Mac Plugin (build 308)

[haukemueller]

Hi,

the new plaxo runs quite well, except some issues already noted in this forum. I've some issues though.

1) From time to time the SyncService eats up 99% cpu, all I can do is kill the process. This just happens when I enter a new entry in iCal, the entry is then not synched to plaxo.

2) The title "Information" in the ab plugin breaks before the n, so it reads:

INFORMATIO
N

3) Is MSN synching still disabled? On first synch it created empty ab entries, which I deleted, only to found out all my msn contacts are gone now (in the MSN application)

4) how is calender sharing working? I shared one of my calendar, but I couldn't subscribe it form my wifes account nor from my iCal application.

5) and I'm missing the "request update" feature from either the ab or the email plugin.

cheers,
hauke

[dcolace]

Hi,

the new plaxo runs quite well, except some issues already noted in this forum. I've some issues though.

1) From time to time the SyncService eats up 99% cpu, all I can do is kill the process. This just happens when I enter a new entry in iCal, the entry is then not synched to plaxo.

2) The title "Information" in the ab plugin breaks before the n, so it reads:

INFORMATIO
N

3) Is MSN synching still disabled? On first synch it created empty ab entries, which I deleted, only to found out all my msn contacts are gone now (in the MSN application)

4) how is calender sharing working? I shared one of my calendar, but I couldn't subscribe it form my wifes account nor from my iCal application.

5) and I'm missing the "request update" feature from either the ab or the email plugin.

cheers,
hauke

Hi Hauke!

Glad to hear that things are generally working for you. I'll try to address the issues you've raised as best I can.

1) This used to happen to me, but then again I used to have a lot more items on my calendar so I haven't been stressing it lately. I don't know if you're syncing with any other software on your Mac (e.g. Microsoft Entourage, etc) but it might be worthwhile resetting the Sync Services database, especially if you've had to force quit it a few times. You can reset the Sync Services core data by opening the iSync application's preferences and then clicking the Reset Sync History button. This may or may not help but when Sync Services is grinding away for a long time trying to resolve conflicts or whatever, you know it can't be in a good state. Do you have a rough idea of how many calendars and events you have stored in iCal?

2) Yep..we're working to resolve the layout issues. Well get this one soon.

3) I'm not sure which MSN application you're referring to, but essential contact sync with MSN appears to be On and working, at least in my case, though my address book is relatively small at only 150 records. If you have a large address book, it might influence the sync. Could you let us know about how many contacts you have to sync to MSN?

4) I'll have to check with our web team to inquire about the iCal sharing. I know we had an issue early on about not being able to subscribe to Plaxo shared calendars but I thought that issue was resolved. I'll try to get more info on this for you.

5) Yes, the "Request Update" button has been removed. We're working to replace it with an improved feature. Sorry about the loss. I feel it too!

Please let us know if there is any abatement of the Sync Services CPU usage or if you have any concerns that I might not have addressed.

Thanks!
-Drew

[haukemueller]

Hi Drew,

ok I got the syncing problem solved. Resetting didn't work. I'll then deleted the ~/Application Support/SyncServices, rebooted and then after a looong time with again a very high cpu usage the syncservices did finish. I'll have a couple of double entries in my ical again. But thats no problem.

Regarding the MSN. I have a WindowsLive account and a couple of contacts with a msn messenger too (5 or 6). Two weeks ago I set up the sync to MSN, then I got 5 or 6 empty contacts in my addressbook. I deleted the empty contacts, cause they held no information at all, but on next sync my msn contacts had vanished in my msn messenger. Perhaps this was an issue at that time (i did the sync the day before you disabled the google sync point). I have restored 3 msn contacts in msn recently and msn syncing does not delete them. BTW, what data is actually synced between plaxo and the msn sync point?

Another thing came to my mind, I desperatly miss the feature to see the differences of a contact in my ab to the original provided data of that contact. As well as the ability to reset to that data. This feature is available in the Outlook plugin of plaxo.Are there plans to integrate in the mac version?

Otherwise I'm really pleased with plaxo 3.0 so far. I hope the speed issues (mac plugin as well as the website) will be solved though.

cheers
hauke

[dcolace]

Hi Drew,

ok I got the syncing problem solved. Resetting didn't work. I'll then deleted the ~/Application Support/SyncServices, rebooted and then after a looong time with again a very high cpu usage the syncservices did finish. I'll have a couple of double entries in my ical again. But thats no problem.

