Green Temple icon is now confusing

LegacyUser

Dwight Blackburn said: In Family Tree I'm looking for my relatives where their work needs to be Submitted to the temple; previously, I did this my looking for the green temple icon; however, with a recent change, all the Shared to the Temple names have the green icon. Where I used to look for the green icon, now I have to open each individual up in the Person screen and look at their Ordinances to see if they have been Submitted.

Suggestion - make another colored icon which indicates their work (or some of their ordinances) have not been submitted to the temple.

LegacyUser

Shanna Jones said: Don't you think it is a good idea to open each individual up in the Person screen and look to see if all of their sources are attached and their dates and places are standardized? You can also look at the name and the gender to make sure it looks good and check on any data problems. Administer to them one by one. Then if they need ordinances, verify your relationship and submit away.

LegacyUser

Angela Taylor Best said: I agree with Dwight. I have 1800 names one my temple shared list. I am looking for lost sheep. Before a green temple meant their work needed to be done. Now I have to look to see if it has already been submitted. I'm not looking for names to personally take to the temple. I have plenty on my list to choose from if that were the case. I'm trying to find those that have not been submitted at all and now have to go look at everyone to figure that out. May I suggest that there be a different shade of green for those that have been shared. I'm wasting a lot of time.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Basically, with the current changes allowing anyone to retrieve names from the temple queue and take them to the temple themselves, the act of sharing records with the temple is becoming moot. Just leaving a prepared record as an unreserve green icon is not much different anymore.

See:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: Bottom line is that the new color scheme makes it harder and more time-consuming to tell the actual status of ordinances. That's unfortunate.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Actually, it is faster now in "telling the actual status of ordinances". It can be determined directly from the color. The color and associated "status of that ordinance" follows:

Orange - Ordinance work NOT ready to be performed

Green - Ordinance work READY to be performed

Blue - Ordinance work in Progress

Grey - Ordinance work Completed

But the color was ONLY ever intended to show the "actual status of the ordinances".

The problem arises for folks who were using the colors to determine information unrelated to the simple "ordinance status" in their research work flows. Recent changes have resulted in the information that they were assuming to be in the color of the icon to no longer be there (that is specifically, whether or not the record has been shared with the temple).

Whether or not the record has been shared with the temple has absolutely nothing to do with the "actual status of the ordinances".

If the record has the data minimally required by the temple department for the work to proceed, it is marked Green meaning that the "Ordinance work is ready to be performed". Can't be any faster than that.

However, for folks who were using the old Red icon to filter out person records shared with the temple that they "Didn't want to waste time with", this has become a problem. However, the assumptions about names shared with the temple that this workflow was based on is flawed anyway. There are several recent discussions out there, but some of the issues with in that that work flow can be seen here:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: Jeff, thanks for your comments. I guess my take is different. Green and blue—the colors users deal with most frequently—now have multiple meanings instead of one simple meaning.

I agree with your statement that technically "Whether or not the record has been shared with the temple has absolutely nothing to do with the 'actual status of the ordinances.'" On the other hand, the distinction does affect my tasks and choices. To have that information immediately obvious based on color was extremely helpful.

As another example, I relied heavily on "yellow=reserved but not printed" and "dark green=printed" statuses for quick information so I could make appropriate decisions about doing temple work for my family.

I realize everyone's experience is different, but even after using the new color scheme for a while, I still find it takes longer and is less user-friendly than the old scheme for tasks I do most frequently. That's really the bottom line for me.

The new color scheme makes sense if we're just aiming for a high-level abstraction of possible ordinance statuses. But it doesn't make sense in terms of tasks I frequently need to do.

Simple = good. Oversimplification that actually complicates . . . not so much.

LegacyUser

Cindy Hecker said: It has changed how people work in FamilySearch but I have always had a different approach. I look for missing info and sources. Someone is missing a death date, can I find it? Someone is missing a spouse, did they marry? I go looking for that. I see someone has only 1 or 2 sources and lived in the 1800s so what can I find to make them more complete....can I find them married, or did they die young? I can often times follow them and find they married (add a spouse) and had a family (add 3-5 children) and I have so much temple work to do after I complete the family. Then to make sure kids are connected I do the same pattern for the kids.

In my family much temple work is done but I find those needing it just aren't added to the tree yet. or I have to merge them because they show up as a child and then again as a married person so I merge the two. This approach has kept me busy and I plant green temples all the time because I do not reserve every distant relation I find. I leave them for others who might be closer and keep just a few that I feel a connection to.

I have no problem with lots of green temples, It is great when you are helping someone new and they find temple work they can do right away rather than it being tied up on the temple list for years!

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I probably don't have as much of an appreciation of these challenges as others simply because I never need the icon colors to determine anything about what I am trying to do. I spend nearly all my time building families from sources, adding missing members, and vetting them out to make sure the records each represent one and only one person. Once I feel a record is reasonably complete at that time, I put it on watch.

Although I have many names on watch (which have traditionally also been on my shared with temple list), I do not have anyone on my Reserved list. Everyone that I've worked on is available to anyone that wants to do the proxy work for them. If I want to do proxy work, I'll un-share a name from my shared with temple list and take that one.

If someone changes something on a record I'm watching, I'll return to it and verify what has been done. I'll usually use that opportunity to also quickly go over the entire record and review it, investigating any new hints that may have come up, and if there are gaps in the vitals, I'll make another attempt to see if any new sources can be found for it.

