iPhone TODO+SYNC bugs/wishes

[flixfe]

Hi guys,

I bought "Todo+Sync" via the App Store and have to say the look and feel is great! Big kudos to the devs.

Of course I have some feedback ...

- Bug: Subtasks created on my server (using Horde 3.3.1 [1]) appear as stand-alone tasks on the iPhone.

- Bug: Subtasks created on the iPhone appear as stand-alone task on the server. Also, the parent task appears twice then on the server.

- Wish: Optional reminders for alarms with a due date. Wouldn't it be great if your iPhone would remind you of tasks which are due now? The due date is already in the task. Don't know if Apple allows that kind of functionality (no background apps ...), but it would be REALLY useful.

- Wish: Would it be possible to also sync notes? I'm pretty sure the Horde Framework for example supports notes via SyncML.

- Performance: An option to not sync completed tasks. I for example have ~2k tasks on the my server with >99,9% of them completed. When I sync the iPhone it process all of them every time (albeit at an impressive speed!). In my case that's unneeded and should be possible to turn off.

Anything I can do to help you debug the two bugs? I'm also the admin of the Horde server, so can trace anything you guys need.

The current feature-set the app is well worth the 11 EURs ... now if we had the notes and the calendar ....

Regards,

Felix

[1] http://www.horde.org

[violet]

Hi Felix,

I am trying to discover if it is possible to use TODO+SYNC with multiple users. There is no info about this that I can find on the synthesis.ch website or video or faq about the product. But they are so into syncing that it seems it must be possible.

Do you know?

Also, my webhost already includes horde automatically installed for my websites. I don't use it, but I'm wondering would it be possible to use it for the syncing and to set it up for multiuser?

FYI I am mostly interested in the todo part. All users have iphones and use the normal mac sync for calendar and addresses. We don't need a new method to sync those.

Thanks so much!

Violet

[glue]

I recently installed Todo+Cal on my iPod touch 2G (FW Version 2.2).

I'm very glad you came up with this solution for the Calender-syncML-Problem and your application is great - in general. I've noticed the following issues I would account for as bugs:

Syncing with my own Horde 3.2.2-Server, at first the Client got stuck with the message "waiting". I restartet the (slow-)sync several times. Now it's working allright. No idea what caused this.

I have about 2300 events in my calendar. All the calendar views need several seconds to become functional after starting the application. Would be nice if this "boot-time" could be a little bit shorter and the "event-overview" would not studder so much when I'm scrolling.

But the main problem I have is, that the events-sync synchronizes only up to "today" when doing a slow sync. New/Updated events added on the Server after the initial slow-sync are synced allright, but no event having been there before ever appeares on the iPhone. Since the Palm-Version of the syncML-Client works just fine, I assume there is something wrong with the iPod-Version.

Thank you for considering my observations.

[luz]

I bought "Todo+Sync" via the App Store and have to say the look and feel is great! Big kudos to the devs.

Thanks for the feedback!

- Bug: Subtasks created on my server (using Horde 3.3.1 [1]) appear as stand-alone tasks on the iPhone.
- Bug: Subtasks created on the iPhone appear as stand-alone task on the server. Also, the parent task appears twice then on the server.

Most probably, Horde does not support the subtask relation in the synced items. vCalendar defines a RELATED-TO property for representing parent/child relationships, and Todo+Cal+Sync fully supports this.
Without seeing some logs (Can you send some? Just switch on "log next sync" under "server settings" and let the phone send the logs to us after the sync), I can't be absolutely sure, but I guess this is something for the Horde wish list...

- Wish: Optional reminders for alarms with a due date. Wouldn't it be great if your iPhone would remind you of tasks which are due now? The due date is already in the task. Don't know if Apple allows that kind of functionality (no background apps ...), but it would be REALLY useful.

They do NOT allow it at that time :-(

- Wish: Would it be possible to also sync notes? I'm pretty sure the Horde Framework for example supports notes via SyncML.

The built-in notes of the iPhone cannot be synced (Apple does not give us access to them). So it would require to integrate our own note implementation into the app. We'll see...

- Performance: An option to not sync completed tasks. I for example have ~2k tasks on the my server with >99,9% of them completed. When I sync the iPhone it process all of them every time (albeit at an impressive speed!). In my case that's unneeded and should be possible to turn off.

That would be a server feature. There are server engines (ours for example ) that support so-called filtering for that.

Another related note: The Todo app is designed such that if you switch it to "don't show completed", it will actually not load the completed todos, and thus a lot of completed todos will not affect performance. Of course, you'll still need a bit of space for the DB and slow syncs take long time. But if the server can't do filtering, this would be an option.

[luz]

I have about 2300 events in my calendar. All the calendar views need several seconds to become functional after starting the application. Would be nice if this "boot-time" could be a little bit shorter and the "event-overview" would not studder so much when I'm scrolling.

We are working to optimize the calendar database such that its performance gets less dependent on the total number of events.
But still, generally it is a good idea to restrict the number of events synchronized to mobiles to what is really needed to be there, usually by defining a time window (like 90 days before and 90 days after today). However, Todo+Cal+Sync cannot do that itself, as it needs server support. Unfortunately not all servers support this yet. I'm not sure about Horde.

But the main problem I have is, that the events-sync synchronizes only up to "today" when doing a slow sync. New/Updated events added on the Server after the initial slow-sync are synced allright, but no event having been there before ever appeares on the iPhone. Since the Palm-Version of the syncML-Client works just fine, I assume there is something wrong with the iPod-Version.

