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What template fields are populated by Ancestral Sources?
Posted: 27 Mar 2023 15:37
by Gary_G
It appears that for each of the fact types covered by Ancestral Sources, there is a set of predefined field-names that can be automatically entered in template. While the predefined setup of AS does imply that certain field-name data is transferred, It may not be a full list. Is there a full list of the template field-names, by record-type, that a user's custom template should employ to permit data transfer?
Re: What template fields are populated by Ancestral Sources?
Posted: 27 Mar 2023 16:39
by NickWalker
I'm assuming you've watched the video on Templated Sources in Ancestral Sources (
https://youtu.be/7yxPQHlHgsg).
I think I understand what you're asking, but just to be clear, AS is able to use any source template from Family Historian. But to have AS automatically populate some of the fields the AS Source Template Editor would need to be used so that the AS keywords (perhaps in conjunction with the AS auto-text functions) can be specified.
So for the "Essentials Collection: Civil Census Return" the template fields have the following AS keywords specified:

- Template Editor.PNG.jpg (56.23 KiB) Viewed 395 times
The screenshot shows that, for example, the Location field will be auto-populated with whatever is typed into the Place field for entry being made. The Reference field will be populated by whatever is entered into the 'Ref ID'. You'll see that the Collection and URL fields don't have a keyword specified so in those cases the user would type in the values before each entry is saved.
Although functions aren't used in this example, it is possible to use these in quite complex 'nested' arrangements if need be.
The actual list of all the keywords and functions can be seen in the built in AS Help (look under the Template Keywords and Functions section) or you can see it in the on-line version of the Help here:
https://ancestral.fhug.org.uk/webhelp/h ... /hs200.htm
Re: What template fields are populated by Ancestral Sources?
Posted: 28 Mar 2023 14:23
by Gary_G
Thank you, Nick. That is exactly what I wanted to know. I'm making a template to capture the BMD records from the French Departmental Archives and want to able to use it with AS, so I meed to use the AS set of transferable fields.