Missing: Sermon File Addon

To quote Bob Pritchett from another thread:

Sermon File -- I need to open a separate thread on this. Because, based on
our analysis of what was uploaded to Sermon File in Logos 3, and the
complaints/concerns/issues with it, we believe that Personal Books is often a
better solution, and that when it's not the new solution will be a new web site
that we haven't coded yet. We're not sure there's any place for a wiki-syntax
based sermon uploading tool that works inside Logos 4. So this isn't so much a
delayed feature as a retired/re-directed feature. But I'm open to feedback on
this.

That's why it isn't done, though -- it's not a "port" to Logos 4,
it's possibly a different project, or no project at all. (I'm short on time
tonight, but will follow up on this.)

LOGOS promised SFA in L4 but continuously delayed its implementation. We’ve
had rare and vague comments about the direction it is going.

It appears, that LOGOS feels that PB is an adequate replacement for SFA, but
there is a key difference - an index at the end. Index, that allows sermons and
illustrations to be grouped by type, user-created keywords, and even the dates
preached.

I am hesitant to add each sermon and especially illustrations as a separate PB
files for Library management issues, and collecting them in one file would be a
huge disorganized mess – no sorting
Illustration titles alphabetically, by tag, keyword, etc. An illustration on
grace would follow a statistic on money followed by story on mothers …

Honestly, SFA was an AUTOMATED way to insert "codes" for keywords,
tags, dates, so it is by far more user friendly.

I personally do not see a need to use SFA for more than text, however, for
sermons especially, it would be ideal if one could use Rich Text formatting for
emphasis.

SFA in Libronix also allowed a batch conversion of files (or am I thinking
of Thomas' addon). This is not available in PB

The huge issue that “we believe that Personal Books is often a better
solution” fails to address is porting all of thousands of sermon and illustration
files into Word for creation of PB in Logos4.

This is where I see LOGOS transforming from a software company for Bible Study
into a Christian Electronic Book publisher with little regard for user content.

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Comments

DominicM

The huge issue that “we believe that Personal Books is often a better solution” fails to address is porting all of thousands of sermon and illustration files into Word for creation of PB in Logos4.

unneccessary (unless you chose to) your sermon file from v3 is detected and read in v4 you need to do nothing

LOGOS promised SFA in L4 but continuously delayed its implementation

Hooray, SFA was a disaster as far as I am concerned, I for one am not missing it a jot..

I hated the way it shared the sermon/illustration by default, for me PB is a far better tool as I have control, plus the wiki code for entering it was/is a pain..

The only redeeming bit of SFA was for illustrations SFA works well, but I always stored mine in a note file because of sharing issues..

This is where I see LOGOS transforming from a software company for Bible Study into a Christian Electronic Book publisher with little regard for user content.

with v4 of PB I would have to disagree, we have been given far more control than I hoped or imagined for

toughski

Hooray, SFA was a disaster as far as I am concerned, I for one am not missing it a jot..

I hated the way it shared the sermon/illustration by default, for me PB is a far better tool as I have control, plus the wiki code for entering it was/is a pain..

The only redeeming bit of SFA was for illustrations SFA works well, but I always stored mine in a note file because of sharing issues..

This argument is moot because within weeks of the issue, Logos came out with the fix and files were NOT uploaded to Logos by default. Still, in L4 they can implement it correctly from the start.

The huge issue that “we believe that Personal Books is often a better solution” fails to address is porting all of thousands of sermon and illustration files into Word for creation of PB in Logos4.

unneccessary (unless you chose to) your sermon file from v3 is detected and read in v4 you need to do nothing

I see your point, and it would be satisfactory to me - just to leave old Libronix "Illustrations of..." and "sermons of ... " as they are. It would not make sense to spend hundreds of hours to develop and test the converter.

