At Permanent, it’s our goal to provide you with the tools you need to preserve your legacy. We are constantly working on improving our platform to provide you with a better experience and more functionality to accomplish your goals.

We want you to know what we’re working on and what we have in store for the future. Please note that this is a working document and that all release dates are estimates. Check back often for updates or subscribe to our newsletter for the most up to date announcements.

We’d love to hear from you about our planned improvements or anything you think might be missing from our list.

What We're Working On

Category	Description
New Features	Permanent Public Gallery The Permanent Public Gallery is your landing page to the public stories, memories, and histories of other Permanent Members. In the Permanent Public Gallery, you can view other Public Archives, search for archives by name, view featured Public Archives, and view your own Public Archives.
3rd Party Support & Integrations	Rclone Allows members to sync files from your computer to your Permanent archive using an Rclone client or directly from the command line as well as any SFTP file transfer client like Transmit or FileZilla.

2022

Category	Description
New Features	Directives Our new Directives feature will allow you to designate what you want to happen to your Permanent account and your Permanent archives when you are gone. The first step of this feature will include options for you to delete or memorialize your account, as well as choose what you want to do with any Permanent Archives you own. Support for Dublin Core Metadata is a vital part of preservation, as it provides context and important information about the materials you are preserving. We will be adding Dublin Core Metadata fields, a widely accepted metadata standard for digital materials, to Permanent. Text files (.txt) Support for viewing text files (.txt) within Permanent archives.
Improvements	Zooming on Images New functionality in our image viewer so you can zoom in and out of your images. Bulk Edit Metadata Add additional features to allow selecting multiple files at once to make bulk changes to the metadata of all selected files, such as changing the titles of selected files to a sequential naming convention, or adding tags, descriptions, or locations. Extensible Metadata Management Permanent tags already allow you to use key:value pairs so you can use any metadata standard you would like. The Archive Settings menu will include a section to view and edit all key:value tags in an archive in one place.
3rd Party Support & Integrations	Publish Permanent-SDK Permanent will release an open SDK available in our GitHub repository that allows 3rd party apps to write integrations to Permanent. This will allow members to save their materials without leaving apps like Theirstory.io, Hyper.audio, Etherpad, etc. directly to their Permanent Archives. Hyperaudio Hyperaudio is open source technology that links audio tracks with transcripts. Hyperaudio uses timing metadata from modern speech-to-text algorithms to make transcripts interactive. Hyperaudio users will be able to publish their content to Permanent directly from the Hyperaudio app.

2023

Category	Description
New Features	Designate an Account as the Funder of an Archive You will be able to designate an account as the funder of an archive. This means that if you are collaborating on building an archive with family and friends, you can designate yourself or someone else as the archive funder, and all uploads to that archive from your family and friends will be applied to the archive funder’s storage total rather than theirs. Auto Add Storage Add an option to automatically add storage to your account during uploads if you reach your storage allotment. Donate to an Archive As part of our mission, our Byte4Byte grant program provides permanent storage for nonprofit organizations. Soon, members will be able to designate that they’d like your donation to go towards the Byte4Byte program or to a specific archive. Convert Files on Download When downloading files, you will be able to choose from a number of different file formats (including your original file format) to receive your file. Crop Photos for Profile Picture Adding the ability to select which part of an image you wish to use as your archive’s profile picture. Write Permanent Metadata to Files Files downloaded from Permanent will include any metadata you’ve added on Permanent embedded within the file, in adherence to best practices from savemetadata.org (previously the Family History Metadata Working Group). Export Metadata Export the metadata for your files in your archive in a separate file.
Improvements	Upload Status Bar We’ve redesigned the upload status bar to provide you with more assurance and confidence as you preserve your materials. You’ll be able to see the status of your files as they upload. If a file fails to upload, you’ll receive a notification and error message so you can address the issue. Transfer Files Between Archives With the correct archive permissions, members will be able to transfer or move files between archives. New Views for Milestones and Folders Add new ways to visualize your archive’s milestones and folders in your archive such as map views, time sorted views, and filters. Search Improvements Add additional search capabilities within the public gallery and within individual archives. Analytics We currently use Google Analytics in select parts of our website and system. Although Google Analytics does not receive any Permanent member data, we wish to use and support an analytics system that better adheres with our mission and values and protects our members’ data.
3rd Party Support & Integrations	OAuth Permanent will expand account management options to include more robust password and login controls, login with trusted sites (Facebook, Google, FamilySearch, etc.) as well as making it possible for users to grant account access to 3rd party partner apps like Theirstory.io, Hyper.audio, Etherpad, etc. Etherpad Etherpad is an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document in real time, track contributions, revert changes, and live chat. Permanent will release its prototype etherpad plugin to save your etherpad notes to your Archive as a fully integrated feature.

Beyond 2023

Category	Description
New Features	Download Your Archive We know that our members’ preservation plans may include other storage platforms. This feature will allow you to bulk download all files and metadata from your files if you would like to store them elsewhere or wish to no longer use Permanent.org. Tagging Photographs Allow for tagging individuals or items within a photograph. Bulk Import Metadata Import metadata to Permanent using a .csv file or other delimited file.
Improvements	Public Archives Gallery Add functionality to follow, subscribe to, and favorite a public archive in the Permanent Gallery.
3rd Party Support & Integrations	Trusted Digital Repository Certification Pursue becoming a trusted digital repository through Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist (TRAC) or other similar certification processes. Takenode.org TAKENODE.org offers content creators a practical, powerful tool to register their 'Terms of Use'. Relevant information about the file, creator and intentions packaged in an unique TakeNode Certificate. Sharing the TakeNode certificate as part of the content offers digital platforms and their users an easy to understand mandate. Permanent will build an integration that uses TakeNode to provide licensing for the materials in our members’ public archives. Webrecorder Webrecorder provides a suite of open source tools and packages to capture interactive websites and replay them at a later time as accurately as possible. Permanent will build an integration to make preserving and viewing personal websites and web materials on Permanent possible. Hyperaudio in Permanent Hyperaudio in Permanent Hyperaudio is open source technology that links audio tracks with transcripts. Hyperaudio uses timing metadata from modern speech-to-text algorithms to make transcripts interactive. This integration will allow Permanent members to use Hyperaudio for their audio recordings for interactive transcripts.