What Customers are Saying
"FamilyInsight" was previously named "PAF Insight"
- Syncing with new FamilySearch™>>
- New! Ordinance Tracker>>
- A Long Search Ended >>
- Better at Searching Online IGI >>
- Repair Saved the Day >>
- It is so much easier to update my records>>
- We Love FamilyInsight's Merge >>
- Ohana Software Service>>
Syncing with new FamilySearch™
Last week I looked at your 5 minute website video on how to synchronize between PAF and New Family Search. So I gave it a try about 4 days ago.
I can't believe how easy you have made this. Even better then PAF Insight. I have imported about 250 new relatives into my database on about 8 hours worth of work.
I also tried your Merge features and this has been enhanced too. And then I tried the Places with the built in database of "valid" names. You simply have made it all so much easier.
Thanks so much for speeding up the processes and making them so easy. I will be your customer for life.
Eddie Evans
Phoenix, Arizona
I was serving in our FHC a week or so ago, and this patron kept asking me questions about how hard it is to match/merge in PAF and also she wanted to take her family file and make a gedcom out of it and then install it into NFS. I said don't do it! You will be spending the rest of your life doing the goofy NFS duplicates thing. I then told her about FamilyInsight and how great the program was. She was still hesitant so I showed her the webinar on 'Synching PAF files'.
When she left she thanked me and said she would be getting her own copy of FamilyInsight when she got home.
I too have learned so much from the webinars, I thought I knew how to use the program but now I KNOW HOW TO USE THE PROGRAM!!!
Bobe
I just purchased the "FamilyInsight". I don't know why I waited. It's so easy to use. One function I like is that it doesn't override the information I have on PAF. Thank you.
Jennifer Roberts , Arnold, MD
This evening I opened FamilyInsight and downloaded the most recent version. I am ESTATIC with the NEW Features ! ! ! !
Thank you for a wonderful product. I've been getting "Warm Fuzzies" all evening using this new release.
Sincerely,
Chris & Alice Markis
Stake Family History Directors
Richmond, Virginia"
"I am simply amazed with the FamilyInsight program. The ease with
which it makes it possible to reconcile and consolidate multiple records
for the same ancestors is a huge improvement over all of the earlier
programs. I applaud, and very much appreciate, your efforts."
"FamilyInsight is a quantum leap forward for reconciling and consolidating
multiple records for the same ancestors. FamilySearch brought together lists
of records from the IGI and Ancestral File, but required you to open each one
individually. PAF Insight improved upon that by ranking the records to help
you find the most relevant ones more quickly, but still required you to open
each one to see their content. FamilyInsight not only ranks the records, it also
displays their content, taking ease of use to a whole new level."
Robert Dean Bledsoe
Temecula, CA
"This week while I was working at the FHC in Cardston, an elderly gentleman came into our facility asking for help in preparing a few names to take to the temple. Fortunately, he had already been trained in using FamilyInsight, but didn't think it would be necessary to use the program in this instance.
After more than half an hour looking for records to combine with a family listed in new familysearch for whom he remembered doing temple work about 20 years ago, I was called by a staff member to help, and again suggested he try FamilyInsight. We were able to bring up duplicate records for the man, his wife, and their six children who lived in Scotland in the 1700's almost immediately. It showed the temple work that our patron remembered doing, as well as some work that was done for a couple of the family members through the extraction program.
Having correctly identified work he knew to be done, he continued with greater confidence to check for family members he suspected still needed their temple work, and was successful in preparing an FOR with the names of several of his ancestral family listed. I feel that Family Insight saves us many hours by bringing up names that we have difficultly finding in new.family search. It also saves many people a lot of time when temple work is not done again for someone who has already received his temple blessings.
I started testing your beta with a file of 180 names, and it has grown to 280... As far as I'm concerned, preparing names for temple work is the bottom line for any family history work I undertake. Another improvement I have noticed ... is that matches are made more quickly, and I have not seen any un-justified match in the upper 50%. All matches offered are connected to the name on my pedigree in some way, and higher matches have more in common than lower matches. Keep up the Good Work!”
Elaine Piepgrass
Talk about Ordinance Tracker
Wow!! What a fantastic program - I am off telling every one I know that does Family History about this wonderful product !!
How wonderful to pull a marriage card into the Temple and have the associated male and female cards go with it. What brillance!!!
And this program sure reduces the time to pull cards together to print.
Please thank the creator for me.
From P. Caldwell, a very grateful patron
I have been a happy user of PAF Insight and Family Insight since they
were first released. I have just minutes ago finished my first Family
Ordinance Request using Family Insight. I could not be more pleased!!
