Wi-fi sync between Android v2 and Windows - totally diferent?

[Wallace Gilbraith]

I got notification of Android v2 yesterday, and made sure all my tasks were safely in MLO Windows Desktop before I upgraded.
Wi-fi sync got all my desktop tasks safely onto Android, and through the day, first impressions of v2 have been favourable.
However - the wi-fi sync in v2 seems to work totally differently to that in v1.6.

In 2 years of use, my routine has been to set up a list of starred tasks each night, sync to android, work through them next day, and sync back to Windows in the evening, and repeat.
So long as I'm clear which platform has my active profile (task list) on, it's worked perfectly - Android overwrites Windows, I edit Windows for tomorrows list, Windows overwrites Android, I'm set for tomorrow.

Now with v2, it seems to do an actual 2-way sync, and I've discovered the Windows MLO generates a conflict report, as it thinks items on both sides have changed (actually only the Android items have changed).

Syncing from Android to Windows, recurring tasks I've checked off and un-starred on Android today were still showing on my starred list in Windows this evening. So I un-starred them all in Windows.
Syncing back from Windows to Android, those same tasks which I've checked off and un-starred during today, and which were un-starred in Windows, are now showing up on Android in my Starred list, with their next due dates and starred. I'm now un-starring them on Android too.

Can any of the beta testers, who have been using this for some time, offer any advice?
Maybe the advice is, pay for cloud sync. Or, stop trying to manage my list manually and get with the auto-sort programme.

Thanks in anticipation

Wol

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Wol. There actually is a change (possibly undocumented) in V2 that might be impacting you. On v1, if the local copy of a task had a change to one field (let's say the star) and the copy of the same task coming in from sync to android had a change to a different field (let's say due date) MLO/Android would look at your synch setting for "both sides changed item". The setting would either say to keep the local (phone) copy or the remote (sync) copy. Which ever way this setting pointed, that's which record would be kept and the other one would be discarded. If the same kind of conflict happened while synching on windows, you would see a conflict resolution screen, have a chance to look at the data from each side and pick one to be retained.

On v2, with the same task that has a new star in the local copy and a new due date in the synch copy, MLO/Android will build a new record with the star from the local copy and the date from the synch copy. The "both sides changed" setting is not used unless the two sides each make a change to the same field of the same record. For example, it you make changes to two different parts of the note of a single task, with one change on Android and one on Windows and no synch in between.

So, I suspect that you are experiencing a synch conflict that used to go unnoticed because MLO/Android was retaining the record from one side and throwing the other away.

The way that you described your process, you are making changes only to Windows, then you synch and switch to Android and later you synch and switch back to Windows. Should work perfectly. But I suspect that at some point you are getting changes to some tasks made on both sides without a synch in between. In other words your switch between Android and Windows and your synch may not be happening exactly at the same time.

Here's how you can isolate the problem. Whenever you synch, force the processing to happen on the Windows side. I have to admit that I don't know how to do that for a wifi synch but I'm assuming that you do know. This will make the conflict resolution follow Windows rules, which means that you will get a conflict resolution screen. You can open up a task in the conflict resolution screen to see a list of fields, flagging the fields where updates were found.

You can then tap the "details" icon (I think it's three dots) near the end of each task record and see the actual value of the field. So now you have a task that should have updates coming from the platform you are leaving but no changes coming from the platform you are going to. But it does have changes from the platform you are going to. So you can look at the changes and try to figure out why they are coming at you from the wrong platform.

[Wallace Gilbraith]

Thanks Dwight, for your explanation of how the v2 sync works - I wasn't expecting it to behave quite like that.

I'm not sure how I can sync only at the Windows end one time, or only at the Android end another time. The wifi sync synchronizes the two sides. Unlike cloud sync, there's nowhere 'in between' for either side to sync *to* before the changes go to the other side.

