Family History Report

One of my assignments in the stake high councilor is temple & family history.

I would like a current report and a report of previous months for all ward in my stake with the number of members submitting names to the temple, number of ordinances submitted and number of ldsaccounts created.

Pretty much like the one attached, but i would like to be able to get the graphs in this report for each ward.

At least I would like to be able to get these reports myself and evaluate the result of stake and ward initiatives for different months, without having to bug and beg anyone.

tcprado wrote:I would like a current report and a report of previous months for all ward in my stake with ... number of ldsaccounts created.

You will have to bug and beg for this information because the only way to get it is for the members themselves to give it to you. It is not available any other way.

jdlessley wrote:the only way to get it is for the members themselves to give it to you. It is not available any other way.

I don't think that's true. But I'm not sure who has access and how they get it. The stake indexing director might be able to get it.

Edit: It looks like they can. They go to indexing.familysearch.org and log in. They should have a "Administration" tab. Under that is reports. The question is if this report is there.

I'd suggest having them run off a PDF once and month and forwarding it.

Only indexing statistics are included at indexing.familysearch.org, unfortunately – no temple name submission statistics.

Well, the report in the OP came from FamilySearch. And we know that information is gathered for the quarterly report. So the question is how is it obtained?

tcprado wrote:I would like a current report and a report of previous months for all ward in my stake with the number of members submitting names to the temple, number of ordinances submitted and number of ldsaccounts created.

I'll begin with two quick comments:

• As jdlessley correctly noted, there is no way to get a report on LDS Accounts created. But that's not part of the report you attached, so that's a separate discussion anyway.
• I don't know why indexing entered this discussion; it's also not part of the report discussed in the original post.

As for the actual report under discussion, I know quite a bit about it. You can see in its header that it is generated by "FHD Business Intelligence". That is a team in the Family History Department that is tasked with creating a wide range of reports regarding family history activities of members (and nonmembers). Many of those reports are used internally by various Church departments, and some are distributed beyond those departments.

This "Priesthood Key Indicator Report" is generated each month for every stake in the Church. It is made available to area family history directors for the stakes they are responsible for. I know that the stake I live in periodically (less often than monthly) receives those reports from our area family history directors; they send them to the stake presidency counselor over family history work. But I doubt that this exact pattern is followed in every area; it would be up to the discretion of the area family history directors.

I know that the report is also generated at the ward level, but I have no information about how (or even if) it might be distributed. Ward and stake level reports are available to Family History Department employees to use as part of a program where employees act as ambassadors to their wards and stakes. But if you don't happen to have a FHD employee in your ward or stake, that avenue is not available to you.

So for the questions in the original post, I would say you could:

• Work through channels to ask your area family history director if he/she could make the ward level reports available to you; or
• Gather the ward data each month from the stake report you receive, store it in a spreadsheet, and generate your own graphs from the historical data. This last option is clearly more work, and the stake report doesn't contain all the information for each ward that is available on the ward report (such as distinguishing between adults and youth). But if you can't get the actual ward reports, this might be your only option.

As for the actual report under discussion, I know quite a bit about it. You can see in its header that it is generated by "FHD Business Intelligence". That is a team in the Family History Department that is tasked with creating a wide range of reports regarding family history activities of members (and nonmembers). Many of those reports are used internally by various Church departments, and some are distributed beyond those departments.

This "Priesthood Key Indicator Report" is generated each month for every stake in the Church. It is made available to area family history directors for the stakes they are responsible for. I know that the stake I live in periodically (less often than monthly) receives those reports from our area family history directors; they send them to the stake presidency counselor over family history work. But I doubt that this exact pattern is followed in every area; it would be up to the discretion of the area family history directors.

I know that the report is also generated at the ward level, but I have no information about how (or even if) it might be distributed. Ward and stake level reports are available to Family History Department employees to use as part of a program where employees act as ambassadors to their wards and stakes. But if you don't happen to have a FHD employee in your ward or stake, that avenue is not available to you.

aebrown, thank you very much. The thing is, the person assigned to give these reports doesn't is a family history missionary and does not know exactly how to generate them. He gets it from someone else and they don't understand why I would want these reports. I'm the stake high councilor assigned to work with temple and family history and I need to follow up on stake and ward efforts.
As I can see the chain this report should take to get to me is completely loose. Someone generates it and then sends it to the family history missionary assigned to work with our stake. He doesn't know what exactly to do with it and it doesn't get to my stake leadership and thus, doesn't reach me. I was able to get the attached report from someone in area administration office who told me the missionary was going to work with me to get me these reports, but when contacted he doesn't know how to get them and he was sure he should not send it to me directly nor why would I want it. It's hectic. Our Family History Center Director was happily surprised that such report existed, so I can't quite go that way either. Furthermore I'm supposed to oversee the Family History Center Director and Assistant Directors' work while I myself had no idea they had access to such reports.