In the process it found one additional record in new.FamilySearch (which
I combined) and two baptisms which I had missed. I like the process much,
much better than the sequence required by new.FamilySearch.
My gratitude to John Vilburn for a sensible and easy-to-use program (i.e.
FamilyInsight). I recommend the FamilyInsight approach over the often
clumsey, akward and tedious procedure used by new.FamilySearch. I view FI
as a genealogists approach and nFS as a programmer, with no genealogical
experience, approach.
Richard L. Halliday
Can I say that Ordinance Tracker was VERY helpful in collecting all of my old temple-ready submitted data (about 900+ of them) which were attributed to me (Family File), and allowing me to put them over into a Temple file.
-Kathryn L., California
Learn more about Ordinance Tracker
A Long Search Ended
Yesterday at the St. George Regional FH Training Center we had a lady come in that had finally found the proxy baptism date of one of her ancestors that she had been looking for for years. PAF Insight found it when no other searching had. The name was misspelled in the IIGI as Glen [space] Something when it was really GlenSomething without the space, and was a female, not a male. She was very pleased. That's a real success story.
Donald Snow
Discover how easy it is to search the new.familysearch.org database with FamilyInsight >>
"I just want to tell you that PAF Insight
is the best thing since the wheel. ...
I am very satisfied with this product." - Jim Turner
I just want to thank you so much for the new update. It is wonderful!!!
Not enough words to express my excitement. Couldn't sleep as I didn't want
to quit working in such a speedy and rewarding fashion.
A ton of thanks to everyone!
Maria Hoopes
Better at Searching Online IGI
I visited the Gresham Family History Center to Temple Ready some names yesterday. I had to go there because I had a bad floppy disk that scrambled the file I had when I went to Sandy. But, I must tell you what I found.
I've been helping my wife Suzanne with her family file of 25,000 names (she comes from old, rich Mormon stock who hired paid genealogist for years). Together, we had over 10 hours of Internet time searching, finding many duplicate ordinances, updating Suzannes records. We probably checked 100 potential names, updated 60 with temple date and found 10 that had temple work remaining. And, as is often case, when we looked hard enough, we found some new parent/spouse connections. We felt really good finding this material but were mentally exhausted (keeping several windows open, typing and checking and even downloading/uploading/merging/backing up) after every session. When I took the disk of 10 names to the Gresham FHC, the more thorough computer check found completed ordinances for 8 of the 10 (which I diligently put on a floppy and brought home and updated Suzanne's data base). Well, that wasn't what made me excited; all that work for two names.
What I found was a letter from Richard Halliday, of the Portland Area PAF User Group. In this letter (which I scanned and attached) he mentions a program called PAF Insights which connects an individual PAF file with the IGI and lets your personal computer talk intelligently to the Salt Lake computer. I visited www.ohanasoftware.com ... By ten minutes later, I'd checked 20 names from my PAF file with the IGI looked at several thousand possible matches, found hundreds of matches sorted by the most probably matches first, updated 50 or so names, places, dates, temple data elements, parent links, sibling lists and source data. I was so overwhelmed by the speed and power of PAF Insights, I made Suzanne get out of bed to show her this amazing software.
This morning Suzanne ran the program on her file. In 15 minutes she compared over 10,000 combinations, found 500 plus matches, updated 30 names with current Temple Ordinance data. And did it without typing one letter or dealing with any files/backup/downloads or messy merges.
When I could get on myself, I ran the merge function in PAF Insight. (for those of you trying to use the merge utility in PAF, you will appreciate this). I've done lots of work over the past 5 years to clean up my own PAF files, so I was amazed to see PAF Insight find nearly a 100 duplicate names in my own file. Best of all PAF Insight rated the 'match' from 99 to 01 based upon comparisons of name, dates, spouses, parents siblings and other data. I had many matches over 90 (which were all certain matches) that I compared and merged in 2 minutes. And better yet, the near matches were so easy to compare that I could easily choose which to merge and which to not merge. You can even set a flag that says "Don't merge these two" so you never have to make that agonizing decision again. Wow!
And then, I did the unthinkable. I used PAF Insight to compare my PAF File with Suzanne's PAF file to see if we had duplicates. This is unthinkable because in the past, it meant downloading portions of Suzanne's file and importing into my file and doing the excruciating merge to look for duplicates. Well, PAF compared the two files in about a minute, found several hundred duplications (where I'd done this same comparison before by uploaded some of Suzanne's line into my file). AND, low an behold, my file showed completed temple work on her line that she didn't have recorded and she had completed work that I didn't have recorded. And, I'd submitted some of her family line; I was creating duplicate temple submission MYSELF! They were easily updated. In five minutes, I did the equivalent of a several hour task that would have normally muddied up my file with thousands of Suzanne's names. But, with PAF Insight, I only connected those names we shared and did not clutter my file with needless names any further. As a data base professional, I was really impressed.
