“New: Switch to new Ancestry API. Ancestry is switching to a new API (the system RootsMagic uses to communicate with it). RootsMagic users should experience better reliability in uploading and downloading data from Ancestry. Very shortly, Ancestry will be turning off the old API, and all versions of RootsMagic before 11.1.0 will no longer be able to interact with Ancestry.”
So, if I’m reading this right, nothing prior to version 11.1.0 will be able to Treeshare with Ancestry in the near future. Correct?
Doesn’t give those of us who have decided not to upgrade to 11 any choice, now does it - that is if we want to use the TreeShare function. Great way to get folks to buy the new version. I just completed what might be my last RM9 treeshare. Not happy.
I have RM11. I bought it to see if I’d like it any better than 9 or 10. I don’t. Downloading a tree with ANY version of 11 doesn’t help me out. How do I get that download into RM9? Manually because RM11 is not backward compatible. And I used the same version of Family Origins for 30 years.
Sorry, with those constraints… it’s either a GEDCOM or “flying phalanges”.
Edited to add: If creating new, full databases from Ancestry back into RM9 is not the aim… filtering .GED export down to only most recent Date Last Edited ~could~ help reduce dragNdrop/merge ”hell” when incrementally adding to your existing RM9 work.
Yes, this will mean any version before 11.1.0 will stop working with Ancestry when the old API is shut off. Development worked hard to not have to force a file format change to work with this new API. We don’t do file format changes in a middle of version numbers, so at least current RM11 users only need to update. Older versions are never updated. I know it is hard to have things break, we’ve all gone through this before when Ancestry and FamilySearch changed their login procedures. If we want the benefit of working with third parties we need to stay current with their changes.
If you already have bought version 11, then why not simply use it? Why do you really need to keep going back to 9?
As for the same version of Family Origins, unfortunately life has changed a lot since those days. First off, you didn’t have the interaction between the software and Ancestry/FamilySearch so there weren’t other parties that had to be considered. I am sure if RM had a choice, they wouldn’t want to have to keep updating software thanks to a third party company deciding to change how they allow access to their material
If I’m reading what Bruce said correctly, Ancestry is turning off the old API, not RM. So, if you are concerned, it might be a good idea to complaint to Ancestry’s customer support. It’s frustrating to everyone when vendors say “hey, we’ve unilaterally decided that you can’t communicate with us this way anymore,” especially if a feature is stable and has been working for several years.
Having worked in software development for many years, though, I understand why RM isn’t patching all of their older versions to use the new API. It’s a huge effort in terms of testing, product support, etc. They’re reliant on what Ancestry allows them to use, and supporting two interfaces across many back versions is a real challenge.
The only part about RM11 that I think is an upgrade is the fact that I can see a person’s sources on their profile. Other than that, it offers me nothing that I don’t already have in RM9. The interface of RM11 is worse than RM9 and I wasn’t the only one who complained about the aesthetics of RM9 vs RM7.
Ancestry isn’t changing how they allow access to their material. They are changing the way RM software accesses their platform. I can still log into Ancestry and acquire data and download images to my computer all by myself. Now, only one version (not four) of RM will be able to access Ancestry via treeshare and that has to eliminate a lot of trouble shooting for both RM and Ancestry.
@martisiq I guess I am confused as I thought you were only using RM 9 to tree share BUT still moving that info back to RM 7…
Sorry to say BUT RM had NO choice in this matter–Ancestry is turning off the OLD API and I suspect FTM is having a similar issue of having to fix their system and probably some of their users have to upgrade --I personally want to say Thanks to RM for fixing version 11 instead of releasing a version 12
from something rumors I read – FTM 2024 should be less impacted as some of the was known but likely will need an update. FTM 2017 will likely need a mandatory update and legacy versions will likely be out of luck. As for the timing my understanding is less than ~30 days (just a rumor from another discussion on different board I read somewhere).
Agreed to RM fixing in RM11 – I think ideally they would have liked to change the database structure to account for all the API change but this will get users by until then . FTM seems to have a slight relationship advantage over RM with Ancestry (but to be expected)
I initially started with RM9 because of the enhanced sources capability but continued to use RM7 as my main database. I hadn’t tried treeshare in RM9. I was spending so much time in RM9 dealing with getting my sources cleaned up, that I more or less abandoned RM7. I still like the aesthetic of RM7 but I have gotten used to RM9. I tried RM10 - nope. Hoping RM11 would be better. Nope, the aesthetics were even worse. One good thing was including the source files with the media files on a person’s edit person page, along with all the others (notes, dna, etc). I am not very adept at treeshare and although I like the concept, it doesn’t always work the way its meant to. I expect I will continue with RM9, do updates manually, and hope for an aesthetically pleasing update in the future. If I could get Family Origins to create a gedcom, I’d still be using that program. That’s why I went to RM7 in the first place.