temple icon color change.

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Carolyn Ann Gurr said: OK-I figured out the green temple thing no longer signifies someone needs their ordinances reserved...it can mean another person has reserved this individual and shared it with the temple...Please change the icon back to red so we know the ordinances have been shared with the temple already.
-Sis. Gurr

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JimGreene said: OK, I am stumped. Please explain why it is important to know that it has previously been shared with the temple?  It is available for anyone to perform. Isn't the goal performing the ordinance, not submitting it to the temple?  Green means it can be done. Please help me understand.

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Eric J. said: Because a. if you're looking at descendants in a tree view and all you see is green, you might think there's potential work to be done there...but nope, it's all done and already submitted to the temple file. b. the logic behind the coding is now flawed, for example, if someone else requests/submits to the temple file all the ordinances for an individual EXCEPT sealing to parents, and then I come along, find that person's parents, and try to request just that sealing to parents...it now will reserve ALL of those ordinances, and the only option it gives me is to print everything off, or unreserve everything. I can't just reserve sealing to parents, and then submit it to the temple file too. WAY too many bugs with this release, pretty awful frankly

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Tom Huber said: I find the four colors make eminent sense -- after all, we are concerned only about the reservations we make for our ancestral lines and related spouses of our relatives.

Green for request,
Blue for In Progress.

Gray for completed and
Yellow/amber for Not available (Cannot Request).

In addition, we can display either My Reservations or Shared.

First of all, you can only use Ordinances Ready or the person's ordinance page to reserve names.

The ordinance page shows if a name has been shared with the temple. The icon is blue not green. If it is green on the person's ordinance page, then it has not been shared with the temple.

If I want to take a name to the temple, it no longer matters if it has been shared or not. I can reserve it. I will be informed if the name is temple shared and if I continue, I have 90 days to complete the ordinances, the same as if I had used Ordinances Ready.

If the name was not been reserved, I am still reserving the name, but now have two years in which to complete the ordinances.

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Tom Huber said: Shared (but not printed) or not...

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Cherie Ailene Morgan said: Just stop... you don't understand that people use this site in more than one way and a solution has to address each and every way an end-user works.

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Cherie Ailene Morgan said: Jim - Your Engineers also need to understand how the end-users use the software. There are MANY of us who do the online work and do NOT do the temple ordinance work ourselves. This change is only geared for people who are doing the temple work themselves, and not for those who are doing the research and submitting the names for others to do the work. When those of us who are researchers go through the family trees and see green, that indicates that the work has not been done and we see it as an opportunity to submit it the temple. But now when we click on the ordinance tab, sometimes we find that someone else has already submitted it. But we have no way to know unless we click on that name EACH AND EVERY TIME WE COME ACROSS IT, if the work has already been submitted. There needs to be a better resolution for what you're trying to accomplish. Making it easier for some shouldn't make it harder for others. All you need to do to resolve this is make some sort of icon where a user can select a record that has already been submitted to the temple. Because right now, you have a color that means TWO things and that defeats the purpose of color coding.

And while we're at it, that doesn't explain why the work that I have requested (which used to be yellow) and the work that I have sent to the Temple, or sent to a friend or family member (which used to be red) is now the same color. Why does BLUE also mean two things? Now I can't easily tell if I've completed both steps. What if I requested the work, but forgot to submit it to the temple? Under this new change, I now have to go to the Temple tab on a regular basis and double check if I have names that are reserved but haven't been shared. Once again, this is creating more work, instead of streamlining our work.

When changes like this are considered, the Engineers need to consider ALL users, and not just a select group. There has to be a resolution that works for everyone.

Please feel free to contact me, I'm more than happy to provide more feedback and suggestions. It's all about getting to the root cause of a problem and solving it to the best outcome for all.

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D. Llewelyn said: Excellent points. These new changes have created more work and more steps to verify and submit/share temple work. The old way was easy and clear, the only thing that needed to be added was a way for anyone to grab "shared" temple work that they'd like to complete.

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Cherie Ailene Morgan said: Now we have to wait and see if the Engineers actually HEAR us and make the appropriate changes to accommodate everyone.

