Expert Connect Update

Updated information on the final moments for Expert Connect.

Dear Expert Connect Service Providers,

As the closing of the Expert Connect system approaches its final weeks, we wanted to remind everyone of these crucial dates:

Feb 27, 2011: Clients must confirm receipt of projects you have marked as complete in order to make the second-to-last payout date of Mar 4, 2011.  Please mark any milestones as complete and then post a message to your client to confirm.  Please click on the “Contact Us” link below if you would like to also email your client(s).

Feb 3, 2011 – Mar 13, 2011: During this time please have all of your projects marked as complete or cancelled. If marked complete, your clients will also need to have confirmed receipt within these dates. You can also cancel your projects within these dates and make arrangements with your clients to complete them outside of the Expert Connect system. You must take action to close out your projects within these dates, as we will not hold client funds In Reserve after Mar 14, 2011.

Access to “My Projects” for your Active and Archived awarded projects will be available between these dates. Remember to review your message boards to download all files and copy any messages.

Access to “My Dashboard” for your Active and Archived awarded projects and the Expert Connect News Blog will be also be available between these dates.

Mar 13, 2011: Final date for your clients to confirm receipt of your completed projects. These will be included in the final provider payout date of Mar 18, 2011.

Mar 14, 2011: Any projects still showing they are In Progress, that have not been completed/confirmed received or canceled by providers, will be canceled and funds held In Reserve will be refunded to the clients. Refunds generally take 1 to 5 business days after cancellation.

Mar 18, 2011: Final provider payouts will be made for all projects clients have confirmed received by Mar 13, 2011. Public removal of the site.

If you have any questions or comments about please contact us at:

http://expertconnect.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/expertconnect.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

Sincerely,

The Ancestry.com - Expert Connect Team

Explore Ancestry's Card Catalog

When you are starting a research project in a new location or just wanting to expand your knowledge of what collections of records, or databases are available on Ancestry.com, take a closer look at their card  catalog. Knowing Ancestry's content and what has been added recently will simplify your searching. Most people search using the "search all" category, but this won't yield your best results. You are searching for "a name" that is attached to "a person" in a collection of records. To better understand the results of your search, you need to know,

• the origins of the record
• who recorded the information
• who supplied the information in the record
• how the information was collected
• where Ancestry got the collection 

From the main menu, let your mouse hover over the "search" selection and when it drops down, click on "card catalog". The result is 30,044 databases offered. This is impressive, and a little daunting to new members at Ancestry. At the top of the list is the selector "sort by" that can reorder the list be title, popularity, size, recently added or updated. I like to examine this list often with the selection "recently updated", to see what has been added. 

As it's still difficult to scroll through over 30,000 titles, let's look over to the left side of the screen to the filters. There are 4 major filters, by record type, location, language and dates. I will use Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA as an example of an area to focus on. I don't want to filter the date, or record type. Philadelphia is  one of the major ports for immigrants through out its history, so I won't filter any languages. Filtering by location, I first click "USA" and then "Pennsylvania" and have 10,142 databases left. Selecting "Philadelphia" drops the total to 49 collections, the largest being "Philadelphia Passenger Lists, 1800-1945". Surprisingly, there are only 4 newspapers, but one of them is an index to The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent obituaries, 1887-2006 with over 46,000 entries. Changing the filters to Pennsylvania and newspapers resulted in 133 newspaper collections.

Explore the record collections and look at some that interest you. On the left, under the search area is the source information for that particular collection, plus a brief explanation of the record, how it was collected and how it may help you. Most of these descriptions are written "in house" by Ancestry employees and they are full of interesting material. On the right, links to other similar collections are provided. Even if you never progress past the US Federal Censuses, read the descriptions of each and learn their unique qualities. 

Ancestry.com timetable for Expert Connect Shutdown

This was posted on Ancestry.com

Calendar of Events for Expert Connect Shut Down

To help with transitioning your clients from Expert Connect here is a bit more detail on the shutdown calendar:

Feb 2, 2011: Prior to midnight on the evening of February 2nd, 2011, if you have any projects that have been awarded to you, you must either accept or decline those awards. If needed, work out any modification to terms with your clients before this time. Only projects that are accepted awards can be accessed after that.

