Submit annual history online?

I remember hearing late last year that there may have been a way to submit your Stake or Ward annual history report online via the church website. You could email your pictures, pdf documents etc via an online form instead of having to print it out and send it via mail.

Is this correct? I have read the wiki page on annual history submission and there is nothing to indicate this way of submitting and I have attempted to search the forums and there doesn't appear to be anything relating to an online website for doing this.

Perhaps this new online submission is still in beta? If so, it would be great to have the link to see what it is like, or to know when it will become available for general use.

chchstake wrote:I remember hearing late last year that there may have been a way to submit your Stake or Ward annual history report online via the church website. You could email your pictures, pdf documents etc via an online form instead of having to print it out and send it via mail.

I've never heard of such a thing. Although it's an interesting concept, it has never been mentioned on the forum, wiki, or any official communication.

Regarding electronic submissions, the current Annual History instructions say (in the Frequently Asked Questions):

What formats are acceptable?
Annual histories should be submitted on paper. An additional electronic copy may be included, but it should not be the only format submitted. Electronic files included in the annual history should be in nonproprietary formats, such as PDF, TIF, JPEG, MP3, and so on.

It seems that the Church is getting more serious about Wards and Stakes "actually" submitting these histories, our Stake has been diligent in doing so and a website method of submitting them would be very nice, as it seems the limit of 12 meg, as stated in the guidebook, is always exceeded and I end up having to snail mail it.

It would be very handy to allow the wards to submit this way to the Stake and then the Stake could access this and approve them, etc, and approve.

This is what I found by searching the history.lds.org site:

https://history.lds.org/stakedistrictmi ... s?lang=eng

Electronic Submissions
Stakes, districts, and missions may submit their annual histories electronically if the submissions meet the following criteria:

The entire annual history is contained in a single PDF or Word file. Photographs or other attachments must be embedded in the file. (Do not e-mail audio or video files.)
The file is no larger than 10 megabytes. A compressed file is acceptable.
Annual histories not meeting these criteria must be submitted in hard copy.

Send the electronic file to:
annualhistory@ldschurch.org

Include the following information in the body of the e-mail:

The unit’s name and number
The year covered

I submitted our Stake Annual History online earlier this week. I followed the directions given at the history.lds.org site and shortly after submitting it I received a response back saying it was received and it would be permanently preserved in the Church archive. Quick and easy process.

That is not the issue, I have done that many times as well. The problem is that they limit the size to under 10-12 meg attachments in emails. As time goes on, that limitation will become a problem, and in fact it is already a problem. We currently have a file size of about 30-40 meg, I was able to get an alternative method from the history department to send it rather than snail mail, but I'm just suggesting that there could be an easier and more efficient method since email systems do have their limits and they are not designed for large file exchanges.

If the alternate method they gave me is available to all then there is no issue, but I had the impression that is was an exception.

I guess, the bottom line of my comment is that there could be a portal created that would make the entire process, from gathering from each organization all the way through to the delivery to the history department easier.

10-12 is going to be pretty standard from an email perspective. Their transfer mechanism is likely something they don't 'like' to do but is setup for most large corporations - some kind of sftp or website solution that you can upload and they can then download.

As time goes by there will likely be a change in the portal. But, like almost everything in ICS, the Hasten the work changes/disruption to priorities are only now beginning to get back to normal.

I have been assigned by the Church History Department to begin gathering requirements for a possible electronic annual history submission tool. I have read through the comments above and have noted the pain points expressed. What other pain points on the current process do you have that you would like to share? What would you like to see in a proposed electronic submission tool?

I'd love to see something like what I can do with FamilySearch and my ancestors. The 'report' is great, but what about fun videos from Youth Conferences and YW Camps. Is there a way to pull in a social media scrape as well as many wards/stakes have created social media, those are my things.

jamesfindlay wrote:What other pain points on the current process do you have that you would like to share? What would you like to see in a proposed electronic submission tool?

Thanks for asking for input -- I think an electronic submission tool could be very helpful, and would probably simplify the archiving process for the Church History Library.