This is where I see LOGOS transforming from a software company for Bible Study into a Christian Electronic Book publisher with little regard for user content.

with v4 of PB I would have to disagree, we have been given far more control than I hoped or imagined for

I guess, I am not being fair to Logos. I apologize. Still, PB is not "one size fits all" solution. You also haven't addressed the AUTOMATION of SFA as a major usability feature.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

Honestly, SFA was an AUTOMATED way to insert "codes" for keywords,
tags, dates, so it is by far more user friendly.

Wondering about usability of a Personal Book (PB) Table that has:

Keywords
Tags
Date
Place

For grins, searched My Content using Logos 4.5 Beta 11, found entries within a Personal Book table within a bullet list of items:

Wonder about creating a PB for each Sermon Series, which has a table (possibly a separate docx file) along with chapters for each sermon. PB's can have rich text formatting (e.g. table has italics and bullet list).

For Illustrations, wonder about using heading paragraph style ? (need to experiment a bit to find out how large of font is needed in heading for inclusion in Large Text searching) In PB, have option to identify large text using field on and off tags. Option: can create a Word macro to insert text using a keystroke (e.g. alt + ",").

The huge issue that “we believe that Personal Books is often a better
solution” fails to address is porting all of thousands of sermon and illustration
files into Word for creation of PB in Logos4.

Wonder if conversion is possible using Word macro(s) ?

Keep Smiling [:)]

MJ. Smith

The issues I would address if analyzing the sermon/illustration issue are:

is the sharing of sermons on the web a primary or secondary function? I would argue secondary.
is the library management system sophisticated enough to handle the "extra traffic" of sermons? I would argue that there are some weak points and that a 1 sermon=1 PB approach could easily overwhelm it. Therefore, if a PB solution is deemed the most desirable solution
- the library management system needs to be upgraded OR
- a sermon system making multiple sermons=1 PB as the natural usage needs to be implemented
how does the Logos application lead the user to include the appropriate metadata with their sermons. My experience is that when this is left to the user they tend to either leave out critical information which they have to go back and add to all previous work or they set up a system so complex that they can't keep it up. The system shouldn;t force its opinion but it should provide guidance to the average user
do users want to store just their own sermons or do they upload (copy & paste) others' sermons?
how do users need to search the sermons?
some churches in particular situations use read sermons when there is no one in the worshiping community qualified to preach - does my solution support this need?
do users want to use the "sermon" function to also cover "giving a lecture" - is this option considered in my design?
from the materials uploaded to the web in L3, I know some people used the sermon function for orders of service ... an odd use admittedly but clearly a function users felt a need for. Proclaim fills the function for a certain percentage of users. How do I want the remainder of users to handle orders of service? If I were the analyst, I'd lean towards a template function in Notes or letting the user to shoehorn in the capability however they wish.

I can understand why Logos might see their Lesson Builder and their Sermon Add-in as failed functions. However, I see this as a problem of analysis and design as these are two major functions that Logos users do. Perhaps Logos needs to ask a representative sample of users what they would like to see as support for:

sermons and other talks
lessons - leader and participant
handouts
templates for Bible study (beta'ed in L3 but never released)

MJ. Smith

Wondering about usability of a Personal Book (PB) Table that has:

I agree that sermons could be shoe-horned into PB's. But I am not sure that is the real issue. To me Logos is teetering on the edge of greatness and slide down the wrong side of the edge. Logos:

does a very very good job of presenting the user with raw data at every level (morphology to theology)
does a mediocre job at allowing the user to capture the data and turn it into information: notes, sentence diagrams, graphic organizers etc. Some aspects it does better than others
does a poor job at letting the user put it all together: sermon, lecture, handout, lesson, lesson answer sheet, templates for given methodologies ... I do not think Logos should provide full presentation / publication functions. But I should be able to pull it all together in Logos.

Net effect: Logos sees that I want to drive to Chicago and motor freezes outside Miles City, Montana.

[Note for individuals unfamiliar with Miles City - when I was a kid it was known for a federal(?) bull testing station, it claims an early commercial airline crash and has as its major annual event a bucking horse sale.]

