Friday, September 5, 2014

Family Trees on FindMyPast.com - Post 5: Search Results Are Improved, and Can Be Attached

On my post Family Trees on FindMyPast.com - Post 4: Searching FindMyPast Collections (22 August 2014), Phil Moir of FindMyPast made several informative comments:

On 28 August 2014:

"It's Phil Moir (Technical Lead for Findmypast Family Tree Team) again. Felt like a response would be helpful. Very interesting points made, and issues found. I'll definitely investigate these, and come back to you and your readers with the results (and fixes)!

"We're aiming to make the tree be a key start point for search and this needs to ensure you get to relevant results quickly, and in many of our tests that has been the case, so I need to check out the issues you have highlighted.

"Some of the elements you were expecting such as attach records you won't be surprised to know is in development, and some coming soon. We'll let you know when the changes are available."


On 2 September 2014:

"We released a new version of the family tree yesterday morning, and following your post, we made some changes to the search coming from the profile page, and hope it comes closer to meeting the expectations of the Findmypast user. The link from Frederick Walton Seaver for example will bring back 7 results, from the US. At least 4 of them are definitely. 1 is for his draft registration, and the other are for Census returns 1880, 1900 and 1930. The search was changed as per your suggestion, focus more on the area which are most likely to have records (in FWs case the US), and searching across all data sets. Thank you for these suggestions.

"In addition, this release also included Attach to a Tree from transcription and image pages. This has been in development for a few weeks so well timed to coincide with your observations. The ability to merge the transcription data is coming, and will contain as much source information as possible automatically.

"Will let you and your readers know when this goes live."


Thank you to Phil for his comments and his attention to my comments and suggestons about the Family Trees on FindMyPast.com.  

So there are some improvements to the Family Tree - Search results from the profile page can reflect non-U.K. records, and record images can be attached to a person's Profile from the Transcription and Image pages.

So let's see how it works:

1)  Here is my grandfather's Profile page:


2)  I clicked on the "Search records for Frederick Walton "Fred" Seaver" blue button at the top of the right-hand column on the screen above:



Note that the heading says "Results for United States and Canada Records."  I could search all FindMyPast records by clicking the "Edit Your Search" button and selecting "World" after clicking on the record collection filter box.

There are seven records that match the search criteria (without editing the tree information), including four records that pertain to my grandfather (the World War I Draft Registration Card, and the 1900, 1930 and 1880 U.S. census records in Leominster, Mass.).

3)  On the screen above, there are blue icons on the right side of each result listed - one for the transcription and one for the record image.  I clicked on the "Transcription" image for the first result - the World War I Draft Registration Card:



On the image above, there are blue buttons to "View image" and "Attach to tree."  I can also click on "Print individual transcription."

4)  I clicked on the "View image" button and saw the image of the World War I Draft Registration Card - both sides of it:


The two blue buttons at the top right of the screen are for "View transcription" and "Attach to tree."

There are links in the lower right-hand corner of the screen above to "Report image error," "Print" and "Download."

5)  I wanted to attach this image to my grandfather in my FindMyPast Family Tree, so I clicked on the "Attach to tree" button:



To attach the record image to a person, I have to identify the person(s) in the Family Tree.  I started typing "Frederick Walton" and was able to pick from the list the correct person.  If this had been a record for more than one person, I could have added more persons in the tree.  I clicked on the "Save" button and saw the "Record Attached" notice.


6)  To see the attached record, I went back to the profile for Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942) and clicked the "Media" tab:


The placeholder for the record is there.  I clicked on it and it went right to the record image (not shown - it's the same as the image above).

However, I did not see any reference to the record or the record image in the "Overview" or the "Fact & events" tabs on the profile screen.  Ideally, the record would be reflected in the "Facts & Events" tab.  As of today, there is no source citation for the FindMyPast record transcription or image, although Phil's comment indicates that will be coming soon.

7)  I'm glad that FindMyPast found my suggestions helpful, and that they have quickly implemented the Search results by region or world, and have implemented the Attach Record to the person.  I really like the ability to specify more than one person to attach the record to.  


Copyright (c) 2014, Randall J. Seaver








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