Feb 3, 2011: No new project postings, proposals, awards, bids, drafts or terms modifications can be placed. We will not be billing client credit cards or PayPal accounts and putting funds In Reserve. You can still complete or cancel a project that is already In Progress.

The messaging on the client home page at expertconnect.ancestry.com will change to reflect the fact the projects postings will no longer be accepted. Links to theAssociation of Professional Genealogists home page and ProGenealogists.com will also appear in the messaging to help clients who may still visit the site looking for services through March 18th, 2011.

Feb 3, 2011 – Mar 13, 2011: During this time please have all of your projects marked as complete or cancelled. If marked complete, your clients will also need to have confirmed receipt within these dates. You can also cancel your projects within these dates and make arrangements with your clients to complete them outside of the Expert Connect system. You must take action to close out your projects within these dates, as we will not hold client funds In Reserve after Mar 14, 2011.
Access to “My Projects” for your Active and Archived awarded projects will be available between these dates. Remember to review your message boards to download all files and copy any messages.
Access to “My Dashboard” for your Active and Archived awarded projects and the Expert Connect News Blog will be also be available between these dates.

Mar 13, 2011: Final date for your clients to confirm receipt of your completed projects. These will be included in the final provider payout date of Mar 18, 2011.

Mar 14, 2011: Any projects still showing they are In Progress, that have not been completed/confirmed received or canceled by providers, will be canceled and funds held In Reserve will be refunded to the clients. Refunds generally take 1 to 5 business days after cancellation.

Mar 18, 2011: Final provider payouts will be made for all projects clients have confirmed received by Mar 13, 2011. Public removal of the site.

If you have any questions or comments about please contact us at:
http://expertconnect.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/expertconnect.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

Sincerely,
The Ancestry.com – Expert Connect Team

Ancestry.com's Expert Connection Program Ends

Today, February 3, 2001, Ancestry.com's "Expert Connect" program came to an end. I was a member of that program, as one of Ancestry's experts, and maintained a 5-star ranking from start to end. I enjoyed working with all of my clients there and have established relationships with most that have led to repeated projects. This was Ancestry's final comment, posted on their site.

Expert Connect - Service to be discontinued

Since launching in the summer of 2009, Expert Connect has been a great place to find clients.

However, Ancestry.com has decided to streamline the business, and as of March 18, 2011, Expert Connect will no longer be a service that Ancestry.com will offer to its members. We expect that many of you may still be working on current projects with clients that have come through the Expert Connect service. We fully encourage you to finish out these projects over the coming months, and if needed, continue relationships with the clients you have made connections with along the way.

We thank you for your involvement in Expert Connect and for sharing your expertise with Ancestry.com customers.

Today, February 3, 2011, I created this blog. When I joined Expert Connect, I thought the label "expert" was a little pompous. Even though I was a frequent user of Ancestry's database through my work and a long time genealogist, I was reluctant to think of myself as an expert in a field where there are so many more knowledgeable people. Over the time that I participated in the Expert Connect program, I began to realize that I was what they had labeled me, an expert. I was already a successful professional genealogist, having worked for over 22 years as a genealogist and private investigator for an international probate firm that located "missing heirs". One of the best sources for our company was Ancestry.com. In the competitive business of locating missing heirs, we were early users of Ancestry, and often found that as they added material to the enormous amount of information they provided, often, we still couldn't find records we knew must be there.

Over the years we studied how Ancestry's search engine worked, how the databases interconnected (and how some didn't), and we developed search techniques and procedures that allowed us to achieve a higher percentage of successful results. When I retired, and started my own genealogical research business, based in Philadelphia, I joined Ancestry's Expert Connect and found that many of their members were not having success finding what they wanted to find on the website. Many of the projects I was asked to work on, were solved by locating information on Ancestry's database, information my clients couldn't locate on their own.

I created this blog to help genealogists and family historians achieve better results when searching Ancestry.com's databases.  I'll be providing tips and tricks that any one can use to find what is there.