Experimental Labs is not on the Home Page
We have a patron who uses the new Home Page. However, the FamilySearch Labs section is totally missing. Is there a setting someplace that he is missing? This is not a one time issue, but over a period of time.
By the way, love the new home page!
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Just witnessed the same thing with a user who has been back a few times. What? Why not?
A brand new user who is getting baptized later this month (March 2025) showed it on his screen this afternoon.
Just type in familysearch.org/labs in the URL instead.
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@Jaelene Starr I have not seen that issue and I do not experience it either. As @RobertLeighPritchett mentioned above, you can use the link he provided.
Is it still happening?
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Home page will show "Experiments" over on the right side and down a bit as clickable.
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@RobertLeighPritchett Thank you for the helpful input.
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You are most welcome! I understand that not everyone has the same Home Page and apparently there are at least 4 different ones. So when all else fails, go here > https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/
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Those experiments are worth the time and energy to explore. Thank you FamilySearch, for permitting us to do so. Everything "AI" has been a joy! As was presented in RootsTech, each AI function is indeed a game changer. I'm pretty sure the main reason AI was revealed to the human mind, was specifically for advancing and accelerating this sacred work.
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@Jaelene Starr What you are seeing is correct according to the engineers. If it is a new user with little or very little information in their tree, they might not see the Labs window. And in fact there are probably around eight or ten variations of the HomePage (member, non-member, language dependent, etc). It isn't that they can't get to them, the labs just don't show on their HomePage.
I would refer them to the link that @RobertLeighPritchett referenced.
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We just got this new home page in Finland and lots of things are missing including the Labs. It is missing in Finnish and in English. As David A. Wilson previously mentioned, I know that there are different home page variations and it also depends about the user, how much they see. I am using a lot of FamilySearch and my tree is large and I am using several labs products already, so why the Labs is missing, even from the English page?
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@Heidi Kuosmanen I asked in your other post about a screenshot so we can see what you are seeing compared to what I see.
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Same results with Chrome, Edge and Firefox
In Finnish
And same in English
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Interesting to hear that the home page has so many variations based on the user, language, and location. Does the location of the user take priority over other factors? Can a user override that by forcing a particular URL?
@Heidi Kuosmanen when I switch from English to Finnish here in the US, my browser switches to the URL:
»» https://www.familysearch.org/fi/home/portal/
Do you get that one or are there extra bits and pieces in the URL that might be limiting what the page shows because you are in Finland? If you have a different URL, can you use the one I see and force a different homepage?
This is what I see for my homepage when I switch to Finnish:
So nearly the whole page has been translated to Finnish and your history with FamilySearch should certainly give you the full set tools so that leaves just your location to influence what you see. By any chance do you have a VPN? If so, do you see anything different if it is on or off? Or if you set your VPN so you look like you are in the US?
(PS. Hello from me! Hope you and your family are all doing well and enjoying spring!)
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@Gordon Collett When a location has been chosen to be shown a custom home page, that will take precedence. The language isn't as important as the location. As I recall, Australia has a custom home page experience, and you'll see that home page when you are in Australia. There are several other locations that have been chosen for a custom home page as well. In those places, you will see the custom home page, regardless of whether you are looking at the home page in English, or French, or any other language.
It's also a factor whether you are signed in or not. Sometimes there is a special experience for a location when you are signed out, but once you sign in, you just get the standard home page experience (shown in your selected language). The example of https://www.familysearch.org/en/australia is one that shows unique content only when you are signed out.
So for the issue reported by @Heidi Kuosmanen , the important factor is if you are actually in Finland. As you started exploring at the end of your post, you can sometimes use a VPN to pretend that you are in a particular country, which might help you to see (or not see) a custom home page.
However, the language is still a factor, because some of these location-specific home pages can only be seen in certain languages. And some of the experiences can be seen with the proper URL. For example, I can see the Korean custom experience by going to https://www.familysearch.org/ko/korea , but if I try to see that in English by going to https://www.familysearch.org/en/korea I will get redirected to a more standard English experience.
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Yes, I live Finland and I don't use VPN. Thank you Gordon for your Screenshots, because now I can show what we used to have couple weeks ago, but now they are missing. I am a Senior Service Missionary for FamilySearch Support here in Finland (Nordic and Baltic team) and I am getting many messages from Finnish people asking where these features like To Do list have gone from the Home page.
So these are missing:
(ps. Gordon, I and my family are doing fine and the spring has finally gotten here and trees are having small mouse leaves)
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@Alan E. Brown , so @Heidi Kuosmanen should be able to see the full Finnish home page if she can determine the proper URL to use. Which still begs the question of why members in Finland with extensive experience in FamilySearch are only presented with the partial Finnish home page when signing into FamilySearch from Finland no matter whether they set the page to Finnish or English. Is this a glitch in this new release for them? Heidi, what URL do you see for your home page when you are signed in?
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@Gordon Collett In general, when a custom home page is created for a location, there will be tradeoffs. Usually there are elements that FamilySearch believes are important for that particular location, or they wouldn't bother to make a custom home page. And it seems logical that if there are additional new elements that are included in the custom home page, there might well not be room for 100% of the elements that are on the standard home page. But in this case, it looks like there are simply some elements missing, and I don't see anything that is new in Heidi's screen shots.
Another possibility that just came to mind is that certain elements might not yet be translated into Finnish, and so they are not being shown at this point. And that could be the case even for elements that used to be shown, if they have been updated and translations are not yet available. That's just a thought….
You said that Heidi "should be able to see the full Finnish home page if she can determine the proper URL to use." I don't know that that is true. Depending on what experiences FamilySearch chooses to enforce via redirection, it might not be possible in a certain location to show all possible home pages.
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As can be seen in my screen shots, all the elements of the home page except for the AI generated hints have been translated into Finnish. Comparing Heidi's screen shots and mine, the only difference is that those standard items in the right hand column are missing from her screen.
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@Gordon Collett there is nothing wrong with my url.
@Alan E. Brown I know that some features have not yet been translated to Finnish, but these missing ones used to be on the home page until just recently and they were in Finnish. I know that some links or buttons are and have not been available to like Get Involved page, because it has not yet been translated to Finnish (Finland has been regarded to be so small language area that they don't provide those features to us).
But this widget was specifically requested for us and it has been available over a year now and now it has been taken away, why? and nothing added to its place.
Also To Do list was in Finnish and it has not links to other pages, so the reason for not been translated, does not apply.
Only what I can think of is that some Home page engineer did something and on purpose or by by mistake removed those missing widgets. If it was on purpose, I would like to hear the reason for it or if it was by mistake, I would like them to be reinstated.
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Yes, that is how we currently see the home page. And also what you see, is that what we used to see.
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So as part of my FamilySearch training, my mentors in Canada do not currently get the "Grow Your Tree with AI Research Assistant" (as of early May 2025) in the Labs that I experience here in the US, but the other AI-based experiments do. And I learned there are different views based on physical locations around the world. I think it has more to do with complying with local laws and "environments" more than anything. There may be other factors involved as well, such as occurred with the Family-Ordinance-Opportunities page that was in Labs (Experiments) for two days and then disappeared because more suggestions needed to be implemented (and have been) - with at least one more suggestion that must be quite a challenge to implement. Meanwhile, the page with the dark-skinned girl and kinky hair that was in Labs, now is under Activities as the "Together" app available for both computers and cellphones - at least as far as I can see here in the US.
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