I feel like Dorothy who just opened the door after landing in Oz. I have gone from what felt like a black and white world to one filled with colour.
This morning, Ancestry raised the bar with several new features and improvements — and I’m loving them.
I don’t usually like change. But because of the improvements Ancestry has made, dinner will be late tonight because I’m have way too much fun exploring the new tools on AncestryDNA and my online trees.
New AncestryDNA tools
If you haven’t seen the improvements on your own AncestryDNA, click on the Extras tab in the black bar at the top of your screen. This will reveal a drop-down menu. Scroll down the menu and select Ancestry Lab.
This allows you to see the new design, colour coding, custom labelling, and other new tools that will allow you to easily sort, group, and view your DNA Matches any way you like.
You can create up to 24 custom family groups that can be labelled, assigned a colour and applied to any matches in your Match List.
All matches provides new ways to filter matches, such as by family group and close and distant relatives.
One feature we have lost is the ability to search by ethnicity.
Personal notes and colour coding are now visible on the list of matches.
I also love the additional filters, including Messaged (See below). In my case, I could probably use the filter, People who have ignored my messages, but that’s a whole other story.
The Common ancestors filter is one that may distract you for hours as you uncover distant matches you never noticed on the old design.
AncestryDNA Thrulines
The new 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 family tree to your AncestryDNA results, you can see how your DNA matches fit into your family tree and learn new details about the common ancestors who likely connect you.
Thrulines replaces DNA Circles, and it searches private and public trees. If you do not subscribe to Ancestry, it will be difficult (impossible?) for you to take advantage of this feature.
ThruLines™ shows the common ancestors who likely connect you to your AncestryDNA Matches.
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.
So far, I have been unable to figure out where ThruLines is hiding, or perhaps it is not yet available to me.
Labels for ancestors on online trees
Ancestry’s new MyTreeTags™ allows you to add labels to people in your tree to highlight personal details or clarify your research status.
You can create research tags, such as Actively Researching, Brickwall, Hypothesis, Unverified, Verified, and Complete.
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.
Feedback and ongoing development
Ancestry encourages people to join the beta experience and play with the new tools. They also very much welcome feedback.
If the beta offering doesn’t satisfy your needs today, you can easily opt out of the beta on the Ancestry Labs page and come back to check it out every few days to check out the new features as they are being developed.
Back to Oz
Many bloggers will be writing this week about Ancestry’s new tools, and I look forward to reading about how they are using them.
Now, this Dorothy is going back to land of Oz.
