Is 2 way sync really a sync?

ClearwaterUser said 2 years, 2 months ago:

I have users who only want to work in Outlook, and not the online group calendar. Two of them want to be able to add events to a calendar, again, using Outlook. However, the options in Desktop Calendar Tools indicate that you have to choose which calendar will be overwritten on a 2 way sync, which means that it isn’t really a sync at all, just an overwrite.

My concern is that if I have both User A and User B set to have their Outlook overwrite the Online calendar, then when User A creates an entry in Outlook and it sends it to the online calendar, User B will never see it, since he will also be set to have his Outlook overwrite the Online, therefore it will never get the entry from User A.

Is this correct, and if so, are there any work arounds?

Thanks

christianh said 2 years, 2 months ago:

@ClearwaterUser

To synchronize the Calendar, you actually have the option to select both synchronization arrows so that it goes both ways. Here’s more on the synchronization:

http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/3804

–Christian

ClearwaterUser said 2 years, 2 months ago:

Thanks for your reply. I do understand about the two arrows, but again, if you have to choose which calendar is going to overwrite the other, as I believe you are required to do, then that is not syncing. A true sync should be based on the newest entry, not on one calendar simply overwriting the other.

chrisg said 2 years, 2 months ago:

@ClearwaterUser,

If you feel that the sync features of your Calendar account are not properly working, I would advise contacting our Live Support so we can investigate this matter within your account.

Our Live Support Department is available 24/7 and can be reached at:

http://support.godaddy.com/support

Christopher G.

ClearwaterUser said 2 years, 1 month ago:

Chrisg, thanks for taking the time to reply. Unfortunately, either I did not explain the situation properly, or perhaps people are not reading the entire post. Nowhere did I say that I felt it was not working properly. I am asking, how does it work? Or more to the point, does it work like a true syncing program, for example, Blackberry Desktop?

I presented a specific scenario, and am merely looking for anyone who can provide a specific answer.

While the people at Live Support have always been extremely helpful, I have found that OGC is not the most well known program at Go Daddy, and I was hoping that someone might have real world first hand experience with this aspect of it.

Nate D said 2 years, 1 month ago:

Good question!

If Mr. A and Mr. B both update different files.

It appears that if Mr. A updates all would be good, but if Mr. B then tries to sync then they would choose to either overwrite Mr. A’s contributions on the upload or his own on the download?

ClearwaterUser said 2 years, 1 month ago:

Nate D, you bring up a good point. I did not consider the possibility of Mr. B’s update overwriting Mr. A’s entries and effectively erasing them. I only thought about Mr. B adding new items which Mr. A would never see in Outlook since it does not appear to be a true sync.

chrisar said 2 years ago:

@ClearwaterUser

The Calendar SyncTool does synchronize data. During the
synchronization process, the tool tracks the unique id (an id that is unique to the system which created the event) of each event that is transferred to determine if the event should be created/updated/removed from the target calendar. This id tracking occurs both from an Outlook and Calendar perspective.

There could be a use case where an event is overwritten/removed if User A modifies/deletes an event which was created by the User B. However, this is the expected behavior of a shared calendar.

ClearwaterUser said 2 years ago:

chrisar, thanks for the update. If I could get you to clarify one thing for me: given the way you have explained the process, what is the reason for making users choose between overwriting the online calendar or overwriting Outlook? What function does that provide?

chrisar said 2 years ago:

ClearwaterUser

Some users want to use Calendar (or Outlook) as their “master” calendar. The directional synchronization allows these users to replicate their data to another calendar product.

The most common use for this scenario is a user who utilizes Outlook to manage/schedule personal events but wants to see other events that are only stored in Calendar (e.g. business events managed in Calendar). With a one-way sync, Outlook can contain one calendar with personal data, another calendar with business data.