* FH 6.2 - FindMyPast Hints

[ColeValleyGirl]

You may be right Nick. I'm not seeing the quality of matches so far that suggest anything other than first and last name and dob and dod are being sent, but I may just be unlucky.

[davidf]

I think I am using the Hints correctly, so this may be more a case of a wish list for version 2

My Great-Grandfather shows 8 hints whoopie ! ?

The Hints webpage (the page you get to one click from the focus window) then shows:
- 1845 Birth in Wigton - spurious: different family
- 1901 Census in Huddersfield - I already have this in my FH family tree
- 1881 Census in Carlisle - spurious: different family
- 1882 Marriage in Carlisle - I already have this in my FH family tree
- 1845 Birth in Wigton - spurious: different family
- 1881 Census in Carlisle - spurious: different family
- 1884 Birth in Carlisle - I already have this in my FH family tree
- 1903 Death in Carlisle - I already have this in my FH family tree

From the Hints webpage I could "decide" all of these hints but I have to visit each individual page to get offered the ability to accept or reject each hint. So for each one
- click through,
- accept/reject,
- click back
(to no genealogical benefit!?)
It would be so useful to be able to accept/reject them on the hints page. Alternatively/Additionally it would be better(?) if FH could realise that I already have these records in my family tree.

Q: What is the actual impact on a hint of actually accepting or rejecting it - does FMP "learn" from the process?

Q: What is the impact on FH (particularly system resources and internet traffic) of having the hints icon on what I think of as the main index window rather than the focus window?

[tatewise]

David, the initial set of 'hints' is a special one of scenario that will never happen again.
Once you have accepted/rejected them, only new Individuals added to your tree, or new documents appearing in FMP will raise new 'hints', that will probably need deeper evaluation.

So most of your suggestions have little if any long term benefit.
The developers would have to invest a lot of effort to ease that one initial scenario.

The dialogue between FH and FMP is governed by its API (Application Program Interface).
I suspect FH cannot discover much about the details of the 'hints' sufficient to perform any filtering.
I suspect the Accept/Reject just flags the 'hint' so that you can use the filter to show New or Accepted or Rejected 'hints'.
I doubt if anything is learnt.
However, it would be better if Accept/Reject could be entered without a Sign In (as suggested earlier in this thread).

I suspect the 'hints' could be added to the Records Window, but what would be much more useful is some way of Querying for them to produce a Result Set, rather than scrolling through records in the Records Window or the Focus Window (as was suggested earlier in this thread).

[johnmorrisoniom]

I am using "One Drive" to synchronise my project between Laptop and Desktop. But how can I synchronise the hints?

I remember getting an answer for this on the Beta Forum, but can't locate the answer.

EDIT:
DOH found the answer myself in the FH help under export and import credentials.

[tatewise]

The 'hints' cache is held in the Projects folder, so should be the same on both synchronised PC, and of course the FMP website is the same in both cases.

[NickWalker]

The dialogue between FH and FMP is governed by its API (Application Program Interface).

My, admittedly short, reading into the API suggests that Family Historian is currently using the Find My Past 'hints user interface'. It would , however, be possible for Family Historian to provide their own interface (which wouldn't necessarily have to be browser based) which could present the hints to the user, allow the user to reject or accept the hints, etc. So this is possibly a future development they could consider, but understandably they will have wanted to get this functionality up and running as quickly as possible to have it in place before the WDYTYA Show for maximum publicity. I think it is brilliant that Find My Past have developed this API and allowed Family Historian to use it.

My understanding of the API is that Calico could, if they wished, keep the existing functionality (using the FMP hints interface) but also provide an FH interface to the hints to allow them to be queried, updated, etc. and even accessed by plugins. Hopefully this is just the first phase.

[davidf]

David, the initial set of 'hints' is a special one off scenario that will never happen again.
Once you have accepted/rejected them, only new Individuals added to your tree, or new documents appearing in FMP will raise new 'hints', that will probably need deeper evaluation.

So most of your suggestions have little if any long term benefit.
The developers would have to invest a lot of effort to ease that one initial scenario.

...

So in order to benefit from hints for new individuals or hints arising from new records, I have to process all the initial set of hints!
Say I have 100 individuals in my only tree (I have far more in many trees!) who lived in the "UK Census window". I could have "correct hints" for birth. marriage, death and between say four and eight census records (say six) plus a few "other records" - so hints for at least 10 correct records plus a significant number of incorrect hints depending on the rarity of the name - say another 10 "incorrect hints". That will be up to 2000 hints (in a smallish tree) to be accepted/rejected before this welcome enhancement starts to be of practical use.

So unless I have misunderstood:
# For each individual:
## Go to individual's focus window
## For each hint supplier (My Heritage/Find My past)
### Click on Hints to get to Hints page
### For each Hint
#### Click to go to record
#### Accept/Reject (probably reject - the importance is to clear the initial hints)
### Goto next hint
## Goto next hint supplier
# Goto next individual
Oh for a macro language! (Or can a plugin be written to do this?)

Alternatively can I manually edit the hints cache? Presumably this is FindMyPastCache.dat etc in the Cache folder in the Project data folder. Unfortunately it's not plain text - and Notepad++ does not make it readable! Is the format of the cache amenable to being edited? (Ideally I would like to change the status of all hints to "Initial" - but the hints page won't then allow them to be selected so changing to "Rejected" keeps them accessible whilst allowing genuinely "new" hints to be visible. You want to keep them accessible so that if you hit a brickwall you can re-review all hints.)

This is a great enhancement particularly for those starting from scratch (as long as they don't blindly accept everything and enter possibly incorrect data into their family tree!). For those of us with significant trees the initial "processing" is rather daunting!

[Wilfreda99]

I agree this is a great enhancement.
So far most of the records I have checked are either records I have previously added -to be 'Accepted', or records that I know that are incorrect - to be 'Rejected'.
However there are some that I am not quite sure about and need to investigate further when I am in the mood - they could well relate to another person in my tree. For a future version would it be possible to display these 'Pending' ones in a separate icon in the person's Focus window, perhaps in a square box. Then I would be able to see any new records posted and periodically look further into these pending records.

[jmurphy]

From the latest Lost Cousins newsletter: http://lostcousins.com/newsletters2/latemay16news.htm

from 9am (London time) on Monday 23rd May, until 11.59pm on Monday 30th May you can access any records that appear in hints completely free.

More info at FindMyPast.

I haven't tested this yet to see if this allows you to look at hints from within Family Historian. I have a World sub and don't need the free access -- could someone who is not a subscriber test accessing from FH and report back?

[johnmorrisoniom]

Yes, it is giving free access to non UK hints.