Tech Forum

I have just downloaded a new app from the FS website called "Take a Name." It searches your tree for ordinances that need to be done. I have some questions about this, but the developers don't seem to have a help or service link. One of my questions is this....doesn't FS have a way to identify needed ordinances without using a separate app?

zaneclark wrote:I have just downloaded a new app from the FS website called "Take a Name." It searches your tree for ordinances that need to be done. I have some questions about this, but the developers don't seem to have a help or service link. One of my questions is this....doesn't FS have a way to identify needed ordinances without using a separate app?

Of course FS has a way to identify needed ordinances. They are shown in various ways -- on a person's detail page, or on various tree views. But many members don't want to search through ancestry and descendancy trees; apps such as Hope Chest or Take a Name or Find a Record will scan through extended trees up and down looking for temple opportunities or other research possibilities. They build on what FamilySearch provides -- they don't replace it or even provide any information that could not be found simply by patiently using FamilySearch.

The speed with which such apps provide opportunities is appealing, and I have used some of them myself at times. They have their place. But there is the danger that users will seek quantity rather than quality of opportunities and not do the research needed to verify that these potential ordinances are truly needed. So they should be used with caution, and only as an early step -- not the final step -- in finding needed ordinances.

Last week I installed Take a Name on my cell phone and the results were fast.

However, the names it found were those already reserved in my Temple list including those Not Printed, Printed, and Shared with the Temple. And that's what it's designed to do. So complete all the ordinances in your Temple list before reserving any additional names using Take a Name.

The Take a Name Help Center states, "Please also note, due to the limitations the app encounters from FamilySearch when a user has large numbers of reservations, sometimes the app may mistakenly label one of your reservations as being reserved by someone else (or vice versa)." They define a large number as anything over 100 names.

I also found that it was labeling names with "relationship unknown" when in fact the names were part of my tree. One of the names with the "relationship unknown" still showed the ordinances were available to print. When I opened FamilySearch the name was not part of my family tree. Why would the app have this name in the list of work to be done?

I released all the names in my Temple list including those Shared with Temple, and then used Take a Name again. The result was a list of names that were already completed or reserved by someone else. The few names which had available ordinances were not part of my family tree.

It's promoted as an app that will "Find temple ready ancestors. Take a Name searches the FamilySearch tree for your deceased ancestors and double checks that LDS ordinances are ready for the temple." I disagree. No app can replace what you must do. Let me explain what I mean.

This company warns you to do your best to "validate information for a person to provide yourself the ultimate confidence that the ordinances you perform in the temple are as correct and accurate as possible."

This means you need to take each name in the Take a Name list and open the file in FamilySearch. Why? Even though the name has a green temple, you still need to open the Vital Information and check for the following:
1. The name is correctly entered in the First and Last Name field.
2. Remove nicknames and titles (Captain, Sheriff, etc.) and put them in Other Information.
3. Remove from the title filed Mr. or Miss.
4. Remove the word "or" from the First name field and put the second name in Other Information.
5. Make sure the Suffix is really a suffix. Ex. Jr
6. All dates and places have been Standardized.
7. The last name of a female is not her married name. Ex: Mary is married to John Brown. You don't enter her name as Mrs Mary Brown or Mary Brown.
8. Click the "View My Relationship" to make sure the name is part of your family.

Next: open all Record Hints and attach as needed. Many Records Hints will provide you with family members that are not in your tree. In the past six months I discovered 40 to 45 missing family members per 100 Record Hints I opened. Instead of taking one ancestor to the Temple, why not take the entire family?

Take a Name only builds you a list of names that have possible temple ordinances to be completed. You still need to examine each name for duplicates that may not be listed under the tool: Possible Duplicates.

Before anyone blindly prints temple cards they should review the following guidelines which are in FamilySearch Get Help:

• Names in Vital Information and Other Information in Family Tree
• Entering names in Family Tree
• Information Required for Ordinances to Be Performed
• Names and symbols causing Needs More Information error
• Name will not let temple ordinances clear—Needs more information

"Take a Name typically delivers dozens of temple ready family names in a matter of minutes." No app can provide temple ready names because you still need to validate the information for each person before ordinances are performed in the temple.

aebrown wrote:But there is the danger that users will seek quantity rather than quality of opportunities and not do the research needed to verify that these potential ordinances are truly needed. So they should be used with caution, and only as an early step -- not the final step -- in finding needed ordinances.

