"Suggested Tasks" no longer useful

LegacyUser

D. Llewelyn said: Suggested Tasks are now showing direct ancestors with the new "green means a lot of things" icon. I about had a heart attack when I logged in and saw green for ancestors in my "suggested tasks" list that I was 99% sure were already taken care of to get their work done. So I had to click on each one to figure out what the heck was going on, only to discover that another relative (who I work closely with on genealogy and making sure temple ordinances get done) has already shared the work.

PLEASE make the shared work a different color.

Making shared work available for anyone to take is great. But providing hints for "suggested tasks" that does not differentiate whether or not the work is shared is frustrating. Tasks include more than just showing available work to grab and go to the temple. Please don't use colors that mean more than one thing (the blue/gray issue on the reservations list has already been addressed and is another issue/problem entirely).

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: I am not meaning to be argumentative, I just want to explain briefly why we made the change. There are many threads you can read to get more details. The green temple icon was always meant to mean, from the FamilySearch point of view, that the ordinance was ready and available to take to the temple. Now that we have made any ordinance on the temple list available as well it has been confusing. To those who are coming to FamilySearch to find a family name to take to the temple making these temple names immediately available to them simplifies their workflow, where before they had to either contact the person who shared it, and hope they reply, or contact support to intervene. We have many more who are in this category than those who feel that sharing with the temple makes it done.  It is a hard trade-off when we have to decide which audience to please more, so we have to look at all of the facts and the audience size then do what it best for most, based on the criteria given to us by our leaders, and the directions we are heading.  Again, I apologize that we made your work harder, but at least now you know why.
P.S. look for orange (or yellow) temple icons if you are looking for those that need work in order to make them temple ready.

LegacyUser

D. Llewelyn said: Thanks, Jim. Your explanation is appreciated. I'm not trying to be confrontational either.

I do think you are going to run into someone problems or questions with the recommended tasks when the temples reopen. I put myself in the position of one of my teenagers who may log into family search for the sole purpose of finding family names to take to the temple (since that what the focus is shifting to). If I were a teenage boy looking for baptisms (and not having anything in my own teenage temple reservation box), my recommended tasks shows green (Go!) for people in the recommended tasks box. Only two of the names are male. When I click on those, the only ordinances left/available are sealings, as the other work has been done. I clicked on the "show more" and only a couple more green boxes showed up (everyone below that was orange). There was one available male, when clicked on had all green for all ordinances (yay!), but when I clicked on him to potentially grab and go with the baptism/confirmation, his 110th birthday isn't until September 15th, so his work isn't available yet without permission.

Perhaps on the homepage have a button that says "Going to the Temple? Click Here". Then ask if the person going is male or female, and have a check box of which ordinances they are looking to take (in my teenagers case, baptisms and confirmations only). Then give them a list with green boxes for the ordinances they are looking for. Just a thought...... especially if you have teenagers that want to find, say 5 baptisms to take. Or a missionary that wants to grab several endowments for his/her zone to take on temple day (we sent cards with our missionary - great way to get endowments done while they're in the MTC). I'm willing to wager that the target audience for the grab and go, probably won't have much going on in their own reservation box.

LegacyUser

Steven Green said: If the desire is to find names that can be taken to the temple immediately, the best way to do that is through the Ordinances Ready feature. That sounds like the feature you are asking for. You can access it from the home page by clicking Temple in the menu, then Ordinances Ready. It will ask which ordinances you want to do, then attempt to find the normal amount for that ordinance. It automatically uses the gender of the user logged in.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Any entry that shows up in a user's Recommended Tasks lists can be dismissed. It will no longer appear for that user.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Actually, the correct term and term used is "Ignore" the task. That is appropriate and the task will no longer appear in the list.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The whole idea is that the green icon allows you to "grab and take" ordinances to the temple, including those which have been "shared" with the temple list.

The difference between Ordinances Ready and being able to "reserve" a name from the temple list is that it is not limited by ordinance or by the sex of the user who activated Ordinances Ready. But it is a good solution for youth who want to take family names to the temple for vicarious baptisms.

LegacyUser

R Greg Leininger said: I have a somewhat related question related to the "Recommended Tasks" tab. I used to go through this to find family persons who needed records linked and possibly have their names taken to the temple.

I found many Scandinavian names in my list right up at the top of the list. Not to suggest that I am a "wimp," but I quickly found that with the changing back and forth of surnames from one generation to the next (eg dad Peder Larson's son is named Johan Pederson) I was worried that I might make many mistakes in assuming that certain records belonged to this person, or that I might merge two persons that were not a true match. So I decided to avoid, for now, doing Scandinavian names.

The problem is that every time I click "IGNORE" for a certain record hint, it would disappear for that session, but would NEVER "stay ignored" the next time i logged on. Back it would come w my next login. So I have SCORES of Scandinavian names at the top of my list and it is very cumbersome to scroll SLOWLY down the list to find a name that I have not reviewed yet.

so I have given up on using that feature. I find names now by going up and down the descendancy list of persons that I have completed temple work for, and have found thousands of persons who need records linked to them. In turn this has led to adding many new names to a family due to a new previously-unlinked census or marriage record, or finding extra siblings on a Find a Grave posting.

Has anyone found a work around for this problem? I find this Recommended Tasks tab/function meaningless for me.