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Tom Huber said: That is true. The new system addresses those who have color blindness very nicely. Something for whom the old systems of icons caused major problems.

Now, changes are inevitable, particularly with the much needed rewrite of the temple system, which had major issues behind the scenes. There are some minor glitches, but for the most part, it is very easy to adjust to the new system.

About the only thing that changed is the icon colors and addition of information that can be very useful, including who did what, and when.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Jim,

Please explain why it is important to know that it has previously been shared with the temple?

The real issue here is that it IS important to know that it has NOT previously been shared with the temple.

A lot of folks (like myself) primarily work in the tree vetting data, filling out data holes on person records, completing families, and generally ensuring that records are fully correct so that they are suitable to have the temple work completed. When they are done vetting, the records are shared with the temple which used to result in a unique icon that essentially meant "all ready for temple work"

In spite of how FS had defined it and Ordinances Ready always used to interpret it, in reality, a green icon on a record almost NEVER means that the record is "ready for ordinances". In fact we have seen many problems based on that very assumption of what the green icon means. So looking for green icons in the tree was a very fast way to find person records that needed to be quickly vetted before Ordinances Ready inappropriately grabbed them and gave them to someone going to the temple in the next few days--people who probably won't even bother looking at the record (since the computer gave it to them, it must be ok, right?)

So now the "already fully vetted and ready for ordinances" type meaning of the red "shared with temple" icon has been merged with the totally opposite "NOT fully vetted and NOT ready for ordinances" green "can be reserved" icon, the icon color has become schizophrenic and cannot be used to quickly identify records that need to have their data vetted.

This completely fouls up a primary way of discerning records that need to be addressed before they are inappropriately taken to the temple.

BTW, my workflow is a bit different so I'm not impacted as much by this change, but it seems that the ability to see that a reservation is coming from a temple queue (90 day reserve) as opposed to a first time reservation (2 year reserve) would still be useful as it helps others to understand that this "reservation" thing that they are doing is not quite the same as the "reservation" thing the first user performed before sharing it with the temple. After all, that original reservation is still in the system relative to the reservation where it is being taken from temple pool.

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Tom Huber said: Actually, you cannot reserve an person's ordinances unless the basic identifying information is present. If there are possible duplicates flagged, you can no longer reserve the ordinances.

The lack of any (even one) sources still bothers me and that needs to be resolved (it actually may be, but I haven't checked to see if that is the case or not).

Also, if there are data problems (born after parent died), the system will not allow me to reserve the name.

I think a basic run through, unreserving all the names where there are data problems and/or no sources, is something that FamilySearch should seriously consider.

I cannot think of one situation in which a source would not exist.

Sometimes, the source may be no more than a compilation of circumstantial evidence, recorded as a memory, but it is still a valid source.

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Jeff Wiseman said:

unreserving all the names where there are data problems and/or no sources, is something that FamilySearch should seriously consider.

There may be other better ways to to this. Unreserving an ordinance simply puts the misleading green icon back on it. And entering a bunch of "estimated" or "guessed at" dates and such would get around that.

Perhaps significantly tightening the criteria on a record before it receives a green icon would work better, but I see a few problems with that as well.

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Cherie Ailene Morgan said: There is a difference between inevitable change and change that makes my work harder to do. Thank you for continuing to be blind to the frustration of other users.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Cherie, I do like the direction the coloring, and handling of people being able to pull names from the temple queues is going. However, I think I also may understand the concern that you are raising. If my response to Jim included below is not in line with the concerns you have, please add a comment to it so we can understand better. Thanks!