I have spent a lot of time finding sources that provide death dates, which many people ignore. I found one individual with no death information, who had been submitted to the temple file for all ordinances. I discovered a death record that showed he died at age 3. When I added the death date, the initiatory and endowment ordinances were marked as not needed. Luckily, those temple file sheets had not yet been printed.

Hi all. Full disclosure: I’m with Kinpoint and part of the Take a Name app team.

This is a great discussion! We’re always on the lookout for good feedback. We’ve noted everyone’s thoughts and ideas from this thread and are discussing internally.

Please know, many of the thoughts you have shared are already on our plate, and we are working as quickly as we can on new and improved concepts, changes, etc. to improve the Take a Name app. We also appreciate feedback on any potential bugs. The system is definitely new, so a bug or two is inevitable. Thanks for your patience as we improve the app.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly (support@kinpoint.com). We'd love to hear from you.
___

Additionally, let me address one of the items mentioned by RandJThorpe:

RandJThorpe wrote:I also found that it was labeling names with "relationship unknown" when in fact the names were part of my tree. One of the names with the "relationship unknown" still showed the ordinances were available to print. When I opened FamilySearch the name was not part of my family tree. Why would the app have this name in the list of work to be done?

I released all the names in my Temple list including those Shared with Temple, and then used Take a Name again. The result was a list of names that were already completed or reserved by someone else. The few names which had available ordinances were not part of my family tree.

Take a Name populates your search results from two sources: 1) Names found searching your tree; 2) Names imported from your FamilySearch reservation list. For those names found during the search, your relationship to them is discovered through the act of crawling the tree, so there is always a relationship indicated. For names that come from your FamilySearch reserved list, the app has no way of determining the relationship, so it marks those as "Relationship Unknown." FamilySearch has a mechanism for determining the relationship between two individuals but to this point they have chosen to not make it available to their partners (although we understand it’s coming soon!). So when you see a search result that says "Relationship Unknown," it doesn't mean you aren't related, it just means it came from your FamilySearch reserved list and wasn't seen during the crawl.

That said, there are a couple ways in which a non-relative could end up in your search results:
1. You reserved the person independent of Take a Name, and they got imported into your search results as part of your FamilySearch reservation list.
2. The person was a relative, and after you reserved their ordinances, someone modified FamilySearch's common pedigree and disconnected the person from you.

Additionally, note that if you un-reserve all of your existing reservations and search again, the app will not find/import any reservations during its search, but will give only new results. However, if, after un-reserving, you simply open the app (without starting a new search), the individuals you previously had reserved will get "refreshed" (this may take up to a minute or so depending on how many reservations you have). Once the refresh is done, you may notice that some of the names in your list are now marked “reserved by other” or “complete” (as RandJThorpe observed). To clean your list completely, run a new search.

This is especially likely to happen if you’ve had the names reserved for a long time. During the time that names are reserved, the data in the tree continues to evolve. For example, since the time you reserved the person...

• someone may have reserved another ordinance (sealing perhaps) that became available.
• someone may have added a duplicate entry to the tree, or even completed the work for that duplicate and then merged the two.
• someone may have completely disconnected the person from you, so you’re no longer related!

A status of "Complete" simply means there's nothing that you could do for the person in the temple right now.

Essentially, if someone is in your reservation list, it's because you considered them ready at some point in time. Therefore, the app also considers them ready.

I hope that helps with some of the confusion!

I think I just paid for it but can find it on my phone. Help!

I've found several problems with apps that crawl FT looking for names.

• They may be based on a misunderstanding of the source of names in Family Tree. If they're not based on a misunderstanding, unfortunately they promote the misunderstanding, which is that the Church has pre-populated FT with temple names just waiting for members to reserve. As much as we might wish for this to be true, it isn't. The names in FT actually were ultimately all contributed by regular users (even those that came from the old extraction program--volunteers extracted those names).
• In my experience about 80% of green temple names are duplicates or invalid (YMMV). The likelihood of error increases as you go back in time. If you have just one wrong relationship (like the children I found a while back born in the 1700s who were attached to a mother born in the 1800s) then entire lines can be incorrect.
• These programs don't tell you if someone else is currently in the process of reserving the names. A friend called not too long ago to relate with deep disappointment that she had been in the process of entering names in Family Tree which she had carefully researched--only to have someone else crawl those lines and reserve the names. And I'm sure they thought they were just reserving names the Church had put there for them to find. The other night I had a name available for about three minutes--no more than five--and someone reserved it right as I was trying to do so. This can be very discouraging, especially to people who are just starting to do their family history.
• We should be looking for names to ADD to Family Tree. Family Tree currently contains about 1 billion names. Population experts estimate the earth's total population over time at 600 billion. Granted, records aren't available for everyone. But there are records for many, many people who just need to be researched and added to Family Tree. When people use apps to crawl FT, they often end up doing invalid ordinances at the expense of those who need their ordinances done.
• For many users, these apps take the place of listening to the Spirit. That's not the app's fault. But it is a problem I've observed because people assume names are just there waiting for them to harvest, and seeking the guidance of the Spirit becomes moot.

People can use these apps to find valid names, but in my experience they usually don't. As an example, my friend's daughter received this family history "training" in her YW class: "Use such-and-such an app to find temple names. If you want more names, run it longer."

Fortunately, the Church's (relatively) new Find-Take-Teach initiative is trying to guide people to find and add names through careful research and following the Spirit.

Kathryn

Kathryn --

I couldn't agree with you more. Basic research should be required for a names to be submitted. We should be using this class of tools very carefully to help us find missing people in our lines, not just find names to submit.

The way I use these tools is to establish research starting point. By looking and documenting that open person, I am usually able to find 5 or more people that need to be researched and entered as well. A quick spider crawl of the tree does not leave you open for the spirit and will leaves lots and lots of people behind. When we teach our TFH class we always advise people to find and attach all records before someone submits a name. We also recommend to people to let a name rest for about 24 to 48 hours after they add the name, to let the FH find algorithm or AI program, time to find other potential records or duplicate records.

Example, I ran one of these tools over a year and a half ago, on just one of my decedent, trees, and found several hundred names. I've only been able get to about 50 names on that list so far, but I've been able to find and merge hundreds of other brother's, sisters, children, spouses & parents, that were not on the list.

Use the tools to help you find then take. hehehe

i have found some names to take to the temple how do i print the cards

Youcon --

It should be on the "Take a Name" web site, but if not its fairly simple, I use an Android Tablet, and will walk you though it, If you have a Apple iPAD, your screens may be a bit different. Here's how I've done it; "Take a Name" interfaces with Family Search so you can go into Family Search and look up the person using their PIN number, reserve the name, and print it like you normally would, or stay within "Take a Name" asit uses most of the same functionality from Family Search to render a card in a PDF format.

Let's navigate you though the process in "Take a Name". Staying within "Take a Name", Click on the name you want, and It should take you to a detail screen, that shows more detail about the person, You should see two blue bars toward the top of the new screen along with a nice map that shows all of the locations you added by attaching supporting documentation. Please do all the appropriate documentation before proceeding. If the "Request" bar is dark blue, Select request, and it will take you to the Family History "Request" Ordinances for ... " page, in the lower right corner "accept" the terms of the agreement, if you qualify.

You should get a message that says the "Ordinances successfully reserved. You get all eligible ordinances for that individual. I don't know how to do partial prints such as doing Baptism and Confirmation only, except within Family Search itself. Click the "ok" symbol, and it takes you back to the screen with the two blue bars again. You have now reserved the name. Now information in the blue bars has changed along with wording in the bars on the detailed page. If you hit "Get Cards" it uses the Family Search print function to print the ordinance card in a PDF format, just as if you were in Family Search.

You can now save the pdf, and mail it to yourself, to print on another computer, or if your device is able to print, you can send it to your local computer to print. Now, your back to following the normal process for cutting out the printed card, and taking them in. Sorry I don't know of a way to print multiple cards at the same time within "Take a Name". It's rather a simple program that way.

This should get you going. I've printed a few times with this tool , but generally I use the Family Search Temple tools to manage my queue and print just what I want for my next temple trip.

Hope this helps.

Warren