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What should I do about "Client has not been synced" warnings? [Fixed: see thread] Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I'm using MobileMe to sync and still have all these issues. Why doesn't OF use the normal OS X sync services in the first place? Then I think there would be none of these issues.
 
It struck me later that you're probably designing for the use case where the client is gone and really isn't coming back. In that case, perhaps a banner at the top of the OmniFocus window would be better than a modal dialog. I'm thinking of something like what you see at the top of http://stackoverflow.com when there are new messages for you. It could sit there until you dismiss it or act on it. The problem with a modal is that it interrupts my flow and makes me feel like I must do something about it now.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wealthychef View Post
Doesn't this show that the Omnifocus "solution" is not really a solution but simply evidence of a flawed model of synchronizing? Another way of viewing this situation is that the choice to keep data all the way back to the oldest sync time is causing this situation. If that were relaxed or changed, the user would not need to be bothered. Omnigroup programmers take note -- a lack of programming foresight on your part should not constitute an emergency on mine. :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xeri View Post
Wait, WHAT? Did you just say that OmniFocus is being changed so that it will automatically drop the unsynced client and force me to lose any local changes on it without even asking me?!? How is that possibly an improvement?!? NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!! DO NOT DESTROY DATA!!! I'd rather have the secret setting to defer the nag screen than have my data automatically destroyed for me. I have five instances of OmniFocus going between iPhone, iPad, and two computers. I simply cannot always remember to start something up every few weeks just to make sure stale changes get synced out.. this does not imply that I don't care about those changes, though. User data should never be put in such haphazard jeopardy!
Rereading this thread prior to adding to it, I'm struck by some of the conflicting desires. Wealthychef is unhappy that the design of the sync mechanism preserves the history until all devices are on the same page (the alternative being that changes from infrequently synced could be lost, possibly without warning). Xeri is unhappy that the sync mechanism is being updated to put infrequently synced devices out to pasture (without losing their data, though some effort is required to recover it). Everyone wants fast, reliable syncs.

I've spent a bit of time ignoring one of my devices while intensively using the others recently, and my experience is that if you do this, as some seem determined to do, it essentially guarantees that you will not only slow down the devices you use frequently, but also when you do finally go to use the neglected device, it will cause a big database compaction to occur (all the devices finally being on the same page), and you'll have to twiddle your thumbs while the newly compacted database is written back to the server, possibly over a very slow cellular connection.

Maybe I just don't understand a workflow where it's more important to have a rather stale copy of your data ready and waiting to be used immediately (but rarely) than having speedy results on the usual case.
 
Again, whpalmer, you fail to understand my concern. I paid for this software (and the iPhone app, and the inevitable iPad app, when it arrives) so that I can put my data into it in substantial part so that I do not forget it. Throwing away any part of my data without giving me any recourse to avoid the operation completely defeats that purpose and undermines the apparent utility of the entire software family for me. Giving me the "option" to manually re-enter my data again after I had already entered it once makes me question why I expended the effort of putting the data into the software in the first place if it's going to be at risk of arbitrary discard. Why did I bother spending the time to enter that data in the first place if I'm always going to be at risk of having to manually reconcile it again? There haven't even been any details provided here of how reconciling such an event would work in the first place, which leaves me even more concerned.

Given all of this, I've already suggested that as an alternative to reverting this behavior, how about providing an opt-out for the people who understand the implications and understand that letting the databases drift too far out-of-sync will have performance implications? That way you can satisfy those who don't understand why their syncs are getting slower but not scare off those who take data integrity very seriously.
 
I see the new release has dropped: so is there any way to turn this behavior off?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xeri View Post
I see the new release has dropped: so is there any way to turn this behavior off?
The "dead" client age timeout is controlled by the SyncClientDeadAge hidden default. Its default value is three weeks (1814400 seconds), but you could change it to one quarter (13 weeks, 7862400 seconds) with this Terminal command:

Code:
defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniFocus SyncClientDeadAge -float 7862400
However, please note that you'll need to change this independently on every syncing device. (We can't easily sync the setting, because it's used to determine which transactions we pay attention to while syncing in the first place.)

The best-of-both-worlds way I'd like to solve stale clients going forward is to make it easy to merge and synchronize databases from unregistered clients, so we can merge changes from them without having to keep tracking every change which has happened while they were unsynchronized. (That would also be useful for initial synchronizations as well, such as when someone first sets up their iPhone and iPad independently and later decides they'd like to sync them together.)
 
I'm assuming that this mechanism is not in the mobile clients, then? (Since there's no way to do a defaults write on those platforms it would be a problem if it was...)

Oh and is there a limit on this interval? Could I set it to something like 30 years if I wanted to?
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xeri View Post
I'm assuming that this mechanism is not in the mobile clients, then? (Since there's no way to do a defaults write on those platforms it would be a problem if it was...)
The equivalent way to set that default on the iOS apps is to open a URL of the form x-omnifocus-debug:set-default:SyncClientDeadAge:7862400. (Unfortunately, vBulletin doesn't allow x-omnifocus-debug links, or I'd just make the above a link.)

Quote:
Oh and is there a limit on this interval? Could I set it to something like 30 years if I wanted to?
The software will ignore the interval if it's zero or negative, but there's no maximum other than the maximum size of a floating point number. 30 years would be just fine.
 
When did this go into the mobile clients? I've already had two clients get dropped before I upgraded anything on the desktop systems to 1.8. Not happy. :mad::mad::mad:
 
Did you set the dead client timeout as Ken instructed?
 
 


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