat format. It's completely unsuited to the purpose: the chances of someone I want to send a message to being on FS in the same month as me, never mind the same hour of the same day, is approximately negative zero.
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How exactly do I access FamilySearch Chat? I'm confused because right now, I don't appear to be capable of sending responses to anyone at all on FamilySearch Messages and while there was (I think) a chat window that I previously used to communicate with one FamilySearch user whom I did supercentenarian research with, that chat window disappeared yesterday evening for some reason. Why exactly? And how exactly can I send replies to people on FamilySearch again?
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@DanielGonik, you should be able to re-open the chat interface using the chat button in the toolbar at the top right.
(This is on the website on a computer/laptop. I have no clue about mobile versions and apps.)
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I got my first response today in the New Chat format.
I have two suggestions.
One is remove the "Enter" key as a send chat message. I like to use it to go to next line.
Two is put the question and answer side by side and not over the top of each other. I responded with a long answer, and it covered so much of the response I had to send chat just to read what was covered before.
Or you can fix it any way you want. I just need to see all of the chat past and present. My memory is not that good to remember it all.
Later Nolan
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In the former Message dialog, <enter> resulted in a <newline>. In the current iteration of Chat, <enter> results in <send>.
I liked the former behavior better because I could format the message more clearly before I clicked on Send to actually <send> the message.
Please consider restoring the <enter> functionality to what it was before.
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Yes, I can do that, but for some reason, I only see the Chat function when I am on certain parts of FamilySearch.org, not on others. I can't see it right now, for instance, but I can see it here: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/new-familysearch-chat#/DefaultPermission?c=1699823354735&vanilla_category_id=blog-comments-en&vanilla_identifier=00000188-591d-d561-adec-dd9f4dd90000&vanilla_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.familysearch.org%2Fen%2Fblog%2Fnew-familysearch-chat
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Chat is a main-site-only function. Community (like this page) is a nearly-completely separate thing, so naturally there's no Chat here. You couldn't get to the old messaging system from here, either, only to the Community-specific messaging (same as now).
I suppose that may be the one advantage to relabeling it as Chat: it might reduce some of the confusion between main-site and Community internal messaging.
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"The feature of turning on or turning off the "online presence indicator" when you have Chat loaded at FamilySearch is on our list of things to deliver."
Music to my ears! for some reason I never got a notification that you had responded, but thank you very much!!!
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Could you PLEASE add the ancestor name to each chat. I have chats going back a year and a half and do not know which ancestors most are connected to. I want to clean up my "chat room" by removing chats that have ancestors with completed ordinances and those with issues resolved. Thank you for your timely consideration of this problem.
Gail Schwoebel
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Unfortunately, the link to the ancestor was not preserved in the migration from the old Messaging system to the new Chat system. And since that was a one-time data migration, that's not going to change. But you can still preserve the link information by using the Download feature in the old Messaging system. I think you need to do this before the end of 2023. Here are some more details: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/529420/#Comment_529420
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I am missing the capability to delete a chat in this new forum. I recognize I can Hide a Chat or Mute a Chat. But for some messages, I just want to be done and not have so many threads once the conversation is complete. Once in a while, you receive a not-so-nice message. I just don't need or want it. We could delete messages in the old system. Could we not have that option back? Please.
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Actually, you couldn't completely delete messages in the old system. You certainly couldn't delete it for anyone else in the conversation. If anyone in the conversation (typically just one other person, but sometimes multiple persons) ever replied to you, the whole thread would reappear.
The new Hide Chat option really hides it, even if someone responds, so it's actually better than the old system in that regard. Is there some reason that option doesn't meet your needs?
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Is there any consideration being given to eliminating the Enter key as a Send key. This gets me every time I want to insert a line or new paragraph.
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Shift+enter will allow you to start a new chat paragraph
This even works on iPad/iPhone—when I remember 🤔
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I created a family group for some church members to share names and ordinances. Someone recently requested to join via an invite link, but FamilySearch did not notify me by email even though I have family group email notifications turned on. (Screenshot below.) There is nothing from FamilySearch in my spam folder, and FamilySearch emails have reached my inbox fine in the past. If she hadn't messaged me directly to tell me, I might not have noticed and approved her join request for a long time because I don't log on to FamilySearch very often.
