What is a Branch?

A "branch" is a set of individuals within a tree that all share a common label. This label allows TNG to restrict access to these labeled individuals based on user permissions. In other words, users who are assigned to a particular branch will have their rights restricted to the people and families in that branch. An individual in the database may belong to more than one branch. Users may only be assigned to a single branch at most, but this restriction can be circumvented by creating a "dummy" branch whose label is actually a substring of more than one other label.

Manage

This tab allows you to locate existing branches, then edit or delete them.

Search for
Enter a keyword (or part of a word) matching all or part of any of the following fields: Branch ID, Description. A cookie will store the value entered here for future searches. Click the Search button to execute the search. Click the Reset button to blank out the field. If the Search button is clicked with no search criteria, all branch records will be returned.

Edit/Delete/Label Branches
Click on the appropriate icon in the Action column to edit or delete the branch record listed on that row, or to label records for that branch.

Add New / Modify Existing Branches

To add a new branch, click on the Add New tab, then fill out the form. To edit an existing branch, click on the Manage tab, then locate the branch using the Search utility and click the Edit icon next to that branch.

Fields available on both the Add New Branch and Modify Existing Branch screens include:

Branch ID
A short, unique, one-word identifier for the branch. Do not include non-alphanumeric characters (stick to numbers and letters), and do not use spaces. This information will not appear anywhere, so it can be all lowercase. 20 character max.

Description:
A longer description of this branch or the data it contains.

Delete Branches

To delete a tree, click on the Delete icon next to that branch on the Manage tab.

Label Branches

To assign a branch label to individuals in your database, click on the Label Branches icon next to that branch on the Manage tab, then follow the instructions on the following page. Items on that page include:

Action
Choose whether you'll be adding new labels or clearing out existing ones. If you're clearing labels, then you will also choose whether this action will apply to all members of your tree or just a subset. Depending on the options you select, different parts of the screen may disappear.

Starting Individual
If you are only applying your action to some of the people in your database, enter or find the ID of the individual with whom your branch begins. All partial branches are defined by a starting individual and a number of ancestral or descendant generations from that individual.

Number of Generations
Indicate the number of generations back (Ancestors) or forward (Descendants) from the starting individual that you wish to label. When labeling ancestors, you can also indicate how many descendant generations to label in from each ancestor.

Existing labels
Your selection here determines what to do if any of the people you selected for labeling already have a branch label. You may elect to leave the existing label(s) untouched, you may choose to overwrite what's there, or you can decide to append the new label. If you choose the last option, the affected individual(s) will now belong to multiple branches.

Label Branches
Click this button to apply labels to the selected individuals. Note: You may also apply branch labels one person or family at a time in the People and Families sections of the Admin interface.

Show people with this tree/branch (label): Click this button to display all individuals who already have the selected branch label within the selected tree. From the display, click the Add Labels link to return to the previous page, or click on any individual to edit their personal record.