Friday, November 13, 2015

Ancestry.com Activates Member Connect in Ancestry Member Trees

The Ancestry.com blog just published The New Ancestry: November 13th Feature Update today that 
notes that the Member Connect feature has returned to the Ancestry Member Trees.

On a person profile, the "Member Connect" link is on the navigation bar below the name and also on the Tools dropdown menu, as shown below:


 After I clicked on the Member Connect link for this person, the page opened indicating that there were 17 Suggested Connections for this person.  Each other Ancestry Member Tree with this person has information for a number of Facts, the Fact that is different, and the source in the right hand column (three screens below):


And it goes on for all 17 other Ancestry Member Trees that have this person in them.  The top of the screen above indicates that there are 4 pages of these connections for this person, but the page numbers don't work - but the right and left arrows do work.

Likewise, at the top of the Member Connect screen are buttons for "Recent Activity," "Connections," and "Suggested Connections."  At this time, they all go to this page - they don't go anywhere else for some reason.  Perhaps it's still in development.

The significant value of this Member Connect feature is probably that a user can click on one of the sources in the right-hand column and see the actual record, and can then Save it to their Tree person if the user chooses to do it.

NOTE:  I think that this is active only in the "New Ancestry" format.  I cannot get to "Classic" format for some reason to check.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/11/ancestrycom-activates-member-connect-in.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.



2 comments:

Bernita said...

Thank you for sharing your experience with this feature. I am excited to try it. Great post.

Barb said...

The Member Connect feature was available in the "Classic" format as I used it quite a bit. After you connect to those other trees you will get notifications on any activity of the other person regarding the common individual where you created the link. It is a great way to keep up with another researcher. I restrict it to members I believe share a common ancestor with me, or where I can see they have a close connection and could reveal a nugget of info to guide me. I skip over those "stubs" or any tree that seems to be "processed" without a care for sourcing. I just asked in comments on the Feature Update Blog if we will once again receive these email notifications. It is also a widget on your Ancestry homepage. ANother feature of the widget/email is a notification when information from your tree has been added to another Member Tree, but I am not so sure that part is only due to a Member Connect link.