Version 12 Worth It? (calendar sync?)

[northwestmsp]

Anyone using Version 12 who also had 11 and found it worth the upgrade?

Like everyone else, the calendar sync is a nightmare for us but this weird "run this exe on logon" instead of just a server-side service seems more like a bad duct tape job than an actual solution to our current woes-- but maybe you all have experienced something more positive?

I guess lastly, any other improvements worth the update anyways, or should I just have the team run on the (mostly) stable v11 until the next iteration?

[Support Team]

Version 12 is very stable and we recommend upgrading.

As for the Outlook Sync Utility - we have received great feedback on this and it offers different advantages beyond it being an external sync utility (that can be included in the log in script). For example it recognizes running backups automatically, knows how to stop syncing during a backup and how to resume syncing once the backup is complete.

On a side note, we heard from a company that installed the utility as a service and have it sync in the background fully automatically. This mode is not officially supported by us but it has been working great for them for several months already. To implement this they've been using NSSM (https://nssm.cc/).

Hope this helps!

[sapsford]

We had the new sync tool duplicate our accounts 3 times this week

some 10,000 accounts which had to be deleted 1 by 1

so have had to stop using it until we can sort out why the mass duplicates keep happening

we have turned off 2 way sync with contacts as well which is probably smarter anyway

[Support Team]

Ouch, duplicate records are a real pain :-(

For what it worth, when it comes to the utility per-se - it uses the same logic as the sync in the Windows client. This means that it is not the utility that caused the duplicate records and they would have been created even when syncing from the Windows app directly. Duplicates might happen when the internal record IDs of the appointments in Outlook/Exchange changes or when another app changes/deletes the meta data stored for each such appointment record (it points to the parallel record in RangerMSP). For example, if you export your calendar and import it into a new one, while visually it may look the same, all records are new in Outlook/Exchange, have different IDs and will not include the meta data required for RangerMSP to sync. A similar case would be creating a new calendar folder a copying the appointments there (in Outlook) instead of syncing the data directly from RangerMSP.

In other words - the utility itself cannot be the cause for duplicates on its own.

Hope this helps!

[nattivillin]

We cant get the new calendar sync to work at all. We stopped using it as well.

[northwestmsp]

Is anyone actually using the Calendar Sync with ANY success? Or should we just admit defeat and admit that Commit will never get native Exchange calendar sync working?

[Support Team]

The utility is not meant to be an Exchange direct/background sync in any way.
It was introduced to enhance what had been supported until it got released, and it definitely offers several advantages over the in-app sync feature.
There are plenty of users using it successfully and it offers them benefits that the built-in sync does not offer.
Also, as mentioned using it with NSSM (https://nssm.cc/) has done magic and got it almost to an entirely background sync, however - this is a bonus that we've learned about from a user after the release and not something we aimed for originally, so if you can make it work you'll get from the utility even more than it was designed for, but again - and Exchange background/direct sync was not the goal of this utility.

Hope this makes sense and helps.

[northwestmsp]

Yup, that's understood. We NEED native Exchange support badly, but was hoping this would get us close. Until we hear from other members using it with real success we will remain dubious (we spend time on other companies' IT issues and wouldn't hack together a cobbled solution for them with something like NSSM so we're not interested in doing something out of band for our own group).