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Cherie Ailene Morgan said: Jeff - This is the response I posted on another thread so someone who is an employee:

The Engineers need to understand how the end-users use the software. There are MANY of us who do the online work and do NOT do the temple ordinance work ourselves. This change is only geared for people who are doing the temple work themselves, and not for those who are doing the research and submitting the names for others to do the work. When those of us who are researchers go through our family trees and see green, that indicates that the work has not been done and we see it as an opportunity to submit it the temple. But now when we click on the ordinance tab, sometimes we find that someone else has already submitted it. But we have no way to know unless we click on that name EACH AND EVERY TIME WE COME ACROSS IT, if the work has already been submitted. There needs to be a better resolution for what you're trying to accomplish. Making it easier for some shouldn't make it harder for others. All you need to do to resolve users being able to request names that have already been submitted to the temple is make some sort of icon where a user can select a record that has already been submitted. Because right now, you have a color that means TWO things and that defeats the purpose of color coding.

And while we're at it, that doesn't explain why the work that I have requested (which used to be yellow) and the work that I have sent to the Temple, or sent to a friend or family member (which used to be red) is now the same color. Why does BLUE also mean two things? Now I can't easily tell if I've completed both steps. What if I requested the work, but forgot to submit it to the temple? Under this new change, I now have to go to the Temple tab on a regular basis and double check if I have names that are reserved but haven't been shared. Once again, this is creating more work, instead of streamlining our work.

When changes like this are considered, the Engineers need to consider ALL users, and not just a select group. There has to be a resolution that works for everyone.

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Tom Huber said: Cherie, you have already been informed that this change received approval of the General Authorities of the Church. It was not an engineer who went rogue, but was following the instructions given to him.

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Cherie Ailene Morgan said: Once again you are trying to twist my words. I never said there was some rogue Engineer. I'm saying that it's the Engineers who are the ones who have to fix it. And trust that I am reaching out to EVERY resource available to correct this.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Cherie,

Ok, That was from your comment above that I was prompted to make my comment on. Yes, using that workflow can certainly be disrupted by having the meaning of those icon colors change.

The flip side of this issue is also a nuisance. If you are PLANNING on processing a name and then sharing it with the temple, the Green icon can no longer be relied on to know if you will or will not be able to share the name with the temple after you have reserved it.

However, in my workflow, I tend to vet records on a person by person basis, going through a family at a time REGARDLESS of the icon set on it, so it really doesn't affect me as much as it does you. Since my subsequent sharing with the temple is almost always done from the ordinances tab of the individual, the information about being shared with the temple is always there. For example, if I go into my wife's account and look at the ordinances tab of a person I have reserved and shared with the temp, I get this:



The fact that somebody else (i.e., me in this case) already reserved and shared with the temple is obvious on these pages, so it is not a problem to me. But obviously, anyone using a workflow where only the icon color is available (such as in the pedigree views) will have an issue with this.

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hthalljr said: Amen! The new meaning of the color green is ambiguous and confusing. I can no longer trust that "green" means "ordinances needed." I have to check EACH AND EVERY green icon to see whether they are actually needed or have been shared with the temple and are available for a 90-day reservation. PLEASE REMOVE THIS AMBIGUITY AND NEED FOR EXTRA EFFORT!

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D. Llewelyn said: Green used to mean needed to be reserved/shared/taken to the temple. Now it means it might need to be shared, it might not, because it's already been shared, who knows? That's what is frustrating. So it takes up time to click to research, reserve and share, only to discover that someone else has already taken the time to do that. I love that people can grab and go with anything that is already shared - because those ordinances need to be done. But "already shared" and "not yet shared" need to be different colors. And knowing that something is available but not yet shared, indicates that whoever wants to grab it and go should pay a little more attention to the research and sources (details).

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JimGreene said: Thank you for sharing with me your workflows to enlighten my understanding. I get it now. At least I think I do. There are a few assumptions that I need to bring up, and I am pretty sure some of them some of you will disagree with. 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.