Dave Hooton

To me Logos is teetering on the edge of greatness and slide down the wrong side of the edge

i.e. a jack of all trades but master of none! The reasons and lack of progress are the same as 7 months ago:-

SermonFile is a harder
problem, because we don't like the way we used to do it. People wanted
to put too many too different documents into that system, so we're
planning a completely different approach that's web oriented. (More http://books.logos.com with
document uploading than 3.x SermonFile.) Part of SermonFile
functionality will be taken over by a much better PBB tool, part by this
new web solution, which is further out than Q2.

PB is great but stil immature. It needs a better front-end and method of distribution. Sermon File needs a front end with the PB system as a back end. But the Library Management system will need to be enhanced before it gets out of its depth (a la Libronix).

Personally, Logos should say "no way SFA" or commit to it.

toughski

Wondering about usability of a Personal Book (PB) Table that has:

Keywords

Tags

Date

Place

Are you suggesting to manually create them? While one can simply add a string of keywords/tags/scriptures/dates in the entry (they can be found with good success by Basic Search) the resulting document would have no internal structure. What SFA did was:

Alphabetically sort all illustration entries in the book
Add Index at the end GROUPING by date, keyword, and tag - this is done automatically, without the need for manual coding of "milestones, datatypes, fields, etc.)
in the end it was logically organized and could stand on it's own. I am afraid the proposed PB as SFA solutions are either very cumbersome or can be used only with a Basic search.

Danny Baskin

This continues to be an area of frustration for me. I wish Logos would:

1) divulge exactly what they plan to do concerning a sermon file feature (I know what Bob has said heretofore.)

2) provide a reasonable expectation of its completion.

Rich DeRuiter

Regarding the Sermon File Addin I need just two features:

1) the ability to import my sermons into Logos.

2) the ability to quickly find sermons I've already preached on a text, topic, or for a special occasion or season.

This year, when I was putting my advent series together, I used the index to find my previous advent sermons, and once I settled on a text, used the text index to find sermons I had preached on that text (regardless of when they were preached). I had a few sermons that haven't been entered into Logos, and while I could find them by searching my hard drive, or searching my own preaching record, it was much nicer to use the ones I already had in L4, in addition to being much faster to find them.

Usually, when I'm trying to decide what to preach or I'm ready to write a sermon, I check the topic and/or passage index to see if I've preached on that passage/topic before.

I have a little interest in the web interface idea. I've used it for the Libronix SFA, and have found it somewhat helpful, at times. But I don't consider it a critical feature as I do local sermon storage/retrieval and a robust indexing system.

If the Logos4 SFA doesn't include all the features I need/want, that's fine. I can compile in Libronix and import into L4. But part of me believes that if the L3 sermon files work in L4, then it should be possible to build a newer/better tool that does the same for L4 - even if it's a program that runs separately from and outside of L4.

I don't consider rich text, genuine outlining, tables, text boxes, links to external files (on my hard drive), etc. essential (as I do the above). But they sure are nice.

Bob Pritchett

The Original Idea:

People wanted to catalog their sermons and illustrations and be able to search them in Logos. We liked the idea of a full-text searchable, scripture-reference indexed online archive, too. We looked at online sermon archives and saw that most people were uploading plain text, and figured that adding some basic formatting would allow for a richer and more useful product.

The Result:

People have a lot more creative formatting in their sermons than we imagined. They use unusual typography and layout and indents as part of their organization. Many people also used Sermon File to store every document they might want to search, ranging from orders of service to outlines to random notes to random clippings from the web to highly formatted handouts.

Our Conclusion:

A neat, orderly Sermon File tool was creating frustration. Some people felt compelled to invest a lot of time cleaning up their content with the wiki syntax, and could never get it right, and some other people just threw all kinds of random stuff in there and got a mess as the result.

