MAJOR BUG: Faithlife - You have to re-architect this

Yes, I'm setting high expectations on this. I believe what I experienced this afternoon is related to an issue I addressed here:

https://community.logos.com/forums/t/88716.aspx

On Mon Oct 13, around 2:00 PM eastern U.S. time, there was some kind of problem in the Logos "cloud" infrastructure. Pages on www.logos.com were inaccessible - no response at all, just a browser timeout. I couldn't initiate normal web authentication to Logos because that happens on a www.logos.com page.

What made me look into things via the web was the fact that my Logos Bible app (latest release, iPad 4 wifi, iOS 8.0.2) was showing me the login splash screen when I launched it. It never does that. If I'm offline it doesn't do that (at least last time that ever happened - don't know how long ago that might have been). So I hit the "Skip This" link in the lower right - I suspect that was a mistake.

I couldn't get to normal "stuff" - my library did not look normal. I killed the app and launched it again, thinking that perhaps the iOS didn't notify the app early enough that it was on wifi (I had switched access points). Same thing - login splash screen. This time I entered my credentials, only to be met with an error along the lines of "invalid error code" - some strange message that did not indicate an incorrect id or password. I tried once more, just in case - same thing.

That's when I went to the web and found that something within the Logos cloud infrastructure was down and was likely the culprit for my Bible app problems. After I logged in on the web, I went back to the Bible app.

I was quite confident of what would happen. It allowed me to log in, but acted like this was a brand new installation with a first time sign-in. Even now, 15 minutes later, I'm at 97% of the "Please wait a few moments" screen. Basically I've been unable to use the app for 30+ minutes even though my iPad is fine, iOS is fine, the app is fine, and my library is (now, "was") fine. And, as was advised in the previously referenced thread, I now have to "rebuild index" on my library, which will take at least another 10-15 minutes. That's really unacceptable.

My expectations, which I believe are reasonable:

Disambiguate the "unsuccessful login" scenario from the "cloud is down" scenario.
If it's the "cloud is down" scenario, behave as though the device is offline. It can't be exactly like that, however. The app would get a notification when general connectivity is established. But the app would need to asynchronously check to see if the Logos cloud has started functioning again.
If it's an unsuccessful login, prompt for corrected credentials.
Upon successful login, if the account is the same as the one that already existed, don't do anything special. Just go to the screen where the app would otherwise have gone.
If there was no previous account on the device or if the newly logged in account is different, then proceed to initialize the account, library, etc.

One more thing. I've said before that I'm willing to pay for a "premium", or even "more attention given to it", app. I depend on this app for my seminary work and for my role as pastor, and it's my first choice for personal study and edification. I don't think I'm alone.

Thanks for letting me be direct in expressing my experience and expectations.

Donnie

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Comments

Kevin Byford (Faithlife)

That's when I went to the web and found that something within the Logos cloud infrastructure was down and was likely the culprit for my Bible app problems. After I logged in on the web, I went back to the Bible app.

I was quite confident of what would happen. It allowed me to log in, but acted like this was a brand new installation with a first time sign-in.

I will write up a case for the dev team, sorry for the troubles.

My expectations, which I believe are reasonable:

Disambiguate the "unsuccessful login" scenario from the "cloud is down" scenario.

As with every web-enabled App I can think of, successful logins are directly related to whether or not the network endpoint is available. One can't login to Gmail if gmail.com is down and there isn't a solution I'm aware of for this.

If it's the "cloud is down" scenario, behave as though the device is offline. It can't be exactly like that, however. The app would get a notification when general connectivity is established. But the app would need to asynchronously check to see if the Logos cloud has started functioning again.

I agree - this is a reasonable expectation and I'll write up a case.

If it's an unsuccessful login, prompt for corrected credentials.

The apps already do this unless the network endpoint is not available (which is what you experienced). I'll write up a case suggesting a different message to the user.

Upon successful login, if the account is the same as the one that already existed, don't do anything special. Just go to the screen where the app would otherwise have gone.

If there was no previous account on the device or if the newly logged in account is different, then proceed to initialize the account, library, etc.

These two scenarios already work properly except for scenarios where the network endpoint isn't available. All roads lead to a single solution - if the network is unavailable, handle the scenario gracefully until it is.