My group was created before the new Chat feature was rolled out. I don't know if the two are related somehow and maybe some settings didn't migrate, or whether the family group email notifications do not include join requests by design, or whether this is a bug.
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I have sent out several group chats over the last couple of months to my Family Group and no one has seen the little red dot that should appear above the "chat" icon for these new messages. It seems that the messages are going into the already read area instead of the "Unread" area.
It might be that some group members are not receiving the notifications. I haven't checked with everyone.
No one has replied to any messages aka "chats" that I have sent out since mid October. We have 17 people in our group.
Does it take awhile for the red dot to appear?
Why are the new family group messages not going into the "unread" area?
Is there something about the new "Chat" system that I'm not understanding?
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Does someone know if it's possible to remove the online icon from the chat?
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@FEmanoeli according to the comment https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/531973#Comment_531973 earlier in this discussion, that feature is planned
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Where even is this "online icon" that people are worried about?
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The online icon is the little green dot that you can see here:
(Sorry, the image won't get any smaller). Playing around with this between my wife and I, what I find is that the green dot is only present if the person is signed into FamilySearch and has the chat window open. If one does not want to have a green dot, then don't open the chat window except for the few minutes one is reading or writing message.
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Thanks, Gordon. (I've never seen that dot.) Next question: how does that green dot behave if you don't respond to a message? Can the person who sent it tell when you both have the Chat window open, or is that only if you reply? And what happens if you hide a chat? Can the other person (or people) in the conversation still tell when you open Chat?
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I had to send my wife a message so that she was on the list of people I was chatting with. She did not read the message or send any reply. When she opened the chat window the green dot appeared. When she closed the window it vanished. When she reopened it, it came back.
Off to test the other question...
When she hid me, I still got a green dot on her when I opened my chat window and she had her chat window open.
When she blocked me, I again still see a green dot on her when we both have the chat window open. Basically, there is no indication from my end that she has hidden our chat or blocked me and there is no indication when I am blocked that a message I send is not going anywhere.
One last thing to look at...
Interesting. If my wife hides the chat and I send her another chat in that message, the chat is unhidden. She gets the new message and can again see all the preceding ones. That is going to annoy people.
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Since the new "chat" was implemented, the little red dot indicating a new message no longer appears, or at least 99% of the time it doesn't appear. Also, I have a Group of family members for ordinance work and most of them also don't get the little red dot either when I send out a group message. This is a huge problem!!!! Please fix it!
I've sent out several important messages to my group over the last several weeks and most of the people don't even know about them. I don't have everyone's number to call and say, "Hey, check your "chat" on FS". What a huge inconvenience that would be anyway!
Also, instead of a new group message showing in the "unread" area, it is in the familysearch groups area. If the "private" area is not collapsed down, then it's nearly impossible to see that a new message has arrived to the Familysearch groups. This is also inconvenient.
I'm also not getting a text notification that a new message has arrived and neither are some of my group members. I checked my FS settings and everything is on.
The "enter" button now sends the message so there is no way to make a new paragraph. Is there anyway to turn this off so that only the arrow button sends the message?
My biggest question is why was the old messaging system replaced by this new "chat" system????? It is not an improvement. The old system seemed to be working just fine. If someone that I sent a message to happens to be on FS at the same time as I, then they would see the red dot indicator and respond right back to me; real time communication.
I rarely complain about the new things FS does. But this new "Chat" messaging is incredibly annoying and frustrating! Especially that I & other people are not getting notifications about a new message or response!!!! I really hope that FS goes back to the old system. Truly. 😪
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All- Thanks for your feedback. I have passed everything on to the engineers and will report back when I have something to tell you.
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@LAHS6 said:
Since the new "chat" was implemented, the little red dot indicating a new message no longer appears, or at least 99% of the time it doesn't appear.
Are you asking about this red dot?
I see it frequently -- whenever I have a new message. I can't explain why you don't see it.