• The way that the system has been written, and the logic built into the code, has purposely made the assumption that there is a minimum amount of information required in order to establish that this person did exist and is correctly placed in the tree, and therefore, is ready to have temple work performed.
• Because we are using a single common tree relationships bear weight on this minimum qualification process as well at dates and places. There are some countries where vital records only started being kept in the 1960's. Where oral genealogy is vital to the work. Back more than 2-3 generations you will never have sources other than the oral record. If I have a person who is alive, with a confirmed and known birthdate, and they have a confirmed and known set of parents (or even only one that is known) that is enough to qualify those deceased parent(s) for temple work. And it will be for grandparents as well, even if all we know is their name and where they lived.  We cannot impose our western standards on places where they would disqualify the majority of the people. Likewise, there are many in the western hemisphere who would go without work were we to force these stringent standards. Thus, we have genealogical standards and temple standards. And we have been instructed that it is worse to deny someone their ordinances than to do the ordinances many times. "No time in the temple is wasted."
• Based on the algorithms and logic built into the system a green temple icon means (and always has) that this person's ordinance work is available to do in the temple. In the past we had a process of reserve, print, go, and that evolved to reserve, print/share, go/let someone else go. The question is why do we have to reserve it?  Why do we need a reservation list with all of its complexities?  Food for thought.
• Finally, we are going through and improving the logic. With the routine that we developed to check for standardized places we have been un-qualifying temple names if they do not have at least one standard place name. The result is that we identified those records, automated a fix for the majority, and for those where an automated fix would not work we offered "Improve Place Names," an opportunity to volunteer to do some light lifting.  

We are grateful for all of the heavy lifting that you all have done. Thank you. There will be more for you to do, I am sure.
May I just say that we have heard you, and as this thread is long and getting hard to get through, can we end it here?

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Jeff Wiseman said: Jim that all makes sense to me. But as you inferred, the assumption in your first bullet does not apply universally. Where I do a lot of my research in southern and southeastern Ohio, many large families with the same surnames like to reuse given names again and again (even in the same family). Since many of these families lived in the same towns and townships, you frequently need multiple vitals to uniquely identify a given person.

So yea, you've got to find some good trade-offs with the other extremes such as the oral histories that you've mentioned.

And we have been instructed that it is worse to deny someone their ordinances than to do the ordinances many times. "No time in the temple is wasted."

Thanks so much for making that specific mandate which has been charged to FS, public. When more of us in the forums understand these types of specifics, it not only helps us "see the roadmap" easier, it also enables us to help others understand as well.

As far as why we reserve names goes, the benefits are obviously numerous to me, so I don't have to ask myself that question :-)

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Tom Huber said: Since it is my understanding that ordinances can only be reserved from a person's ordinance page, there should not be any confusion over the green icon. I can understand if a user only scans icon colors and how the same icon is used for both types of reservations, it glancing and taking in the entire page should iet us know at a glance (and it does), which are already reserved (and shared) and which are not:

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hthalljr said: The problem is that you can no longer see at a glance on the individual's ordinance page or in a pedigree where ordinances are actually needed. The green icon has become ambiguous, and you are forced to go to individual's ordinance page, creating additional, needless effort.
Worse, when you finally find an ordinance that is actually needed, reserve it, and and try to share it with the temple, any ordinances for that person that had already been shared with the temple are now reserved for you. If you don't discover that and don't take steps to unreserve it, that ordinance is no longer shared with the temple.

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Eric J. said: Either I'm reading what you're writing wrong, or you're completely misunderstanding every single person on here.
A. Ordinances can be requested from the tree view as well, so you are incorrect there.
B. The "at a glance" everyone is talking about is NOT on this page, obviously it's apparent what the status is there. We're all talking about looking "at a glance" from someone's individual profile, and then clicking on all the siblings/parents names, and/or in the tree view...pretty much anywhere else you can see ordinance statuses, NOT this page. Moot point post

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Jeff Wiseman said: Hey Tom,

Eric's right, I think that you might be missing the point. The issue that these folks are having has nothing to do with trying to reserve ordinances for a person. The issue is searching for person records that are likely to need research done on them based on the color of the icon. The assumption being that records that have NOT already been previously shared with the temple (traditionally the green icons) are the ones that need attention.

So these folks have traditionally been walking through pedigree and descendant charts looking for green icons which, when found, they would investigate and research. The color of the icon was assumed to be all that was necessary to find such records.

