Great Additions to the Descendancy View

What’s New on FamilySearch.org—April 29, 2014 Two powerful new features have been added to the Descendancy view—Research Suggestions and Data Problems. They help you identify where people might be missing in your tree and where you might be able to improve the quality of your data. You also can now use Settings to choose what information you see in the Descendancy View. You can choose whether to display the preferred portrait or the spouses. (For example, not displaying the portraits lets you see a lot more people on a screen.) Changing a setting is easy and quick, so you can change them as often as you want. Research Suggestions and Data Problems The system analyzes your tree and lets you know if a person might have had a spouse or another child or if the data has a problem (like the wife died before she had children). When the system identifies an opportunity for finding more people or discovers a data problem, you will see the icon displayed on the right side of the person. Click on the icon for the specific information for that record: What the System Evaluates Over 25 rules are evaluated for each person—most of the rules deal with data problems; the rest are for research suggestions. Data Problems: The system identifies unlikely dates for an individual or family. For example, the system lets you know if the dates indicate that a person died before he or she was born or if a girl was too young to bear her oldest child. The system also looks for duplicate entries in the same family. For example, it will indicate if the same child seems to appear twice in a family. This helps you identify errors you could fix. Research Suggestions: The system checks for research opportunities, like missing information or people. For example, the system looks for large gaps between children (which might indicate that there was another child), for couples who may have had children but no children are listed, and for missing information. In a future release, you will have an option to dismiss Research Suggestions that are not valid for a particular person. For example, if you know a person never married, you will be able to tell the system not to suggest that you look for a spouse for that person. Using Settings You have 4 settings you can select to determine what information you see in the Descendancy view: With preferred portraits and spouses Without preferred portraits Without spouses Without portraits or spouses By default, you will see preferred portraits and spouses. To change the settings, do the following: 1. In the upper right portion of the screen, click Settings. 2. To remove a setting, click the option. 3. The system removes the check mark from the box, and you no longer see that option. 4. To see the option again, click Settings, and click the option. The system adds a check mark, and you see the option. Here is the same section of Family Tree displayed with the different settings. With preferred portraits and spouses: Without preferred portraits: Without spouses: Without portraits or spouses: