so you could be at cross roads — you need to decide if you are going to abandoned Share method and go instead with copy method. You then would need to decide to redo all the ones you previously shared and change to copy method
I probably would agree with that statement, but I would have to do some testing to be sure. One test would be to play with improved Advanced Search and Group building tools in RM11 to be sure they worked as well with roles as I think they do. And I would also have to look at the way notes work with shared facts. I make the note for the census fact for each family member slightly different. I would have to see how well that works with roles. When I copy census facts, I’m obviously copying the note for the head of household as is. I then go in and tweak it for each person. But roles have their own note, separate from the note for the original fact.
Oops, I just remembered that there is still a major limitation in RM for shared facts, even after RM11. Roles cannot become columns in People View and Custom Reports. Copied census facts can become columns in People View and Custom reports. I depend on census facts becoming columns in this manner
I do make custom facts for each census year - an 1850 Census fact, and 1860 Census fact, etc. That allows the census facts to become columns. If you use the built-in Census fact, only one of the Census facts for a person can become a column. My original impetus for custom Census facts for each census year was to make searches work correctly for census facts. That problem appears to be fixed in RM11. But I would still need to roles to be able to become columns in the same manner. The way I usually describe it is that roles need to be able to act like real facts in all aspects of RM.
yeah I have a query or two that does that (Need to update mine) one was in excel the other was in Power BI (both using DAX / ODBC connector)
Finding present or missing seems to working correctly in RM – but not the role (Unless it was part of a note)
This has been a great discussion and I appreciate everyone’s comments. I wanted to share my “take away”, open for discussion. It seems the biggest item to come out of this discussion is the use of shared facts. If I was not sharing a census fact, then I would not need to enter the boarding housekeeper. Since I am sharing the census fact, I need (want) to start with the head of household. The question then becomes, what is the best way to add a person who is not related to anyone in the current tree. Using Associates, wouldn’t boarding housekeeper - boarder be the same as Employer - Employee?
I currently share the same citation for Burial and Find a Grave, although both facts have the same location. Since the association creates both its own event (fact) and person, maybe I have two events.
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one other thing to consider RM could change how association work in the future – that could potentially impact the use in Census or other things. Not sure what the risk of that – maybe small but no zero. I doubt RM could (or would ) say what the potential risk is
I would make a Customized Association-- and change the sentence to something similar to the Rental Association or you could just use the Rental Association and add a note as to the info comes from the Census or tweaked the rental to include the census year..
As for best way to add someone who is NOT related to anyone in the current tree— In my opinion , it doesn’t matter if you are using shared fact, association or copy fact, I would just add the person-- with minimum info and under general notes for the person I would either just state that they were a boarder of this relative or this relative boarded with them in the year of Census…
Reason I would most of the time add the person no matter what is based on where they live and when such as a small town etc-- I do have a line of relatives that lived in a Big City for over 100 year–in this Big City, there were a lot of houses that either had an extra room or a smaller apartment to rent-- sometimes listed as a separate family–sometimes listed as boarders-- I was lucky enough to know the people who were related to this relative, so that I knew her family was living with Aunt Sally in this Census or she was listed as a servant in her 1/2 sibling’s household so as I add new lines in this Big City, I add the extra person-- go to another big city in the state and I will just add a note to the relative
it all comes down to what works for you
You can share (click share fact) the census and add the person (click just type name) (The person doesn’t need to be in your tree). Or if the person IS in your tree, select them. Either way - Change the role (I have a border role) and add information to the note field. I do this because MANY times the border has turned out to be a family member (cousin, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, step-child etc).