FamilySearch have announced their prototype Family Group Trees and I’ve already begun to experiment with it. There is huge potential here for fairly large groups of people (up to 500) to share a pool of living people.
So… my trees (all > 25 of them) in RootsFinder contain a large number of living people. I won’t be moving them all to FS Family Group Trees, but enough that having the ability to copy over will be VERY important.
In particular, I’d like to be able to copy the living person from RootsFinder into a particular Family Group Tree (ie not have to create them as my private living person, then copy to the group, then delete them in my private tree.
So… I’m crossing my fingers you have the interest and time to take this one on. It seems VERY important.
So, a little trial and error has a few promising results:
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I can link a living RF person to a living FS person using the FS ID, even though I can’t see them in the FS tree on the right side of the screen
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I can then link their spouse without having to enter the FS ID
This means I can track who I have added to FS and who I haven’t (referencing the FS ID on the People page). And I can go directly to the person in FS. But the Compare with Family Search page is a bit hit and miss 
- If I copy a person to FS, eg their child, it will create them in my private people, not the living people in the Family Tree Group their parents are in. I get that :-). Perhaps one option would be to ask for which private space they should be created in. I’m hoping it might not be a huge overall to support this
Once a person has been linked to a living person in a particular Family Group Tree, I can use the Compare with Family Search page to successfully copy information back and forth between them. Creating new people seems to be the main issue.
Note: Because RF is a shared environment, there is already the situation where one person can link an RF profile to a living person in FS that another user of RF cannot see.
After some more trials, I confirm that if you were able to add a feature that allows me to create a new person from RF to FS within an FS Family Group Tree, I would be very happy… !
Scenario. I have created a young couple (niece/partner) in RootsFinder. They have already been created in a Family Group Tree in Family Search and linked to the relevant RF profile.
All I want to do is copy their child into Family Search. It does it, then complains that it can’t find the parents, which is because it is creating the child in the Family Search Tree (as a private profile) rather than in the Family Group Tree. If you can find an easy way to select which tree I’m copying into, I think it will work pretty well.
Hope you get to read this soon
Hi again @DallanQ .
Wondering if you can give an indication as to whether/when this will be addressed. I have a meeting on March 17 with the committee that maintains all of its trees on RootsFinder and we are keen to know if there will be an opportunity to use RF to transfer living people to FS Family Group Trees.
Just a clue as to what you are thinking would be helpful before that meeting, if possible.
Thanks
Marlene
Here’s the issue: When I copy people from RF to FS I have to use their API, which is documented here: API Resources - FamilySearch Developer Center — FamilySearch.org
The problem is they haven’t updated their API to allow users to add people to family group trees. I will ask if/when they plan to do that, but my guess is that it will not be in the near future.
I will ask and let you know what I find out.
Hi Dallan. I thought that might be the case. It appears the API can handle comparison with private people in a group tree, but just not create a person there at this stage.
I would really appreciate your following up, and, while I don’t want to be too optimistic, I would have thought there was pressure for this within the FS community, so
Here’s the response I received:
“We should definitely have this functionality this year.”
That’s very promising, but I’ve experienced other times when an API was planned that never happened. So it’s promising, but I might not say guaranteed.
If they make the new API available I will add the functionality to RootsFinder within the next few months after it’s been made available.
Thanks Dallan. That’s encouraging 
and the hint of doubt is noted.
I have separately raised this on the feedback forum to hopefully attract a few ‘me too’ responses.
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