This definitely must be a server-side strategy or bug, because in SyncML the client has no control over what the server does or doesn't send. The only thing the client can do is requesting filtering (like with the "only x days before and y days after today option), but as said above not all servers support that.

Note that while originating from the same SyncML engine, Todo+Cal+Sync still different from the PalmOS version, so it might well be the iPhone version is treated differently by the server).

Bottom line: That's something the horde folks should look at (in the logs) first - of course if they have any question or think our client is misbehaving, they can contact us directly (we have sorted out issues in cooperation with them already in the past).

[flixfe]

Hey Luz,

I'm glad to read your feedback!

Originally Posted by luz

Thanks for the feedback!
Most probably, Horde does not support the subtask relation in the synced items. vCalendar defines a RELATED-TO property for representing parent/child relationships, and Todo+Cal+Sync fully supports this.
Without seeing some logs (Can you send some? Just switch on "log next sync" under "server settings" and let the phone send the logs to us after the sync), I can't be absolutely sure, but I guess this is something for the Horde wish list...

I've sent the log of a sync. Before syncing, I created three tasks on the server:
TEST_PARENT
TEST_CHILD1
TEST_CHILD2

The latter two are - in horde - child tasks of the TEST_PARENT task. Lemme know if you need anything else to pinpoint the problem.

Also, the new calendar app is well done. But there are two usability issues:

1. I prefer to (only) use the week-view of the calendar. It is the right-most - i.e. you get there by "wishing" the screen to the left 3 times. That is slow and painful to do on every app start. I think the first/default view should be configurable
2. The week view defaults to display the earliest event in my calendar - which is years back. So I have to tip the "now" button on the bottom left every time. Would not "now" be a better default after the app started up?

[luz]

Sorry it took me a while to have a look at your logs...

I've sent the log of a sync. Before syncing, I created three tasks on the server:
TEST_PARENT
TEST_CHILD1
TEST_CHILD2

The latter two are - in horde - child tasks of the TEST_PARENT task. Lemme know if you need anything else to pinpoint the problem.

It seems that the server does not send any UID, which is needed to relate one item to another. The following shows in black what the server sends, and I added in red what it should send:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//The Horde Project//Nag H3 (2.3.1)//EN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTODO
UID:<here the server should put an UID>
SUMMARY:TEST_PARENT
DESCRIPTION:description of parent task
PRIORITY:2
STATUS:NEEDS-ACTION
CREATED:20090120T151251Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090120T151251Z
END:VTODO
END:VCALENDAR

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//The Horde Project//Nag H3 (2.3.1)//EN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTODO
UID:<here the server should put an UID>
SUMMARY:TEST_CHILD1
DESCRIPTION:desc of child task #1
PRIORITY:2
RELATED-TO:<here we would need the UID of the parent>
STATUS:NEEDS-ACTION
CREATED:20090120T151308Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090120T151308Z
END:VTODO
END:VCALENDAR

As the server includes the RELATED-TO, but with no value, this very much looks like a server bug to me, which for some reason causes the UID to be omitted.

I prefer to (only) use the week-view of the calendar. It is the right-most - i.e. you get there by "wishing" the screen to the left 3 times. That is slow and painful to do on every app start. I think the first/default view should be configurable

The application remembers the last view you had open, so if you close it and re-open it, you'll be on the same view as before.
We also plan to make the order of views configurable in a future version (as we might add more views)

The week view defaults to display the earliest event in my calendar - which is years back. So I have to tip the "now" button on the bottom left every time. Would not "now" be a better default after the app started up?

It should have been that way, but there was a bug in 1.5. With 1.6 it should work.

[flixfe]

Luz, thanks for the great analysis. I've opened a feature request over hat horde.org:

http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/7989

[flixfe]

Originally Posted by luz

The application remembers the last view you had open, so if you close it and re-open it, you'll be on the same view as before.

OK, but that does not cover the use-case of switching between task view and your favourite calendar view.

Originally Posted by luz

We also plan to make the order of views configurable in a future version (as we might add more views)

That will be excellent

[flixfe]

Originally Posted by luz

It seems that the server does not send any UID, which is needed to relate one item to another. The following shows in black what the server sends, and I added in red what it should send:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//The Horde Project//Nag H3 (2.3.1)//EN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTODO
UID:<here the server should put an UID>
SUMMARY:TEST_PARENT
DESCRIPTION:description of parent task
PRIORITY:2
STATUS:NEEDS-ACTION
CREATED:20090120T151251Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090120T151251Z
END:VTODO
END:VCALENDAR

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//The Horde Project//Nag H3 (2.3.1)//EN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VTODO
UID:<here the server should put an UID>
SUMMARY:TEST_CHILD1
DESCRIPTION:desc of child task #1
PRIORITY:2
RELATED-TO:<here we would need the UID of the parent>
STATUS:NEEDS-ACTION
CREATED:20090120T151308Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20090120T151308Z
END:VTODO
END:VCALENDAR

As the server includes the RELATED-TO, but with no value, this very much looks like a server bug to me, which for some reason causes the UID to be omitted.

Hi Luz,

I've brought this topic up at the horde bugtracker and they say they deliberately strip out UID and RELATED-TO as a workaround. Can you please have a look at: http://bugs.horde.org/ticket/7989#c5

I'm not sure how to proceed to get nested TODOs working. I think it is a very important feature to use the iPhone app for real work.