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Pro Tools & New format DNA Match Lists

I can load profiles in my tree but they cannot display anything on the Facts or Hints pages although Lifestory seems OK.

Has Ancestry been affected by the Crowdstrike problem?
 
Yesterday afternoon here in Australia I could not sign in to Ancestry, just telling me there was an error, several minutes later we heard that there was a world wide problem connected to Crowdstrike. Everything seems to be ok now although they are saying on the news that some problems will take longer to fix.
 
Ancestry is mostly working OK now, but on one occasion (about an hour ago) I couldn't view shared matches for a DNA match despite retrying a few times.
 
peter said:
I'm not sure that I will need to have Pro Tools on a permanent basis. I'm only interested in the DNA upgrade, and the data isn't going to change much from month to month.
No great discoveries so far.....
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My subscription is up tomorrow, and I'm not going to get it again for awhile, maybe another year. Its value has been in making corrections for me - looking at matches and finding our shared matches are all quite small has moved a lot of matches off my priority list. I did find a few pairs of parent/child relationships that made it easier to place a few people. And I found a good workflow that works quickly to go through the matches.

I figure in about a year or so, I'll get another month of Pro Tools and go through all the matches since I last had it.
 
Has anyone actually renewed yet? It’s a couple of days until ours is due, but the renewal price is still showing at £4.99. I had been wondering if the increased price would apply at renewal.
 
Pauline said:
Has anyone actually renewed yet? It’s a couple of days until ours is due, but the renewal price is still showing at £4.99. I had been wondering if the increased price would apply at renewal.
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My renewal price is still showing as £4.99 too. Due on 27th.

I think I'll let it run for another month anyway, as I'm still sorting out the shared matches for myself and my husband (life has been getting in the way, restricting my available time). I'll post again when I know what I've been charged.
 
My Pro Tools subscription renewed on 27th July at £4.99 and next renewal is scheduled for 27th August, also at £4.99.
 
Apparently Ancestry are offering free access to Pro Tools in the US until Sep 3rd, but I can't check whether there is a similar offer in the UK as I currently have a Pro Tools subs.
 
peter said:
Apparently Ancestry are offering free access to Pro Tools in the US until Sep 3rd, but I can't check whether there is a similar offer in the UK as I currently have a Pro Tools subs.
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I checked my mum's account since she's got a sub right now. I definitely didn't see anything on the US site for that - but I did see she's got the 6 months for $30 for Pro Tools. Folks have been saying if you call Ancestry in the UK that they can manually give you that rate instead, since the UK discount is definitely not as nice!
 
I checked today and while Mum's account still doesn't have anything, my account DID have the free Pro Tools until 3 September 2024. So it might be hit or miss? I didn't find a message or anything - I just clicked on my match's page, went to the shared matches, and after scrolling below an extremely large ad, it showed as the pro version.

From what my cousins have been telling me, they are not seeing anything on the CA or UK sites, so its a US site only thing. One of my cousins in Canada checked into her test with her US based managers account and saw it, so that might be a good workaround.
 
Seeing that Ancestry have added a new DNA feature to Pro Tools - matches by cluster - I have just taken out a subscription (intending it to be for one month only), specifically to try this feature. When, several years ago, it was possible to link Ancestry DNA results to the "Genetic Affairs" auto-clustering feature, I had some interesting results and some clusters of matches with whom I could not, and still cannot, find a connection. I was interested, therefore, to see what Ancestry's own clustering feature could offer me. Ancestry's response to my attempt to use their new feature is "We're sorry, we couldn't cluster your matches. This can happen when the matches we use for clustering are not assigned to a parental side or don't share enough DNA with each other." What a total disappointment. My closest match on Ancestry, a third cousin, shares only 113cM with me, and I have just two other matches above 100cM and three between 70 and 99cM. 282 matches share between 20 and 69cM with me. Amongst them, are many with unknown relationships to me, some with wrong ThruLines and many without a tree - and Ancestry clustering seems to be unable to give me any clues to their correct connections to me, or each other. In total, I have over 26,000 matches, most of whom are excluded from clustering. A considerable proportion of my identified matches have been assigned by Ancestry to the wrong parental side, particularly those definitely related on my paternal side being shown by Ancestry as maternal, even when their Thru Line is correct.
Please be warned if you are thinking of trying this new Pro Tools feature that you may be wasting your money. The one interesting thing I found when I first tried Pro Tools ( at a special offer price soon after launch) was that many of my matches with no shared matches suddenly gained some interesting ones and Ancestry gave me estimated relationships of some of those matches to each other. As soon as that month's trial of Pro Tools ended, all of that new information disappeared. Pro Tools, is not entirely useless, but not worth the full price, and certainly not worth an ongoing monthly subscription.
 
I saw the new cluster feature and gave it a whirl. it offered four, a five, a four and two threes. All are close relatives, and DNA matches, who have been in, and linked to, my tree for ages. All my matches over 55cm are linked to my tree, so Ancestry could actually use it to create the clusters! And the current Pro-tools matching has so far proved extremely useful in identifying the links between DNA cousins. Estimated relationships can confuse grandparents and grandchildren, or similar, but this is relatively easy to sort out with cross-referencing. It is useful that they compare a cousin's >20 cms against my whole match base, including the 6cm and 7cm cousins I retained. It would be more helpful if it worked the other way as well and compared my >20c against the cousin's distant relations, especially with US and other foreign cousins, it is in these that we can possibly identify which branch (or several) they fitted in with before their ancestors left the country.
 
John Dancy said:
I saw the new cluster feature and gave it a whirl. it offered four, a five, a four and two threes. All are close relatives, and DNA matches, who have been in, and linked to, my tree for ages. All my matches over 55cm are linked to my tree, so Ancestry could actually use it to create the clusters! And the current Pro-tools matching has so far proved extremely useful in identifying the links between DNA cousins. Estimated relationships can confuse grandparents and grandchildren, or similar, but this is relatively easy to sort out with cross-referencing. It is useful that they compare a cousin's >20 cms against my whole match base, including the 6cm and 7cm cousins I retained. It would be more helpful if it worked the other way as well and compared my >20c against the cousin's distant relations, especially with US and other foreign cousins, it is in these that we can possibly identify which branch (or several) they fitted in with before their ancestors left the country.
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John, Thank you for your reply. I am sure that some people such as yourself have been, and will be lucky in obtaining some useful clusters. Like you, I have linked as many of my identified ,matches to the tree attached to my DNA test, but apart form two known to be deceased, I have not named them. Where they have a linked tree Ancestry should be able to find the connection, but my lack of cl0se relatives on my paternal side (closest are 2nd cousins once removed in the USA, and third cousins in the UK) a few of whom are in my match list, and no cousins on my mother's side who will agree to my offer to buy them a test, again people about 3rd cousins are my closest matches. The extra match information is the most useful part of Pro Tools for me so far.
 
MazH said:
"We're sorry, we couldn't cluster your matches. This can happen when the matches we use for clustering are not assigned to a parental side or don't share enough DNA with each other."
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Maz, that feature is still in beta-its rolling out to a selection of people each month, and they are making tweaks to it. Its not going to be in full standard release until at least December 2025. A ton of people are getting the same message because their account doesn't actually have full access to it yet.

But in terms of my own use of it, I tried it out. Everyone is in one ginormous cluster on my mum's side, and my dad's side has none. Even though I've got hundreds of DNA matches mapped onto my tree.

I wouldn't suggest doing another trial until they lower the threshold for clustering from 65cM minimum. I found it less than useful in that respect - I'm often working in the 30s and 40s connections.
 
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