Using green icons for both names from the Temple System and new names that have never been found mak

LegacyUser

Cassie Roundy said: Dear Sirs,
Please, please, please, please make the temple icons from the Shared names a different color from the names that have never been found. I’m pretty accustomed to the new system now, but.... Before the temples closed I could find and do about 100 baptisms per week. Now, because I have to click on every Temple Shared name, I’m lucky if I can find 1 new name per hour, having to click on every green icon that come

For the last three years I have been doing FS during the evenings and mornings, and then going to the temple all day. (I’m also a single male.) I usually have 50 to 150 baptisms that I do on Tuesday morning, and then I do Initiatory Ordinances for the names that have Sealing to Spouse connected to them. Then I do 2 to 4 Endowments per day. After a couple of months I have about 300 or so Sealings, some SP and some SS, and go to a temple where they get them done in 2 to 3 days. For all the names I find, if they are females so that I can’t do the baptisms, or if someone has reserved the Endowment so that I can’t do the sealings in order, I Share them with the Temple System. Now that the temples have been closed I have about 2000 baptisms backed up, and 2400 Sealings. So I’m not going to run out of temple work to do for a month or so. Nevertheless, your new system is going to significantly slow down my Family Search in the ongoing months and years.

Here’s the biggest problem: I am only looking for “Lost Sheep,” i.e. relatives that have never been found and put into someone’s list, or into the Temple System. Now, as I search there is a Green Temple for not only Lost Sheep, but also for all the ones in the Temple System. So I have to click on about 10 to 50 times as many Green Temples as I used to because most of them are ones already in the Temple System that I don’t want. It would be so nice if the ones from the Temple System were a different color than the ones who have never been found.

I suspect I’ll get accustomed to the new Reservation List display, but for now it is so much more cumbersome to go through and sort out which ones I’ll keep to do the ordinances and which ones I can't do. The problem is again the green icon that has two meanings. I click on the parents name to see if they also need to be found. But there is a green icon for both Temple names and un-found names. This takes a really, really lot of time to check them out.

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: There is a long list of threads that talks about this. I appreciate another vote. But I do have to ask, what is your purpose in doing this? Is it to go the temple and do the work? If so, then it shouldn't matter if they have already been "found" the work needs to be done and by you reserving them they will get done, sooner than if the temple does them. If your goal is to share names with the temple, can I suggest that you not look for green temples but rather look for orange ones that need more data. If all you are doing is finding a green temple and sharing it with the temple that is not something that we are asking people to do.

LegacyUser

Cassie Roundy said: Dear Brother Greene,
My goal is to be the most productive I can in doing Temple work for my relatives. Under the old system I could find enough names of "Lost Sheep" in the evenings and weekends to keep myself occupied in the temple 8 to 12 hours per day and 5 days per week, doing the ordinances I described in the second paragraph above. If I just take the names that are already in the Temple System I'll have NOTHING TO DO in the evenings and weekends. Finding "Lost Sheep" during these times was highly motivating to me, both to do the FS and to take the names to the temple. I ONLY SHARE NAMES TO THE TEMPLE THAT I CANNOT DO.

I applaud making the names that have been Shared with the Temple available to everyone on Family Search. It's a GREAT idea.

I guess it's a matter of motivation. I'm much more motivated to spend time in the temple when it eventually leads to a SS that I found on FS of someone who had not been found and would never get their work done until they were found. When I run out of "Lost Sheep" to do, then I'll start doing the names already in the temple. But for now, the present system of green temple for 2 types of names is very time consuming and very frustrating.

Thank you for your answer,
Carlos Roundy

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Thank you for explaining more, I completely agree with you that finding them does make it more special, which is why I suggested looking for orange temples instead. Any name with a green temple has already been found though, whether it has been submitted or not. Ordinances Ready will find it and give it to you or anyone in your line without you having to search the tree.  I know there is fun in searching, and I appreciate your efforts. 

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Wait, Jim - are you saying that Ordinance Ready will now look for ordinances that have NOT been shared with the temple before?

If that's the case, I assume it only gives the ordinances to people that are related?

And that it only reserves names of people born at least 110 years ago?

Why doesn't familysearch put big changes like this on the blog or email people to explain? This seems like a feature people would like to know about and understand.

If the things I asked about above are true, and people knew that, I think there would be a lot less frustration and complaining (myself included) about 'green meaning 2 things'.

I've been looking at these threads for a couple of weeks and feels like I am only now understanding what is going on (if the answers to the questions above are, yes).

LegacyUser

Christine said: Jim, I loved the change, which will allow anyone to take a shared with temple name, but has it been rolled back? ALL of my shared with temple are now blue, even those not printed. I am so confused!

