*Data Loss* on new Manage Photos page

[mevans]

I tried out the new manage photos page today. I encountered a problem where I edited a photo on that page and the edit not only saved for the individual whose photo I edit, but also wiped out the photos of other members I had edited and replaced them with the photo of the member I had just edited.

I'm submitting some details about what I had done this morning to the LCR feedback team, but at this time, I encourage people not to try editing photos from this page at this time, as you could lose existing photos.

[russellhltn]

You're doing this in LCR and not the directory?

[mevans]

Yes, it's a new feature in the recently-updated LCR. Overall, I think it's a nice improvement (as long as it doesn't wipe out photos).

[sbradshaw]

Is it just a display issue, or does wiping out the other photos actually save to the database? I.e. if you refresh the page, is the problem still visible?

[mevans]

Yes, the photos of several members were wiped out and replaced with the same photo of a member I edited. I sent some fairly good details to the LCR team through the feedback link. Due to the data loss, I don't want to try recreating the issue.

[sbradshaw]

Hopefully they're able to reproduce and fix that quick!

[mevans]

Through some private messages with a church employee, I found out that the LCR feedback link doesn't always go directly to the LCR team. At the moment, feedback is going through another system and eventually makes it to the LCR team. So, unfortunately, they don't know when my detailed comments are going to get to them.

I'm going to try posting what I remember here in this thread. I sent the confidential details of who the members are through private message to the church employee.

Date: Saturday, September 23 (somewhere around 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time)

I was investigating the new features in the LCR release notes.

• I often times use multiple browser tabs, so it's possible that multiple LCR pages were open in different tabs. I don't know how things are programmed, so I don't know if that could have an impact or not.
• I was using Chrome on a Mac.

Here's what I remember doing (I was going through the release notes to see the changes):

• I went to the new Manage Photos page in LCR. I went to the Manage tab. Member A doesn't have a photo. I clicked on the + sign on Member A to see what would happen. I don't have a photo for Member A, so I press Close. Maybe I chose the option to look for photos on my device before choosing Close.
• The release notes mentioned you could click on a member's photo to enlarge it. So, I opened a member (either Member B or Member C) to see this feature. I'm on the Member Information page in LCR here, not the Manage Photos page.
• I noticed that the member photo has an "Edit Photo" option. I click on it to find out what that does. I see that I can crop the photo! A light bulb went off in my head: Finally! a way to restore the heads of all the members that were cut off by the circle mask the church imposed on photos a while back!
• So, it's possible I was on Member C, but then thought of a member whose head was cut off. I knew Member B's head was cut off by the circle mask, so I edited Member B's photo from the Member Information page. Edit Photo worked! Member B finally got his head back!
• It's possible I also adjusted Member C's photo using the Member Information page. Maybe I did this before Member B, or maybe I did it after.
• I thought it maybe I could go through and restore the heads of other members now. But who had cut off heads? I remembered the nice layout of the new Mange Photos page. I went there (which may have been open in a tab while I did the other things) to see all the members. This was great.
• On the Manage Photos page, Manage tab, I clicked on Member D. I don't remember if I clicked on Member D's photo and then Edit Photo, or clicked on the pencil icon beneath the photo, which directly takes you to editing the photo.
• I cropped Member D and saved my changes.
• The Manage Photos page took a very very long time to update. I may have posted more observations about this in my Feedback comment.
• When the page updated, to my horror, I found out that the newly-cropped photo of Member D also appeared for Member A and Member B. (I'd forgotten about Member C and later found out that Member C's photo had also been replaced with Member D's photo).
• Wondering if this was some glitch in LCR, or if the photo really had replaced the photos of other members (or added a photo in the case of Member A), I took a look at the Directory and observed that yes, Member D's photo now appeared for Members A, B, and C.
• Since Member A never had a photo, I deleted Member A's photo.
• Although I've taken a substantial number of photos of ward members, I didn't take the photos of Members B or C, so I couldn't go through my photo archives to restore the photos.
• Looking through my browser tabs, I realize that I happened to have open the Manage Photos page from the Directory. I downloaded thumbnails of Members B and C from that page and uploaded them (using the Directory upload) as the member photos. They're low-resolution photos and don't look great, but at least I kept the member photos. (I'm hoping the church can restore photos of Members B and C from backups.)

[russellhltn]

I tend to suspect that having multiple tabs open had an effect - most likely having multiple values of variables that indicate the person currently being edited.

My impression of CHQ is that they are stretched so thin that they'll tell you to retake those photos. Even if they were willing, depending on how the data is saved and the backups are done, it may be near impossible to retrieve a couple of photos. They would have to restore the whole system somewhere and then pick the photos out.