Version 1.5.0 of Family Diagram has just been released with a new diagram cloud server, “Client” license, and other improvements.
Diagram Sharing via the New File Server
The new Client license allows anyone with a free license to share their one free diagram with one other professional user. The idea is that a coach and client can edit the same diagram. The client can choose whether the coach can only view the diagram or can view and edit the diagram. The Client license has a one-time fee of $19.99 and does not expire.
Here is a new tutorial video (Part 9) for sharing a free diagram with a coach using the Client license:
Professional users can now share their diagrams with other users by uploading them to the file server. Once a file is on the server they can choose which users have access to it, and whether they can only view the diagram or can view and also edit the diagram. The file server can also simply be used as a drive that is shared among a person’s computers.
Here is a new tutorial video (Part 8) for sharing diagrams as a Professional User:
Toward a Family Research Database
It has long been an ultimate aim of Family Diagram to serve as a datasource for a family research database. This requires quality data, a place to store and publish the data, and personnel to manage that place. Many things have to be in place for this to happen, including:
- A standardized format for recording case data.
- Family Diagram provides this now.
- A standardized data model for ensuring quality data and that cases can be compared.
- This still needs to be developed and is a problem for theory itself.
- A database to systematically store, curate, organize, and publish family cases.
- These features can be built on top of the new Family Diagram file server.
- A group of data curators to set approval criteria and publish cases to the database.
- This group still needs to be formed.
In the future it will be possible to use the new Family Diagram file server to access curated family diagrams for research purposes. But a standardized data model must be developed first. A data model dictates precisely what data can be reliably recorded by different people. Family Diagram provides the beginnings of such a data model in that it dictates the recording of family structures such people, pair-bonds, child-of’s and adoptions, important dated events pertaining to those structures, “variable” changes in those dated events, and dated shifts in evidence for emotional process such as the mechanisms, cutoff, inside/outside positions, toward/away/defined self moves, etc. But theory does not dictate which variables to track for events, and shifts in emotional process have not been demonstrated to have inter-rater reliability. This is a problem for theory and stands in the way of developing a standardized data model, which stands in the way of compiling a database with many samples of family cases that can be compared.
The best way to chip away at these problems is for folks to enter many, many family cases into the app. That requires one to think about what data is being entered and most importantly, what the evidence is for what they are entering.
Other Improvements in Version 1.5.0
- Setting a tag on a Relationship symbol now automatically sets it on that symbol’s start and end events, and vice-versa.
- This should help streamline setting tags in general, as tags always pertain to event dates and folks often want to use tags to show/hide emotional process symbols.
- You can now click Web Portal in the Account Manager view to change your payment methods and view invoices.
- The Timeline now has a Tags column when expanded wide enough to have room for it.
- The Parent column in the timeline will now stretch somewhat as the timeline is expanded.
- The Graphical Timeline is now more integrated with the diagram, allowing you to change the current date of the diagram, honoring the search criteria, and with fixed wheel-scrolling on Windows.
- It is now easier to select multiple people on the diagram