The automated index creation at the "back of the book" was something we threw in because we could and it looked cool, but which we didn't consider essential, since the whole point of a search engine (with field support) is to make back-of-book indices unnecessary.

Our Plan:

Ship the new Personal Books tool, which can read Word documents directly. (This took a lot longer than planned.) This means we can support much more complexly formatted documents using our native display engine, and is a lot easier than messing with XHTML or wiki syntax.

At this point, it gets vague. But the idea is:

A) Some users will find Personal Books the perfect tool that lets them have control, and easily import Word documents. People who want lots of sermons or illustrations in a single Logos book can use Personal Books to compile a large Word document that has exactly the formatting and styles, etc. that they want.

We could even create (sorry -- haven't done it yet) a model Word document with structure, markup, and headings that you could paste sermons, illustrations, etc. into and get a well-designed / marked-up Logos book via Personal Book.

Then we'd also offer an online store for distributing (and even selling) your Personal Books to everyone else.

For handouts, sharing sermons publicly, and sharing all the other miscellaneous "church/pastoral/school documents" that people were stuffing into Sermon File, we would create a new site called BibleFile.com. This site would be like Scribd.com and similar sites: a document repository where you can upload Word, PowerPoint, and many other file formats. Each document has optional metadata (Title, Author, Description/Abstract, Key Passages, Sermon Category, Sermon Date, Church, City, etc.) and there are even metadata templates set up for Theses / Dissertation, Academic Papers, Sermons, and general Documents.

These online documents would be displayed as page images / PDF, and would be downloadable (if the uploader allowed) in their original, editable formats. This becomes a superior place to share handouts, lesson plans, syllabuses, dissertations, and sermons, without losing any of the original author's formatting or careful layout.

Unlike Scribd, BibleFile documents would also be full-text and scripture indexed using the Logos search engine. A web service call would then allow you to see BibleFile content integrated into your search results and Passage Guide.

You'd have your own BibleFile content showing up in "My Content" and, optionally, content from everyone else showing up in other appropriate sections, the way SermonCentral is searched in the Passage Guide.

POSSIBLE: Using a new Logos 5 feature (shh... it's top secret!) we could even support viewing these "page facsimile" documents inside the Logos desktop software, and support offline viewing of the ones you chose to keep locally. (Which could be just your own, or even specific documents you'd found at BibleFile from others.) This would at last answer the "let me import PDF's and other documents!" request from some users. (For an example of performance of image-based document display, instead of PDF, see http://books.logos.com/. You can also full-text search these image-based resources. Try searching for Eph 2:8)

Schedule:

We're behind on lots of stuff...and, as you know, trying to hire more people...

1) We want to get distribution / selling of Personal Books working soon. Vyrso.com required almost exactly the same changes to Logos.com -- supporting a "second store" on the product browsing system -- and so we're getting close to this. We also needed a credit system (now done) so we could pay people who want to sell their Personal Books.

2) We need to know if more training/templates for Personal Books means a Word document might meed many users' needs for Sermon File.

3) We need to implement BibleFile. (It is fully specified -- I have a 25+ page spec ready to hand development.)

4) We need to know if this plan won't meet your needs, or if there's still affection for the existing system. Now that the Personal Books tool is done, we could conceivably continue to support exactly what the old Sermon File did; it would be some work, but we could support the wiki syntax and use it to create the highly structured document and then run it through Personal Books.

Your thoughts?

Bob Pritchett

Philana Crouch

We could even create (sorry -- haven't done it yet) a model Word document with structure, markup, and headings that you could paste sermons, illustrations, etc. into and get a well-designed / marked-up Logos book via Personal Book.

I would find templates very helpful!

toughski

Some users will find Personal Books the perfect tool that lets them have control, and easily import Word documents. People who want lots of sermons or illustrations in a single Logos book can use Personal Books to compile a large Word document that has exactly the formatting and styles, etc. that they want.

We could even create (sorry -- haven't done it yet) a model Word document with structure, markup, and headings that you could paste sermons, illustrations, etc. into and get a well-designed / marked-up Logos book via Personal Book.