When I was a stake clerk responsible for submitting histories, I found that some wards were very comfortable with submitting electronic histories to me, which simplified my task of gathering all the ward histories. It would be helpful if wards could submit their histories electronically for review by the stake clerk. After gathering the stake's history and reviewing the submitted ward histories, the stake clerk could then make the final submission.

Other wards were very traditional, paper-oriented. It would be good to allow a mixture of paper and electronic submissions. Perhaps for each ward, the stake clerk could see if the ward history has been submitted, or upload it himself, or indicate that a paper history would be mailed.

Another occasional pain point was getting the stake president's signature. If that is required (which the paper process seemed to require, but the email process glossed over, if I recall correctly), it would be good to allow a bit of workflow where the stake president could electronically approve the submission.

jamesfindlay wrote:I have been assigned by the Church History Department to begin gathering requirements for a possible electronic annual history submission tool. I have read through the comments above and have noted the pain points expressed. What other pain points on the current process do you have that you would like to share? What would you like to see in a proposed electronic submission tool?

johnshaw wrote:I'd love to see something like what I can do with FamilySearch and my ancestors. The 'report' is great, but what about fun videos from Youth Conferences and YW Camps. Is there a way to pull in a social media scrape as well as many wards/stakes have created social media, those are my things.

Which begs the question of what exactly is on the table? It might be good to clarify that before everyone goes too far afield. Is multimedia being considered?

Yes, multimedia is being considered. Video, audio, photos. There is also provisions for in-tool text creation as well as uploading of pdf, word, excel, powerpoint.

All of this is currently in our requirements document. Workflows are planned that allow for review and approval at the ward and stake levels. Thanks for the feedback. What if we made it so members of the Ward Council could log in and add stuff to the accumulating annual history? Would the do it?

It would be great if you could have your history as a "living document" where members could upload what they think is relevant for the history during the year, the history editor could edit it and then have the leadership "pre-approve" snippets of it as the year goes along. This would give a fresher look at the history and avoid the yearly crunch.

I love the idea of being able to add videos and other media as well.

Yes, that is also in the plan. Great thoughts! Keep them coming and spread the word if you can. We want to understand our audience needs as much as possible!

It is very important to be able to capture any possible document and import it into your main program. For me right now, it is MS Word because you can attach and import almost anything including PDF's. Pictures and video are very important to the history and while Word does great with text and pictures, it is difficult to use for video. Most folks do not have the knowledge to configure these programs, so any supplied program would need to be very simple to operate.
Also it would be very helpful to have a list of what is really important, as opposed to what is thought to be important.

simsbc wrote:Also it would be very helpful to have a list of what is really important, as opposed to what is thought to be important.

What do you mean by this?

jamesfindlay wrote:

simsbc wrote:Also it would be very helpful to have a list of what is really important, as opposed to what is thought to be important.

What do you mean by this?

I'll take a stab at it. What are people going to look for when they want to look at the history of a ward? A collection of Sunday programs might be nice for the part that documents who held what calling, but the bulk is likely to be uninteresting. (A sample of one or two would be sufficient.)

OTOH, there are likely some changes that will be of interest that might be forgotten. A favorite of mine is building changes. Maybe not new carpets as much as significant changes to the building - such as expansions. Future historians might be curious about when WiFi was rolled out.

I think a "checklist" of things that should be in the history is an excellent idea.

russellhltn wrote:

jamesfindlay wrote:

simsbc wrote:Also it would be very helpful to have a list of what is really important, as opposed to what is thought to be important.

What do you mean by this?

I'll take a stab at it. What are people going to look for when they want to look at the history of a ward? A collection of Sunday programs might be nice for the part that documents who held what calling, but the bulk is likely to be uninteresting. (A sample of one or two would be sufficient.)

OTOH, there are likely some changes that will be of interest that might be forgotten. A favorite of mine is building changes. Maybe not new carpets as much as significant changes to the building - such as expansions. Future historians might be curious about when WiFi was rolled out.

I think a "checklist" of things that should be in the history is an excellent idea.

