There are quite a few blog comments here suggesting that contact sync just isn't working at present. As far as we are aware contact sync is working normally. We can sync contacts on test devices, add contacts on each end and everything seems ok. There are situations in which the iPhone will delete all its contacts and then re-fetch the contact list from our service. If for some reason it can't contact the service at that point then the device has an empty contact list. It's possible that this event has been happening more often than normal, or that there's some reason why the re-fetch isn't working. We'd expect devices to catch up again and retain their contact list.
Update: if you have no contact sync (or indeed no calendar sync) please send a message to support@nuevasync.com with subject 'I have no contacts (or calendar)' and include your Nuevasync username and the number of contacts in your list if you know that. There may be some account-specific problem and we'd like to investigate some affected accounts. Thanks.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
iPhone/iPod Default Calendar
We're not yet up to date on the web site with all the tips and tricks for the iPhone multiple calendar feature. Here's one useful thing: for reasons not yet clear the iPhone sometimes picks a 'default calendar' seemingly at random. This can be annoying because when new events are created on the device they are assigned to the default calendar unless another one is explicitly selected. We intend the default to be your Google main calendar but this doesn't seem to always be the case. Until we get this resolved, it will be necessary to change the default calendar after the initial sync. This can be done in the settings page, under 'Mail, Contacts, Calendar...', scroll down 'till you see 'Default Calendar'.
Friday, January 16, 2009
iPhone Multiple Calendar Support Fully Deployed
All existing users now have multiple calendar support enabled. The next time your device syncs it should pick up colored calendars. No user intervention is required. Sync status logging is still turned off so the sync status page will not display correct information yet. It might say that your sync has an error when in fact it succeeded.
Service Status
The servers weren't quite able to keep up with their workload during the busy part of the day Thursday but are operating normally now. As load rises on Friday morning it is possible that service will degrade again. We are working on two fronts to address our overload problems: 1) deploying additional server capacity and 2) making a performance optimization in the software. One or both of these measures will be introduced on Friday to address our increased load.
The heavy traffic over the last few days is due to two things. First the transition to multiple calendars generates more work for the servers. Second, we have three times as many new users signing up every day than we did last week.
The status on the transition to multiple calendars is as follows: about half our users have had the feature enabled. Roughly 75% of their devices have made the transition. When we're sure that most of the eligible devices have transitioned and the current performance and capacity issues have been addressed, the remaining users will then be multical-enabled.
The web page that reports sync status and the elapsed time since the last successful sync will display incorrect information at present. This is because the recording of the status and error data has been temporarily disabled to reduce disk traffic (and improve overall reliability).
The heavy traffic over the last few days is due to two things. First the transition to multiple calendars generates more work for the servers. Second, we have three times as many new users signing up every day than we did last week.
The status on the transition to multiple calendars is as follows: about half our users have had the feature enabled. Roughly 75% of their devices have made the transition. When we're sure that most of the eligible devices have transitioned and the current performance and capacity issues have been addressed, the remaining users will then be multical-enabled.
The web page that reports sync status and the elapsed time since the last successful sync will display incorrect information at present. This is because the recording of the status and error data has been temporarily disabled to reduce disk traffic (and improve overall reliability).
Thursday, January 15, 2009
iPhone Calendar Color Selection
The mystery of the iPhone calendar coloring is...well...still a mystery to us. At present the situation is this : the iPhone picks the colors. We don't yet know how to send it color information. If we learn how to do that (assuming it's possible) then we will allow users to pick the colors. Google does allow users to select colors, and assuming a stable calendar/color assignment on the device, it is usually possible to modify your Google colors so they match. However, sometimes the iPhone randomly changes the colors. There is also a strange black on yellow color that can show up, and in extreme cases all the calendars get that color. We suspect that it has some deep meaning (perhaps related to the 18th century practice of flying a yellow flag on a ship to indicate the presence of fever?). The yellow plague and the random color reassignment can usually be fixed by clicking the link 'Folder list on the device does not match? Reset it. ' on the calendar setup page.
Chinese, Japanese Calendar Names
Several users reported that in the calendar selection page, if the calendar name is a multibyte string, it was displayed as ???? characters. This bug has been fixed and those calendars should be readable now.
Service Status and Vanishing Contacts
After a marathon debugging session we found and fixed two performance-related bugs in the service last night. One had led to more disk I/O being done when a device performed a re-sync with contacts enabled. The data we store was being re-written when it hadn't really changed. We had many devices re-syncing yesterday when they converted to multiple calendars. This led to disk saturation and hence service slowness. Slow service leads to increased load because some devices time out and trigger yet more re-syncing. The second problem was a memory leak that became worse with the increased load, eventually leading to the service bogging down completely which triggers an automated re-start. Both these bugs were fixed late last night.
The worst aspect of this incident was that Apple devices interacted in an unfortunate way with the degraded service: if the device wasn't able to sync a change made on its end it could trigger an out of sync condition in the service. This is handled on the iPhone by deleting all the existing data, then re-fetching new data from the service. Normally this would happen in a few seconds but yesterday the service wasn't always responding to the re-fetch and as a result the device ended up empty until it was able to successfully re-sync.
For us this is a worse situation than if the service were completely down because in that case you'd still have all your data on the phone. Therefore we modified the service code last night to allow us to globally block these out of sync triggers on a temporary basis. Hence we can guarantee that nobody will have their contacts vanish all of a sudden. The downside to this is that nothing will sync for the affected devices either. This safety mode was enabled last night. It will be turned off once we're sure service is stable this morning (things look good at present).
All the devices that got into the half-synced state where contacts and calendar events were 'vanished' should have picked up sync again and fetched new data.
We do have plenty of servers and network bandwidth available.
Update : people have asked 'what can I do' to get syncing again. The answer is : nothing. Sync should pick up again naturally. The safety mode has been turned off now, so unless there are further service load problems everyone should see normal service return soon.
The worst aspect of this incident was that Apple devices interacted in an unfortunate way with the degraded service: if the device wasn't able to sync a change made on its end it could trigger an out of sync condition in the service. This is handled on the iPhone by deleting all the existing data, then re-fetching new data from the service. Normally this would happen in a few seconds but yesterday the service wasn't always responding to the re-fetch and as a result the device ended up empty until it was able to successfully re-sync.
For us this is a worse situation than if the service were completely down because in that case you'd still have all your data on the phone. Therefore we modified the service code last night to allow us to globally block these out of sync triggers on a temporary basis. Hence we can guarantee that nobody will have their contacts vanish all of a sudden. The downside to this is that nothing will sync for the affected devices either. This safety mode was enabled last night. It will be turned off once we're sure service is stable this morning (things look good at present).
All the devices that got into the half-synced state where contacts and calendar events were 'vanished' should have picked up sync again and fetched new data.
We do have plenty of servers and network bandwidth available.
Update : people have asked 'what can I do' to get syncing again. The answer is : nothing. Sync should pick up again naturally. The safety mode has been turned off now, so unless there are further service load problems everyone should see normal service return soon.
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