Photos on lds.org show on mobile apps?

A member in my ward uploaded photos on the LDS Tools for his smartphone (don't know if its a Droid, iPhone, ect), and also uploaded photos to lds.org.

His photos uploaded to one system are not getting synchronized to the other system.

It was my expectation and his expectation that lds.org and LDS Tools are integrated - both data and photos, but I'm beginning to doubt this.

Can you shed any light on this?

Ryan

nayrnayr wrote:A member in my ward uploaded photos on the LDS Tools for his smartphone (don't know if its a Droid, iPhone, ect), and also uploaded photos to lds.org.

His photos uploaded to one system are not getting synchronized to the other system.

It was my expectation and his expectation that lds.org and LDS Tools are integrated - both data and photos, but I'm beginning to doubt this.

The photos are indeed synchronized from lds.org to LDS Tools (at least on Android and iOS I know for sure). But photos on LDS.org do have to be approved before they are visible to everyone, and before they are synchronized with LDS Tools.

My guess is that the photos have not been approved by the ward clerk (or ward website administrator). Unapproved photos can be seen by the submitter and his or her household, but until they are approved, no one else will see them.

You can test this by having some other regular member of the ward look for those photos on the directory on LDS.org. If they can't see them either, then it's not surprising that they aren't syncing to LDS Tools yet.

Another interesting question is whether LDS Tools handles deletions and replacements of photos.

Have someone delete their photo on lds.org, and see if it ever disappears from the LDS Tools apps. (The behavior of each mobile platform may be different.) Unless deletions and replacements are being respected, there is not a true "synch" going on. As of last year, the iOS version did not handle these cases. But that is probably a separate issue.

Meanwhile, I am intrigued by this comment:

nayrnayr wrote:A member in my ward uploaded photos on the LDS Tools for his smartphone (don't know if its a Droid, iPhone, ect), and also uploaded photos to lds.org.

This is probably not the Android app, because in its current version there is no capablility to upload or originate any photo for LDS Tools on the mobile app. It only downloads photos from the web site.

Perhaps the member is using the iPhone platform. As I recall, there used to be a feature on that app allowing the user to make his own private photos of other members for local storage within LDS Tools, but those photos were never uploaded to LDS.org. If that feature remains, that could explain the confusion.