Regarding the MSN. I have a WindowsLive account and a couple of contacts with a msn messenger too (5 or 6). Two weeks ago I set up the sync to MSN, then I got 5 or 6 empty contacts in my addressbook. I deleted the empty contacts, cause they held no information at all, but on next sync my msn contacts had vanished in my msn messenger. Perhaps this was an issue at that time (i did the sync the day before you disabled the google sync point). I have restored 3 msn contacts in msn recently and msn syncing does not delete them. BTW, what data is actually synced between plaxo and the msn sync point?

Another thing came to my mind, I desperatly miss the feature to see the differences of a contact in my ab to the original provided data of that contact. As well as the ability to reset to that data. This feature is available in the Outlook plugin of plaxo.Are there plans to integrate in the mac version?

Otherwise I'm really pleased with plaxo 3.0 so far. I hope the speed issues (mac plugin as well as the website) will be solved though.

cheers
hauke

In checking with my colleagues, I found that there are(were) a couple of known issues with MSN sync. The issue of syncing a blank contact to Plaxo from MSN appears to be resolved for our coming update. I believe this is only happening when the contacts record on MSN does not contain any data in the fields that we sync so the work around would be to add at least some cursory information to your MSN records such as your contact's name. But again, this problem should be resolved when we release our next update, coming soon.

We don't have any immediate plans to provide an ability to see a contact's natural information (if you've made your own changes to their record) but it is a good suggestion that I'll log as an enhancement request so we can consider it for future work.

Please let us know if your system responds better to calendar changes now that you've done a full reset of the sync system.

-Drew

[RickyB]

I'm having the same problem with SyncServices hitting 99% CPU and staying there. It's definitely been a problem with the latest version of the Mac Client. I can wait for a fix, but I need to know if it will affect my data (for duplicates, etc.) if I uninstall this version and reinstall the 2.0 version so that I can still sync my Address Book. Or should I just wait for the next Mac Client?

[RickyB]

I'm having another problem as well. It seems as though build 308 of Plaxo is interfering with Missing Sync. I've been having difficulty syncing with my PDA (Axim X51v) since I installed the latest version of Plaxo. I recently uninstalled Plaxo as a test and after resetting my sync history could sync fine with Missing Sync. I then reinstalled Plaxo and ran into the same problems. Are you aware of this issue?

[haukemueller]

Please let us know if your system responds better to calendar changes now that you've done a full reset of the sync system.

-Drew

No the reset did not help.

The high cpu load of the SyncService was caused by a massive amount of duplicates (all-day-events) that got more and more. I didn't noticed them at first, cause there were back at december 2004. I had one all-day-event almost 2000times duplicated. This was too much for the SyncService apparently. :-)
Took me a while to got rid of them, cause iCal has the nasty habit to crash (in week and month view) when you click on one of those events..

I read in another post, that those all-day-events are troublesome. So I will wait for the next release and watch my all-dayers in the meantime. But I believe there were caused by the first beta build and some calender trouble I had at that time.

I noticed one missing feature for the webinterface though: a refresh data button.

[dcolace]

No the reset did not help.

The high cpu load of the SyncService was caused by a massive amount of duplicates (all-day-events) that got more and more. I didn't noticed them at first, cause there were back at december 2004. I had one all-day-event almost 2000times duplicated. This was too much for the SyncService apparently. :-)
Took me a while to got rid of them, cause iCal has the nasty habit to crash (in week and month view) when you click on one of those events..

I read in another post, that those all-day-events are troublesome. So I will wait for the next release and watch my all-dayers in the meantime. But I believe there were caused by the first beta build and some calender trouble I had at that time.

I noticed one missing feature for the webinterface though: a refresh data button.

Hauke-

Thanks for the follow-up. Yes, a lot of sync conflicts will keep SyncServices working away, loading up your CPU. Duplicates and conflicts were most prevalent in the first preview release as you mentioned. It appears that our one last problem case is with handling all-day events correctly; you've noted correctly that we're working on the problem and should have it resolved in the next 1 to 2 releases.

Regarding data refresh on Plaxo Online, currently the data is refreshing every couple of minutes or so, though you certainly can force a refresh by reloading the page or logging out and back in again (both ugly solutions). We will eventually be implementing an automatic data update solution so that manual refreshes will not be necessary.

-Drew