Ancestry made several major announcements at Rootstech today. Following are their news releases – three of them! Major advances have been made in using AncestryDNA matches, as well as Tagging within your Ancestry Tree.
ThruLines™ Fact Sheet
Overview
● ThruLines™ shows you the common ancestors who likely connect you to your AncestryDNA® Matches—and gives you a clear and simple view of how you’re all related. When you link your public or private searchable family tree to your AncestryDNA results, new chapters of your family story may be revealed. You could see how your DNA Matches fit into your family tree and learn new details about the common ancestors who likely connect you.
About the Product
● Easier Discoveries: ThruLines™ makes it easier than ever to make new discoveries — whether it’s finding out which ancestors connect you to your DNA Matches or analyzing how well your DNA Match relationships line up with what you know about your family’s history.
● Save Time: Customers may spend hours researching how they’re related to their DNA Matches. They review their matches and compare them to their shared matches and public trees to find their common ancestor. ThruLines™ aims to make this effort more efficient, enabling our members to spend more time making meaningful discoveries.
● Find New Potential Ancestors: ThruLines™ may also suggest potential ancestors that will appear with a dashed outline around their names. These are people who are not in your family tree, but appear in the public family trees of other Ancestry® members who may share a common ancestor with you.
● Evaluate Relationships using DNA: People who appear in ThruLines™ are labeled with their potential relationship to you based on their position in your family tree. Your DNA matches are also labeled with how many centimorgans (cM) of DNA you share and the relationships that are possible between you. These DNA relationships, combined with relationships suggested in your tree, can help you understand if your DNA matches support what you know about your family’s history.
Release Information
● ThruLines™ will be in open beta on 2/27 and any member who meets the following criteria will receive ThruLines™ insights free for a limited time.
1) Your AncestryDNA results are linked to a public or private searchable family tree.
2) You have DNA matches who have also linked their results to a public or private indexed family tree.
3) Your linked family tree is well built out. It should be 3-4 generations deep to have the best chance of ThruLines™ finding new discoveries for you to explore.
Qualifying customers can access this feature from the AncestryDNA logged-in home page. This feature will also be highlighted on our landing page at www.ancestry.com/product/new-release. Ancestry often puts new features in Beta as we test and refine ideas and gather feedback from our customers. Features will come out of Beta when we have enough feedback to validate their value to our customers, including whether the feature will require a subscription.
ThruLines™ can show you the common ancestors who likely connect you to your DNA Matches—and give you a clear and simple view of how you’re all related.
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New and Improved DNA Matches Fact Sheet
Overview
● New & Improved DNA Matches: Now you can easily sort, group, and view your DNA Matches any way you’d like. We’re redesigning the DNA Matches experience to help you make more discoveries, faster. Now use color coding, custom labeling, and other innovative new tools to see your AncestryDNA® connections in the clearest light possible.
About the Product
● More control: With new tools and customizable groups, New & Improved DNA Matches gives you control over how you group and view the matches that are the most meaningful to you.
● Streamlines matches: New & Improved DNA Matches allows you to quickly identify your newest matches or your maternal/paternal matches more easily.
● New Look: A much needed redesign brings an updated look and new features to the DNA Matches experience.
● Updated Match List: This offers customers new ways to filter their matches, such as by close, distant, not viewed, tree status, notes and messaged. If a customer’s parent has taken an AncestryDNA test, the customer can now see a label next to their DNA Matches that identifies if they are connected through their maternal or paternal side of the family.
● Custom Groups: A much longed for feature request – now there is also the ability to create custom groups that can be labeled, assigned a color and applied to any matches in a customer’s Match List.
● Easily View Additional Tests: Customers can also easily see and switch between the Match Lists for AncestryDNA tests they administer, collaborate or have viewer rights for.
Release Information
● The New & Improved DNA Matches experience will be in public beta on 2/27 and anyone with an AncestryDNA test may opt-in at www.ancestry.com/BETA. Customers will continue to find this feature from the DNA Matches card on the logged-in-home-page and from the AncestryDNA menu item in the site navigation. We are still adding functionality and the features may change day-to-day as we work to provide the best version of this tool. Please come back frequently to use the tool and leave feedback for us.
Now you can easily sort, group, and view your DNA matches any way you’d like. Use color coding, custom labeling, and other innovative new tools to see your AncestryDNA connections in the clearest light possible.
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MyTreeTags™ Fact Sheet
Overview
● MyTreeTags™: Add labels to people in your tree to highlight personal details or clarify your research status. Now you can add tags to people in your family tree to indicate whether your research on them is confirmed or verified, or to record personal details, like “never married.”
You can also create your own custom tags to note that a person immigrated from Denmark, or worked as a blacksmith. You can even use filters as you search your tree to see everyone with the same tag.
About the Product
● Efficiently Annotate Research: MyTreeTags™ provides customers with a mechanism to annotate their research status at the level of a person within their tree. It will include tags applicable to most family trees within Ancestry® plus the ability for members to create custom tags to match their personal family history research process. Customers can apply tags as filters in Tree Search to drill down in searches of people in their tree.
● Easier organization: MyTreeTags™ is a simple way for you to highlight important details about the people in your family tree, allowing you to easily organize and categorize them for your
research.
● Customizable: With MyTreeTags™, you can create custom tags to personalize your family history
experience.
● Research Continuity: MyTreeTags™ allows you to easily indicate and identify the research status of each person in your tree so you know exactly where you left off. And you can filter by tag to get started more quickly.
Release Information
● MyTreeTags™ will be in public beta on 2/27 and anyone with an account (no subscription necessary) may opt-in at www.ancestry.com/BETA. Customers will find this feature through two entry points: their Tree View page and their Ancestor Page view.
Customers who opt in to the public beta will have the ability to add 20 universal, predetermined tags to their Ancestor Pages as well as create their own custom tags. Applied tags can then be used as filters in Tree Search.
We are still adding functionality and the features may change day-to-day as we work to provide the best version of this tool. Please come back frequently to use the tool and leave feedback for us.
View of MyTreeTags™ from the person page with a workspace where members can add universal, pre-defined tags or create custom tags which will then be linked to that person in the member’s tree.
