"Reverse Copying" Syncing
Currently, you can copy-paste information on relatives (that are connected to your personal, private profile) into a Family Group Tree. When you do so, any living relatives (including oneself) have new profiles created for them, that are only visible within the group. Deceased relatives are always public.
I understand why the system designed this way; to preserve privacy and prevent digital vandalism on profiles for living people, all the while building a free, open, and public family tree for the whole human race. It's a good system, and I like it.
But one feature I wish existed was a "Reverse" copy-paste functionality. What I mean by this is, it should be possible to take information that has been entered into a Family Group Tree, and copy it BACK into your private profiles for living people. For a while now, I've been writing memories for my own profile (after all, we have memories of our own lives). But ever since Group Trees were introduced, I've been focused on updating the information on the shared version of myself and my living relatives. Since the information doesn't sync, my private profiles for living people are now "outdated."
I recognize why full syncing shouldn't be made a feature. Allowing other people to alter and edit your private profiles for living people could easily be abused. By keeping the Group Tree profiles separate, private profiles are kept safe. But having a feature in place to streamline "syncing" would be a welcome change.
Perhaps there could be a page where you can compare the differences between your private profile of a living person and the Family Group Tree profile of a living person, and then update it in both directions. Like unto the Merge feature, where you can merge details and sources, except both profiles survive the process. It would act as a pseudo-sync between Group and private profiles, whilst protecting private profiles from vandalism, as all changes have to be approved by the user before they "sync" to your private profiles.
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Thank you for your thoughts on the ability to copy back from a Family Group Tree profile to your private person profile. The product team is investigating various ways for you to be able to keep all your different copies of yourself and other profiles in your private Person List synchronized. Your thoughts and suggestions help them better understand how users would like the process to work.
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I agree that this would be a very useful feature to have. Having it set up like the merging interface would be great, being able to choose what information is copied over. It would also be useful to be able to pick which memories are copied over as well (I'm not sure if that's already a part of merging or not).
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Would you both be willing to submit some screenshots of how it might look if you were to do something like this copy-paste as you suggest?
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Sorry for the delay, here are some mockups I made:
During syncing, some information would have to be overwritten, such as Vitals. Other information could simply be copied from one person to the other.
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Just to clarify what you mean, "syncing" would be a one time thing, right? They wouldn't be permanently linked together?
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@Carter J Parker That is something we would love to have your thoughts on. Would it make sense to have it try to match profiles each time you go into the 'copy-paste' process, or would it make more sense to link certain profiles so that each time you go into the process, the system retains the same matched profiles?
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Personally, I'd like for there to be some sort of internal tag that can be attached to multiple instances of a living person, indicating that they are the same person. This tag would be generated automatically upon copying a living person to a family group tree.
The Sync feature could reference the tag to know which profiles can/ought to be synced.1 -
(My draft of this comment got deleted when I hit post, so hopefully I can rewrite it all…)
My question was more if the private profiles would be automatically updated every time the shared profiles are changed. The word "syncing", at least in my head, implied "automatically linked" but I think it would be better to be able to choose what and when things are copied to the private profile.
I like the idea of private profiles being "tagged" to shared ones. I'm not sure if this is what you had in mind, but here's what I'm picturing:
Each private profile has the ability to store "tags" to matching Family Group profiles. These tags are automatically added (or maybe suggested) when a private profile is copied into a shared tree. They can also be manually added by ID.
To add on to the idea, it could be nice if when any of the tagged, shared profiles are updated, you get a notification (similar to when profiles you follow have been updated). Then it can bring you to the merge/sync/copy page ("copy" might be a more accurate name) where it will show you what data, sources, and memories were added or changed. Again, you have the ability to pick and choose what is copied over and what isn't.
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Yep, that's pretty much what I was imagining. If you create/join a Family Group Tree, you would:
- Copy your Private Profile(s) for living people over to the Family Group Tree.
- If a Private Profile does not already have one, a "Same Person" tag would be created, and attached to the Private and Family Group Profiles for a person.
- If a Private Profile already has a "Same Person" tag from another Family Group, the new Family Group Profile would adopt the existing tag.
- Merge duplicate Profiles.
- When duplicate Profiles are merged, one of the 'Same Person" tags (and all of its instances) would be overridden with the other Profile's tag. (like unto how one Profile's ID (ABCD-EFG) survives, while the other is discarded)
Then in the future, you can Sync Profiles:
- You go into a Profile, either Private or in a Family Group, and click a "Sync" button (see Mockup 2)
- A window appears, listing all of the Profiles that share this Profile's "Same Person" tag (except for Private Profiles owned by other people, which aren't visible to you under any circumstances), and you choose which Profile to Sync with. (See Mockup 3)
- There's no point in attempting to Sync two profiles that are 100% identical. So perhaps if a Profile is 100% identical to the one you're attempting to Sync with, its name would appear in grey, and wouldn't have an available option to Sync.
- A new tab opens, and you can choose which information to duplicate or override between the two Profiles. (See Mockup 1)
There is one concern that comes to mind, now that this has been written down: If a person is a member of some highly active Family Group Trees, it may become quite tedious to constantly Sync Profiles. But that's a bridge we'll cross when we get to it, I'd certainly like to try to implement Syncing and see how the community feels about it.
0 - Copy your Private Profile(s) for living people over to the Family Group Tree.
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The lack of this functionality needs to be made clear to new users as they make copies to populate new trees.
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Here's a weird thought: What if we turned this idea on its head, and instead of syncing entire profiles, we sync bits of information that are attached to profiles?
It's a little difficult to describe, so here's a quick and dirty mockup:
(This comment has also been put into another thread)
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@Samuel.D.South Please post comments in only one thread. Duplicating comments is contrary to the Code of Conduct (point 9 of prohibited behaviors).
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Ah! So sorry, I didn't know about that. That was my fault, and I won't do it again.
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I put together an example of what "Living Tags" and copying data between profiles might look like (don't worry, the example profiles don't actually exist).
Living Tags section added to Details page:
Potential layout of the copy page:
In the example, the profiles are the same person but with different names. Either name can be quickly copied to the other profile. However, if you want them to stay different, you can dismiss the red notice (this wouldn't remove the REPLACE button, in case you change your mind later).
While putting these together, I realized that if any living person can have Living Tags, then Family Group profiles could have tags to people's private profiles. Possible solutions: only allowing Living Tags to private living people; or when a tag links to a private person, only make it visible to the owner of that profile.
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Had I understood the consequences, I would not have done a family group tree. Perhaps a warning as to the inability to synch among one's trees, duplicate records, etc., would be helpful? If the end purpose is solely to allow family member users to see one another's data in a family tree, it seems more trouble than it is worth.
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@MLV2 Well, the end purpose is share information with other close family members. See Todd Powell's comment. It has been interesting to see the various ways users have tried to use this tool. If it works for you, use it. If you find that a different platform (stand alone computer program, Ancestry, Geni, etc.) works better for you, we encourage you to use what works best for you.
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I'm sure that you will all be excited to hear that a recent update has included the ability to match profiles that you are copying from your (private) FamilySearch Tree with profiles that already exist in your Family Group Tree. You can copy and match these as often as you want. So as you continue to make edits on profiles listed in your Person List, you can quickly copy that information into your Family Group Tree(s) using the COPY FROM FAMILYSEARCH TREE link on the right-hand side of the Group Details screen.
Remember, this copies EVERYTHING. If there is something that you don't want copied into the group, you will want to add information to that profile by typing it in.
Note also that all the profiles that you are copying now show a green outline.
What this copy matching looks like:
How to re-enter the COPY FROM FAMILYSEARCH TREE tool:
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Hurray! Progress is being made!
I like how Copying has been updated to automatically match existing people; this dramatically simplifies setting up and updating a Group Tree. No merging necessary! I do still feel that one important functionality is missing though:
We can sync information from the (private) FamilySearch Tree into Group Trees, but not the reverse. If it were up to me, I'd take the new Copy From FamilySearch Tree function, rename it Sync With FamilySearch Tree, or perhaps Copy To/From FamilySearch Tree, and add the ability to copy information from the Group Tree into the FamilySearch Tree. Before choosing which people to copy, you first choose which tree to copy from.
In any case, I'm really pleased with what's been accomplished thus far.
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My feature request to show all the changes made in a group tree on the group tree overview would lend itself well to having an option for each change to sync it with the corresponding person on the main familysearch tree. This would give everyone in the group visibility to the changes made by others and allow us to sync if we want that change. Here's my original request:
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