GAP newsletter April

[Darren]

Hello all, this recently went out to group admins:

Dear Group Administrators,

The first quarter has been busy for everyone here, and we know it’s been busy for you as well. Normally we have a bit of a lull after the holidays but this year sales have remained strong.

We’ve added staff and equipment and are exploring ways to be more efficient with the staff and equipment we already have so that we can accommodate the additional volume and future growth.

We’re growing, and we appreciate your patience with the inevitable growing pains that crop up along the way.
Important myGroups update
Part of the growth has come from the myGroups initiative. Administrators and members alike have become more active and engaged, whether converted to the new format or not.

You’ve given us great feedback and because some of it involves some changes or additions that will take a bit of time, we will not be automatically converting all groups on April 16th as previously planned. We want to make sure that the process goes as smoothly as possible, so we’d rather delay a short while to be sure these items are properly addressed.

We don’t currently have an estimate of when we will make the transition, but we commit to giving you at least a week’s notice before we switch all projects.

Coupons will stop posting as of April 16th as planned.
FAQ page for myGroups public website

Many of you told us you’d like to have an FAQ option on the public website. The team created that feature, which can be enabled on the public website page in GAP. Just click the tab labelled “FAQ” and check the box.


It will show up as a menu item on the left side of the public page.

SNP submissions
While we remain committed to providing the most comprehensive testing services available, effective now we are temporarily suspending review and development of new individual SNPs to focus on the backlog of submissions.

We realize that SNPs are understandably an important part of many projects’ research, and we want to accommodate as many as possible, but at this time we are focusing our resources on those that have already been submitted, and to processing the orders we’ve received across all haplogroups. As soon as we’re able to begin focusing on new items, we’ll let you know.

Big Y novel variants

Since Big Y is moving into its second year of results, and many of the SNPs now listed as “novel variants” are no longer “novel,” we’ll soon be removing them from that list. Before we do so, we will let you know in advance exactly what’s being moved so you can update your spreadsheets.
Upcoming events

Family Tree DNA’s got a full schedule of events coming up! Here’s what the calendar holds:

April 15-18 New England Regional Genealogical Consortium - Providence, Rhode Island Janine and Jim will be at Booth 39, so come on by and say hi! www.nergc.org/

April 16-18 - Who Do You Think You Are? Live - Birmingham, England Look for the amazing team on Stand 110. www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.com/

April 17-19 - 2015 Scottish Clan & Family Caucus - Huntersville, North Carolina
FTDNA is the Caucus Underwriter, and Bob McLaren of Clan MacLaren will be attending on our behalf! www.cosca.scot

May 13-16 NGS 2015, St. Charles, Missouri - Janine and Taylor will be at Booth 106.

http://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/

We hope to see you at one of these events!

As always, thank you for all you do. We appreciate your hard work and patience.

[gtc]

Thank you for publishing that here. I suspect many FTDNA project members receive zero to little company information such as this via their Group Administrators.

Please continue to publish these newsletters here.

[LynCra]

Not every customer is a member of a group, so it would be wrong for FTDNA to rely on distribution of important change information by group admins. Information should be easily available to every customer.

[dna]

Thank you for publishing that here. I suspect many FTDNA project members receive zero to little company information such as this via their Group Administrators.

Please continue to publish these newsletters here.

Not every customer is a member of a group, so it would be wrong for FTDNA to rely on distribution of important change information by group admins. Information should be easily available to every customer.

It is very nice to see Darren's post. Thank you Darren!

I had always had a somewhat weird feeling, when I was posting here contents of FTDNA announcements to project administrators.

And I wish FTDNA was publishing updates via e-mails to all the testers. Like they just did yesterday with the search/dashboard upgrade. E-mails were sent to everybody (I presume) with the description. Then e-mails were sent to the administrators with the additional information relevant to project administration. (As it happened, on our project there is always at least one administrator who did not test with FTDNA. And it is doubtful would test in the near future, since both parents have already fully tested here.)

The forum requires a separate registration and requires scanning for news. I cannot sincerely recommend that as the primary source of information to members who are not deeply involved with result analysis. Although, obvious to those who use it , the forum is often the best choice left.

Receiving a forward from a project administrator is only the second best choice, as one might get spammed if being a member of multiple projects. And also one would need to analyze which parts of the announcement are important to her or him as a tester and not as a project administrator.

W. (Mr.)

[gtc]

And I wish FTDNA was publishing updates via e-mails to all the testers. Like they just did yesterday with the search/dashboard upgrade. E-mails were sent to everybody (I presume) with the description.

All testers? I received no such email.

First I knew of the changes is when I read the complaints from users having trouble with the site.

[gtc]

Update: I just now received that email. I guess it was routed via the moon and the mail server there is overloaded.

[Paul Burns]

Newsletter for Admins? I have been the administrator of a project for about ten years now. I think I received something like that way back when, but not in recent years. Did I push the wrong button? How do I subscribe?

[rivergirl]

Paul
I had to get onto Support to get the GAP Newsletters.
It took a few emails and months to sorted.
I became aware late last year that new member join emails, aswell as result emails and GAP newsletters were not arriving in my email inbox.

I do get GAP emails now, but not the new joins or result emails. I occaisonlay get emails about matches within the projects.

Some of my Co Admins are having the same problem.

I did not receive yesterdays email to customers about the new Search system, but did get the GAP email.