Family History Report

[drepouille]

I wondered whether printing new cards for ordinances that had already been reserved "counted" on the report.

I do not believe it is that they have been reserved, but rather that they may have been printed out before.

I don't remember Ordinances Ready ever suggesting an ordinance that had already been printed. I have only seen it suggest ordinances that have been reserved by others, but not yet printed. If I print a card for an ordinance that has already been printed by a member or by the temple, that would be bad, in my opinion.

[russellhltn]

I do not believe it is that they have been reserved, but rather that they may have been prined out before.

Good point. Reprints may not count.

[sbradshaw]

Family name cards expire, even if they've already been printed. Have the ones that are showing up in Ordinances Ready expired?

[aebrown]

I don't remember Ordinances Ready ever suggesting an ordinance that had already been printed. I have only seen it suggest ordinances that have been reserved by others, but not yet printed. If I print a card for an ordinance that has already been printed by a member or by the temple, that would be bad, in my opinion.

Ordinances Ready will find ordinances in a variety of places, each with different interaction with the "printed" status:

• Your own reservation list: If you have one or more reserved ordinances on your own list and you ask for that type of ordinance in Ordinances Ready, you'll get those returned to you first. It doesn't matter whether they have been printed or not -- you'll get those first. If one or more has been printed, you'll be warned that they have been printed.
• Ordinances shared with the temple by others: When another person shares ordinances from their reservation list with the temple, the "printed" status of those ordinances is essentially cleared. They will simply have a "shared" status. It's possible that that other person printed the card before they decided to share it with the temple. In that case, they should be responsible and destroy the card. But this scenario is not "bad" -- if it weren't allowed, then once someone printed a card, they would not be able to share it with the temple, even if they then realized that they just didn't have time or ability to do the ordinances themselves. It's much better to allow people to share ordinances with the temple, since that makes the ordinance available for someone who will actually do the work in a temple.
• Ordinances from Family Tree that are reservable: These are new reservations, so when you receive them via Ordinances Ready, they are in an unprinted status. Once you generate the cards at the end of the Ordinances Ready process, they will change to a Printed status.
• Ordinances shared with the temple and printed by the temple: This can't happen. If a temple has printed an ordinance for a person, that ordinance will never be given to someone who requests ordinances via Ordinances Ready.

A final note: when you said "I have only seen it suggest ordinances that have been reserved by others, but not yet printed," I assume you mean ordinances that were reserved by others and shared with the temple. Ordinances Ready will never give you ordinances reserved by others unless they shared them with the temple (or the reservations expired and so the ordinances were automatically shared with the temple).

[lotsicaf]

If you use the Ordinance Ready feature to print a card that was previously shared with the temple by others, will that count in the Family History Report as your submission?

[aebrown]

If you use the Ordinance Ready feature to print a card that was previously shared with the temple by others, will that count in the Family History Report as your submission?

Yes. The FHAR only counts your first submission for the year, so it will cause you to be counted as a new submitter only if this is your first submission for the year, but it does count.

Some might think this might lead to double counting. After all, for the person who shared this ordinance with the temple this might have been their first submission of the year, and so the act of sharing this ordinance might very well have caused the sharer to be counted as a submitter on their ward and stake FHARs. And then the person who used Ordinances Ready to print the card could also be counted as a submitter for that action if that was the first ordinance they submitted in the year. So both could conceivably get counted as a submitter for that single ordinance. But this is by design. Remember that the focus is on how many members do submission activities, not how many ordinances might be involved.

[markojarvis]

For instance, the 1st-4th Gen ancestors in family tree percentage is easily misunderstood. It does not mean the number of members in the stake with all of their 4 generations entered in family search, but rather how many of the adult members of the stake, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents are entered into family search. There is a total of 15 possible names per member of the stake, and the percentage is how many of those names are entered.

What is your source for this conclusion? I'll admit that the wording is a bit ambiguous, but it seems more likely to me that it refers to the percentage of members who have their four generations in the Family Tree. Your definition of 4 generations is correct -- some people fail to count the individual as the 1st generation, but that has always been the definition of "4 generations". However, the focus of the Key Indicator report is members (except for the "Baptisms Submitted data), and so it makes more sense for that to be a percentage of members, not of those 15 slots in the tree.

I'll see if I can find a definitive answer to this question...

Well, I was able to contact someone in the Business Intelligence team at FamilySearch, and it turns out that user Swift is indeed correct now.

Originally, this statistic did refer to the percentage of members with a full four generations (all 15 people filled in), but then it was changed a few years ago to be exactly what Swift said -- it is the percentage of those 15 people filled in for the members of the ward/stake. One reason for the change is that some people may have a situation where a person or two is essentially impossible to fill in (e.g., the father of a person in the tree is simply unknown), and it was felt that a 93% completeness percentage was a more accurate reflection of the situation for someone with an essentially full 4 generations than a 0% because it was not completely full.

Thanks, Swift, for making the community aware of this detail.

I know this thread is old, but I am having trouble making sense of our ward's Four Generations report in light of the information above. The 4-Gen report's percentages are as follows: 2021 = 79.8%, 2022 = 41.4%, and 2023 = 43.9%. I don't understand how the number of ward members/parents/GPs/GGPs could drop nearly in half between 2021 and 2022.

Presumably that would require one or more of the following to occur:
1. We lost ward members with complete (or nearly complete) four-generation data. (Former ward members either moved, died, or left the Church.)
2. We gained ward members with very little four-generation data.
3. People have been deleting our ward members' ancestors from the tree.

I have a difficult time imagining that any/all of those occurred on a scale large enough to cut the number in half between 2021 and 2022.

Can anyone help me understand what I'm overlooking?

Thanks in advance!
Mark

[russellhltn]

Can anyone help me understand what I'm overlooking?

The method compiling statistics changed. Please see this post.

Before, people were counted has having 4 generations even without a FamilySearch account if one could be established from membership records. They're now requiring that the member have an account to be counted.

[markojarvis]

Can anyone help me understand what I'm overlooking?

The method compiling statistics changed. Please see this post.

Before, people were counted has having 4 generations even without a FamilySearch account if one could be established from membership records. They're now requiring that the member have an account to be counted.

Thank you!

[Makisig]

If I haven't taken a name to the temple this year and I take an ordinance ready name to perform the ordinance, will that count towards the Family History report?