I believe this will be a lot more "clicks per user" than SFA in Libronix. Yes, PB allows more control, but it is a lot more time consuming.

Using a new Logos 5 feature (shh... it's top secret!) we could even support viewing these "page facsimile" documents inside the Logos desktop software, and support offline viewing of the ones you chose to keep locally. (Which could be just your own, or even specific documents you'd found at BibleFile from others.) This would at last answer the "let me import PDF's and other documents!" request from some users. (For an example of performance of image-based document display, instead of PDF, see http://books.logos.com/. You can also full-text search these image-based resources. Try searching for Eph 2:8)

I was not impressed with scan quality

but the search in these scanned pages is amazing. I cannot wait for secret L5 features!!!

We need to know if this plan won't meet your needs, or if there's still affection for the existing system. Now that the Personal Books tool is done, we could conceivably continue to support exactly what the old Sermon File did; it would be some work, but we could support the wiki syntax and use it to create the highly structured document and then run it through Personal Books.

I don't believe that the current plan will meet my needs and there is still affection for the existing system of SFA because of the highly structured document it produces.

Bro. Bob, thank you for taking the time to flesh out your vision. and thank you for listening to users' feedback.

Bob Pritchett

I was not impressed with scan quality

Click the Color/B&W toggle between the magnifying glasses and the page number control in the upper right. This will give you a full-color scan that's easier to read.

We deliver B&W by default to allow faster downloading, but some books are on such yellowed paper that B&W doesn't work well, and you need to use the color images.

Anthony H

Wondering about usability of a Personal Book (PB) Table that has:

I agree that sermons could be shoe-horned into PB's. But I am not sure that is the real issue. To me Logos is teetering on the edge of greatness and slide down the wrong side of the edge. Logos:

does a very very good job of presenting the user with raw data at every level (morphology to theology)

does a mediocre job at allowing the user to capture the data and turn it into information: notes, sentence diagrams, graphic organizers etc. Some aspects it does better than others

does a poor job at letting the user put it all together: sermon, lecture, handout, lesson, lesson answer sheet, templates for given methodologies ... I do not think Logos should provide full presentation / publication functions. But I should be able to pull it all together in Logos.

Net effect: Logos sees that I want to drive to Chicago and motor freezes outside Miles City, Montana.

[Note for individuals unfamiliar with Miles City - when I was a kid it was known for a federal(?) bull testing station, it claims an early commercial airline crash and has as its major annual event a bucking horse sale.]

MJ has targeted, what I think is an ongoing problem since L4 came out. A target that L4 should have hit by now. A target that should be meet before L5 makes alpha. I'm not dismissing L4's progress or "PB". There has been a great deal of quality work and progress.

Maybe PB and sync access to the iPad will be sufficient for me but the idea of another website or "Dropbox" like concept ... Just, well, I don't know why...it just frustrate me that it's "outside" the application. I was really disappointed with "handouts" and even more frustrated that the solution was another product offering.

Maybe that was because of my ill conceived expectations of what handouts would be capable of or that a new SFA in L4 would be more robust. Nevertheless, for me...I would like to get from prep to pulpit or prep to a class handout with the fewest of steps and software applications. If I could get it all done in L4 on the desktop and see it on my iPad at the pulpit..man, what a time saver and my wallet wouldn't suffer. In the end this is what i have wanted L4 to do. Well, you have made this posible to a degree but I'm asking...for better.

"...very good job of presenting the user with raw data at every level...a mediocre job at ... turn[ing] it into information...a poor job at letting the user put it all together".

Love the app, love company.

MJ. Smith

Because, based on
our analysis of what was uploaded to Sermon File in Logos 3, and the
complaints/concerns/issues with it, we believe that Personal Books is often a
better solution, and that when it's not the new solution will be a new web site
that we haven't coded yet. ... But I'm open to feedback on
this.