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Ordinances Ready has been around for well over a year. It is not new. The article that explains where Ordinances Ready gets its names is in the article at https://www.familysearch.org/help/hel....

The order is:

* First, family names that you have reserved in Family Tree. "My Reservations"

* Second, names that you reserved in Family Tree and then shared with the temple. "Shared"

* Third, names that are in your ancestral lines and were reserved by someone else and then shared by that other person with the temple.

* Fourth, names that Ordinances Ready finds by scanning 10 generations of your ancestors and 5 generations of their descendants for incomplete ordinances. The ordinances have not yet been reserved by anyone and do not have any possible duplicates.

* Finally, Ordinances Ready will retrieve available ordinances that have been submitted to the temple by any patron. This is the same as picking up a name at the temple.

Ordinances Ready is designed to provide sufficient names for one temple session and for the person that runs that routine.

Note that the articles now have a publish date, something that has been missing and requested for a long time. Most of the articles will now have a date when the article was last created or modified, which will be when the publish date was added. The article likely existed before, but with no date.

LegacyUser

Cassie Roundy said: Dear Brother Greene,
You said: "Any name with a green temple has already been found though, whether it has been submitted or not." It must be that I don't understand this statement. All the new names that people find in the Family Tree and take to the temple, or Share with the temple are not names that have been found. Yes, they have been found by Family Search to put into the potential for temple work, which maybe you meant, but not identified to actually take to the temple. That is the work we have been doing.

I tried Ordinances Ready and it does not fit my needs. Of the 6 categories it gave me 28 names that I have already printed and am ready to take to the temple as soon as they open. (It asked me if I wanted to print them again.) The other 2 names were under SS and both of them had not yet had their Endowments done. (I am trying to do ordinances in order and get the Endowments done before SP or SS.)

You have suggested I do other things, such as work on Orange Icons. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in doing genealogical research. I was a Scoutmaster for 38 years and it's been a miracle that I could switch over to Temple Work at all. Really, a real miracle. I found a lot of satisfaction in finding my relatives and taking them all the way through from Baptisms to Sealing to Spouse. Now that activity has been essentially blocked by the double meaning of Green Icons.

I plead again, please make the icons for names from Shared with the Temple a different color than new names.

Thank you for listening,
Carlos B. Roundy

LegacyUser

Cassie Roundy said: Dear Brother Huber,
Ordinances Ready does not meet my needs. It gives 5 baptisms at a time. I like to go to the temple and do 50 to 150 baptisms at a time during a time when other patrons are not arriving and the temple workers are idle. I also like to take 300 to 500 Sealings to the temple, starting at 6:00 am and ending at 6:00 pm, for 2 to 3 days in a row, and get them all done at once. It's a many hours drive to the temple and doing only 5 ordinances is not enough to make it worth it. Endowments yes. 5 is sufficient for one day. But maybe not for folks that have to drive for so long that they stay over for multiple days.

I'm advocating that you stop having green temple icons with 2 meanings so that we can continue to accumulate as many new names to take to the temple as fit our particular situation.

Thanks,
Carlos B. Roundy

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Christine, when you share a name to the temple it turns blue for you and remains green for everyone else until it is done, or until the temple prints it--then it would turn blue for everyone. That is to prevent you from trying to share it again, they can only be shared once. When someone else picks it up it would then turn blue for everyone. If you want to take back the ones you shared with temple then you need to select them and then select unsure. When you do that they will turn back to green for you, and you could reserve them or share them again.  The blog article mentions all of this with illustrations if you want to refer to that: https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/updates-to-temple-ordinance-reservations/

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Yes Jeff, that is exactly what I am saying. And it will only do it for those to whom you are related. It will search 10 generations up and 5 generations out--as outlined by Tom and others. There is an order in which it searches, so it will only do this referenced search after it has found all the names in the other searches.  It is aimed at those who are going to the temple soon. As are a lot of the recent changes. We know the temples are closed, and we know even when they are open this does not help those who go and spend extended time in the temple doing many ordinances. But we have found that we have to program to the most likely or majority case and see what we can do to accommodate the corner cases. Leaving a green temple in the tree that has never been reserved will result in someone getting it, to the degree that relatives are active using ordinances ready. We hope that becomes a common case. We are still discussing how to handle the other exceptions, without disrupting the improvements to the majority of cases.

LegacyUser

Christine said: Thanks! I guess it was just too late last night to think clearly!

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Thanks for the responses!

I knew Ordinance Ready has been around for a while and I think it is great. I knew it found names shared with the temple (the old red) but I didn't know it found names that were unreserved (the old green).