I'm looking into it. For now, anyother help is very much appreciated.

I was able to get onde further report for the Month of January. I'm looking into getting past reports now. I think we'll be able to get them from the family history missionary, he was able to get the January report alright.
Many thanks!

I just saw this report recently also. I have a question about the meaning of the "submitting" indicator. Does it indicate the number of members who added names to family search, or does it indicate the number of members who reserved an ordinance, or does it indicate the number of names in family search who had at least one ordinance reserved for them by a member of your stake?

This may seem like a small issue, but it is vitally important to understand what the data are really saying before conclusions are drawn from it.

For instance, the 1st-4th Gen ancestors in family tree percentage is easily misunderstood. It does not mean the number of members in the stake with all of their 4 generations entered in family search, but rather how many of the adult members of the stake, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents are entered into family search. There is a total of 15 possible names per member of the stake, and the percentage is how many of those names are entered.


Lastly, I recognize that this might not be the place to ask my question, but frankly, there is nowhere else I know of that has a chance to answer my question. Thanks in advance.

Swift wrote:I just saw this report recently also. I have a question about the meaning of the "submitting" indicator. Does it indicate the number of members who added names to family search, or does it indicate the number of members who reserved an ordinance, or does it indicate the number of names in family search who had at least one ordinance reserved for them by a member of your stake?

I think "submitting" means using the "Print" or "Share" menu on your reserved list, in the Temple section of FamilySearch. If I understand it correctly, this would include any of the following:
– Printing a Family Ordinance Request (FOR) for someone that you have reserved.
– Printing a Family Ordinance Card for someone that you have reserved.
– Sharing someone that you have reserved with the temple, through FamilySearch.
– Sharing someone that you have reserved with family or friends, through FamilySearch.

It presupposes that you have found a person in your tree who needs ordinances, and reserved those ordinances, but those steps by themselves do not constitute "submitting." "Number submitting" is the number of members of your unit who have submitted at least one name during the month (it doesn't matter if it was one name or several).

Swift wrote:I just saw this report recently also. I have a question about the meaning of the "submitting" indicator. Does it indicate the number of members who added names to family search, or does it indicate the number of members who reserved an ordinance, or does it indicate the number of names in family search who had at least one ordinance reserved for them by a member of your stake?

It is none of the above. For a submission to happen, one of these three things has to happen:

• An ordinance is shared with the temple
• A Family Ordinance Request (FOR) is printed/created
• Family Ordinance Cards (often colloquially called "temple cards") are printed

That's it. Adding names to the tree doesn't count, nor does reserving names, nor sharing with another person.

And note that what is counted is the number of members who did one of the above 3 activities in the specified time period. It doesn't matter how many ordinances any particular member submits.

sbradshaw wrote:– Sharing someone that you have reserved with family or friends, through FamilySearch.

Your list was mostly accurate, but this one does not count as a submission. A reservation does not count as a submission, and simply moving that reservation to someone else's list doesn't count either.

Swift wrote:For instance, the 1st-4th Gen ancestors in family tree percentage is easily misunderstood. It does not mean the number of members in the stake with all of their 4 generations entered in family search, but rather how many of the adult members of the stake, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents are entered into family search. There is a total of 15 possible names per member of the stake, and the percentage is how many of those names are entered.

What is your source for this conclusion? I'll admit that the wording is a bit ambiguous, but it seems more likely to me that it refers to the percentage of members who have their four generations in the Family Tree. Your definition of 4 generations is correct -- some people fail to count the individual as the 1st generation, but that has always been the definition of "4 generations". However, the focus of the Key Indicator report is members (except for the "Baptisms Submitted data), and so it makes more sense for that to be a percentage of members, not of those 15 slots in the tree.

I'll see if I can find a definitive answer to this question, but since you seemed so confident in your statement, it made me wonder if you had some authoritative source, or if this was simply your analysis of the meaning of the term "1st-4th Gen. Ancestors in Tree" that appears on the report.

aebrown wrote:

Swift wrote:For instance, the 1st-4th Gen ancestors in family tree percentage is easily misunderstood. It does not mean the number of members in the stake with all of their 4 generations entered in family search, but rather how many of the adult members of the stake, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents are entered into family search. There is a total of 15 possible names per member of the stake, and the percentage is how many of those names are entered.

