Sharing a branch (eg. with an assistant) - What is the current advice?

[Joel Azaria]

Hey all,

So I searched the group and posts are either a few years back or not conclusive.  Want to see what is the current advice for this.

I just hired a virtual assistant and need to share 1 or 2 specific branches of my MLO file with her.  What is the best way to do this?

She works via remote desktop to a machine on my local network so I'm a candidate for any of the tech options (LAN share/SMB, FTP, CloudSync, etc.) I just don't know which is advised/best for this.

• She should have full read/write access to any branches I share.  
  
• Her changes and mine should sync both ways.  
  
• She should absolutely not have any access to any areas not explicitly shared with her.
  
• Bonus points if this potentially can scale to a 2nd va (3rd user) or more.
  

thanks,

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 27.08.2015 um 00:07 schrieb Joel Azaria:
> I just hired a virtual assistant and need to share 1 or 2 specific
> branches of my MLO file with her. What is the best way to do this?

Create a shared network folder (you will probably need that to share
documents anyway), put a data file with only the branch on the network
folder and create a sync profile for this data file on both MLO
instances. Under "Branch sync", select the branch you want to share.

-- Christoph

[Joel Azaria]

Thanks Cristoph.  I considered this but MLO help file does not have good things to say about this 'sync' (not sure it even is a sync - help file says the entire file is transferred each time so not sure if it's a sync or clobber)

Also, it's not automatic.  Manual 'sync' only.

From the help file:

 this type of synchronization is not recommended anymore since entire file
transferred on each sync.

Use MLO Cloud instead since it works better sending only updates
to/from the Cloud and handling conflicts.

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 27.08.2015 um 03:18 schrieb Joel Azaria:
> Thanks Cristoph. I considered this but MLO help file does not have good
> things to say about this 'sync' (not sure it even is a sync - help file
> says the entire file is transferred each time so not sure if it's a sync
> or clobber)
> Also, it's not automatic. Manual 'sync' only.

In this case, only the shared branch is transferred. Works pretty well
for me, no performance issues. Yes, you need to press the "sync" button
manually, that's a bit annoying.

Of course the help file recommends using could sync service instead,
this is where they earn money ;-)

This is not to say that cloud sync is not really better. If you have a
lot of stuff to sync and want to do it automatically, go for it. The
pricing is moderate and helps the company to stay profitable and keep
maintaining MLO. You can also restrict the cloud sync to one branch as
far as I see. However, you need to accept that your data is leaving your
own IT environment and is stored somewhere in the cloud where you don't
have control over it.

-- Chris

[Joel Azaria]

Thanks Chris.

I may try the manual sync but frankly it's a lame solution in 2015.  Not even a way to schedule the sync periodically (every 10-15 seconds?  Every 5 mins even?)

As far as cloud - I let my cloud account lapse but I'm trying to put MLO back at the center of my system due to MLO-A beta.

Afaik cloud does *not* allow sync of just one branch.  If your sync options show different, please advise.

Thanks for the assist Chris.  

Open to more/other ideas please.  Really would like this not to be the deal breaker so soon after trying to put MLO front and center again.

[Dwight Arthur]

Joel,

I believe that you have to start by making a tradeoff.

On one side, you have two separate profiles. You have to keep track of what belongs in what profile. One is shared, the other is not. You have two copies of MLO running on your machine simultaneously, only one on the assistant's local machine. If you put a task in the wrong profile you can move it to the other but it is not easy or simple. Your shared profile and the assistant one are synched by wifi or cloud. If you want fully automatic synch, sorry, windows isnt there yet, but cloud will bring you much closer than wifi.

The other side of the tradeoff is largely as has been described. You establish a shared network drive. You use "synch to other data file" to synch across the lan, and you use "branch sync" to restrict the synch to the sharable branch. You have a single copy of MLO (unless for some reason you want more than one) and all of your tasks are ina single profile, you have a variety of simple tools for moving a task into or out of the sharable branch. You have to hit f9 when you want a synch. If you fail to hit f9 there will not be a synch.

[Christoph Zwerschke]

Am 27.08.2015 um 19:10 schrieb Dwight Arthur:
> On one side, you have two separate profiles

Note that "profile" here means "MLO file", not "sync profiles".

The word "profile" is a bit confusing in this context.

-- Chris

[Joel Azaria]

Thanks Dwight, Christoph.

