New Tasks no longer sync to Android

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duarte.framos
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New Tasks no longer sync to Android

Post by duarte.framos »

Hello.

I am using EPIM 11.2.3 under Windows 10 64bits and syncing locally over wifi to Android EPIM 6.0.10 exclusively, no other syncs are used.

A few versions back, maybe around 11.2.1 or so, not sure, I started having trouble syncing a few of the last tasks I had created under windows to Android. Whenever I synced they were deleted from Windows EPIM, instead of being synced to Android. Restoring them from trash and syncing again would delete other group of different recently created tasks instead. Restoring these would revert to deleting the previous group on next sync, and it would go on toggling between deleting these two groups of tasks alternatively, never syncing both to the phone.

Since I could not end this deadlock, I hoped to solve the issue by deleting the Android synchronization from Windows EPIM, purging all my phone database, clearing storage and cache for Apim App, and starting sync again from scratch.

After this I can no longer sync new Tasks to the Android phone no matter what. New tasks created under the phone sync back to Windows EPIM, but only some of my oldest tasks sync to the phone, if I purge the Android database, and the windows synchronization and start again from scratch only some older tasks I created are sent to the phone. It seems to somehow "remember" these tasks, and newer ones are always ignored. If I activate Sync Deletions option all those tasks are erased from Desktop EPIM and I can't send them to the phone, even after restoring from the trash in desktop. I tried editing them manually to force change their "modified date", I tried copy-pasting them as new tasks to a new leaf, but I still can't get them or the new leaf to sync to my phone.

How can I force them to sync to the phone again? Would uninstalling Android EPIM help?

This seems a similar issue to viewtopic.php?t=37595

Android EPIM sync log seems to be empty at 0kb size, I can send some desktop logs through PM if it helps.
Examples of the relevant tasks can be found with the following IDs

Code: Select all

<id>2116558272536876133</id>
<id>4901177600143729142</id>
<id>2588263722185589546</id>
id>4608689582401500738</id>
<id>281546292397863775</id>
How can I solve this? Thanks
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Re: New Tasks no longer sync to Android

Post by admin »

Log files would definitely be of help. Forward them to me via PM and mention names for couple of tasks that do net get synchronized.
Android version of EssentialPIM. Keep all your data in sync!
duarte.framos
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Re: New Tasks no longer sync to Android

Post by duarte.framos »

After a lot of testing, sweat and tears I finally found the culprit : Categories.

Here are my findings :

1 - Tasks without category don't sync well from EPIM to Android. If two way sync is enabled they get erased from windows too.

2 - Tasks with assigned categories that are child or subtasks of tasks without category are ignored and don't sync to Android at all.

3 - Categories from Windows EPIM don't always transfer well to Android. Syncing doesn't make categories of both match.

4 - Fresh database on new Android installation has pre defined categories (like "Important", "Needs Travel", "Phone Call", among others), which are undesirable and may not align with what every user needs. On first bidirectional sync these get transferred to desktop EPIM and pollute the database. Erasing them beforehand leads to the issues below I've been experiencing.

5 - On first sync tasks without category, when synced from windows to Android get assigned some arbitrary category by default which is undesirable. In my case they all got assigned to "Important".

5 - If the unwanted category exists it gets synced back to Windows polluting the database. If I delete the category beforehand tasks without category don't sync at all and are erased. If I delete the category after the fact, the tasks are also removed and no longer sync, which is what I've been experiencing until now. Purging Databases, making new Epim desktop files, importing and exporting tasks don't solve the problem.

As such I'd say :

6 - Categoryless tasks should sync just the same as all others. No arbitrary categories should be automatically assigned without explicit user intervention

​7 - New databases should always be empty. No pre populated categories, sample tasks, tags, example events, or other residual data on new databases or purged data. This only leads to issues. When a user starts over, a fresh empty database is expected. Having categories there is a hassle to eliminate.

​8 - Eliminating categories beforehand leads to these issues of tasks not syncing well or getting randomly assigned arbitrary categories.

​9 - Eliminating categories after the fact is a chore. These get synced back to other devices, have to manually be eliminated in each one, and is hard to manually distinguish between user created ones and default ones.

​10 - This some times leads to duplicate categories with the same name. It is hard to tell them apart, or know which one is user created which one is pre defined. On elimination it is easy to accidentally remove the wrong one, and with it mistakenly erase the associated data.

​11 - Deleting the default "Birthday" category on Android makes it difficult to get Android to create birthday events in the calendar for contacts. After successful creation these events are left without category, which makes them show up without color in calendar module. These leaves them "orphaned" in an endless loop where one can't manually define their color. Manually recreating the category after the fact to try to define a color, no longer works, events are never associated with them again. The only solution is to purge the database again.
duarte.framos
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Re: New Tasks no longer sync to Android

Post by duarte.framos »

Besides the above, yesterday in the process of diagnosing the issue I've experienced some errors syncing events to Android which I ultimately solved but I'm not sure why.

They happened while syncing calendar events. Contacts seemed to work fine, but syncing events always ended prematurely and only a few calendar events got synced.

​I've sent some reports by email. Did you get them? Do they shed some light on what caused them? How can I prevent this in the future.

​If I recall correctly purging database did not work, I  had to purge events before syncing contacts to make it work. Is this related to the categories issue above?

​Other minor issues I found with Android EPIM:

​1 - On a new installation or after resetting app data and permissions, on the first visit to the contacts module, epim asks if we want to create a system account. If no permissions were given before Android system ask if you want to grant them with a pop up dialog but no system account is created on first try, though the check box remains checked. One has to disable and re-enable to get it to work.

​2 - Birthdays that fall on the 29nth of February don't show an event in calendar module on Android, though they do show on the 28th in Windows EPIM
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