What is your source for this conclusion? I'll admit that the wording is a bit ambiguous, but it seems more likely to me that it refers to the percentage of members who have their four generations in the Family Tree. Your definition of 4 generations is correct -- some people fail to count the individual as the 1st generation, but that has always been the definition of "4 generations". However, the focus of the Key Indicator report is members (except for the "Baptisms Submitted data), and so it makes more sense for that to be a percentage of members, not of those 15 slots in the tree.

I'll see if I can find a definitive answer to this question...

Well, I was able to contact someone in the Business Intelligence team at FamilySearch, and it turns out that user Swift is indeed correct now.

Originally, this statistic did refer to the percentage of members with a full four generations (all 15 people filled in), but then it was changed a few years ago to be exactly what Swift said -- it is the percentage of those 15 people filled in for the members of the ward/stake. One reason for the change is that some people may have a situation where a person or two is essentially impossible to fill in (e.g., the father of a person in the tree is simply unknown), and it was felt that a 93% completeness percentage was a more accurate reflection of the situation for someone with an essentially full 4 generations than a 0% because it was not completely full.

Thanks, Swift, for making the community aware of this detail.

Stake Family History Key Indicator is a great report. Thanks. I notice that there are negative number for some wards in the column of "Nbr of Submitters", which I interpret to mean that the 12 month rule is being applied and so the number of new submissions is overwhelmed but the number of submitters who dropped off, causing a negative number. This is fine.

My question, is there anyway to find out the names of who the submitters are and when they submitted names. We would like to work with those people who dropped off and "reactivate" them in their family history work. It would also be good to know who is doing the work in our ward so we can include them in our efforts.
mike

girand wrote:I notice that there are negative number for some wards in the column of "Nbr of Submitters", which I interpret to mean that the 12 month rule is being applied and so the number of new submissions is overwhelmed but the number of submitters who dropped off, causing a negative number.

I'm wondering what effect a move-out or death of a submitter would do to your numbers.

I know in HT/VT we will see the stats history get revised when a family moves out of the ward taking the record of being visited with them. Likewise, when a submitter leaves your stake, their record of submissions attributed to your stake might go "poof".

girand wrote:My question, is there anyway to find out the names of who the submitters are and when they submitted names. . . . It would also be good to know who is doing the work in our ward so we can include them in our efforts.

As far as I am aware, this information is not available to leaders.

¿Quien tiene conocimiento de un reporte de 4 generaciones?, Quién tiene acceso a él? Cómo se puede obtener? Cada cuanto tiempo se puede solicitar?

Is there a way for the bishop to get this report without having to go through a family history director? We typically get it from the Stake High Counselor assigned to family history, but I wish it was available under "Reports" in the Leader Clerk Resources section of LDS.org when the bishop logs in. This would eliminate the work effort of the Stake High Counselor having to manually send it out to the wards.

According to Rod DeGiulio's presentation at RootsTech 2017, family history reports should be available through Leader and Clerk Resources "soon."

sbradshaw wrote:According to Rod DeGiulio's presentation at RootsTech 2017, family history reports should be available through Leader and Clerk Resources "soon."

The discussion of family history reports on LCR starts at about the 42:30 mark of Rod DeGiulio's presentation.

sbradshaw wrote:According to Rod DeGiulio's presentation at RootsTech 2017, family history reports should be available through Leader and Clerk Resources "soon."

I don’t like their definition of “soon”.

bballrob wrote:

sbradshaw wrote:According to Rod DeGiulio's presentation at RootsTech 2017, family history reports should be available through Leader and Clerk Resources "soon."

I don’t like their definition of “soon”.

These reports were available on LCR by June 4 or earlier, according to this post and many others that have followed. I don't quite understand why you are raising this issue four and a half months after the reports became available.

The main reports were, however, he also talked about reports that would show down to the individual level as far as who is submitting names to the temple, adding names to the tree, adding memories, etc. I have yet to see those. Are they available somewhere and I've just missed them?

bballrob wrote:The main reports were, however, he also talked about reports that would show down to the individual level as far as who is submitting names to the temple, adding names to the tree, adding memories, etc. I have yet to see those. Are they available somewhere and I've just missed them?

I just listened again to Rod's entire discussion of LCR family history reports (from about 42:30 to 47:30 in the recording), and he never talked about individual names. If he discussed individual names for the reports somewhere else, please tell me the time stamp so I can review it.

aebrown wrote:

bballrob wrote:The main reports were, however, he also talked about reports that would show down to the individual level as far as who is submitting names to the temple, adding names to the tree, adding memories, etc. I have yet to see those. Are they available somewhere and I've just missed them?

I just listened again to Rod's entire discussion of LCR family history reports (from about 42:30 to 47:30 in the recording), and he never talked about individual names. If he discussed individual names for the reports somewhere else, please tell me the time stamp so I can review it.