Indeed. Have you seen the materials posted here:
https://www.lds.org/callings/church-his ... e?lang=eng

manielsen2002 wrote:... The problem is that they limit the size to under 10-12 meg attachments in emails. As time goes on, that limitation will become a problem, and in fact it is already a problem. ...

Who has some good solutions on how to more easily fit the annual history into 10-12 meg?
We usually collect all docs and put in a word doc and then print to pdf and then compress to zip file.
While we are collecting docs to put into word doc, we receive all different types of docs from wards.
We can only import the first page of a pdf doc so we have to use snipit to get the other pages but don't know if there is a better way.
Are there other text formats that will compress more efficiently?
Any other ideas or hints?
Thanks in advance

dellellison wrote:Who has some good solutions on how to more easily fit the annual history into 10-12 meg?
We usually collect all docs and put in a word doc and then print to pdf and then compress to zip file.
While we are collecting docs to put into word doc, we receive all different types of docs from wards.
We can only import the first page of a pdf doc so we have to use snipit to get the other pages but don't know if there is a better way.
Are there other text formats that will compress more efficiently?

Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but the first step is to insure that you're are dealing with text and not images of text. I know both Word and PDF will allow images, but it greatly increases the file space needed. The fact you're using snipit makes me wonder if you capturing images and not text. Simple cut and past (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V) should work if you're dealing with text.

Depending on what the wards send you, you might have to OCR or retype things to get text.

Online submission would be great - but could we start with just an upload feature or an email to submit the histories to. With .pdf and zip compression i can produce a 10 MB file. Just would be nice to be able to send it somewhere electronically until the online version is up.

mcg30916 wrote:Online submission would be great - but could we start with just an upload feature or an email to submit the histories to. With .pdf and zip compression i can produce a 10 MB file. Just would be nice to be able to send it somewhere electronically until the online version is up.

See this post:
https://tech.lds.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 23#p136605

And these instructions:
https://www.lds.org/callings/church-his ... es-eng.pdf

Hi James Findley
What ever happened to this development?

It's been a long time since I've been a clerk now, so I'm not sure where we are on this, but from the last I used, I was able to either email or use the church filesend tool to upload large files.

Use this link to get more information: https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org ... t?lang=eng See the related links and send large files link.

It's been a long time since I've been a clerk now, so I'm not sure where we are on this, but from the last I used, I was able to either email or use the church filesend tool to upload large files.

FileSend will not work for me, using either Safari or Chrome, on either my home computer or my work computer. Safari says: "Safari can't connect to the server 'filesend.churchofjesuschrist.org'." Chrome says: "This site can't be reached. filesend.churchofjesuschrist.org refused to connect."

chrisgrant wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:07 am FileSend will not work for me, using either Safari or Chrome, on either my home computer or my work computer. Safari says: "Safari can't connect to the server 'filesend.churchofjesuschrist.org'." Chrome says: "This site can't be reached. filesend.churchofjesuschrist.org refused to connect."

Church systems are having major problems with services going up and down. I'd keep trying when you have a chance.

I am trying to use filesend to submit my annual history. I tried last night (along with the rest of the world) and again this morning. I can't get it to work. I tried to use it with 3 different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera). Chrome: "This site can’t be reachedfilesend.churchofjesuschrist.org unexpectedly closed the connection." Any idea when it will be fixed or any tips?

SusanBurdick wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 10:15 am I am trying to use filesend to submit my annual history. I tried last night (along with the rest of the world) and again this morning. I can't get it to work. I tried to use it with 3 different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Opera). Chrome: "This site can’t be reachedfilesend.churchofjesuschrist.org unexpectedly closed the connection." Any idea when it will be fixed or any tips?

There have been lots of tech issues at the church in the past week or so. Some systems have been reported as being taken offline until sometime next week. I don't know if the filesend option is affected, but with General Conference starting tomorrow I recommend you wait until after later next week to try again.

So I waited a bit longer than later next week *oops*... But it still isn't working. I really don't want to print out this entire document and ship it... Did anyone get it to work and it's gone down again? Or has it just been down all this time?