I'm also not getting a text notification that a new message has arrived and neither are some of my group members. I checked my FS settings and everything is on.
There's no feature (at this point) for sending text notifications when a new chat has arrived. If you have the Family Tree app installed (iOS or Android), then you will get an app notification when a new chat arrives (depending, of course, on your notification settings for the app -- you can turn those off).
The "enter" button now sends the message so there is no way to make a new paragraph. Is there anyway to turn this off so that only the arrow button sends the message?
You can use shift+Enter to create a new paragraph in a multi-paragraph message. There's currently no option for changing the behavior of the Enter button, but others have made a similar request. But this behavior is not particularly unusual; very popular apps like Facebook and Slack have the same behavior, and no option for changing that behavior.
My biggest question is why was the old messaging system replaced by this new "chat" system????? It is not an improvement. The old system seemed to be working just fine. If someone that I sent a message to happens to be on FS at the same time as I, then they would see the red dot indicator and respond right back to me; real time communication.
See the article linked to in the first post of this conversation -- it explains many of the reasons for the new system. One of the main motivations for the new chat system is improved real-time communication. So it's ironic that you see one of its failures in the area of real-time communication. But I certainly can understand that you would be disappointed if you don't see the red dot indicating that you have a new message.
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@Alan E. Brown, in my (admittedly limited) experience, FS's Chat shows the notification dot when it darned well feels like showing it. I exchanged a couple dozen messages with someone not quite a month ago, and I distinctly recall at least four instances where I only became aware of the existence of a new reply because I opened the chat box to look up a prior message.
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I just tested the "Red Dot" Unread Chat indicator in Direct Chats, Shared Family Group Chats, Event Chats, etc.
The Red Dot UnRead Chat indicator worked in every case.
Can you double check with your group members to make sure they are looking at the right place?
Changing to new systems can take a little time to get used to. The feedback in general has been very positive about the new features and added benefits of Chat. This year Relatives at RootsTech will also be integrated with Chat. Finally all in one place.
Embedded Chat with RootsTech Sessions will put the Chat on the main Session Page itself. We will see if this is an improvement or not.
Thanks for your interest in FamilySearch and giving your experiences to us so we can improve the services. Thanks to Alan for commenting on your other questions.
Much gratitude.😀
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I have checked with as many group members as I have their phone numbers. It is impossible to check with the rest of them if they are not receiving the red dot indicator or receiving a text notification that a new message has arrived. Out of the 7 that I was able to talk to, only 3 were receiving the red dot indicator. And if I am counted in that total, it is only 3 out of 8 because when those 3 responded, I didn't receive a red dot indicator either for any of those 3 messages. The other 9 people in our group have not responded to a message that I sent out via the "chat" asking everyone to respond so that I knew if they were getting a red dot notification & seeing the group messages. I even went so far as sending out individual "chats" to each of the people I hadn't heard from and they still didn't respond. The FS messaging system is the only means of communicating that I have with the whole group and I am beyond frustrated at this new "chat" system!
"FamilySearch Chat enables real-time conversation with any FamilySearch users signed in at the same time as you."
Apparently, if someone I want to communicate ISN'T on FS at the same time as me, I'm out of luck because they will neither get any notification or a red dot indicator when do they do get on FS. And obviously, most of the people I need to communicate with are NOT on FS at the same time as me.
I am especially upset about all this right now because one of our group members is on Hospice & I'm trying to move all her reservations to other group members before her FS account gets closed. If other group members are not aware of the situation, then we might lose her reservations and a lot of work went into finding and working those ancestors. I just hate to think of having to go through all that work again, or any work to add them to a following list and then having to re-reserve them all again. I am already busy attending to other things in my life. I've gotten almost 100 names moved to other accounts or 120 day reserved by those group members that I have been able to talk to, but there are still about 200 more names to take care of.
"The feedback in general has been very positive about the new features and added benefits of Chat."
This must be feedback not shown here in the forum. Just in this thread only, there are several complaints."
With the old system, a text notification was received when a new message arrived. Why was that function done away with? I use a computer to access FS, not the app.
Also, on my computer screen, your picture just shows an hourglass icon.
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