Consistent LCR outages

[jb007tas45]

It's been a rough summer for LCR uptime on Sundays. There have been multiple Sundays this summer where I could authenticate through Okta, but LCR would not load. Printing youth temple recommends and processing tithing have been impacted, along with sending a prospective missionary their initial paperwork to start an application - along with anything else I have to do as a clerk.

Can any light be shed on what the Church Technology Dept. is doing to improve the uptime of LCR on Sundays?

[BrianEdwards]

There's a lot of different threads on this same topic, lots of Forum members like yourself asking the same basic question. It has been stated that Church servers are sufficient to handle the load, even on Sundays. However, it does seem pretty common that during the magic hours when all the Utah wards are at church on Sunday, there's LCR (or LCRF) outages. For example yesterday we could access LCR early morning EDT, then it was down for a number of hours, and then again we had access mid-afternoon EDT. Curiously aligning with when all the leaders in the Mountain time zone were at their church buildings...

There's likely something else in the Church's system that produces these outages, we all know LCR is down also during the week at times when there's definitely no overload. However, Sundays do seem pretty frequent, and we're left to wonder why. Unfortunately the Church does not share details about these issues, even when they produce a global and recurring roadblock to our ability to administer important items.

[garystroble]

Some possibilities are internet issues with backbones in the global network as well as headquarters security systems seeing so many attempted log-ins to LCR in a very short time as possible DOS attacks. Also since Sunday's are not a normal business day some ISP's may be doing maintenance on those days. An actual directed attack is also worthy of consideration; anything is possible these days. Beyond all of that, we are left to speculation.

[jb007tas45]

I still think we (the customers) deserve visibility into the church's efforts to detect and remediate system issues.

I tried to log in just now and got a 502. And it's the middle of the day on a Tuesday.

What is up? Any enterprise company has a page that its customers can go to to understand if there's an outage. You also get information on what is being done to address it and and ETA to when things should be back up and running. Why doesn't the Church have this? It has a legit software development organization and the folks that work there understand how to properly develop software. Knowing that, I'm really surprised at how unreliable the church's systems are, and the lack of visibility into remediation of issues.

[brokelly]

I've been having the same issues and it seems like they are more frequent. Sunday afternoons when I have a room full of people getting their temple recommends renewed and I'm not able to log into LCR to print them is becoming a major issue. Please! Please! Help us out, we're moving to more and more online tools without paper backups and if the tools don't work, it creates so much more work for us. I can't even find a place to report these issues. I hope someone is watching these boards.

[lajackson]

Please! Please! Help us out,

It helps to remember that this is a user-to-user forum and that no one here is able to help with any of the server challenges at Church headquarters.

I can't even find a place to report these issues. I hope someone is watching these boards.

The place to report these issues is by using the Feedback link on any page, or by calling the Global Services Department. Sorry to dash your hope, but the reality is that, for the most part, no one is watching the forum who is able to help..

[garystroble]

From the way the church web page and LCR in particular have been the last few weeks, I am not sure anyone is watching them either frankly. It is frustrating and embarrassing for us as users. Meanwhile the lack of information about problems and outages as referenced above makes us feel far less than celestial. I reported the LCR issues to the GSD today on the phone and to that employee anyway they were brand new; she had not heard of any recent problems before.

At this very moment LCR says I am logged in there, but all I get is a blank page with the symbol/logo. My wife says temple appointments are not working right now either.

The scriptures on line have not been working consistently for at least a week either. It is fine to say report these issues. My biggest fear is that members trying to use the assets on the web page are getting upset and giving up.

[BrianEdwards]

One option would be for your Bishop to talk with the other Bishops in the Stake, and if all agree this is a problem for their wards, then the Bishops present this united message to the Stake President. If he agrees, he could then escalate this to his Coordinating Council, as an issue that each of his wards is constantly struggling with, and that has a meaningful impact on their ability to administer and minister to their members. I assume the other Stakes in the Coordinating Council are suffering the same way, and if other Stake Presidents aren't aware, they probably could just poll their Bishops and get an earful.

Lone voices are unlikely to make any difference, but a unified voice going up through the "priesthood channels" might have a better chance of getting the attention of an Area leader who might carry a bit more weight with SLC.