Well, you may think I'm excited about PAF Insight. I am, and I haven't even figured out what else I can do with it. It says I can change RIN numbers to suit, and do all kinds of other things. But, the real blessing of PAF Insight is the easy of comparing to the IGI.
If you have tried to find completed Temple Work on your own family names, you know you can do it, but its hard and must be done with painstaking accuracy and careful spiritual guidance. In other words, most people don't do it. We end up with people just doing a Temple Ready Download, running through the Family History Center Temple Ready Program saying "No", "No", "No" to possible matches and end up doing duplication on Temple Ordinances.
You may note in Bro Halliday's letter the Church estimates 74% of all Temple ordinances are repeats. A shame. But, with the easy, simplicity and dramatically improved accuracy of the PAF Insight tool, the duplicates could be cut in half within a year. And, with the ability to scan the IGI so easily for missing places, dates and connecting family members, it is much easier to extend family lines beyond those dead ends. Genealogy research then moves to a whole new level.
While, I'm typing this email, Suzanne is merging duplicates in her file using PAF Insight. I can't seem to get her away from the computer. Before, it was such a drudgery to merge, it was put off and off and off. She now find is so easy to identify inconsistencies in her data file that she has a whole list of things to search-all this in the last hour.
I wonder from time to time why bad things happen. Why did my floppy disk go bad in Sandy when I was trying to do Temple Ready on names for Feb 24th? Now I know. PAF Insight is a miracle that came into my life.
Bro. James R. Holt, Ph.D., PE.
Tonight my wife finished up a submission of about 200 names and asked me to
take it up to our local FHC to run it through Temple Ready.
I'd been bugging her to let me show her the new PAF Insight features and said I'd just show her a quick 10 minute sample on the data she was sending, then I'd go do the TR run.
Within that 10 minutes we found about a half a dozen ordinances already done (she'd already done a manual check) and she became a believer. She is now running the rest of the submission through PI and is pleased as can be that it's doing so much better a job finding duplicates than she can. I found the exact same thing to be true for my own submissions.
She is a believer now, like I already was.
Great job with the IGI search, John. Keep up the good work.
Mike St. Clair
I purchased your software this week and have become one of
your biggest fans! Thank you so very much for this
excellent tool.
I have spent the past year or so simply trying to research "one by one" all of the temple ordinance work for my database of over 8,500 names (that's just for my two parents lines, because I haven't started yet on my wife's). I estimate that I have worked about 5 hours per week on average for the past year and have probably cleared 800-900 names, mostly sealing dates only. I can already see how your program is going to expedite that process many times over and I should be able to get these 8,500 names in a big hurry!
Thank you so much!
Terry Robison
You might be interested to know that I did an I-IGI search on 59 names and
completed the ordinance updates, then did a TempleReady submission. I decided
to go back into FamilySearch.org as a test to double check the names which
cleared for ordinances to see if any completed ordinances would come up using
the manual check. Paf Insight proved to be 100% accurate in finding and updating.
Thanks again.... a real time saver!
Bonnie Whitley
I just downloaded the latest version of PAF Insight (www.ohanasoftware.com)
and tried out the latest feature... updating your PAF database from the church's
online IGI. Here is what I've noticed, so far:
1.) Unlike searching the IGI manually, (where one has to laboriously (sp?) enter all the pertinent data), PAF Insight does the search automatically, (it supplying the pertinent data from your database to the website), once you've selected a person and clicked on PAF Insight's Search button.
2.) Unlike searching the IGI manually, where a ton of hits may be displayed, (you having to search each one of them to see if any are relevant), PAF Insight assigns a probability figure to each hit as to whether of not it could be your ancestor.
3.) If there is a match, (a high probability figure), you then examine the information, and if its your ancestor, select that person and click on the update button, and PAF Insight updates your PAF database with that information. Slick!
4.) The process goes very quickly. Doing the above manually can take 5 to 10 minutes or more per person, depending on the number of hits you get. Using PAF Insight, the process takes less than a minute.
5.) There are a number of options in PAF Insight that can be changed so that the searches go even quicker.
This is a great program, and I know from personal interaction with the good people at Ohana Software that there are other, more exciting features yet to come. (I have no affiliation with Ohana Software; I'm just a VERY satisfied customer.)
Sincerely,
Ronald W. Frye
Danville FHC Computer Specialist
Took a database of about 2130 people, ran it through temple ready,
and found over 800 names in it that "qualified" for temple work.
