Family Tree Maker 2017 Update News

The Software MacKiev Support website for Family Tree Maker genealogy software (https://support.mackiev.com/498640-RELEASE-OF-FTM-2017) has this information about the progress of Family Tree Maker 2017 synchronization with Ancestry.com:

FTM 2017 UPDATE - 10:30 PM UTAH TIME - APR 9

QUITE A WEEKEND AT MACKIEV LABS

We’ve had a busy weekend with nearly our full development staff on board both Saturday and Sunday, analyzing beta results. There’s clear progress in identifying and finding solutions for unforeseen issues, and while we are not out of the woods yet, the team is upbeat for a couple of reasons.

First, syncing is now working well for a majority of beta users. This is largely the result of an advanced reporting tool our engineers built last week. The old sync error reports just weren’t picking up what was wrong, and the new tool gathers what we need to know to build a more forgiving sync process that can complete without errors.

Second, benchmark test results for syncing have been nothing short of astonishing, even to us. For example, a 10,000 person tree with some media that would have taken 4 minutes or so to sync a few changes on the FTM side under TreeSync, now finishes in just under 30 seconds with FamilySync. Good news for those of you with larger trees.

NEXT FEW DAYS

Our immediate goal now is two-fold. First is to find out how well our updated beta version that we completed over the weekend syncs. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll be sending it out to all 4700+ beta testers who’ve enrolled. Each will be asked to upload, sync, download and fill in an online report on their results. That and the new auto-send error reports should tell us what we need to know.

Our second goal is to collect as many of the new error reports as possible. And to accomplish that, over the weekend our web process engineers built a "Send Report” button into the sync error message window.  Clicking that now automatically creates the advanced report, and, with the user’s permission, sends it directly to us. Couldn’t be easier than that.

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

After we know where we stand this week, we’ll meet with Ancestry to decide on a rollout plan. If it turns out to be necessary to stagger our release, we will contact all those waiting for their copies to find out who would like to go first — and who’d be happy to hold back and let others to be the pioneers. If we do, we’ll post about it here, so you won't wonder if you’ve missed anything.

Finally, for those of you that are anxious to get started syncing again, or to try out some of the new features, consider beta testing. You do need to be an experienced user and be carefully backed up to an external drive and cloud storage to qualify, but that’s about it. If you have time to help out, please click the Beta Test link at www.familytreemaker.com to apply. Thanks!

KEEPING UP TO DATE

We will continue to post updates here as well on Facebook user group sites.

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Family Tree Maker continues to keep its customers informed about their effort to make FamilySync work.  

If you have questions about Family Tree Maker, whether it's about FamilySync or not, you can JOIN the Family Tree Maker Users group on Facebook - see  https://www.facebook.com/groups/FamilyTreeMakerUsers/

Disclosure:  I have paid for the Family Tree Maker 2017 update and have received no material considerations from Software MacKiev or Family Tree Maker.

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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