I ended up sharing one branch to a separate file which her machine then syncs that file as well.  With the F9 syncing it kind of has a 90's feel to it - like I'm constantly saving a wordperfect document.  It works in so far as it functions and syncs but it's more than just a *little* cumbersome, esp. for the year 2015.

There are ways I could suggest to fix this but it seems the real way forward is for cloud sync to support syncing branches (which it presently does not.)  To be an actual solution however it also has to adopt push-based syncing (as soon as there's a change, it should be queued to push) and a more intelligent automatic record merge /conflict resolution.

This is an area that requires some solid attention and doesn't seem to be getting any. Either MLO is an end to end system or it's just a bunch of loosely related but in-cohesive parts. 

Cloud sync was pitched as a solver of problems.  So far it doesn't appear to have done much of that and MLO will not truly be an end to end system until it does.

Thanks for your advice guys.  Let's see how this works in practice over the next few weeks..

[Joel Azaria]

So, here's an update for ya:

Somehow or another the entire contents of my Inbox (not Inbox folder itself but everything under it including my entire speedbox structure) 'got' deleted.  Pretty sure my assistant isn't daft enough to pull that dumdum and you can bet your a$$ it wasnt' me.  Further insult to injury is that due to the constant F9 syncing she synced past the daily backups limit so can't recover from there.  I did manage to find it in a daily two days back (not sure why it was two but the previous day didn't have it*) but those two days held a LOT of changes and I'm finding it very difficult to isolate the changes in each file.  What I need is a way to merge the files and sus out duplicates.

So far my direction has been to export both files to mlo xml and open them in Beyond Compare.  At first glance this seems like it should be easy enough but the files are don't automatically align correctly (I guess due to the sheer volume of changes i.e moves/deletes) and trying to manually align the start points of blocks is proving not just time consuming but quite difficult as there are what appear to be duplications of lines or even whole xml nodes throughout the file making figuring out the actual block starts to align on a hair-pulling experience.

Please please please someone tell me there's a merge tool that does this.  Or at least a deduplication tool that will find exact matches... I can merge both files wholesale if there's a way to sus out the thousands of duplicates that will arise after.

So, MLO's 1990's sync logic strikes again.  For something with so much raw power and flexibility, how can there still be so many holes in it's foundational basic underpinnings?  Even as they announce a $25 price tag on the mobile apps (and still a license for each platform separately) to accompany a $60 desktop app but yet can't assure it won't eat data nor have the tools/facilities to repair such aggrievement when it happens is asinine.  I (and I'm sure many others) are glad to see MLO-A v2 is out and I know they are still working on it and adding features but it's been said and here is more proof:  the team cannot work on just one platform at a time.  MLO-A development cannot be to the detriment of the desktop or even the iToy branch.   Development on all three must happen in parallel.  Now that android has been refreshed to "match" the i branch they should be focusing on fixing bugs and missing foundations across the entire platform instead of wasting dev cycles with the cosmetic refresh they want to call MLO 5.   

Andrey, I hope you're listening.  Releasing MLO 5 and forcing users to pay an upgrade even as 4 is still full of holes will alienate a large core of your usership.  The cosmetics of 5 will not motivate anyone to upgrade and frankly I think it's proven out that from mlo-a that halting dev and bug fixes on a branch to favor a new major release did not garner you a lot of goodwill.  I'm urging you to consider this factor heavily.  You need the core users to evangelize and talk highly about MLO.  Everywhere you go on the interwebz that MLO is discussed, it's rarely if ever a glowing review.  It's always a tempered discussion of (I'm paraphrasing here:) "I tried it, I hated it, but I went back because it's the only thing so powerful.  But it's clunky and cluttered and has it's issues but if you need that power you'll have to learn to deal with it."   THAT my friend is NOT glowing endorsement.  That's a statement of pure compromise at best and a statement of defeat and surrender at worst.  This is NOT how MLO should be discussed.  This is NOT how mlo should be experienced.  This is NOT how you want to be known.

Now someone dear g-d please, tell me an easier way to merge/dedupe my .ml files!!

* From the sync logs I can see exactly date and time that the deletes happened, but unfortunately can't tell which side initiated the deletes nor how the deletes came to pass - ie was it the delete key or as a result of the conflict resolution dialog - so can't tell if one of us is responsible or if it was HAL that screwed up or just a glitch in The Matrix

[Lake Norman B2B Homes Boats]

Any updates to this? Merge files, sort, scan for dupes?  How about a confirmed EXPORT method? Run excels dup finder, and import clean?