Duplicate items created by sync?
 

I have a laptop, desktop, and iPhone syncing my OF database. Over the weekend, I completed a bunch of tasks on my iPhone and Laptop. I opened my desktop Monday morning, and it still had a lot of old tasks. I sync'ed it up, and instead of getting marked as complete, they seemed to stick around. Worse, my laptop had those tasks re-appear for me.

(Now, I realize I'm presenting a *terrible* case for reproducibility here, because I don't know what the order of my steps were, I'm not sure what I checked off where, or how the sync'ing happened.)

Has anyone else seen behavior like this?

One particular "bug" to note. It seems like if I check off a recurring task on my laptop, and then check it off the next day on my desktop, when it syncs up, I now have a duplicate of that task, but spaced one day apart. As if it doesn't realize that the same thing was checked off in two places in between syncs. Perhaps this is a bug related to using something like an instance ID instead of the recurring-task ID to resolve sync conflicts? (just speculating)

It makes me nervous to think that my carefully crafted DB of tasks might be getting sullied by the sync process. Very un-GTD-like anxiety starts to creep back into my trusted system! :-)

[QUOTE=wkoffel;42059]Has anyone else seen behavior like this?

... It seems like if I check off a recurring task on my laptop, and then check it off the next day on my desktop, when it syncs up, I now have a duplicate of that task. [/QUOTE]

I have a set of reoccurring "daily" Actions. So yes, I see this behavior every <expletive> day!

Yeah, I get this as well. Seems to only happen on recurring tasks and not all the time. Usually this happens if there is an overlap in synching. One feature that would be really helpful is some sort of feedback when synching from my Mac. I typically use my Mac during the day and then switch to the iPhone version. Before launching on my iPhone, I do a manual synch, just to make sure. However, since there is no feedback I can't tell when the synch is done.

I'm noticing this syncing issue (or one similar) as well.

It seems if I make a change or create a task on the iPhone, then mark the task as completed on the desktop, the task will be returned to the uncompleted state on the iPhone, with the previous settings (time change goes back to previous time, etc.). When I sync with the desktop again, the desktop gets updated to the iPhone state, and both are back in sync.

It doesn't matter if the task is reoccurring, it just happens all the time. I'm doing syncs between changes, so I'm not simultaneously making a change to same task on the iPhone and desktop.

My guess is the problem lies with the iPhone picking up changes made by the desktop when it made a change to that same task, as the desktop always stays in sync with the iPhone. The iPhone is always the one to mess it up.

[QUOTE=cavemonkey50;43673]My guess is the problem lies with the iPhone picking up changes made by the desktop when it made a change to that same task, as the desktop always stays in sync with the iPhone. The iPhone is always the one to mess it up.[/QUOTE]
In my experience, it doesn't have anything to do with the iPhone, because I don't have one, but get this problem frequently with two desktop machines. What is even more insidious for me is that when it undoes the completions that one machine has supplied to the pool, it leaves the future ones scheduled, so there can be quite a bit of multiplication if I'm not careful.

I bet this bug is the cause of much of the "sync doesn't work" traffic on the forum!

This sounds like the same sync issue discussed elsewhere on the forums. We've found the main* source of these sorts of syncing problems, and are working out the best way to fix it.

billback: You can customize the toolbar to add a sync button. While a sync is occuring, the icon will rotate. So the sync is done when the sync button stops spinning. Is this the kind of feedback you're looking for?

*I say "main" but hope I mean "only". But until we've got that one eliminated, it's hard to tell if there are a few other, far less-common situations that might cause it too.

I think billback is referring to the iPhone version, not the desktop; I was about to say the same thing in my message, but after rereading his message, didn't. I don't know if there is any visual sync feedback on the iPhone, but I'm pretty sure our solution (add button to toolbar) won't work there :-)

The visual indication on the iPhone is the two arrows at the bottom of the pane turning into little twirly dashes while the sync goes on, and back into the two arrows when the sync completes. (There is no way to enable or disable this indication.)