However, since now ordinances shared with the temple can be Reserved due to the addition of this great new feature, they are now marked green (since they can be reserved and printed). This means that based on these people's previous assumptions on the meaning of a green icon, it now becomes "ambiguous" to them and they can no longer find the "not previously shared with temple and therefore needs investigating" records by just looking at the color of the icon as it shows up in pedigree and descendant charts. They must now open each person record, go to the ordinances tab and open it, then look at the text associated with that record to determine if it was previously shared with the temple. If after going into each record with a green icon in this fashion, they discover that it was previously shared with the temple, they then conclude (based on their assumption) that they don't need to look at the record, and therefore have wasted all that time just to discover that that record was NOT one they were interested in looking at.

I completely understand and empathize with their case. But the assumptions that all of this is based on are just not correct with the way the system design was intended from the start, and the resulting workflows that they have been using based on those assumptions have now "broken" for them based on those incorrect assumptions.

They have interpreted Green as meaning "needs to have the data vetted". This may or may not be true of any green icon, but from the start Green has always, and was intended, to mean "may be reserved and taken to the temple". It was ordinance specific and controlled from the temple records side of the system. Although some characteristics of the record such as "needs to have the data vetted" might sometimes be inferred from the color, that was never the intent of the colors.

That is why an ordinance that has been shared with the temple has always showed up as Green in ordinances ready (since you could always reserve names that were shared with the temple via Ordinances ready). Now that you can reserve directly off of the temple shared list, they appear green to every one.

The meaning of the green icon has never changed. However, the incorrect assumptions of its meaning based on some people's workflows will now make the "meaning of Green" to them ambiguous now. But again that is based on an incorrect assumption of its original meaning.

The assumption that since a record has been submitted to the temple that it must be all correct and doesn't need attention is a really bad assumption. It might be true in many cases, but a research workflow should not be based on this type of assumption

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Jeff Wiseman said: Tracy,

I would think that the ability to reserve an ordinance from the ones shared to the temple, and then subsequently re-share it to the temple under your own name should never be possible. If something screwy like this is really happening there, then for sure FS needs to address it. In all of the changes recently made, I suspected that this "cyclic" reservation and sharing capability and it's correct limitations is a significantly complex part of the design, and as a result I have no doubts that FS may have made mistakes there.

If you could show some screen shots of the issue you are describing in your second paragraph, it would likely be very helpful to the FS engineers that need to address it. Also it is a significant and distinct issue by itself. You should probably start a separate thread on it as it is different from the color assignments issue in this topic.

Note that this issue may be related to:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

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Tom Huber said: Eric, thank you for raising the issue that I can reserve names from a tree view by clicking on the icon. That's a problem for the new system that needs to be resolved.

I never have used the tree view to reserve names. I always work from the persons Ordinance Page on their profile. So I posted the above in ignorance. My apologies.

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R Greg Leininger said: my thoughts to tracy ahll and anyone else interested:

some of us find names from census record links but have too many to take to the temple ourselves. You can do one of two things:
1. you share that name w temple, or
2. you unreserve the name and hope that someone else will come along who has the time to do it NOW.

I did an "experiment" for about 8 months, where I had 10 male/female names for each ordinance and shared w temple. I kept them in one pouch to monitor.

I then took a similar number of male/female names for each ordinance, and unreserved them as green icons for anyone to reserve. But I kept them in another pouch to montior later.

8 months later, about 60% of the "shared w temple" persons had their baptisms and confirmations done by then, yet only 1 of the "unreserved" group had been claimed and had their baptism/confirmation done in the same time period.

so it appeared better to me to share all my names w the temple, assuming they would get done sooner. So it is helpful to me if the green icon is for names shared w temple OR unreserved names, not both.

If already reserved w the temple, i dont want to open up that profile, but if it is unreserved, then i will, in order to correct any potential errors, link any new records and then share w temple. I think their work will get done sooner than leaving them unreserved.

So a diff color icon to tell between shared w temple and unreserved helps, so i dont "waste my time" opening up the names of 8 kids in a family, only to see that they have already been shared w the temple.

What are your thoughts on this?

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hthalljr said: Yes, that is exactly the problem I am referring too, well illustrated. It appears from the thread that FamilySearch engineers are now aware of the problem and are working on it.