It still would be helpful to folks like brother Roundy to have 2 shades of green or a 'hover over' message/text to distinguish between 'can be reserved, never shared with temple' and 'can be reserved, has been shared with temple.

It sounds like bro Roundy is doing much great and important work and the system should facilitate his efforts.

In my experience when I saw people with the 'old green' in the tree (available but not reserved), it was fairly common to find that their records were incomplete and in just a few minutes I often was able to add a spouse or other family member to the tree, whereas people that had been shared with the temple often had been researched more and records were more complete. So when I saw a green icon it was often an opportunity for me to add some people to the tree. That probably wasn't the intended use of the colors, but in my experience it helped me find areas where I could help add people to the tree.

Thanks!

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hi Tom - thanks for the response. I knew Ordinance Ready found names shared with temple but I did not know it found names never shared with the temple.

the link you sent seems to be on a protected site.

Access to www.familysearch.org was denied
You don't have authorization to view this page.
HTTP ERROR 403

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: You have to be logged in as a member to see the article. Otherwise, you get the 403 error. It happens to me when I attempted to initially pull up the article via a shortcut to the article. I logged in on another tab, refreshed the 403 error page and the article appeared.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said:

...whereas people that had been shared with the temple often had been researched more and records were more complete...

This may frequently be the case, but it is definitely NOT always the case. I have seen many, many, cases of where someone just collecting names from records has copied an entire village into the database from some area record and immediately shared them all with the temple. A single person may have shared tens of thousands of names with the temple, most of which they weren't even related to.

So making the totally incorrect assumption that because a name has been previously shared with the temple, and then concluding that "it is a waste of my time to be looking at them" (a quote that has been repeated on this forum SEVERAL times in the last week or so), is totally barking up the wrong tree and is likely resulting in MANY records being ignored that seriously need attention before the ordinance work is done.

And yet it appears that over 90% of all discussions in the forum over the last week or so have been because people want to be able to continue to use this flawed assumption in their workflow in order to skip over records that they incorrectly assume need no research done on them.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Ahh. Thank you Now I see it.

LegacyUser

Cassie Roundy said: Dear Brother Greene,
I apologize for the defiant way in which I have answered your comment a few days ago. I now realized more what you said that the goal is no longer to accumulate names in the Temple System, but to get the work done. Jeff had made the comment, now missing, that the Apostles are on the committee reviewing the current changes. That made me a little more aware that this is the Lord's work and I ought to follow directions and suggestions. As of today, I hope to start to learn how to work on the Orange Icons.
Sincerely,
Carlos B. Roundy

LegacyUser

Angela Taylor Best said: "green temple has already been found....whether it has been submitted or not"???? The green temple doesn't mean the ordinances need to be done anymore? Please clarify.

LegacyUser

Angela Taylor Best said: I have 1800 names on my temple shared list. There is no way I alone can do all that temple work but that doesn't mean I shouldn't stop looking for lost sheep. I am a member of the Harkers Island Ward where we have been the record holders for temple submissions. This change in the green temple flag will be good for "taking from others who has shared" in the event I want to do that family member's work instead of waiting for someone to release it to me. That part is an improvement. But please, please give us a different color for those that have not been submitted. I have to actually look at each one when trying to find these lost sheep and is not a good use of my time. Obviously I am not alone in this sentiment.

LegacyUser

Christine said: Angela I commend you on your desires to submit names to the temple, and understand your frustration that the new change slows you down, but may I present a different perspective? Every green temple icon represents a person. A mother, a father, a brother, a sister, a grandmother, a grandfather, an infant who died shortly after birth. When we really look at a record of a person, we come to know them. We see one daughter with a green temple icon without a husband and search a little bit to find her husband. We then find them in a census record that indicates they had 9 children and 2 are living. We then search to find the 7 babies who died (weeping as we find each child's birth and death record). Our hearts turn to them in love as we slow down to not just click on a green temple icon, but as we find their family. We find the husband, the wife, the children, the parents, the siblings. . .dozens of family members from that one green temple icon that might have remained lost if we had just clicked on the green icon and moved onto the next.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Personally, I feel that looking at ANY record that the temple department considers “ready for temple work” is a “good use of my time”. That includes all green icons regardless of whether they have been shared with the temple or not.

The whole inspired idea of the shared tree is to get many people looking at and vetting the same records so that they are all as accurate as can be as quickly as possible. When we use something like the fact a name has been shared with the temple as a reason to NOT look at it, we are defeating the very things that the brethren have intended to be used in the system IMHO.