I then ran these 800+ names through PAF Insight - just finished.
For about 350 of these PI found additional information in IGI with
just limiting my search to those who had missing individual ordinance dates.
This is a great example of how useful PI has been. I expect if I search for
all missing ordinances I may find another 300 or more.
Most of this work really has been done, but is hard to find because
of the particular language/naming conventions of the early Dutch colonists.
I really am looking for a needle in a haystack with this group of ancestors,
but that needle needs to be found, and now I have the tools to do it.
Rachel Rahman
Learn more about FamilyInsight
Repair Saved the Day
One of our staff members brought in a floppy with a small 188 KB PAF 5 file (not a backup) and she was not getting it to open on the computer. The floppy drive would churn and we had to reboot to get out of the loop. In assisting her, I could see the file in Windows Explorer but not open or copy it. After having the same problem on two other computers I ran the Windows 2K scanning function, however it did not find any errors. I then tried our lone Widows 98 machine and still could not copy the file. Trying basic Scandisk in Windows 98 also did not find any errors, but then the full surface scan found and repaired some bad sectors on the floppy.
PAF could now open the file, and the PAF check and repair found and fixed some database errors all associated with RIN 26. When viewing the data, everything seemed to be complete, however, when scrolling the individual list PAF would consistently crash at RIN 26.
I thought, what the heck, lets try the repair option in PAF Insight. (She did have another copy at home so there was no risk to the experiment) As soon as that process finished, PAF would run the file without crashing and the database appeared to be fully intact.
Based on that experience, I would definitely recommend trying PAF Insight when a patron has an apparently corrupted file that is otherwise not retrievable, particularly if it is a critical file with no backup. It might allow recovery of at least a large portion of data that would otherwise be lost.
Gary TemplemanDirector, Corvallis Oregon FHC
Clean up your database and reclaim wasted space >>
It is so much easier to update my records
This PAF Insight is WONDERFUL!
I can't wait to show the staff how to use it!!!
Copying and pasting can be too complex for older patrons who are struggling with just using the computer.
This program is GREAT!
Regine
You can now quickly update your file with the information on the new FamilySearch website.
For a quick update use the Simple Update mode, if you have info to contribute to new FamilySearch, use the Full Synchronization mode.
We Love FamilyInsight's Merge
I just wanted to let you know I love PAF Insight. I have been using it every day since I got it. The match and merge is awesome. I have over 50,000 people in my database and the old PAF merge was so frustrating. I used yours for hours yesterday and merged a ton and I especially love the way you can add RESEARCH to do in the notes. That is awesome. I have a ton of McDonalds who married McDonalds from Scotland and in Ontario, Canada. They all intermarry and cause a lot of merging nightmares, this will help tremendously. Thanks for all you are doing to make this work much easier. I almost forgot, the RIN number changing, that is so cool. We have so many patrons wanting to do that at the FHC and now I can make it easy for them.
Have a great day!
Shanna Jones
I found a real WOW today that I needed badly and didn't know you had.
You probably know that I have a free service of converting PAF 2 databases
to PAF 5 for those who want to move but don't feel up to doing the migration.
Today (and from time to time) I get files that have logical errors and require
some manipulation. In this case there were a few dozen people with unknown sex
who were married. PAF will not allow you to either merge two individuals of
differing sexes nor to change the sex of someone who is married, even if their
marriage partner is "unknown". This makes it a real pain to fix such a situation.
PAF Insight allowed me to repair these painlessly by merging individuals with
"unknown" gender with new or existing people with the correct gender.
Thank you. It's saved me several hours on this particular conversion.
Mike St. Clair
Personally, I intend to use it for all of may IGI/OI searches in the future
as well as for its other capabilities. It uses the same matching algorithm
to do Match/Merge within a PAF database. It also uses that same algorithm
to find matching records from two different PAF databases.
Just this last week I was helping a member of my ward do some extensive
matching and merging. When she expressed some frustration at how long the
job was taking I told her about PAF Insight. We downloaded the program, she
used it, and was delighted with the results.
Purely my own opinion, but I think that John V. has done a very fine job on
this program.
Richard Halliday
See how FamilyInsight can make Merging a breeze >>
Ohana Software Service
Please know how much I appreciate the service you gave me last week on my PAF Insight problems.
Your patience with my lack of knowledge, experience in use of PAF Insight was so appreciated.
Your willingness to send me later emails with your diagnosis and recommended solutions helped me so much. I have cleaned up the duplicates and am working on the disconnected pedigrees.
Thanks again.
A Very Satisfied Customer,
Bob Sims
Mesa, AZ
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