Listen from 44:00 to 44:30 and he talks about being able to go downtown individual level.

Our ward in Texas and my son's ward in Maryland both had youth activity nights where the youth logged in to Family Search and printed names for an upcoming youth temple trip (mostly using Ordinance Ready). However, in both wards, the # members submitting a name and # youth submitting a name did not reflect the fact that youth had printed names to take to the temple. For example, over 10 YW in our ward printed a name to take to the temple, yet the monthly report only showed that 4 youth YTD had submitted a name. Therefore, I'm confused as to how the statistic "# of members submitting a name" is actually calculated. I'd like factual knowledge not guesses or opinions. Can anyone in the Temple Department give a factual answer?

dlcall wrote:Can anyone in the Temple Department give a factual answer?

You would have to ask someone in the Temple Department. I suspect no one there visits this user-to-user mutual help forum. There may be some who have knowledge or experience who can chime in, but it will be based on their experience and opinion and will likely not be an official answer from the church.

I have recently been using the Ordinances Ready feature to print ordinance cards regularly. I noticed that most of the ordinances suggested by Ordinances Ready were already reserved, either by other members, or in the Temple File. So I wondered whether printing new cards for ordinances that had already been reserved "counted" on the report. Perhaps it only counts if you make a new reservation, and not if you simply transfer a reservation from one file to another.

drepouille wrote:I wondered whether printing new cards for ordinances that had already been reserved "counted" on the report.

I do not believe it is that they have been reserved, but rather that they may have been prined out before.

There is an excellent post earlier in this topic by aebrown, who is very knowledgeable about these things, that explains exactly what counts. See this post.

And to answer the previous question, I do not believe the Temple Department runs the report. I believe the Family History Department does. But either way, neither of them haunts this forum.

lajackson wrote:

drepouille wrote:I wondered whether printing new cards for ordinances that had already been reserved "counted" on the report.

I do not believe it is that they have been reserved, but rather that they may have been printed out before.

I don't remember Ordinances Ready ever suggesting an ordinance that had already been printed. I have only seen it suggest ordinances that have been reserved by others, but not yet printed. If I print a card for an ordinance that has already been printed by a member or by the temple, that would be bad, in my opinion.

lajackson wrote:I do not believe it is that they have been reserved, but rather that they may have been prined out before.

Good point. Reprints may not count.

Family name cards expire, even if they've already been printed. Have the ones that are showing up in Ordinances Ready expired?

drepouille wrote:I don't remember Ordinances Ready ever suggesting an ordinance that had already been printed. I have only seen it suggest ordinances that have been reserved by others, but not yet printed. If I print a card for an ordinance that has already been printed by a member or by the temple, that would be bad, in my opinion.

Ordinances Ready will find ordinances in a variety of places, each with different interaction with the "printed" status:

• Your own reservation list: If you have one or more reserved ordinances on your own list and you ask for that type of ordinance in Ordinances Ready, you'll get those returned to you first. It doesn't matter whether they have been printed or not -- you'll get those first. If one or more has been printed, you'll be warned that they have been printed.
• Ordinances shared with the temple by others: When another person shares ordinances from their reservation list with the temple, the "printed" status of those ordinances is essentially cleared. They will simply have a "shared" status. It's possible that that other person printed the card before they decided to share it with the temple. In that case, they should be responsible and destroy the card. But this scenario is not "bad" -- if it weren't allowed, then once someone printed a card, they would not be able to share it with the temple, even if they then realized that they just didn't have time or ability to do the ordinances themselves. It's much better to allow people to share ordinances with the temple, since that makes the ordinance available for someone who will actually do the work in a temple.
• Ordinances from Family Tree that are reservable: These are new reservations, so when you receive them via Ordinances Ready, they are in an unprinted status. Once you generate the cards at the end of the Ordinances Ready process, they will change to a Printed status.
• Ordinances shared with the temple and printed by the temple: This can't happen. If a temple has printed an ordinance for a person, that ordinance will never be given to someone who requests ordinances via Ordinances Ready.

A final note: when you said "I have only seen it suggest ordinances that have been reserved by others, but not yet printed," I assume you mean ordinances that were reserved by others and shared with the temple. Ordinances Ready will never give you ordinances reserved by others unless they shared them with the temple (or the reservations expired and so the ordinances were automatically shared with the temple).

If you use the Ordinance Ready feature to print a card that was previously shared with the temple by others, will that count in the Family History Report as your submission?

lotsicaf wrote: Mon May 31, 2021 7:22 am If you use the Ordinance Ready feature to print a card that was previously shared with the temple by others, will that count in the Family History Report as your submission?

