Temple 'My Reservations' page changes are having major impact on workflow

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hi - some time last week a large change in format was made to the 'Temple Reservations List' now called 'My Reservations'.

The changes are described here:
https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/...

At the bottom of the blog page there are now many comments from frustrated users about how the changes impact their workflow.

I tried to post several detailed comments in an attempt to describe why the changes were slowing down and frustrating my temple work and ways to fix. Unfortunately, my comments have not posted. Maybe they are awaiting moderation or maybe there is another reason (it has been 6 days).

The problems that I (and many others) revolve around:
- Filters replacing sorting, no ability to sort by ordinance (yes there is sorting, but reservations can no longer be sorted by ordinances - for example if i want to see people who need initiatory i get a list that is not sorted, some people still need baptism, some don't and the list is not in order making it really hard to see how many people are ready to do initiatory. if there are lots of people it may consumer multiple pages that have to clicked through, and since they are not sorted it is so tedious to count them that it's not worth it) Being able to easily tell how many people are READY to do an ordinance is extremely helpful when sharing with other people
- Opening a filters menu consumes screen space and is an extra step, it used to be possible to sort by simply clicking on the column header
- Reservations list is no longer a single 'page' it now appears to only hold ~50 people on a page and requires switching to another page to see the other parts of the list
- Icon color changes (cannot distinguish categories at the same time on the same page, yes there is some filtering but you cannot have printed/unprinted names on the same screen and easily distinguish which are printed and which are not without reading the text next to each ordinance)
- Ordinances are stacked instead of in a line, so the rows can be much taller, resulting in far less information viewable in a single page. I can only see 5 people on a single screen at 1920x1080 resolution.
- Odd quirks like for sealings sometimes the male is listed on the top and sometimes the female (not a huge problem but inconsistencies consume brainpower to interpret)

I would be very happy to talk to someone to explain in more detail how these changes impact the workflow of many people, if such a communication is possible, and if familysearch is willing to take feedback and consider making modifications. I spent a lot of time typing info to post that was never posted so I'd rather not waste more time typing if there is no interest by familysearch in making modifications.

Some of these changes may have been made to help new users or to accomplish objectives that are not known to me. People with a very small reservation list may not be affected much.

However, I imagine there is a way to implement solutions that help new users while not frustrating the work of experienced users and users with longer reservation lists.

Again, I am very happy to talk to someone to talk about changes or solutions but I don't want to type a bunch of info again if such things are not going to be considered.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I can understand some of your frustrations.

I liked the old sorting capability, but when it came to reservations, there were still problems associated with sorting on a specific ordinance past Baptism and Confirmation.

What filtering has done is to remove those entries that I do not want to see. For instance, if I filter on sex, I only see the persons of the sex I've chosen.

Separating my shared ordinances from my reserved ordinances is a major improvement. I no longer have to go through all the shared ordinances to get to those I have reserved and ready for me to take them to the temple.

I suspect the breaking up of the list is to facilitate loading where slow internet speeds persist. This is one of the reasons why persons' profiles went from a single page to multiple pages.

Some user's lists are in the thousands and that takes a lot of time to load even a significant fraction of a thousand names. I do not have a large list, so it doesn't matter to me. By sorting on the expiration date, I know which names I need to get to the temple next.

But then, I've already taken care of my immediate family and ancestors back at least four generations. Of course, it was never possible to sort the temple list on how close a person was in terms of relationship.

The filters sidebar can be opened and closed, without impacting what was set. With a narrow screen, this is very important. I don't know what the mobile apps have in terms of temple ordinance displays.

With respect to your concerns and issues and suggestions, every message thread is read by at least one FamilySearch representative. The key is when you post a concern or issue, post just one per message thread. It is very easy to overlook some important concerns when more than one is posted in a thread.

Screen shots can be worth a lot of words. Since you haven't participated a lot, you may want to take some time to read through the past several days of messages. Most of them are concerns about the new system that has impacted members' workflows. Those are valid concerns and sometimes, a solution is an easy fix.

For instance, I suggested that we be able to print our temple list, with one line for each entry. It took a bit to get across what I wanted, but it has been passed back to the development teams. They may or may not act on it, which is their decision.

Keep in mind that all temple related activities on FamilySearch are approved by the council which is led by Elder Bednar. Two other members of the Quorum of the Twelve are also on that council.

