Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Stop and Wait Before You Update

Once again there were more problems with FamilySearch Indexing over the weekend. Once again the indexing servers seemed to have crashed. Once again users saw this warning:

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If you get this message when submitting a batch, do not update your FamilySearch Indexing software without first learning if the indexing server is up or down. Wait a couple of minutes and try again to submit the batch. If you still cannot submit, exit the indexing software and restart it. If the indexing server is down, the indexing software will not restart. Instead, you will see this:

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This is your signal to not update. Instead, wait minutes, hours, overnight even, and then try again.

FamilySearch issued a statement during the outage Sunday advising indexers that Sunday afternoon outages may continue for a time. Indexers were encouraged to download extra batches beforehand.

Here is the complete text of the statement.

We understand that our indexing system still struggles a bit at our busiest times of the week—usually Sunday evening or Monday morning depending on your time zone. If you are concerned about running into problems during this time, we have some steps you may want to follow. You do not need to do this, but it may help avoid possible issues.
  1. Before 1:00 p.m. on Sunday (MDT, UTC-6), download up to 10 batches.
  2. Open each batch to make sure the information is saved to your computer.
  3. On the indexing start page (or the My Work page), click the Work Offline box.
  4. Click OK. Note: You do not need to disconnect your computer from the Internet; you are simply telling the program not to connect to the indexing server while you index these batches.
  5. Do not close your indexing program. Keep your computer on and your indexing program open until you have completed and submitted all 10 batches.
  6. Work on your batches. You will not be able to submit or save your batches while in "offline" mode.
  7. When you have completed all of your batches, return to the indexing start page, and click the Work Offline box to remove the checkmark and return to "online" mode.
  8. Click OK on the dialog box. Note: You should already be connected to the Internet.
  9. Highlight each batch, and click Submit Batch.
  10. Download more batches if you like, and start over at step 2.

If, while submitting your batches, you receive a message to update your program, this is an error. You do not need to update. Simply click OK. Let the program close. Wait a few minutes, and open the program again using the desktop icon. Once the program is open, try submitting your batch again.

Thank you for your patience during these busy times. We hope to get the system to a point soon where the program can handle these busy times smoothly.

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