I see a problem here:

What is the basis of the assumption that what was uploaded was representative of the use of the sermon-addin?
What percentage of the usage which you did see was continuing use vs. users experimenting - perhaps without even realizing it went to the web?
Of the data which you could see, what portion indicate additional functions users want in Logos but had to try to "abuse" another feature to do at all?
What are the usage patterns of users of the sermon-addin who prohibit uploading to the web?
Is there an unmet sermon/illustration function that was not met by the sermon-addin but that users expected the L4 version to meet?

The user base of Logos is very broad - I suspect that the answers to these questions are elusive but critical.

Brad Fry

When I purchased the SFA, I did so for my benefit. After using it I found that it was built, at least partially, for Logos' benefit, automatically uploading user's sermons into their database. At first the default position was to upload the file unless you had the presence of mind to uncheck it. And you couldn't change this default setting.After quite a bit of complaining Logos yielded. They need to yield some more. Just give me the new and improved SFA in L4 as you said you were going to.

Brad Fry

From "Features coming soon to Logos 4":

Second Quarter 2011

Video resources
Personal Book Builder (Improved to use the native book format!)
Sermon File (To be re-designed; partially replaced by the forthcoming Personal Book Builder, supplemented by a to-be-released web site)

Danny Baskin

We could even create (sorry -- haven't done it yet) a model Word document with structure, markup, and headings that you could paste sermons, illustrations, etc. into and get a well-designed / marked-up Logos book via Personal Book.

I would find templates very helpful!

Templates would be helpful to me as well.

Scott Burke

I have been patiently waiting for SFA for L4 since I believe it was targeted to be in L4 back in 2010. I understand that other features needed to be addressed and that at times new features get pushed off. I am thankful for the work Logos has done with L4 and for the features that are available to me. Personally, I would prefer SFA to be all within L4. If the files are uploaded to an external site so they can be assessed in L4 and the mobile app that is fine but I want to do all the work within L4. I would prefer to not have to login to an external site to upload, tag, modify, etc. my sermons and illustrations. Although, I am fine with the ability to both do the work with the site and L4 (best of both worlds). I would also like the ability to mark my files as private and only have them available to me if I so do choose. Again, I am patiently waiting and I expect to be pleased with SFA when Logos does release it for L4. Maybe, just maybe that patience will pay off in 2012...early in 2012 [:D]

TCBlack

SFA in Libronix also allowed a batch conversion of files (or am I thinking of Thomas' addon). This is not available in PB

SFA in L3 permitted import of WORD Doc files. My addin would take OpenOffice ODT files and convert them to source for the compiler to compile. :-)

TCBlack

is the sharing of sermons on the web a primary or secondary function? I would argue secondary.

Totally secondary. I already post my sermons (that I care to) on my blog - for the most part though, I just want the records of Topic/Location/date/Main passage(s)/reference passages. I'm neither using SFA>L3 or PB for my sermons at the moment, though I did go through the extra expense and learning curve of switching to MS Word so I could stop fighting against Logos' desire to use MS source documents.

4) We need to know if this plan won't meet your needs, or if there's still affection for the existing system. Now that the Personal Books tool is done, we could conceivably continue to support exactly what the old Sermon File did; it would be some work, but we could support the wiki syntax and use it to create the highly structured document and then run it through Personal Books.

I do not like leaving the date index behind. It is imperative for sermons to know when they were preached (probably also for illustrations.) I DO NOT want wiki syntax if I can help it. I like being able to import my (new) docx files into the PB tool and you could readily solve a good portion of the dilema by adding

Type: Sermon
Location:Church_Name
Date(s) preached
keywords/topic tags

I would then be content myself to compile them into books titled "Sermons 1997-2000" or whatever. Please, don't make me learn the wiki syntax again. I'm a tech guy and I still hate learning specific syntax for something.

Oh, and the Bible File mock-ups look quite interesting - just don't make me post my sermons there to use them in Logos.