Family Search

Hello!

I’m trying to get Connections setup for my church directory. I have been reading through the forms and picking up on the limitations that come with the “family” listings.

I feel like I’m close on a work-around, but I’m still having some trouble. It seems like one of these scenarios should work. Let’s walk through them and see if anyone has some ideas. This is long, but I hope everyone can follow along easily.

Scenario 1.
–Mix of family and individual listings–

I have two categories, “Everybody” and “Member Directory”.
All individual listings are part of the “Everybody” category.
All family listings and individuals without family are added to “Member Directory”.

John Doe (Individual, “Everybody”)
Jane Doe (Individual, “Everybody”)
Doe (Family, “Member Directory”)

Sam Smith(Individual, “Everybody” & “Member Directory”)

My shortcode can be [ Connections category=”Member Directory”] which displays the directory properly (all people are accounted for only once).
My problem comes when trying to search. If I search for Sam, I find him; If I search for Jane, no results.

Questions:
A. Why doesn’t the search include the first names under relationships of family listings? When searching for Jane, I would expect the Doe family listing to be returned.
Or B. Can I display Category=”Member Directory” but search on all categories?
This could return Jane’s individual listing.
(Note, this would need to be hidden from the front-end. Multiple category selects would not make sense to the users)

Scenario 2.
–All listings have a family–

John Doe (Individual, “Member Directory”)
Jane Doe (Individual, “Member Directory”)
Doe (Family, “Member Directory”)

Sam Smith(Individual, “Member Directory”)
Smith (Family, “Member Directory”)

I can now use the family listing shortcode [connections show_family=true].
However, now I can’t search for Sam or Jane.

Questions:
Why aren’t first names searchable when using show_family?

Thanks so much!
Dustin