90-Day Reservations & Ordinances Ready

LegacyUser

Tom J. McVey said: I have grown to LOVE the "Ordinances Ready" feature. I love the rules that you can only reserve your gender and that you are limited in the number of names you can reserve until you get the work done. Also that you cannot further "Share" these names. The opportunity that this feature gives to those who previously didn't have family names to take to the temple is wonderful.

Now it issue...it seems that the gender limitation and quantity limitation have all gone out the window as recent as last week. I help a number of members who do a significant amount of FamilySearch work and their accounts are starting to fill up with names reserved for only 90 days and the limits are gone. Previously all 90-day reservations were found via Ordinances Ready, but that is no longer the case. With the new availablity to take a name previously reserved by someone and then they have shared it with the temple system all the limits seem to be gone.

When you use the "Descendants with Tasks" feature on your phone you can get all the previously shared with the temple names you want, no limitations! This is going to become the old issue of names piling up in accounts...at least they will only be there 90-days (after the Covid 19 adjustments are taken away).

Can someone chim in who is in the know on this?

Thanks,

Tom

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: The missing piece is a limit on the number of names we can have on our personal list. Ron Tanner has talked about this several times in his live Q&A sessions. At some point in the near future this will be put into place. No one has said anything about what the limit will be. There will not be any limit on our Shared With Temple list.

So when this limit gets in place and when the people you are referring to have filled their personal reservation list to the limit with names with 90 day expiration dates that they cannot re-share to the temple, they will not be able to reserve any more names until they complete those ordinances, release them back to the general temple shared pool so someone else can do them, or they expire and fall off the list automatically.

I don't think it will take too long when that happens for people to realize that there is no need to reserve 200 names that they will never be able to complete in three months and start letting the names stay in the shared pool until they need a couple to promptly complete.

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: We were also counting on people being prudent and realizing that there are only so many ordinances they can actually perform in 90 days.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The whole concept is that the user is going to grab and go to the temple immediately.

Users should never pull shared names they plan to hold on their temple page.

The expiration dates move as long as the temples are not open or open for only live sealings. Once the temples reopen, then the 90 day limit will be in force.

LegacyUser

Tom J. McVey said: I do indeed understand the concept and I support it totally and think it's wonderful. My concern is that the reserving of these shared ordinances is SO easy now you don't even know you've done it. Yes, there is a small message but it's so easy to miss it. Just a few examples:
1. From a pedigree, see a green temple, click on it and you could get 4 or 5 people needing work and you don't notice that a couple of them are from shared names.
2. From Descendants with Task you see one name is available, you go through the reserve process and wa la you get all available ordiances that everyone in the family needs...including those with shared ordinances. Again, there's a message but on your phone it's difficult to sort from "needs permission" and so forth.
3. From the "Person" page you see that after you've attached all appropriate hints, fixed all locations that work is available and you reserve it and it includes shared ordinances.
I could go on and on but you know them all, propably better than I.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: It does not matter which pedigree view you use (Descendancy and Fan are pedigree views) the green temple icon indicates ordinances are ready to be reserved and take to the temple. This now includes ordinances shared with the temple system by others. You can actually reserve those ordinances from that point, something that I have never used, but many people do.

The Green Temple Icon in the Recommended Tasks list does not tell me who, but will take me to the person's ordinance page, where I can see what is available and whether or not it has been shared and by whom. This is the same whether I have come from the person page, the recommended tasks, or click on a specific ordinance icon (not the temple icon) in the person's summary card.

Those shared are available to reserve from the ordinance page, just as the unreserved ordinances are available.

There is currently a problem that is an "all or nothing" approach to making reservations. which means if just one ordinance (typically, the SP ordinance) has not been reserved or shared, the only way to reserve it is to reserve all the ordinances that are available, including the shared ordinances.

Supposedly, there is a way to unreserve those previously shared ordinances, so they go back to their place in the queue, but it appears to require some unique actions.

I don't know if or when this problem will be addressed, but it is something that needs to be looked at. The solution is the option to reserve all available ordinances or just specific ordinances if they have not been shared with the temple system. The same holds true for unreserving the shared ordinances.

Several things need to be noted: I cannot reshare a previously shared ordinance to the temple system. It is mine to complete in a 90-day period and then it returns to its former place in the queue, which is now just a single queue for all shared names. Previously, it was by the temple district in which the user (who shared the ordinances) lived.

I believe that some means will eventually be developed that will allow me to reserve individual ordinances, rather than all of them... Jim Greene, who is an authority on what is going on with FamilySearch, has indicated the a council will consider the issues that have been raised. He talks about this in his post in the https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea... discussion.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I just hope that it doesn't take as long as it took to get a means to start correcting indexes.

LegacyUser

Jessie Hearle said: Apparently the limit is 300 unshared names.
https://familysearch.org/ask/productS...

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Yep, there it is. A pretty subtle introduction of the new feature. Anybody out there that has over 300 names and would like to try this out? Did it really get put in place with this new update?

On thing Ron mentioned in his Q&As is that if people currently have over the limit in their reservation lists, no names would be taken away from them but they would not be able to reserve any more until they whittled their lists under the limit by completing ordinances or sharing the name with the temple.

This also means that if people have over 300 names, as names on the list expire at the two year limit, they will not be able to re-reserve those names. I don't know if those expired ordinances will just get unreserved or if they will be automatically be shifted to their shared temple lists.

Three hundred sounds like a very reasonable number. If one has just endowments reserved it would still take that person over a year, 60 weeks in fact, to clear out the list by doing 5 endowments per week.

LegacyUser

Tom J. McVey said: Not sure that rule works? I help a number of people who have way more than 300 and none of them are "Shared".

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Since the update, that is within the past week, have you helped any of these people who have over 300 names reserve more names?

Again, Ron stressed that reservations will not be taken away if one has over 300, just that that person will not be able to reserve anymore until the number drops under 300.

LegacyUser

Tom J. McVey said: I'm looking at a friends account right now. He has 798 names shared with the temple and another 787 under the "My Reservations" category. He's added new names as recent as 6/13. Now most of those happen to be names previously shared with the temple and he's snagged them and they have a 90-day expiration on them. Perhaps that's why he's been able to reserve them.

Thoughts?

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Either temple shared names don't count or the update is still pending and they updated the help center article a few weeks before the release instead of years afterwards.

Can you ask him to try to reserve a name that was not shared with the temple and see what happens?

LegacyUser

Tom J. McVey said: That would seem to be the case

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Gordon and Toms and all, I guess I was unaware of that document's existence. That feature has not yet been released, nor will it be as long as the temples are closed for proxy work.