Saturday, May 20, 2017

Latest News on Family Tree Maker 2017 Update

I received an email this afternoon with information posted last night on the Family Tree Maker Users Facebook group page:

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FTM 2017 UPDATE 
MAY 19 - 11 PM UTAH TIME (UTC 06:00 )

TEST DRIVE ROLLOUT CONTINUES
We reached out to all who had pre-purchased FTM 2017 with an invitation to take a test drive - 48 hours to try out the new edition under controlled conditions. Nearly all test drivers elect to continue using it rather than rolling back at the end of the two day test period. We've now processed all the new applications received this week and have accepted more than 80% to test drive immediately.

MOST ALTERNATES ACCEPTED
We are continuing to work through those whose applications placed them as "alternates", mostly due to having large or unusual trees. We've now placed more than three quarters of alternates either in test drives or in beta testing. If you're still an alternate, please be patient as we continue to make hundreds of additional places for large trees available daily as we ramp up.

YOU STILL HAVE A CHOICE
Note that you don't have to take the FTM 2017 Test Drive. If you're happily working away on your research in an earlier edition, you're welcome to keep on doing that for now. Ancestry will continue to keep everything but sync working until after the rollout is complete. And we’ll be announcing additional temporary functionality in the next couple of days to support your research until the official launch. Stay tuned.

NEXT STEPS FOR DEVELOPMENT
We're continuing to beta test builds with the streamlined process for syncing changes made on the Ancestry side, and that looks to be coming along nicely. When completed it will allow us to remove all limits from adding FTM 2017 users to the system. We expect to provide a new build to our test drivers in a week or so, and assuming success there, roll it out to the rest of the world shortly after.

STAYING UP TO DATE
Last weekend we sent out our third email in six weeks to update all those who have pre-purchased FTM 2017, and to offer them a test drive. And to date we've posted more than a dozen interim updates here and on our support site as well at https://support.mackiev.com/498640-RELEASE-OF-FTM-2017. We'll continue to post weekly updates here, or more frequently if there is news.

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The email said that I could see comments from beta testers at   http://www.mackiev.com/familytreemaker/betatest/feedback.html.

I am not doing beta testing on FTM 2017 - I was not selected to be a test driver, but I was notified that I would be an alternate.  That's OK, I didn't have time to do it, but my feelings are not hurt.



Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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