Problems accessing "Changes to people you follow"
I check "Changes to people you follow" on my phone. The problem is When I hit the view activity button it will not bring up any of the information. I've checked all the settings for notifications and everything and cannot figure out why it won't let me see the information. I can get in fine on my computer but not my phone. Any ideas? Thanks, Owen
Best Answers
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The behavior where the app handles certain URLs has nothing to do with sessions or the back end. Rather, it is an intentional behavior that happens because of what is called Deep Linking (sometimes called Universal Links or App Links). An app can register with the phone's OS to handle certain URLs. When URLs are clicked on the phone, then the OS checks to see if an app has registered to handle them, and if so, passes control to the app to handle them, rather than the browser.
Deep linking can be very helpful in many cases. For example, if you receive an email from FamilySearch (or a collaborator) that has a link to a person, you may well want that profile to open in the app. I certainly do. The app will also open links to the Tree, or to a Memory, or to the Source Linker. But it sounds like you may not appreciate this behavior, since you talked about links that "work properly, staying in the browser."
If you are on Android (which your reference to a "hamburger menu" makes likely), then you can completely disable deep linking for a particular app. To do this for the Family Tree app, long press the launcher icon for the app, and then choose App Info. Scroll down to "Open by default" (it might be worded slightly differently on some OS/manufacturer versions, but that's usually what it's called). The current setting will be "In the app," but you can change it to be "In your browser." Then all FamilySearch URLs will open in the browser. I don't think that iOS lets the user turn off deep linking like this.
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@Owen Ira terry1 I can reproduce the behaviour that you are seeing, in the Android Family Tree app (version 5.3.5) on my phone. I have a "Changes to people you follow" notification there. When I open the notification and tap VIEW ACTIVITY, nothing happens. As it happens, I have another older phone which will run only an older version (4.8.16) of the Family Tree app. When I open the same notification there, it works; the Following list opens in the Chrome browser. So, it seems that this is an issue with the current version of the app.
I delete those notifications after I have looked at them using my desktop, and I don't have any notifications visible there. I was surprised to see that there was still one notification visible in the app which I would have 'deleted' about 10 days ago. This seems to be a separate issue, serendipitous in this case.
@Alan E. Brown Thank you for the extensive briefing on Deep Linking. As I rarely use the browser on my phone for FamilySearch stuff, I may leave the option turned on.
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This issue is now fixed!! If you access activity for people you follow from the App, it takes you to the list. Thanks for reporting this. Sam ☺️
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Answers
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It works fine for me. From the notification I click the VIEW ACTIVITY button, and it brings up the list of people with changes. I viewed it using a Chrome browser on my phone to view the FamilySearch website.
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@Owen Ira terry1 Do you have the Family Tree app installed on your phone as I do? When I sign in to the website in the Chrome browser on my phone, and click the hamburger menu button, followed by Family Tree, then Following, I get switched to the Family Tree app! The same happens for Tree, Recents, My Contributions and Person List subitems. The Overview, Find and Family Groups are the the only subitems under Family Tree that work properly, staying in the browser and loading the appropriate pages.
I don't know what would happen if I didn't have the Family Tree App installed (and I don't intend to find out). I don't see any VIEW ACTIVITY button.
I suspect that this a session-related problem and the back end is confusing the browser and app sessions.
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Hey that worked to change the open by default button. Thanks everybody for your great help.
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@Owen Ira terry1 Can you tell me which version of Android you have on your phone? My phone is somewhat elderly, and runs Android 13. I would like to know if your issue was happening on the current version of Android before I pursue the other issues that I listed in an earlier post. Those were the attempts by the app to open the relevant screen when I clicked various Family Tree menu subitems in the browser. I described the behaviour just as a switch from the browser to the app. In fact, there is more to it than that. When the app receives such a message from the browser, it typically does not open the correct screen. It usually just sits on whatever screen it had open at the time (normally the Tree screen). If these are not issues in the current version of Android, I won't follow this path any further.
I have decided that I will disable the "Open by default". Not having a profile open in the app is a small price to pay in return for being able to open the target page directly (in the browser) for the menu items I mentioned. I'm not sure, though, what else I might be missing out on by doing this. The current version of the app has four supported domains or links; I imagine that the one that starts with "integration" is the one that is responsible for this functionality, but there are three others that will be disabled.
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@JulianBrown38 said ”The current version of the app has four supported domains or links; I imagine that the one that starts with "integration" is the one that is responsible for this functionality, but there are three others that will be disabled."
No, it is most definitely the entry for ”www.familysearch.org" that is responsible. That is the production website. It's highly unlikely you will ever encounter URLs on the integration website.
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@Sam Sulser This issue is happening again (VIEW ACTIVITY in the Changes to People You Follow notification results in an Unexpected Error message). I am using the current version of the Android app.
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@JulianBrown38 When you are reporting which version of an app you are using, it's helpful to actually mention the version number (rather than just "current version"). In particular, the Android Family Tree app was just upgraded from 5.4.0 to 5.4.1 yesterday (or the day before, depending on your time zone). Are you using 5.4.1?
I'm using 5.4.1, which I know made some fixes for how links are handled. Tapping VIEW ACTIVITY in the Changes to People You Follow notification works fine for me — it takes me to the correct page on the website (since www.familysearch.org/tree/following is not a feature that is handled by the app) in the browser on my device.
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@Alan E. Brown Thanks. I am using 5.4.0, which is later than the version that I had (5.3.5) when this discussion was started. When Sam advised that the issue had been fixed in February, I'm pretty sure that I checked it using my then-current version. My app was later updated to 5.4.0 in late March.
- I received recent notifications from FS for Changes to People You Follow on 30 March, 18 and 25 April. I think that it was only the last of these that I checked with the app, and discovered it was not working.
- In Google Play Store at present, I still see 5.4.0 as the current version (updated 22 March).
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FamilySearch often does a staged rollout of new releases. So I probably happened to get the new release. Assuming the partial rollout goes well, the 5.4.1 version will soon be available to everyone. As I mentioned, the 5.4.1 release does fix some issues with links. I can't guarantee that it fixes your particular issue, but when I try to duplicate the symptoms you reported, I don't see any errors on 5.4.1.
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@Alan E. Brown My app updated to 5.4.1 yesterday, and the problem is fixed.
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@JulianBrown38 Thanks for taking the time to follow up. I'm glad it's working for you now.
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