The news has finally broken on the collaboration between Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage. Family Tree DNA is retiring their tree-building program and opting instead to have customers build their DNA-linked trees using MyHeritage's system. A blog post yesterday at MyHeritage spelled out the changes and provided step by step instructions for Family Tree DNA customers to migrate from the one tree-building option—to be phased out by early September—to the other.
There are actually two different offers out there. One is to set up a new tree on MyHeritage by migrating from the already-existing family tree the customer may have set up at Family Tree DNA. This is a wonderful opportunity for those who aren't already MyHeritage subscribers. The other option is to simply use an already-existing tree at MyHeritage and link the FTDNA test to the person's entry in the pre-existing tree. I chose the second option.
All great news, I assure you, but not so exciting for those of us who got multiple family members involved in targeted DNA testing. While I already keep a rudimentary version of my family tree on MyHeritage, it will require quite a bit of work before all the branches are polished and in their proper places. Plus, each DNA test I administer will need to go through the same process to migrate over, properly linked, to my account at MyHeritage.
Let's just say I take my job as genealogy guinea pig seriously: I needed to write down notes on my experience and share them. Here's what I found. Though the MyHeritage blog post provided explicit instructions to walk customers through the process, if there was any place something could go wrong, I was sure to be the one to find it.
And I did. I managed to inspire a "something went wrong" message almost immediately on my first try—while adding my husband to his tree at MyHeritage. Granted, that was partially my fault. I had signed in to what I thought was his account at FTDNA and began the process when that nagging thought in the back of my mind—did I really sign in to the right account?—ground the whole thing to a halt. I wanted to go back and check, but—poof!—there went everything, including the pop-up window in which I had been working through the instructions.
When I regrouped and finally thought I had completed the whole process of linking each test taker with the appropriate box in the MyHeritage pedigree chart, I spotted what looked like a DNA icon, so I clicked on that, hoping it would provide confirmation of a successful linking. But no. All that came up was a message: "Pop-up window blocked." I couldn't tell if I had correctly completed the link or not.
After wandering around both sites for each of the tests I needed to link—complete with visits back to my email inbox to retrieve MyHeritage's two-factor notifications each time I signed in to their account—I happened to notice I had received other emails from MyHeritage. "Your account was successfully linked," the subject line proclaimed, providing the specific FTDNA kit number for each of the messages.
While it would have been nice to see that notification pop up on the actual screen at MyHeritage as I was desperately trying to poke on buttons without, seemingly, any result, at least the feedback arrived at some place where I could find it. I guess I just would have liked my immediate feedback to be a bit more, well, immediate-er.
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