And in many cases, the assumption that because a name was previously shared with the temple somehow makes it more “complete” is just plain wrong. (For some more details on this see my response above to Jeff_Luke about 27 days ago).

I fear that using ordinance state flags to do a type of fast “hit and run” genealogy is resulting in many erroneous records that have been shared with the temples to be ignored and not corrected. The colored icons were never intended to support that type of workflow.

Furthermore, it does very little in helping to find names that are missing from the system and families which they belong to. The only way to find those “lost sheep” is to use a family directed search process to discover the sources where those “lost sheep” are identified so that they can be added to the FamilyTree in the families that they belong to.

Regardless of whether or not a green icon is on a record that has been shared to the temple, the green icon flags a record of a person who:

1. Has been identified as a real person
2. Has been recorded in the database already
3. Has had at least a minimal amount of vitals data identified
4. Has been identified in a relationship to somebody else.
5. Has been worked on by at least one other FS patron

Regardless of the completeness of the record, it can not be considered that of a “lost sheep”. That name has already been “found”. At this point, the most important thing is that the temple work be performed, and secondarily, the record is as complete as possible. But as Jim Greene has Also pointed out on a couple of occasions, that is the order of priority. When the minimally required amount of data is present, then do the temple work. If you have time, make sure all the record data is correct and complete as possible.

But the most important thing is getting the work done as soon as a minimal amount of information has been accumulated on the record per the temple standard. THAT is what the green icon signifies.

So in summary, the ability to decide upon the “completeness” of a record by seeing whether it has been submitted to the temple or not, appears at best to be self defeating to how the temple standards for “work to be done” are set up. In fact, since the green icon says that the temple standard for the work to be done has already been met is all that is needed, it would not surprise me in the least if the ability to “share with temple” eventually went away completely. Anytime a temple needs names for its patrons, all it needs to do is to pull names with the green icon.

Obviously, this is all just my opinion and nothing has been revealed to us from FS about where this is going. Also the entire legacy system of using queues to feed the “shared to temple” records to the temples themselves would need to require a major overhaul to remove the queue, but it would likely result in a far simpler and more efficient system.

Again, this is all supposition on my part, but in the current picture it really appears that workflows requiring the ability to discern between items shared with temple and those that are not may be barking up the wrong tree. And if t… [truncated]

LegacyUser

Amy Archibald said: The software will now find any green temple and make it available to be reserved via Ordinances Ready. There isn't a need to manually go through the tree and find green temple icons to submit to the temple shared list. The software can find them. The greater need is to take a green temple, reserve it to your own list, and when the temples open again to complete the needed ordinances.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: The standard for submitting names for ordinance work has shifted over time from looking for any person who has lived to requiring a family relationship and asking for permission from close relatives. To have the temple system automatically cue up ordinances without an actual person with a family relationship submitting does not seem to be the trend.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I think that you are right.

The privilege of being able to do the proxy work for your own ancestors and close relatives is something that many of us relish. And I believe that the church leaders feel that it is pretty important too. So I'm sure that the ability for family members to be able to do proxy work for their own ancestors and relatives is not likely to be undermined.

Ordinances Ready already does this in that it looks in that same realm when hunting for ordinances that a given person can perform.

But normally, when you Share with the temple, the people that pick up those names at the temple typically may not be related anyway. So I'm not sure what capabilities might be traded off here.

But that did raise a curious question for me. I know that if you are in the 110 Year rule window, you can't request names, but outside of that, Do you have to have a traceable relationship to submit to the temple? I don't think so, but I'm not sure.

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Jeff, please allow me to shed a little light:
The submission of names of people for whom you want to perform or have someone else perform temple ordinances has multiple steps, as follows:
1 - you must request the ordinance(s). When you request the ordinance it immediately shows you a policy, to which you must click on "Accept" in order for the process to continue. The very first words in that policy are: "Temple ordinances are sacred and should be treated with respect. Please reserve ordinances for individuals only if you are related to them." It then goes on to be more specific, and even references a First Presidency letter to all members of the Church. I believe that it is very clear. If you are not related you should not be doing even the first step of submitting the name for ordinance work.
2 - the actual submission happens when you either print the card or share it with the temple. Again, step 2 cannot happen without first completing step 1.

Does the relationship have to be traceable? The policy gives one small exception for people in a "small geographic area" around a known ancestor. It does not count that we are all descendants of Adam or Noah. I believe that answer is yes, we need to be able to show the relationship or connection.

I do not believe we could be much clearer.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Jim, thanks for the reminders. I agree completely.

I am ashamed to admit that since I have acknowledged that policy so many times, that I rarely read it, and therefore had forgotten where it's placement was in the process :-(