Tuesday, October 6, 2015

New DNA Notification Icon on Ancestry ~ Now You See It ~ Now You Don't

Today, when I signed in to Ancestry.com I opened my usual two windows on my desktop computer to begin working on my current tree. I use one window to work in and another to keep the pedigree view of the family that I work on for the day so that I can keep things in perspective and quickly check dates, ancestors and descendants. I usually leave the window with the pedigree alone until I am through for the day. 

After doing a few things here at home I sat down at my computer to begin where I left off before lunch. That is when I noticed a new icon in the top right hand corner of my Ancestry toolbar. I went to look at the window with pedigree because I had not refreshed it in since I had opened it this morning which meant it still had the old tool bar icons. The photograph below shows only the "leaf" for hints and the message icon. See the photo below.




 I went back and forth between the two pages. The DNA icon was not the only thing I noticed (the icon actually had the number of matches) but unfortunately I didn't think to snap a picture with my cell phone at that particular moment. Below is the the "new toolbar" with the DNA icon.


Yay!!! Now that there is an icon on the Ancestry toolbar it will be easier to see new matches right? Not yet! I clicked on the icon and I had about 20 matches I could look at and I quickly scanned them, realizing that of the 20 matches I could see only 4 of them which were direct matches for me. Now wait a minute, should I really be seeing these matches? I know who the matches belong to and we are related on my birth father's side of the tree. As a matter of fact, without this person's help I would still be wondering about the paternal half of my biological tree. However, the 4 matches belonging to me on the list are for my maternal side of the tree. 

I called Ancestry and yes, the icon is a new feature being rolled out. When I was talking with the Ancestry representative my question to him was, "Am I seeing these results because I have shared my DNA results with the administrator of another test/tree?" Yes we share DNA but should I really be seeing all of her matches? The representative I talked to didn't really have an answer. While he put me on hold and attempted to find answer for me, the blurb he was given to pass on was in short, yes.

Curious to see if possibly these are new matches to me, as in a branch of my birth family I had not discovered, I opened a new window so that I could click on this new icon for DNA matches I was seeing and to try the first name that was on the list. When the toolbar was visible, the icon was no longer available. I signed out of Ancestry, signed back in and still I have no icon. Just think, if I hadn't snapped some quick pictures I would be really wondering if I had seen this icon!  Obviously there is still some tweaking to do and I will wait until Ancestry is ready to roll out this feature in more detail and see what happens.




 

4 comments:

  1. Ancestry can't keep the new website working, and they apparently cannot fix the problems that users keep referring to them. Instead they are coming up with "new" features? Why aren't they hiring people who can actually fix the problems on what they already have? My guess is that they are busy with these kind of "new" features so that they will have more that they can sell to Calico. All about money it seems.

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    1. Hi Amy,
      Thank you for your comments. I agree that Ancestry needs to get their ducks in a row so to speak where this "new" Ancestry site is concerned. I understand that they think they are doing there customers a great thing by all the new bells and whistles however, it does appear that more "testing" among their users would have been more prudent. I cannot speak to the hiring of employees.

      Take care,

      Dawn

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  2. So glad some one else see's that New Ancestry has many issues to solve. My husbands gggrandfather was born in Ireland but have no document saying what town he was born in so I just put Ireland. I found a military document with him residing in Roxbury Ireland and was a Labor. Ancestry added Roxbury as where he was born without a birth document. So how accurate can a person's tree be when this happens.

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    1. Hello,

      I have talked about my frustration with the "new" Ancestry in my post, The New Ancestry and My Frustration which was posted on 30 September 2015. This very subject is in that post. I can only hope that with time that the powers that be at Ancestry.com will realize that they have more issues than they originally thought they would.

      Take care,

      Dawn

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