I admit I have not yet fully explored the Associations option in RM (still working on cleanup of an import from another program.) However, based on my reading of the Association function in the RM10 book - It seems that Associations have to be explicitly designated as a separate type of “relation” (not a Principal, not a Witness, but an Association).
This seems extraordinarily redundant to me, and a crazy amount of work to go back through a database of 100s or 1000s of people and have to select, person by person, who should be Associated with whom.
Why could there not be a simple checkbox that you can turn on/off whenever you enter a Witness to also have them be designated as an Association? In other genealogy programs I have used (mostly TMG) - the Association feature was sort of automatically built in and you could list Associations easily with a click of the tool bar — and never even have to actually formally designate them as Associations. The program was smart enough to figure that out (and that was ten years ago!)
I understand the conceptual difference between Witnesses and Associations - for instance, for a deed, the adjoining property owners could be considered Associations; but the Register of Deeds or Clerk does not need to be a true Association, even though they might be a Witness.
But it seems like surely there could be a simpler way to designate Associations based on data that is already inherently a part of the current database, without having to take the time and effort to do additional data entry.
There is no need to go back through everyone in your database to add Associations. I think you are misunderstanding how this feature works. This video should help.
New “Associations” Feature in RootsMagic 9
Thank you. I guess I am misunderstanding. It seems pretty clear to me in the video at approx. 1:30 for example - a data entry screen comes up. And I am asked to input names, dates, etc. That seems like data entry to me. I’m not clear on how I could “universally” go through and designate people as certain Association types without having to do this individual data entry work.
For example, just looking at my Deeds. I have over 100 people in my database who have the Role of “Neighbor” as a Witness in the Fact Type of Deed. Based on what I saw in the video, there is no way to have all 100 of these people designated as Associates without having to go through and individually Create an Associate date entry.
What I would like to see is a checkbox method. So that I can designate in a Fact Type Template that any one who has X Role (such as “neighbor”) in a certain Fact automatically becomes an Associate. This would allow for both universal updating as well as a simple checkbox to gather almost all of the same info that is being asked for input in to the Associates data entry screen as presented in the video, including even keeping it tied to a source.
I am importing from another program, so I have a lot of data already in my database.
In addition, I have numerous Neighbors appearing in many other Facts too - such as tax lists. land grants, censuses, etc. I’ve been very diligent about documenting my “FAN Club.” It would be far easier to simply go in to a Fact Template and click “make this Role an Associate” and boom - have all 100 people designated as such. And of course, there are many other types of Roles that are in the nature of Associates rather than Families.
The Associates feature is one reason I was really excited about moving to RM, thinking it was just going to be mostly a Reporting feature, rather than a Data Entry feature. The fact that I have to designate *every single Associate on an individual Name and “Association Type” — rather than simply just extracting that information from Witnesses and Roles already established and documented via sources all throughout my database is a big disappointment.
Perhaps I am still misunderstanding - or maybe I’m just not making my wish list item clear - but it all appears to be data entry to me, based on the video.
Correct! I think your understanding of Associates in the context was very incorrect. If you now want to create Associates out of what you currently have as witness roles, it is going to involves a great deal of manual data entry. You are one of those edge cases scenarios in which I suspect the developers never imagined.
I am not certain how your “Deeds” managed to get Witnesses unless you created a Deeds fact for some reason.
I’m coming from TMG. In TMG, each Fact (Event) had Roles, and I made heavy use of custom facts and custom roles. Worked excellent for me in TMG. A great way to develop a FAN Club. Thus my dilemma in RM. “it is going to involve a great deal of manual data entry” Yes, exactly what I was hoping to avoid. It just seems like it should be so simple - check box at the Fact/Role Template level “always make this Role an Associate” (such as Neighbor). Or - perhaps also a checkbox when you are doing the data entry at an individual witness level (only make this particular person an Associate in this particular individual Fact right now, this date/place.)
What I’m trying to describe is a “global option” at the Fact Template level (checkbox on, checkbox off) - as well as the option to select at the individual Fact level. But if I can only get one, I’d want the global one. At least for me, I always want Neighbors (in any context) to be Associates.
(Oh, and I guess I slightly misspoke. Technically my Fact is “Land Sale” or “Land Purchase” (so it is an action - not a source, like a deed. Sorry about that.)
I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but the Witness is attached to the fact, not a specific occurrence of the fact. If I am correct, then you may have a ‘Land Purchase’ with something like 5 ‘Neighbor’ witnesses, then what will happen if you had a an option to create an Association, it would include all Neighbors everywhere in your file, not just the five neighbors that are witness to that one specific transaction. So it is very possible, depending on design of the DB, that is not going to be something easily done. I would imagine you are not going to see such an option for a couple of versions, which in the RM world could be anywhere from 2 to about 15 years.
Of course I am assuming when you say you “always want Neighbors … to be Associates”, you mean Associates of a specific person, not just associates in general.
It has been my thoughts, since Associates were introduced, that people are using Associates in a way they were not meant to be used. The creative ways that people are trying would all be better as Witnesses…much like it sounds like you are doing. At this point, Associates are still pretty new to RM and I am not going to get too excited over them until I see where they are going. There have been features over the years that were introduced and never fully developed. I suspect this is going to be one of those.
Including shared events or fact roles for which there is scant reporting and tools and is unsearchable. Associations has a report but little else - no export.
Roles are defined in the Fact Type so an “occurrence” of a fact (event) for the Principal (default) role can be shared among people with other roles in the event. Converting these people to Associates of the Principal is something that has been bandied about as a desirable enhancement or outboard utility but I don’t recall that anyone has created the latter. There’s not much incentive to do so if the Associations remain trapped in the original database.
Edit: such a conversion would have a similar level of complexity as:
https://sqlitetoolsforrootsmagic.com/facts-split-shared-to-individual/