One more thing. I've said before that I'm willing to pay for a "premium", or even "more attention given to it", app. I depend on this app for my seminary work and for my role as pastor, and it's my first choice for personal study and edification. I don't think I'm alone.

Having a "paid-for" app wouldn't have changed anything at all about your experience today, and I don't believe there are any plans to develop them. An app that costs money can't solve underlying network problems. The mobile apps are considered companion (not replacement) apps for Logos Desktop, although if you had been using Logos Desktop online today you would have experienced similar network issues unless you were working in offline mode. Both Logos Desktop and the mobile apps rely on the same network infrastructure.

Thanks for letting me be direct in expressing my experience and expectations.

We appreciate your frankness and hope that this issue doesn't occur again with future improvements to the mobile apps.!

Donnie Hale

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/638858#Comment_638858

As with every web-enabled App I can think of, successful logins are directly related to whether or not the network endpoint is available. One can't login to Gmail if gmail.com is down and there isn't a solution I'm aware of for this.

Perhaps my comment wasn't sufficiently clear. The disambiguation is needed to do the right thing between my next couple of bullets. The difference between the Bible app and gmail is that a significant portion of Bible functionality is and should be available if the cloud infrastructure is unreachable (whether the device is offline or that infrastructure is down / unavailable).

These two scenarios already work properly except for scenarios where the network endpoint isn't available. All roads lead to a single solution - if the network is unavailable, handle the scenario gracefully until it is.

That is not true, as Logos/Faithlife admitted in the other thread I referenced. I saw the same anomalous behavior when I had changed my password via the web and had to update my credentials in the app. The network was up, my credentials were accepted, but the app acted as though it were a new installation / different account.

Having a "paid-for" app wouldn't have changed anything at all about your experience today

My impression, from numerous threads and interaction with Logos folks, is that the mobile apps are somewhat second class citizens (not the greatest phrase, but the best I can come up with) *because* they are not paid apps. If that is true, and if they had been given additional resources up to now because they had been paid apps for some period of time, then it is possible that an open issue like this could have been corrected. So while I'm not saying that paying now would have fixed this problem, I'm considering the future when additional resources in app dev and testing could get the features many of us have been asking for and/or correct bugs more quickly. Hope that's clear - not trying to offend...

Thanks again,

Donnie

Kevin Byford (Faithlife)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/638860#Comment_638860

The difference between the Bible app and gmail is that a significant portion of Bible functionality is and should be available if the cloud infrastructure is unreachable (whether the device is offline or that infrastructure is down / unavailable).

Agreed, but this is unrelated to logging into the app.

That is not true, as Logos/Faithlife admitted in the other thread I referenced. I saw the same anomalous behavior when I had changed my password via the web and had to update my credentials in the app. The network was up, my credentials were accepted, but the app acted as though it were a new installation / different account.

Yes, you are correct - sorry about that.

My impression, from numerous threads and interaction with Logos folks, is that the mobile apps are somewhat second class citizens (not the greatest phrase, but the best I can come up with) *because* they are not paid apps. If that is true, and if they had been given additional resources up to now because they had been paid apps for some period of time, then it is possible that an open issue like this could have been corrected. So while I'm not saying that paying now would have fixed this problem, I'm considering the future when additional resources in app dev and testing could get the features many of us have been asking for and/or correct bugs more quickly. Hope that's clear - not trying to offend...

Personally, I consider the mobile apps to be first class and if they're not considered that way from the customer standpoint I hope to affect change in that regard. There are two scenarios you've mentioned (Password change and network issues) that indeed seriously inhibit what could be a much better customer experience, but neither scenario is extremely common... nevertheless they need to be corrected.

As earlier mentioned, I don't believe charging for the mobile apps will happen anytime soon, if ever. In my personal opinion if we charged for the mobile apps there would be far fewer mobile users and therefore potentially less need for developer resources to work on them, but I could be wrong.

Any further discussion on the free vs. non-free mobile apps would be better directed towards Faithlife management (I'm not in the position to decide the matter) but I doubt for either of the issues you've experienced it would have made any difference. We've only just recently learned about these two issues from you (and from nobody else, to my knowledge). We can't fix what we don't know about and now we know - !

I'm not offended but do want to make sure these two scenarios get corrected.!