In recent indexing newsletters, we've shared a few features of the future program that many are looking forward to. As a stake indexing director, you have plenty to be excited about as well. These new features will make your life easier as an administrator in your stake.
New Getting-Started Training
Today, helping new indexers get started generally consists of having them take the tutorial and walking them through their first batch or two, step-by-step. The new training experience, as described here, will walk indexers through the main instructions, leaving you free to answer questions as they learn. This will make it much easier to train a group of people at once or to help someone get started even when you are not in the same room. It certainly won’t replace your role, but it will provide a basic understanding of what indexing is so you can help where you are really needed.
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No Program to Download
You—or others in your stake—likely spend time helping people download and access the indexing program. The new program will reside on the FamilySearch website, so indexers will no longer have to download and install a program to get started. They’ll be able to access the site from any modern web browser on both computers and tablets. You will no longer have to focus a large portion of your training on downloading the program.
(Please note, the images shown are in English because the program is still in development. The new program will be translated into the standard indexing languages. These are just examples; the final product may be slightly different from what you see below, but the concepts will be the same.)
New Administration and Communication Features
In the new program, group features will be greatly expanded. Families, youth groups, entire wards, and others will be able to create their own groups.
Indexers will be able to belong to more than one group, and their indexing work will be shown in all the groups they are members of. As part of a group, indexers will be able to:
- See the work that the group is accomplishing together.
- Index projects adopted by the group and see what the group is contributing to the project.
- See the achievements of others in their group and congratulate them on their accomplishments.
As a director, you will have much more flexibility in communicating with your volunteers.
- Messages can be sent to everyone or to just some of the members of your stake—indexers, arbitrators, administrators, subgroups, and so on.
- Images can be displayed in messages.
- Messages will no longer have a 2,000 character limit.
Improved Reporting
In the new program, you’ll see many improvements to reporting that will make it easier for you to communicate with your priesthood leaders about the activities in your group. You will see:
- More options to customize the information in the reports based on your needs.
- The ability to run reports on your group or on subgroups.
- Better formatting to make it easier to share the reports directly with others.
Preparing for the Transition to the New Program
When the new program is released later this year, you will play a vital role in helping indexers feel comfortable with the changes. We’ll provide you with information and resources so you can help your indexers make a smooth transition. For now, you may want to be aware of what will happen over the coming months:
- The beta test of the new program has begun and will continue throughout the summer.
- The new program and the transition will be discussed in a future stake indexing director webinar.
- You’ll be provided with a presentation you can use to train your indexers when it’s time to transition to the new program.
- When the new program is launched, it will be a phased transition. Indexers will be brought in gradually over the course of a few months.
Providing you with better tools to help the indexers in your stake is a high priority for us. Leave a comment below, and let us know what you think about these new features. What can we do to help you support your indexers in this transition? Email us at fsindexing@familysearch.org.
Thank you for all you do—we couldn’t do this without you!
Learn more about the program coming out later this year in these articles:
– Article by Janell Vasquez
