27 July 2018

Updates are coming to the FamilySearch Fan Chart

I am excited about the announced updates and changes for FamilySearch Fan Chart. The changes are scheduled to come out in a few months but the development team has released a video of some of the features and said that we can share with family and friends!!

Yes, there are things coming I cannot share yet.


The feature I think I am most excited for is the ability to view seven generations in the Fan Chart. I have a full tree and the additional two rows will help me navigate my tree much faster. I know those of you with none or some trees will not find this feature as awesome.


The other additions to the tree allow you to see a visual representation of the number of sources, stories, and photos that are associated with each person.


In the above Fan Chart the darker the color the more sources that are associated with that person. The lighter or white pieces would be great places to find more relatives by attaching additional sources.


In the above Fan Chart, the darker color shows that 5-9 different stories have been attached in memories. The white pieces would be places to go and write narratives or stories about your ancestor and then upload it to the memories tab. The person I would recommend you start with is the one in the circle.


The above Fan Chart shows that one side of the family has five to nine photos loaded into memories of most of the second through sixth generations of ancestors. The other side of the family and many of the 7th generation do not have any photos uploaded at all. This would be a good place to focus efforts.

I know that these additions may not ground breaking but they add richness and texture to the process of discovering your family.



The FamilySearch Memories app allows you to see and find the photos, stories, and documents attached to your relatives memories. Even better, it allows you to upload new photos, stories, documents, and audio recordings to the memories of your ancestors.

FamilySearch also already had a way to find photos of your ancestors. However, the outlined steps took you through filtering drop-down menus. Once found, you had to click an additional view my relationship link. The new design is much more simple and easy to use as well as understand. 


The website and app from  https://stories.familyfoundapp.com/ has made it possible to find your family stories. The site also estimates how long it would take to read the story. 


FamilySearch also had a way to print a seven generation Fan Chart even though you could not view all seven generations in the Fan Chart View on the website or app.

I hope I have done justice in showing the upcoming features and additions as well as some of the other ways to access and enrich your discovery experiences. 

No comments:

Post a Comment