6 replies to this topic

[Rick Landrum]

I have a question regarding TreeShare and RootsMagic8.

 

I have always had a problem with TreeShare posting sources to RM, but failing to post the research details. This required me to manually copy that information from Ancestry and paste it into the RM source details.

 

Some time ago, I started running into issues with TreeShare not transferring sources from RM to Ancestry. Instead, Ancestry would place the source notes as "unsourced citations". There are numerous posts in this forum about this problem. I had come to believe that the cause  for this was that the Ancestry source had been posted to RM by TreeShare, and that I had later copied the source to another RM tree member event. Ancestry then lost the reference to the source and did not recognize it when TreeShare tried to post it back to Ancestry. While this does appear to be true, I have also discovered a different but related issue. I had some problems with my RootsMagic 7 data base and I ended up having to reload it to Ancestry. Two problems resulted. One, Ancestry reset all of the "hints". This I knew would occur. Second, Ancestry did not recognize any of the sources coming from RM7 and TreeShare, even though they originally came from Ancestry. I recently launched a review of my entire RM tree, comparing it to my Ancestry tree, and I found these two issues existed across the entire Ancestry tree.

 

I have tried to use TreeShare to correct the problems to no avail. As a result, if I want to keep my RM and Ancestry trees synchronized, I will have to repost all the missing sources  in Ancestry by re-processing all the hints. Or, I can choose to only maintain my RM tree,  and leave my Ancestry tree as is. So basically, this situation is forcing me to choose between the two platforms to be my standard.

 

My question is, will RM8 correct any of this?

 

Any insights appreciated.

 

Rick

[Jerry Bryan]

Only the RM developers know how TreeShare works in RM8. The general public won't know until RM8 is released or until there is some kind of preview posted about RM8 that includes information about how TreeShare works in RM8. But I will offer my guess.

 

My guess is that TreeShare will be little changed between RM7 and RM8. The reason for my guess is that I think that TreeShare needs massive changes, so massive that doing the changes in RM8.0  would delay the release of RM8.0 much longer than it has already been delayed. And I don't think the RM developers will do anything that will delay the release of RM8.0 unnecessarily.

 

Whether the massive changes that are needed in TreeShare will ever be made is hard to know. Some of the needed changes in TreeShare would require changes in ancestry's API, which is outside the control of the RM developers. But some of the needed changes in TreeShare could probably be accomplished on the RM side of the house alone. I think those changes should be made eventually, but not at the expense of delaying RM8.0 any further.

 

Looking at the big picture of TreeShare, I think it's a pretty decent product as long as it's only used in one direction. That means that you have to choose either RM or ancestry as your master data and only make changes in your master data. I think the problems in using TreeShare in both directions at the same time and keeping your data in sync are pretty insurmountable, no matter how hard the RM developers might work to solve the problems.

 

I have largely given up on using RM's light bulbs with ancestry. They seldom show up anyway unless I go into ancestry and look at them as shaky leaves. I think they are extremely valuable there, and I do understand that when/if I do a new upload from RM to ancestry that the shaky leaf hint status is all gone. The hints are still there, but they are all unapproved. I just sort of have to live with that one.

 

I do wish it was much easier than it is to get from an RM person to the corresponding ancestry person. You have to start up TreeShare, which takes a while. Then you have to navigate to the person in ancestry before you can go to the person. The navigation is very slow. The only thing that really works for me is scrolling. Trying to type into the list of names to get to the right place is incredibly, horribly slow. Maybe that's one thing that could be better in the RM8.0 version of TreeShare.

 

Jerry

 

[Rick Landrum]

Thanks Jerry,

WOW!! That's helpful, or at least good to know.

However, TreeShare in my opinion does not live up to it's hype and promise. If anything it has just caused me a huge mess to have to clean up. So, I guess I'm right where I thought I was, having to choose which platform will be my standard. Essentially, I have already done that, it's RM, because I just like it better. I will continue to use Ancestry as a research source and concentrate on getting the data I find to go one way over to RM. I'll use the hints in Ancestry to populate my tree there. Since I'm already having to copy source details and paste them into my RM sources, I'll just continue on that path.

Waiting to see what if anything that RM8 brings to the table.

Rick

 

PS - this takes me back to what I was doing before the introduction of Tree Share, so I guess that's not so bad.

[pstaveley]

In my experience TreeShare can be useful but you must use it with care and not rely on it.

 

I generally only make changes in Ancestry and then TreeShare those changes to RM. I then use RM as a (sort of) backup to my Ancestry tree and to use the facilities in RM for data cleaning.

 

However, there are a number of issues for which I have not seen any evidence that RM8 will solve. Among the issues are that webhints are not always synchronised. I have found that if there is a webhint in RM7 but not in Ancestry then you have to delete the individual in Ancestry and resynch it from RM7 to Ancestry.

 

In the past I have had the unsource citation problem, which is one of the reasons I normally only make major changes to the individual's details in Ancestry.

 

Another problem is when RM marks an individual as changed or unchanged. It is not unusual to find that the individual's details differ between Ancestry and RM but in RM that individual is not marked as changed. You can see this if you untick the changed box and view the individual's details. I use two computers for Treesharing (one for home and one for travelling). In theory I could use the pack and go feature of RM. However, because I use automatic file copying software to keep the two computers' files identical I, accidentally, discovered that by copying the RM and media files to the other computer then the individual who were previously marked as unchanged show on the other computer as changed. So that means that many changes that seemed to be missed on the first TreeShare appear on the other computer when doing a TreeShare on that computer.

[JimDavis79]

Among other things I've done in my life, I've acquired a lot of software and overseen the development of same for government and big business.  I've never seen an easy integration of several separately developed major software programs, e.g., RM, Ancestry, FTM, FamilySearch etc.  The integration problems are tremendous, and the API changes over time, making all integration a constant effort to keep up, with bugs and failures constant companions.  Without going into the reasons why software integration are specifically difficult, I am quite leery of connecting any software programs that were not coded with the other program(s) as a known adjunct.

 

I use the hints in RM, Ancestry, FamilySearch et al as hints to my work, and do all the transfer of sources and information between them by hand.  I do not let the programs do the transfer automagically.  More work for me, but I avoid all the hassle described above.  I agree with Jerry about picking one as your repository of master data -- I choose RM because I control the data.

[Rick Landrum]

Jim,

You have stated much more eloquently than I how to deal with this issue. As I previously stated, I'm back to where I was before "TreeShare". I use other platforms to do my research and then manually post the data to my RM tree. This works with no issues. However, I do have a subscription on Ancestry, and several family members who use, and prefer, Ancestry. Therefore I use the hints in Ancestry to populate my tree there for their sake. If I have data in RM, that is not on Ancestry, I'll just have to manually enter it there. In the long run this is much more efficient than fighting all the problems with the TreeShare interface.

 

Thank you for your comments.

Rick

[JimDavis79]

I use other platforms to do my research and then manually post the data to my RM tree. This works with no issues. However, I do have a subscription on Ancestry, and several family members who use, and prefer, Ancestry. Therefore I use the hints in Ancestry to populate my tree there for their sake. If I have data in RM, that is not on Ancestry, I'll just have to manually enter it there. In the long run this is much more efficient than fighting all the problems with the TreeShare interface.

 

Rick, your process is exactly what I do.  In addition to Ancestry, I also maintain minimal family trees on Family Search, Find My Past and Family Tree DNA.