Admin Assign Starting Person

jamesfrank1

As a Group Admin, I'm doing all I can to help my family join the group and collaborate with these new features. After clicking the link to join the group, there is still a significant hurdle of connecting members to their starting person.

The success of this connection is hampered by several factors:

1. Family Group Trees are not supported on the Android app (yet)
2. Members are simply blocked from accessing the tree when they don't have a "starting person," and there is nothing they can do to work around the issue on their own
3. Admins are not given clear definitions on how the matching algorithm works.
   1. I finally figured out that it requires a nearly exact name match.
   2. It seems the birth date must be an exact match as well.
   3. I tried going back and forth fixing maiden names and adding parental birth information just to be able to help a member see the group tree and be able to make edits on their own.
4. While the tree view does show which people on the tree have been claimed by members, there is no view that shows which members have claimed a starting person and which members have not yet claimed a starting person.

In my family group, I already have 15 members, but I hope to be able to triple that number as we work together to build out the descendants of my great-grandfather. We are a tight-nit family having large family reunions every other year.

So far, I can see ~50% of my members have joined the group, but not yet been connected to a "starting person." I've created people on the tree for them to connect, but I don't always know the birth dates to be able to fill in for the automatic linking. In my group post, I asked everyone to provide their birth information and parents, but even if it works, that communication hurdle makes it harder for members to join the group.

Here are a few requests that would help alleviate this issue:

• Give (at least admins) access to view lists of all members who are connected to starting people, and especially those who are NOT connected to starting people.
  • Show the group admins which members are connected to which starting people for auditing purposes
• Allow admins to manually connect a member to a "starting person"
  • This may be done even if the admin does not yet know the exact birth date of the member.
  • For me, I know my cousin's names, and I know where they belong on their tree, but it's been difficult getting enough information for the system to automatically link them properly.
  • This could potentially allow us to edit the starting person assignment of people in the group as well.

I'm imaging these features could be easily placed on/near the existing "members" dialogue box:

jamesfrank1

Furthermore, if group members could add themselves to the tree without requiring assistance from another individual, that would help them get started all the better.

jamesfrank1

This is an example of the screenshots I receive from my aunts and uncles as they try to access the family group tree. Luckily, I am active and responsive and try to do my best, but it would be much better if group members could work through these issues on their own.

Ashlee C.

@jamesfrank1 mod note: Because Community is an online public forum, it can be viewed by anyone anywhere. To protect the privacy of living people, your post was edited to hide their names.

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