I was told that the IT disconnected the file share because of hacking issues? But I understand that the IT have come up with a method of submitting history on line now? Anyone out there know how it works?? I would like to have some heads up on this. Maybe it is going to be discussed at the upcoming Roots thing?

Use the new tool to submit annual stake histories. March 2023
https://unithistory.churchofjesuschrist.org/upload

ryardley wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 12:14 pm Use the new tool to submit annual stake histories. March 2023
https://unithistory.churchofjesuschrist.org/upload

This is not available to all units. I am in West valley and it's not available to me yet.

johnsonkidsdad wrote: Fri Mar 31, 2023 3:06 pm This is not available to all units. I am in West valley and it's not available to me yet.

Is that the message you got? I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it was limited to certain callings. And then there's the ever popular cookie issue that messes up web pages.

How do I get on the Beta for this?


https://unithistory.churchofjesuschrist.org/

I get the following error when I visit the site

Not Yet Available
We're sorry, your unit has not been authorized to access the Unit History tool at this time.
Eventually, most units will be given access. When your unit is authorized, please refer to communication from your unit leaders on how to access and contribute to your unit history.


However… It is mentioned directly in the new update (with a hyperlink) in the handbook in section 33.7.1 so it is a bit misleading that it is not available yet.

I try to request email updates from the clerks in my stake a few times a year so that they are not trying to remember what happened 11 months ago and just after school starts (end of summer camps etc) is a great time to remind them to grab photos etc from ward members but I would love to do the “new and cool and easy” way so I don’t have to do things 12 times the wrong way.


Keeping a history is a spiritual work that will strengthen the faith of those who write and read it. Documenting stories throughout the year will improve the quality of the history.

Stake and ward priesthood and organization leaders contribute stories using the Unit History tool on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Stake and ward clerks have the primary responsibility to organize and coordinate this effort. The stake presidency and bishopric may call a stake or ward history specialist to help. Additional instructions are available in the tool’s Quick Start Guide.

Members may use the Unit History tool to view stories that have been published by their ward and stake leaders. Published stories are automatically preserved by the Church.

jacobstimpson wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 8:52 am How do I get on the Beta for this?

It's not yet available to all stakes. There were some delays in releasing it. Our stake presidency received training on it a few weeks ago and was told it would be rolling out over the next few months.

We were told that it was going to rolled out last Thurs (19 Oct 2023) then received a message on Wed that there was a glitch and the launch has been delayed. We were assured that it would be announced to all leadership when it was active. So, it sounds like it's getting closer.

I tried both links, neither are working. I get a "timed out" error message.
Danny, Clearfield, UT

I tried both links, neither are working. I get a "timed out" error message.

Perhaps it was a momentary issue, when I just tried the links posted above, they worked for me.

Unable to find TOOL for submitting ward reports. Anyone have a clue where to find new recording information re: PORTALS

lakerie wrote: Tue Feb 27, 2024 5:46 pm Unable to find TOOL for submitting ward reports. Anyone have a clue where to find new recording information re: PORTALS

The link is in Post # 35 in this thread. I just tried it and it works.

You should also be able to find it by signing into the church website and looking at "All Resources". Unit History is one of the resources listed.

In reviewing the annual online history i find that the list of authors contains Ward Bishoprics. I am in a Branch and wanting to know how I can get the Branch Presidency listed as authors.

ctcoombs@hotmail.com wrote: Wed Feb 28, 2024 2:19 pm In reviewing the annual online history i find that the list of authors contains Ward Bishoprics. I am in a Branch and wanting to know how I can get the Branch Presidency listed as authors.

There's actually a separate thread where I brought up this same issue -- it would be good for you to also post your issue there, just to help collect all of us that are experiencing this:
Unit History invitations for Branch-specific callings
From my understanding, there's nothing that can be done at the local level to resolve this, it seems to be a bug that the Church needs to resolve. The two options I suggest are
(1) From the Unit History Tool webpage, submit this issue using the Feedback link at the bottom of the page, and
(2) Speak with your Stake/District History Specialist, and request they send this question up their chain-of-command (assuming they have communication with some kind of Area person, or something similar)