Yes. The FHAR only counts your first submission for the year, so it will cause you to be counted as a new submitter only if this is your first submission for the year, but it does count.

Some might think this might lead to double counting. After all, for the person who shared this ordinance with the temple this might have been their first submission of the year, and so the act of sharing this ordinance might very well have caused the sharer to be counted as a submitter on their ward and stake FHARs. And then the person who used Ordinances Ready to print the card could also be counted as a submitter for that action if that was the first ordinance they submitted in the year. So both could conceivably get counted as a submitter for that single ordinance. But this is by design. Remember that the focus is on how many members do submission activities, not how many ordinances might be involved.

aebrown wrote: Tue May 24, 2016 5:41 am

aebrown wrote:

Swift wrote:For instance, the 1st-4th Gen ancestors in family tree percentage is easily misunderstood. It does not mean the number of members in the stake with all of their 4 generations entered in family search, but rather how many of the adult members of the stake, their parents, grandparents and great grandparents are entered into family search. There is a total of 15 possible names per member of the stake, and the percentage is how many of those names are entered.

What is your source for this conclusion? I'll admit that the wording is a bit ambiguous, but it seems more likely to me that it refers to the percentage of members who have their four generations in the Family Tree. Your definition of 4 generations is correct -- some people fail to count the individual as the 1st generation, but that has always been the definition of "4 generations". However, the focus of the Key Indicator report is members (except for the "Baptisms Submitted data), and so it makes more sense for that to be a percentage of members, not of those 15 slots in the tree.

I'll see if I can find a definitive answer to this question...

Well, I was able to contact someone in the Business Intelligence team at FamilySearch, and it turns out that user Swift is indeed correct now.

Originally, this statistic did refer to the percentage of members with a full four generations (all 15 people filled in), but then it was changed a few years ago to be exactly what Swift said -- it is the percentage of those 15 people filled in for the members of the ward/stake. One reason for the change is that some people may have a situation where a person or two is essentially impossible to fill in (e.g., the father of a person in the tree is simply unknown), and it was felt that a 93% completeness percentage was a more accurate reflection of the situation for someone with an essentially full 4 generations than a 0% because it was not completely full.

Thanks, Swift, for making the community aware of this detail.

I know this thread is old, but I am having trouble making sense of our ward's Four Generations report in light of the information above. The 4-Gen report's percentages are as follows: 2021 = 79.8%, 2022 = 41.4%, and 2023 = 43.9%. I don't understand how the number of ward members/parents/GPs/GGPs could drop nearly in half between 2021 and 2022.

Presumably that would require one or more of the following to occur:
1. We lost ward members with complete (or nearly complete) four-generation data. (Former ward members either moved, died, or left the Church.)
2. We gained ward members with very little four-generation data.
3. People have been deleting our ward members' ancestors from the tree.

I have a difficult time imagining that any/all of those occurred on a scale large enough to cut the number in half between 2021 and 2022.

Can anyone help me understand what I'm overlooking?

Thanks in advance!
Mark

markojarvis wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2024 5:11 pm Can anyone help me understand what I'm overlooking?

The method compiling statistics changed. Please see this post.

Before, people were counted has having 4 generations even without a FamilySearch account if one could be established from membership records. They're now requiring that the member have an account to be counted.

russellhltn wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2024 5:41 pm

markojarvis wrote: Sun Jan 28, 2024 5:11 pm Can anyone help me understand what I'm overlooking?

The method compiling statistics changed. Please see this post.

Before, people were counted has having 4 generations even without a FamilySearch account if one could be established from membership records. They're now requiring that the member have an account to be counted.

Thank you!

If I haven't taken a name to the temple this year and I take an ordinance ready name to perform the ordinance, will that count towards the Family History report?

Makisig wrote: Wed Jul 03, 2024 7:20 pm If I haven't taken a name to the temple this year and I take an ordinance ready name to perform the ordinance, will that count towards the Family History report?

Looking for clarification of "ordinance ready name". Was this shared with the temple previously?

russellhltn wrote: Wed Jul 03, 2024 8:26 pm Looking for clarification of "ordinance ready name".

Ordinance Ready is a FamilySearch function where names of relatives that have been prepared for temple work can be found by other relatives, printed, and taken to the temple. The names have not been shared with the temple.

I would think that printing such a name would count on the Family History report, but I am not familiar with the specific requirements of that report.

lajackson wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2024 9:22 am The names have not been shared with the temple.

Ordinances Ready can include names shared with the temple. See The “Magic” Behind Ordinances Ready and a New Update (FamilySearch, April 2022)