LegacyUser

D. Llewelyn said: I agree with Jeff's comments 1000%. Removing the sorting feature has caused more headaches and frustrations. The former sorting feature was user friendly, and I don't think the new filters are really that useful for people that want to grab names and go. We need to be able to sort for ordinances that are ready. I concur with what Jeff states here:

"Filters replacing sorting, no ability to sort by ordinance (yes there is sorting, but reservations can no longer be sorted by ordinances - for example if i want to see people who need initiatory i get a list that is not sorted, some people still need baptism, some don't and the list is not in order making it really hard to see how many people are ready to do initiatory. if there are lots of people it may consumer multiple pages that have to clicked through, and since they are not sorted it is so tedious to count them that it's not worth it) Being able to easily tell how many people are READY to do an ordinance is extremely helpful when sharing with other people."

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: I have carefully read your post, and agree that there is definitely a case where when I sort by ordinance I just want to see those that are ready, that I can print and go, not all the prior ordinances which may or may not be done.  I have forwarded this idea with my comments to the engineers, let's see what they say.
Most of the other things are design changes that we implemented on purpose in order to comply with responsive design, which enables a better mobile experience, since most of the rest of the world accesses FamilySearch from a mobile device.  It will take some getting use to and some flow changes, but the tradeoff was deemed necessary.
Thank you for taking the time to get us this feedback.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hello,

Thank you for the quick responses and comments! I was not expecting that so quickly.

Jim - thank you for talking to the engineers.

Regarding the sort by ordinance feature, you might take a look at the mobile app. I have the IOS version (app version 3.9.0), which is not the latest version. When I pull up my temple reservation list (which ironically pulls up the whole thing at once instead of limiting to 50 per page), there are filter buttons along the top of the screen.

Clicking on a filter does filter by ordinance READY, not just available. For example if I select 'endowment' it only shows people who are ready for an endowment (baptism, confirmation, initiatory already complete). I think that might be what we need on the web based familysearch. That would solve my problem and allow people to quickly see, count, and print cards. I tried to post a screenshot from my phone below. Not sure if it will work.



I was a little surprised to hear that the web based familysearch is being optimized for mobile users. There is a separate mobile application that works very well and seems to be well optimized for mobile use. If everything is moving to the web and the mobile apps are going away it would be very nice if there could still be a 'full' version of features and maybe a mobile version, or a setting to pick which one to use so that all users can be as efficient and effective as possible.

Over on the blog (https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/...) there seems to be many demotivated and frustrated people who likely really need a full featured version to keep working with large reservation lists.

Thanks, Jeff

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: Jeff, you can actually do the same thing on the web app. Just filter on Not Printed, and Endowment, then sort by date expired.  Just a different interface. Our goal is to have the two equal, though there are times when the app does something first and the web catches up, and vice versa. 
We do not intend to do away with either, they are both needed. What responsive design enforces is a screen layout that can respond to virtually any width screen, from the huge design monitors to cell phones, and as you narrow the screen the functionality moves from a horizontal layout to a vertical layout without causing undue stress or confusion.  It is best practice now in the industry because more and more users are on cell phones and if they come to our website from the browser we still want the experience to be good.
As for the size of reservation lists, stay tuned...thanks for the heads up, we have a couple of folks assigned to monitor the blog.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Thanks Jim.

Sorting by date expired may only help if all of the ordinances for all of the reservation were completed in sequence based on the reservation date.

I just tried to filter by endowment and sort by date of expiration, and my list still shows a mix of ready and not ready (initiatory not complete) ordinances. See screenshot below.

I was hoping to find a way where only the 'ready' ordinances are shown, which is what the IOS app does (at least on version 3.9.0).

One example of a use case would be planning a temple trip with a group and checking to see how many endowments are actually ready to go now.

LegacyUser

Ali Jessee said: Jeff, doing the same set up as your screenshot, I believe if you also click on the 'Not Printed' button under 'View', that should get you what you're looking for! It's not quite perfect (I had two sneak through on my page that weren't supposed to be there), but it'll get you pretty close.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hi Ali - thank you for responding and looking into the problem.

I think you may misunderstand the problem. People need to be able to see how many ordinances are READY to be done. For example, endowment can only be done after baptism/confirmation/initiatory are complete.

Filtering by printed or not printed has no relationship to baptism/conf/initiatory being complete or not complete.

To see ordinances READY, it must be possible to either sort by ordinance, or filter by ordinance READY, not just by ordinance.

Up until 2 weeks ago it was possible to sort by ordinance in the web version of family search. That function was taken away and there is no 'ordinance' option in the sort list.

