New color scheme

LegacyUser

Elizabethe Walton said: how to post to it.)

I am one of those people who have thousands of names released to the temple. I just want them to get done. I am usually working on lines with few descendants who are members of the church and if I don't find and share them they may never get done. I have always cheerfully shared those name with anyone willing to get them done. The new system that allows a person to reserve names which have been shared with the temple as long as they get them done in 90 days is awesome!

In the past, people who have wanted to do those names only had to ask the person who shared them, and they could get the name back and share the names with the person who was willing to do them. (Perhaps the poster who resented people who shared thousands of names with the temple did not understand that.) But I am grateful for the change, as it makes it so easy for other people to do those names that might otherwise wait even longer.

I do wish the color for those that are shared was different though, as I often go to a lot of effort to get a person ready to add the name to the temple list only to discover it is NOT actually needing to be done as someone has already shared it with the temple. Perhaps just a different shade of green or something like that?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I don't know if you use an external fully-certified family tree management program or not to do your reservations. If you don't then the only place you can reserve a person's vicarioous ordinances is their ordinance page. It is clear which ordinances have not been reserved and which have been reserved and shared with the temple on that page:

We get used to glancing at the color of the icons. Jim Greene commented extensively in another thread about the method some people use and I believe his is now understanding the problem.

I've never used the color as a guide, but with the new system, the difference between a shared/available ordinance to take to the temple, and a not reserved ordinance is easy for me to distinguish. A quick glance at the page taken in as a whole quickly tells me that. If I focus only on the color of the icon, I can see where using the same color icon for both can cause a user to miss the text.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Tom, I think you are still, to a degree, missing the point. Are you positive you never use the color of an icon as a guide?

When you are checking through Family Tree, how often do you click on the icon here to see what ordinances need to be done and reserve them?



Every single time you come to that page? Or never?

Now let's build an imaginary scenario here. Let's say I am older, have some health problems, limited funds, have no close family in the church, live 500 miles from a temple, cannot travel. I will never have the opportunity to get to a temple again but I have a lot of family that needs work so share every family name I work on with the temple. I do have a distant cousin that is also working on the family but is in my same situation and also shares everything with the temple she finds.

As I work through family tree, I want to make sure everyone I am related to has their ordinances all shared with the temple so they will get done even though I personally can't do it.

Now as I work through Family Tree I see this:



Does this relative need me to do anything to make sure his ordinance work gets done? I have no idea. I have to click on that icon every single time I come to this page. to make sure the ordinances are reserved and shared with the temple.

How about when I run across a whole family? How do I check to see if my cousin has shared every ordinance properly? I could go down to the Family Members section and check summary cards;



No way to tell here, either. In addition it looks like I need to do something for him and his wife. When I go to check the problem I find that he was never married.

So I give up on telling who needs ordinances on the person's page. The summary cards don't help. So I'll try the pedigree page:



which of these four brother have had their ordinances shared by my cousin and which do not? I can't tell here either.

Needing to go to the ordinance page to read the text every single time will lead to checking, rechecking, and checking again to make sure no one was missed.

Psychologically speaking, this:



has the potential to become a very bad reinforcer for the intended behavior for those who have too much temple work to take care of to do it all personally or who cannot go to the temple but are diligent family historians. If more than 50% of the time clicking on the green icon turns out to be a complete waste of time, why ever click on… [truncated]

LegacyUser

Elizabethe Walton said: I think he has explained it beautifully! I am one of those people who are looking for work that needs to be done primarily so I can share it with the temple. I already have over 8000 names shared with the temple which is more than I will ever be able to do in the years I have left. Because the new color scheme doesn't differentiate between names which have no reservation and names which have been reserved but shared with the temple, I find I have to reserve them for myself so they will turn blue, even though it is unlikely that I will actually be able to get them done in 90 days, just so I can tell what is already shared with the temple. This has the unintended effect of unnecessarily locking those names up for 90 days.

So a different color for ordinances which are shared is a good idea. You could just use a darker green or something like that.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: No, I work almost exclusively with a local program and so do not use the icons. When I work on one of my relatives, at the completion of the work, I will either leave the ordinances unreserved, or reserve and share them with the temple.

The problem that now exists is that I have no way to dismiss the icon from my view of the pedigree charts.

At this point with the new ability to "grab and go" I no longer will leave available ordinances unreserved, but will reserve and share them with the temple system. I was concerned before because of the problems involved with shared ordinances and one or two years ago, went through and unreserved many of the ordinances in order to reduce the number of names in my temple list.

Another user recently reported experimenting with shared vs unreserved ordinances and found that the shared ordinances were many times more likely to be completed than the unreserved ordinances. It was a short and limited test that the user ran before the new system but after Ordinances Ready was introduced.

I do know that Jim indicated that

Nevertheless as we go back and examine all that has happened with the release and with your comments I think we now have the information we need to decide if we need to change some of these changes or not. Please be patient with us, as this review and then react process may take some time.

in the https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea... discussion thread.

LegacyUser

Stephen Jorgensen Kelsey said: This is always and inevitably the problem with computer programmers. When something is working well they will not leave it alone but do so=called improvements. the old color scheme was working well and there was really no need to change it but change it they did to something much worse. The new color scheme is awful===telling the difference between a light black and a dark black is rdifficult especially for those of us with vision problems. When something works and works well please leave it alone and let it do it's job. There are many other things which could be done which are much more important than changing the color scheme. For instance what happened to being able to see a listing of all people we have entered who are categorized as "living;' When famly search start4ed and migrated data from ancestral file into family search, many of my people were giving living who should not hav been. In addition back when adding gedcoms people were listed as living. Years later now those people are well within the 110 year rule and work could be done for them. With more than 300,000 relatives in my files It is difficult to see which ones were made living. Also it was promisted that this would be available at least a year ago. Are all temple ordinances now in family tree? What about all the peoole who were born in the covenant yet have sealing dates?? A simple program to compare the parents marriage date with the children's sealing dates could solve that roblem or at least give it some data to look at. In additio comparing baptismal dates with endowments date would indicate that baptismal dates are missing somewhere, especially for early church members...I amsure there are many others

LegacyUser

Dorothy Badger said: Tom,

it isn't only the green icons - it is also the teal blue color (was turquoise a few days ago) means both printed and not printed - so again, a quick glance is now not enough to answer some very simple questions and keep moving along with the piece of the process of that moment

the orange color no longer means "needs more information" - but the very same color now means "not available"

the former colors were very clear in distinguishing the exact status of an ordinance and who was involved, paired with the information that appeared when i hovered over the icon - and the dotted box to indicate "not needed" or "not available" (no spouse for SS - infant not needing BCIE) was a very clean and clear symbol

i understand that there are some who don't see colors well - and there needs to be a solution for them, which i feel like was already in place . . . check the ordinance page for written information beside each ordinance

but there are so many more of us who do see colors clearly, and now there is a whole new set of problems and frustrations that have been created - now we ALL have to go to the ordinance page, instead of just those who needed color help

it may sound like a lot of whiny complaining - i get it - however, those colors are a BIG part of a patron moving efficiently through Family Search

thanks for listening

p.s. i don't know how you fit into the comment board/branch of FS - but so many are directing their posts to you, so i thought i probably should too - you are a dear to put up with us