[Nicolas_Thomsen]

I use OF on two macs. On top of that I have an iPhone 3gs.
I use OF on all those devices. I sync via mobileme.

I have one HUGE problem, the sync time is horrible.
Even after trying to make the database as smooth as possible it is still not even close to acceptable.

I have archived old stuff, I have unregistered clients, I have made backups and reverted from those, I have tried every trick I can find and I still can´t get it to sync in less than 40 secs.

My database is fairly small, only 44 projects and 121 actions.
This morning I went through all the tricks to make it smaller, before the size was 980 kb now it is 130 kb. Before 460 zip files now 27 zip files.

Still when I sync it takes forever, most of the time more than a minute.

After talking to OG support, who were very helpful, I really don´t know what do about it.

I have been using Remember the Milk with the same amount of tasks and projects, and there sync takes about 5-7 secs.

To have to sit and look at OF while it syncs for these long periods is a thing that makes avoid using it, which makes me unproductive.

Could it be mobileme that´s slow? I almost have no files on my iDisk, 14 gb free.

When I look inside the OmniFocus.ofocus file there are always between 7-9 .client files. I only have 3 registered. I have even tried to manually deleting all of them from inside the file, but they return when I sync next time.

I hope someone here can give some advice as to what I should do about it.

[whpalmer4]

One relevant variable not mentioned here is the speed of the connection you are getting from your iPhone to MobileMe.

You don't want to manually delete client files from inside the OmniFocus.ofocus bundle unless you know what you are doing. It is normal behavior to have several of them per client -- you'll get a new one each time a client syncs. What you don't want is client files representing clients that are no longer syncing, and those are best removed through the Show Clients display in the Sync preferences in OmniFocus.

There is a known bug in the shipping version of the iPhone app which can cause syncs to take longer than they should. Omni is testing a fix which greatly improves the situation, but they want to be 100% certain that it doesn't introduce any other problems before releasing it for general use. The problem is also present in the desktop application, but less likely to be noticed there because of the much greater performance of the desktop cpus.

In the mean time, turn off auto sync and have the phone do a sync at a time of your choosing, like when you won't immediately need it. You can put the display to sleep with the button at the top and prevent any inadvertent button presses while it syncs in your pocket.

[Nicolas_Thomsen]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

One relevant variable not mentioned here is the speed of the connection you are getting from your iPhone to MobileMe.

You don't want to manually delete client files from inside the OmniFocus.ofocus bundle unless you know what you are doing. It is normal behavior to have several of them per client -- you'll get a new one each time a client syncs. What you don't want is client files representing clients that are no longer syncing, and those are best removed through the Show Clients display in the Sync preferences in OmniFocus.

There is a known bug in the shipping version of the iPhone app which can cause syncs to take longer than they should. Omni is testing a fix which greatly improves the situation, but they want to be 100% certain that it doesn't introduce any other problems before releasing it for general use. The problem is also present in the desktop application, but less likely to be noticed there because of the much greater performance of the desktop cpus.

In the mean time, turn off auto sync and have the phone do a sync at a time of your choosing, like when you won't immediately need it. You can put the display to sleep with the button at the top and prevent any inadvertent button presses while it syncs in your pocket.

Thanks for your reply.
One odd thing is that it is impossible for me to turn on auto sync, I can turn it on inside the app, but it never syncs by itself, I always have to press the button. If I put it to sleep while it syncs it will 9 out of 10 times tell me that sync timed out when I activate it again.

It makes the sync function quite useless.

I was told by a supporter that there is only supposed to be one .client file per client, I have attached a picture of my .ofocus file to show you how many I have.
Currently there should only be two registered clients as I unregistered them all this morning, however as you see there are 17 in my file??

[Brian]

Nicholas, sorry for the confusion here - OmniFocus does keep more than one .client file around.

At a minimum, it keeps one client file that's more than an hour old for each machine; we do this so the database doesn't compact before some other device gets a chance to add un-synced changes to the server.

If you sync a device more frequently than that, you could easily have multiple client files on the server, though.

Auto-Sync means that OmniFocus will sync when it notices the following:

1. Changes need to be synced and you haven't changed anything in the app in the last minute.
2. It's been more than an hour since the last sync. (This usually happens when the app starts up.)

When you auto-sync, it's important to put the phone's screen to sleep (a short press of the power button at the top) rather than putting the whole phone to sleep. Not sure that's causing the problem you mentioned, but it's one possibility.

If you let us know the specific error message you got, we may be able to help figure out what's causing it.

[Nicolas_Thomsen]

Originally Posted by Brian

Nicholas, sorry for the confusion here - OmniFocus does keep more than one .client file around.

At a minimum, it keeps one client file that's more than an hour old for each machine; we do this so the database doesn't compact before some other device gets a chance to add un-synced changes to the server.

If you sync a device more frequently than that, you could easily have multiple client files on the server, though.

Auto-Sync means that OmniFocus will sync when it notices the following:

1. Changes need to be synced and you haven't changed anything in the app in the last minute.
2. It's been more than an hour since the last sync. (This usually happens when the app starts up.)

When you auto-sync, it's important to put the phone's screen to sleep (a short press of the power button at the top) rather than putting the whole phone to sleep. Not sure that's causing the problem you mentioned, but it's one possibility.

If you let us know the specific error message you got, we may be able to help figure out what's causing it.

Hi Brian

First of all thanks for your reply.
As you can see there are two problems here.

One is that the sync time simply isn´t acceptable, it shouldn´t take this long and it makes the product quite useless as a trusted system.

The other is that in 9 out of 10 cases the sync fails if the phone has gone into sleep mode before it is done syncing.
That means that I have to sit and "keep it awake" every time I want to sync.

These two factors means that right now I can´t use OmniFocus as it is intended, there is simply too much waiting involved and there really shouldn´t.

I have attached two pics from my iPhone to show how it looks when it wakes up after it has been trying to sync in sleep mode.

Is there anything to be done with the horrendous sync process?

[Brian]

The error message you're getting there means that we were unable to connect to the sync server; we sent a message, but never received a response to that message. This could be a problem in OmniFocus, or it could be a problem with one the EDGE network the traffic is crossing.

I'm not sure why it only happens when the screen is turned off; if we take a look at the console messages your phone has logged, we may be able to figure out what's going on here, but that information isn't going to be particularly forum-post-friendly. Please contact the support ninjas so we can figure out what's going on here.

One thing I'm trying to figure out is how to communicate to folks in threads like this that sync involves wirelessly contacting a server that is likely to be hundreds of miles away, fetching information from that server, doing some non-trivial processing of that information on the phone, and then sending information back.

Obviously, we want to make sync as fast as possible, and I understand that folks don't want to wait for syncs to complete. Especially on an EDGE network (with upload speeds comparable to a 56k modem), 30 or 40 seconds doesn't seem to be that long to wait to do all that. But that's because I know how it all works.

The previous two paragraphs aren't really about the specific problem you're having, Nicholas - it's just something I've been noticing and chewing on for a while. I think folks will always want syncs to take less time; when/if we hit a point where the network is really the limiting factor, I need to figure out how to communicate that without it sounding like a cop-out.

In any case, I've rambled a bit here - contact the support ninjas and we can pull the console logs off your phone. That will give us info on the specific traffic between your phone and the sync server; we'll use that info to figure out why sync is failing for you when the screen is turned off.