It is possible to filter by ordinance READY in the IOS app ver 3.9.0. For example when filtering by endowment, only people who have had baptism/conf/initiatory completed will be shown.

As shown in my screen grab above, filtering by endowment shows anyone who needs an endowment, even if the baptism/conf/initiatory are not yet complete. That really is not helpful at all.

I've tried explaining this multiple times on this thread and showing screen grabs. I don't know how to explain it any better. I hope this makes sense to someone who can put this functionality back into the web based familysearch.

Is there any way for me to talk to a developer to try and explain it to them?

Not being able to find ordinances ready is a huge inconvenience for people with small reservation lists and for people with larger lists it makes managing the list nearly impossible.

LegacyUser

Jessie Hearle said:

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: hi Jessie - thank you for adding those screenshots. Hopefully that will help with explaining the problem.

LegacyUser

Ali Jessee said: Ah, sorry Jeff, I didn't explain very well. Using that combination of filters is the best way to get what you're wanting to do for now, and I wanted to make sure you were able to get that working okay!

As Jim mentioned earlier, the idea of filtering by the next ordinance ready has been passed on to me and my team of developers and we're looking into it as we speak. There are a lot of parts involved so we'll see what happens, but I loved using that feature as well, so you've got a good advocate here.

Thanks!

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Hi Ali -

Thanks for your responses and for working on this!

I appreciate your help!

I look forward to hearing if the sort by ordinance, or filter by ordinances ready can be added.

LegacyUser

D. Llewelyn said: This was working great (sorting by next available ordinances - and with colors only meaning 1 thing) until the update about two weeks ago. Is it possible to go back to the colors/sorting feature before this big change was rolled out? The developers only needed to make available shared temple ordinances for anyone to grab and go. Thank you.

LegacyUser

JimGreene said: The engineers are working on a fix to enhance the sorting so that next available ordinance is easier to see. You will see improvements in the future. Thank you for your feedback.

LegacyUser

D. Llewelyn said: Thank you!

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: I see some changes have been made. But they are not actually improvements. I don't understand why this is so difficult to implement in a functional and useful way. Either sorting by ordinance (like the old temple page) or filtering by ordinance READY (like the mobile app) would solve the problem.

Now when I filter by endowment, I am only shown endowments, sort of. I am shown completed endowments as well as incomplete endowments. Why would completed endowments be shown here?

As far as I can tell, filtering by ordinance is really is not filtering anything, but merely not displaying the status of other ordinances in the 'ordinance' column (it is really annoying not to be able to see all of the ordinances anymore in the 'ordinance' column). The list still has the same lack of useful functionality described earlier in this thread.



As you can see here, when I click on Rose Mary Nix, none of the ordinances required prior to endowment are complete yet. So why is she on the list when filtering by endowment? We need to see a filtered list of ordinances READY.



Now there is a new filter called 'perform next'. No idea what that is supposed to mean, but maybe it means it will filter out people who are ready for endowments (prior ordinances complete). But, nope it doesn't do that either...

It does filter out the people who have endowments complete, but it still shows people that need initiatory. So they are not actually ready for endowment.

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: A couple more views. Here, the 'perform next' filter is applied with initiatory selected.

Message is 'No Reservations found'.



But I have many people who still need initiatory done, including several that have completed baptism and conf and are indeed READY to be done, yet the filter fails to find them...

The view below shows one person (William Clifford Luke) who needs and is ready for initiatory as proof that there are people in this category on my list. There are many more if I were to scroll down (and open new pages).

I don't understand what the 'perform next' filter is supposed to do, but it is not any help in finding ordinances that are ready.

LegacyUser

FamilySearch Moderator said: Working on it, stay tuned!

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: OK. Great. Thanks! It does seem like a work in progress right now

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Just stumbled on a mention of this new filter today and started trying it out. As far as I can tell, it looks like this is working now as one would expect. it's really nice. Thanks for adding it.

LegacyUser

FamilySearch Moderator said: Here is a link to a blog article that talks about the filter updates: https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/...

LegacyUser

Jeff_Luke said: Thanks for making those updates! It is a great improvement!

LegacyUser

Kathryn Grant said: Thanks, Jim! As I understand it (speaking as someone who does web design and development) the whole point of responsive design is to enable an equally good experience for users on any size screen. So a good mobile experience shouldn't compromise the experience for someone using a regular or large monitor. Just my 2 cents . . .