[Bug 10730] item shows pending changes even when there are no local
changes
https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10730
Several of us sharing the Office Calendar have been seeing 'false
positive' conflicts that are essentially a result of poor
coordination between sharing and email syncing.
The best illustration of this is the invitation Philippe recently
sent out for tomorrow morning's 'Desktop build/release/process'
meeting from 10-12PM.
Philippe created the event on the Office Calendar and sent out an
invitation. Everyone received that invitation via email and sharing.
Then Philippe edited and updated the event. Here's where it starts to
get interesting.
1. Philippe sends the invite. It goes out over email.
2. However, sharing auto-sync isn't schedule for another while.
3. Meanwhile Office Calendar subscribers receive Philippe's update
via email (but not sharing because Philippe's Chandler Desktop hasn't
actually pushed his changes to the server yet) and boom, Philippe's
edits are considered conflicts and quarantined as pending changes
even though no one else has touched the event except for him. (There
are later conflicts with Reid, but that's not relevant to our story
at this time.)
Why did this happen? Well, unlike sharing changes, email updates do
*not* carry with them a snapshot of the item *before* it was changed.
This means that subscribers receiving Philippe's update via email
have no way of knowing that Philippe actually edited the *latest*
version of the event, the same version they have in their Chandlers.
All they know is that Philippe's email update is *different* from
what they have and so to be safe, the changes are flagged as conflicts.
Now, once Philippe's Chandler *does* sync with the server and
subscribers sync as well, all should be well. The subscribers'
Chandler clients should figure out that Philippe had indeed edited
the 'right' version of the event and his changes should be applied.
Currently, this doesn't work and Morgen already has a bug logged to
track this issue. https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?
id=10877
However, even if/when we fix this issue, given that auto-sync only
happens once an hour, there will still be plenty of time for users to
get confused over false-positive conflicts.
What are ways we can ameliorate the situation?
1. Carefully synchronize email and sharing sync? Whenever an user
sends a shared item via email, sync it via sharing as well. Whenever
an user receives a shared item via email, sync it via sharing first.
2. Capture and send the 'last synced version' of an item when sending
it out via email so that Chandler Desktop recipients can tell if the
sender/updater edited the same version of the item they have.
Any other related scenarios? Any other options for addressing this
issue? Has anyone else noticed this behavior?
Mimi
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