None of this requires me to even look at the color of icons at all.

As another example, I relied heavily on "yellow=reserved but not printed" and "dark green=printed" statuses for quick information so I could make appropriate decisions about doing temple work for my family.

I did notice that the ability to differentiate between these two conditions by color had gone away, but everywhere I would need to see this (e.g., my Reserved list or in the ordinances tab), the statement of whether or not it is printed is spelled out in text right next to the color icon now. I don't see a problem with this visibility at present, but then again, I rarely use that information. I print the card and take it to the temple, usually within a few days. At that point the icon goes grey indicating ordinances completed.

Again though, my concern is with the workflows where many people seemed to be using with the colors to "avoid wasting time" looking at records that have been shared with the temple. With the very large number of records shared with the temple that contain incorrect or sparse data in them, I personally feel that this is a bad practice. The assumption that all names shared with the temple are somehow "more complete or accurate" is just not true. I've seen names that others have shared with the temple that have dozens of hints on them. Why? Because they were shared with the temple LONG ago, and since so many persons were ignoring them, the hints just continued to pile up.

Then you go through the backlog of hints and discover that the record was actually schizophrenic. It was representing 2 different people. But because it had been shared with the temple, everyone just assumed that it was an OK record and not worth their time.

So when people who were using the color icons to choose which records to ignore no longer have that capability, I'm sympathetic with them that their workflows have been messed up. However, I'm also hopeful at this point that they might start using a more effective workflow that helps them to actually find missing names (any name with a green icon is definitely NOT missing).

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: Jeff, thanks for your thoughtful comments. It's always interesting to learn someone else's perspective. Your involvement in temple work is very different than mine, which obviously is fine But maybe I can share my perspective because from what I can tell, you've misunderstood the reason the colors were so helpful to me and others.

Like you, I carefully build families in Family Tree and document them with sources from FamilySearch Historical Records and elsewhere. But for me the process doesn't stop there. I personally feel an obligation to shepherd these names all the way to completion of ordinances if I can. Besides going regularly to the temple myself (in the pre-COVID world!), I enlist the help of many of my family and friends who aren't as focused on research--which is also completely fine. We all have different strengths and focuses.

So from the names I have researched, I supply valid names to them. I track the progress of the names so that I can make sure all ordinances are done.

(Side note: As you pointed out, many names shared with the temple haven't been carefully researched; they have substantial issues such as bad merges, incorrect relationships, etc. I never just find a green temple name and do the work without verification.)

Granted, as the years have passed, I've found more names than I can do, and I share those with the temple. But I still manage a substantial number of names to ensure their temple work is done. Occasionally I'll pull back a name from the shared list if I feel a strong feeling about the person or if they've been on the temple list for a long time and an opportunity comes up for their work to be done.

So I didn't use the colors to avoid doing research or take appropriate care with temple names; rather, I used them to help make sure the work gets completed. It matters whether the name has been printed or not, and whether it has been shared with the temple or not. The previous color scheme made it easy to tell at a glance.

I don't know about you, but between a full-time job, family obligations, and my family history work, I'm pretty maxed out. No complaints, because it's all good. But I'm always grateful for things that save me time. While the loss of efficiency and time with the new color scheme isn't dramatic, it is having an impact. And it would be so simple to change it back.

On a little bit of a tangent, I very much appreciate all the great things FamilySearch is doing. The completely free site they've provided is amazing and mostly keeps getting better and better. But I also wish that they would focus on fixing more severe problems, such as ongoing bad merges and corrupted data. (I spend a huge amount of time fixing bad merges, and I wish I could spend that time adding people to Family Tree instead.)

The color change for ordinances, in my opinion, was a very low priority. The benefits are questionable.It would have been better to make that change, if needed, after the more serious problems were fixed.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I certainly don't disagree with any of those comments. In fact, I also like the ability to track individuals I have researched and documented "through to Completion" by using the shared with temple capability. When you do a lot of work for an individual, you feel a responsibility to see the work through to completion. FS has made that possible to a large degree through the current processes. I would be disappointed if we lost that capability.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: "The color change for ordinances, in my opinion, was a very low priority."

The color change took place because the entire temple portion of FamilySearch is in the process of being rewritten. The previous system used borrowed code from nFS, and had some massive internal problems. The first result was the (then) new Ordinances Ready feature. In that system, all shared names are treated as if they are green, meaning they are available to take to the temple.

The change in colors happened largely because we can now "grab and go" to the temple with any available ordinance. It is the same as if we picked up a name in the temple.

I suspect there are more changes coming. Jim Greene said

We are no longer in a position where names submitted to the temple is more important than to have the ordinances performed. Therefore, while not changing the meaning we are changing the emphasis of the green temple. We need to think of it as "This ordinance is available for temple work to be performed." It does not mean "This ordinance is ready to be requested/reserved or submitted/shared with the temple."

That is the way FamilySearch looks at the colors.

If you stop and think about, using the temple icon colors to work on a person's profile is not available to non-members. Yet many are just as involved with researching their ancestors and their descendants -- all without any visible aids.

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: I can't edit my original post above, or I would have done so instead of adding a new comment. As I worked in Family tree tonight, I was reminded that the gray status is also confusing/problematic now. It means both completed and not needed—two very different statuses.

I fully appreciate that a logical argument can be made for the current color scheme. But the arguments and assumptions strike me as abstract and removed from the actual needs and tasks of users, at least in my case.