Wednesday, February 1, 2017

MyHeritage Introduces New Discoveries Pages - UPDATED

The MyHeritage blog posted "Introducing the New Discoveries Page" today which modifies the look and feel of all of the matches - both Record Matches and smart Matches - offered to users of a MyHeritage family tree.

The email from MyHeritage today said:
"I'm delighted to let you know that we’ve just introduced the new Discoveries pages on MyHeritage. 
"The Discoveries pages provide a unified experience for all matches, organizing them into two main pages: Matches by People and Matches by Source. Now you can look at all matches that were found for a particular individual in your family tree, or all matches found in a particular collection of historical records or matching family tree. Whatever you choose to use, the new pages combine Smart Matches (matches with trees) and Record Matches (matches with records) into the same unified and consistent interface.
"We also now display the new information that each match provides, and matches are arranged by the value that they add to your family tree, so that those matches that add the most value are listed first. This saves you time and allows you to focus on the most valuable matches. You can easily save all new and improved information to your family tree. 
"MyHeritage is known throughout the industry for it's matching technologies, and they have just gotten even better with a great new user interface. 
"The new pages are easier to use, more intuitive and much faster than the previous layout. 
"Please learn more about the Discoveries page in our official blog post which we invite you to link to: https://blog.myheritage.com/2017/02/introducing-the-new-discoveries-pages/"
Please read the MyHeritage blog post for all of the details.

I will use my MyHeritage family tree for the screens below:

1)  On my home page, the "Discoveries" tab dropdown lists "Matches by People," "Matches by Sources," and "Instant Discoveries":


2)  If I click on "Matches by People" I receive a list of persons in my MyHeritage family tree with Matches:

 The screen above is for "All Matches," which includes both Record Matches (from sources) and Smart Matches (from MyHeritage family trees).   I could click on "Record Matches" and see only records from sources for specific persons.  Likewise, I could click on "Smart Matches" and see only matches from MyHeritage family trees.

Note that I have 27,963 people with a total of 472,844 matches in "All Matches."

On the screen above, there is a dropdown menu for the type of matches - the user can choose "Pending," "New," "Confirmed" or "Rejected."

 3)  Also on the screen above, over on the right side is another dropdown menu for "Sort by" that has "Value" at the top.  If I click on the dropdown arrow, I see more options:

 The options on the "Sort by" dropdown menu are "Value," "Number of matches," "First name, " "Last name," and "Relation."

4) There is also a gear icon next to the "Sort by" dropdown menu, so I clicked on that and saw:


On the screen above are the "Discovery settings" that used to be the "Filters" before this change - the star bar (which is the basis of "Value" I think), and buttons to select between "Show all record types," "Show only structured records (Vital, Census, etc.)," and "Show only free text records (Newspapers, Yearbooks, etc.)."

So there are a number of options for "Matches by People."

5)  The same options are available for the "Matches by Source" option on the home page.  When I clicked on "Matches by source" I received 41,156 sources with 472,842 matches (for "All matches") listed by "Pending" and Sorted by "Number of Matches":


The number of sources noted on the screen above are for both "Record Match" sources and "Smart Match" sources.

6)  I clicked on the "Record Matches" button, and there are 130 sources with 108,055 matches for persons in my MyHeritage Tree.  There is a dropdown menu on the right-side to "Sort by" and the options are by "Number of matches" and "Collection name" (i.e., alphabetical):

 8)  I clicked on the 1900 United States Federal Census collection on the list above, and saw that I had 1,559 matches from that collection, sorted by "Value":


In the record collection match on the screen above, I have to click the orange "Review match" button for the match, and then can "Confirm the match" or "reject the match" on the Review screen.

9)  All of this adds more options, complexity, and perhaps confusion, for MyHeritage users.

I will stop here because this post is already long, complex and perhaps confusing.

If you have a MyHeritage tree and data subscription, go work with it yourself and see how you can work with effectively.  There is a learning curve on these changes, and the sooner you are comfortable with using these features, the more effective you will be when using them.

10)  For my own work, I much prefer working only with "Pending" "Record Matches" sorted by "Value" (used to be the star filter) and usually work on one record collection at a time.

11)  There is one feature I hope that MyHeritage adds at some point in time.  I would really like to have a search for a specific person within this Match system.  If I sort the present system by Last name, it starts with the A surnames.  I have to go through hundreds of pages to get to the Seaver name, and then through dozens more to get to the Seaver I want to find.  I know that there are Record Match and Smart Match icons on the family tree, which does have the search for a specific person feature.  However, I have to go through several clicks to get to that search for a person feature.  I would like to have the person search feature on these Match pages also.

UPDATED:  2 February 2017.  I was wrong about there not being a search feature fior a specific name.  Users can search for a specific name using the magnifying glass on the right side of the screen next to the "Sort by" dropdown menu and the gear icon.  I clicked on the magnifying glass and entered "isaac seaver" in the search field and got results for the name:


Thank you to Aaron Godfrey of MyHeritage for providing me the correct information.

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The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/02/myheritage-introduces-new-discoveries.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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