Presentation for the 2018 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. Intended to help family history and temple consultants learn the basics of how to use the Consultant Planner to gain insights into others' families to make consultant visits more meaningful.

1. Leveraging the Consultant Planner to Help Young and Old
Ben Baker – bakerb@familysearch.org
To view the presentation slides this handout accompanies, please go to:
https://www.slideshare.net/bakers84/leveraging-the-consultant-planner-presentation
Consultant Planner Overview
• Allows consultants to request to view another person’s family history prior to a visit
• Can create and manage customized lesson plans for consultant visits
• Track progress from visits
• Accessible via the Help dropdown, Consultant Resources or http://familysearch.org/ask/planner
Basic Process
• Pray to be led by the Holy Ghost
• Prepare a personalized lesson
• Minister one-on-one
• Invite them to act
Personalized Lesson Plans
• Keep prayer a part of preparations and visits
• Try to understand what they’re looking for ahead of time
• Allow the other person to control the computer
• Keep it short – try to keep under 30 minutes
• See https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history/my-calling/helping-others/prepare-a-personalized-lesson
for some other great ideas
• The goal should be to have the person feel joy and success and want to do more
More Details on Consultant Planner
• Links to training videos and other resources
• Find even more consultant resources at https://www.lds.org/callings/temple-and-family-history
• See what e-mail campaigns have been sent
• Understand recent activity – what areas they may already understand or have never seen
• Review their tree
o Areas that may be fruitful (Ex. good time period with few sources attached)
o Areas that may hold a touching and personal photo, story or record
• You can add yourself to the Help Others list to try things out too
Additional Thoughts
• Find, Take, Teach is being replaced with Discover, Gather, Connect
• More focus on discovery, less on taking a name to the temple
• RootsTech leadership session encouraged focusing on those turning 12 and new members

2. Questions to Ask to Increase Understanding Before Creating a Lesson Plan
• If Training Other Consultants
o Are you aware of the consultant planner and how to use it to help those in your ward?
o What is your favorite experience helping someone else with family history?
o What do you feel you lack in being a better family history consultant that I may be able
to help you with?
• Discovery
o What would you find exciting as a potential family history discovery?
o Did you know that you can experience some of the discovery experiences available in
large family history centers? Can show tools on familysearch.org/discovery
• Memories
o What is the most memorable photo or story you’re aware of in your family? Do you
know if it has it been uploaded to FamilySearch?
o Are you aware of All the Stories? https://stories.familyfoundapp.com – A nice partner
app that shows lots of stories for your relatives.
• General Questions
o What do you feel you lack to do family history that I may be able to help with?
o Do you have a favorite person or line in your family that you are most interested in? If
so, why?
o Do you have any questions about any features on the website?
• Submissions for Temple Work
o Have you submitted names for temple work from your family? If yes, what is your
favorite experience? If no, what do you think is keeping you from doing this?
• Record Hints
o What experiences have you had with attaching record hints to expand or improve
information in your tree?
• E-mail Responses
o Have you received e-mails from FamilySearch suggesting certain tasks?
o What have been the ones you found the most meaningful or relevant to you?
Discussion
• What have you found makes using the consultant planner more effective and visits more
successful?
• Can you share any other tips you’ve found useful that haven’t been shared yet?
• How have you been able to successfully work with youth consultants?
• What have you done to help someone who just wants to click on green temples or use a tree
analyzing app to find names and not do any research?
• Other questions from the audience