Working With Focus Groups

If you have ever done an export to GEDCOM you will notice that one of the options in creating the export is to use a focus group. Focus Groups are a great feature of TMG, but I have always found the steps to working with focus group to be a bit counter-intuitive.

You can bring up the Focus Groups window by selecting it from either the toolbar from the main menu (Windows -> Focus Group), but that is actually only part of it. For these next steps you will want to open both the "Project Explorer" and the "Focus Group" window.

Start by clearing the "Focus Groups" window. Click "Select All" and then click "Remove Selected".

Then go to the Project Explorer and here you will create/use a filter to "filter" the people displayed in the "Project Explorer".

First clear any filters that may be in use by the project explorer (it will say FILTERED in the title bar if a filter is in use) and then click the "funnel" button at the top of the Project Explorer to create or use an existing filter.

Create a filter query for the "Blood Relatives" flag (for example "equals C") and then save the filter so it can be easily loaded whenever it is needed again. Then click OK.

 The Project Explorer will indicate that the filter is applied by saying "FILTERED" in the title bar and the number of names displayed in the list.

Now here comes the counter-intuitive part - to get the names listed from the Project Explorer into the Focus Group first open the Focus Groups window and make sure that it is cleared and then going back to the Project Explorer, with your mouse, right-click the Project Explorer screen and from the pop-up menu select "Add All Names To Focus Group".

In the Focus Groups window you should now see the same names that are shown in the Project Explorer and at the top of the Focus Groups window it should say "Current Group: (new)". You will now want to save this Focus Group so that it can be used for the GEDCOM export. On the Focus Groups window click the save button. This presents the "Save Group" dialog.

There are two options on this dialog box. "Add" saves a new focus group file and "Overwrite" will overwrite an existing focus group file.

Now you may be thinking that once you have created this focus group that you will never have to do it again - not so. It is important to note that the focus group that you have created is a snap-shot in time of the query (filter) used in the Project Explorer and if you make any changes such as changing the flag setting for an existing individual or adding a new individual and setting their flag, you will need to go back and repeat the steps of clearing the Focus Group window, re-filtering the Project Explorer, copying all individuals from the Project Explorer to the Focus Group. Only this time instead of creating a new group, you will want to overwrite (update) the existing group.

By saving the current focus group to a focus group configuration this allows you select that focus group from the Export Wizard when exporting information out to a GEDCOM file.

In step four of the Export Wizard you have the option to select "All People", "Selected people on the Project Explorer", or "People in The Focus Group" (specifying the saved focus group). By using a saved focus group, you then save the export settings to a configuration file and always have it set to use the specific focus group for a specific export.

One thing that I have noted that I do not like about the export configuration settings is that Export Wizard does not allow for saving the file name and path for the export. It always displays the name of last file on step two of the wizard, but it is on step three where you specify which configuration to create, use or modify. It would be nice if you could save the filename and path as part of the export configuration and not have to make sure to re-enter the correct file name every time.