I'll have a play with it this evening

Wol


- sent from my phone - please excuse brevity -

- phone sends from gmail account, but please always mail me at ho...@gilbraith.co.uk -

---

From: Dwight Arthur <m...@dwightarthur.us>
Sent: 3 December 2015 03:37:18 GMT+00:00
To: MyLifeOrganized <mylifeo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [MLO] Re: Wi-fi sync between Android v2 and Windows - totally diferent?

[Wallace Gilbraith]

My Android v2 is running on a HTC One, with Android 5.0.2 and HTC Sense 6.
My on-screen keyboard has arrow keys - up down left right - to help position my cursor in a block of text. I use them a lot.
I'm finding they don't navigate correctly when I'm editing a task description in MLO v2.
Has anyone else found this? Should I report this as a bug?

Regards

[Wallace Gilbraith]

Oops - I'll start a new thread for that one about the arrow keys
Wol

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi, Wol.  What you say about wifi synch makes sense and I  admit to knowing nothing about it. But logic would suggest that when there is a conflict between the two sides,  you can have both side ready and able to decide how to resolve the conflict but for each single conflicted item only one side can make the actual decision.  When the conflict resolution algorithm is different on the two sides  (as it is now) the question of which side decides can make a big difference.

I  suspect that each sync, whether manually or automatically initiated, is initiated drom one side with the other side responding. I would be willing to guess that the aide which initiates the sync gets to do the conflict resolution. You can try playing with initiating syncs from wither aide; I suspect that the trick is going to be getting a manual sync initiated before either side runs an automated sync ahead of you.

One other suggestion is this: whenever you are about to touch one of your devices after touching the other, no matter how trivial your interaction with each device, initiate a synch before updating any tasks.
-Dwight
MLO Betazoid on Android SGN4

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MyLifeOrganized" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mylifeorganiz...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to mylifeo...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mylifeorganized.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mylifeorganized/C31B833C-6746-4FBD-8731-473A6190C729%40gilbraith.co.uk.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Wol Gilbraith]

Wi-fi sync is covered in the User Guide, section 9.2.4, available from http://www.mylifeorganized.net/downloads/files/MyLifeOrganized%20User's%20Guide.pdf.

That refers, in turn, to the online guide at http://www.mylifeorganized.net/support/Wi-Fi-synchronization-setup/.

This documentation covers how to make it work, but says not a lot about how it works.

There’s not much scope for setting it up to go wrong – if you don’t follow the steps described, it just won’t happen.

The sync is initiated from the Android side, and after that, everything happens automatically. The conflict report I came across appeared in Windows.

But whatever it is that happens, syncing from Android v2 behaves quite differently from how it did from v1.6.14 (I think that was the version number).

Is there any v2 beta tester on the forum here who gave feedback to the development of the wi-fi sync, and who can say how it’s best to use it?

Regards

Wol

 

[Wol Gilbraith]

I see we're now up to v2.0.9. I wonder what's been tweaked.
In Android v2, Settings > Synchronization > WiFi, there's a note saying 'Pro version is required', so today I paid to upgrade my license, before syncing, just in case that made a difference. 
Syncing generates the same problems, which I now attribute to the Star properties. It's Starred items that are handled erroneously.
Last night on Windows I'd Starred various Recurring and one-off Tasks for working on today. During the day, on Android, I'd completed and un-Starred most of them, and un-Starred any that I didn't manage, before syncing an empty Stared View back to Windows. The evening routine on Windows is, anything I didn't do today gets a new Due Date, and gets Starred if I plan to do it tomorrow. Then re-sync to Android, so I've got tomorrow's list in my hand.
It takes me an extra few minutes, after syncing, to check through and un-Star the tasks that aren't due for working on tomorrow; it's a nuisance but I could probably live with it.
I've today contributed a Review on Google Play, and applied for the free 30-day cloud sync service - I'll pilot that on a test profile when I get access.
I'm still interested to hear from anyone who was involved in beta-testing the wi-fi sync, and get their take on how best to use it.
Regards
Wol