BUG: Synced documents pane different between two machines?

SamMarrocco

I have 3 documents in my Documents pane, all cloud/synced (none of them are local documents).
I have 2 PCs side-by-side, both running the ‘native’ Legend app, a web browser logged into the web version of Legend, and an iPad running iOS Legend. Here is what I am seeing…..

PC1, both the native Legend, and the Web Browser Legend both show these Documents:
MainList
Tests
Document A
Document B
Document C
Temp

PC2, the native Legend shows these documents:
MainList

My iPad shows these documents:
MainList
Document A
Document B
Document D
But it shows that it hasn’t synced since yesterday. I killed the iOS app, then restarted it. Now it shows all the documents from the other machines, PLUS Document D, which doesn’t exist on any of the others.

All are running the most current version of Legend as of today. I’ve rebooted the machines, and restarted the apps/browser several times. All the Documents show the little “cloud icon” next to them, so they are Sync documents and not local documents. All are showing that they have ‘synced’ within the last few minutes.

Of the four instances of Legend running, three are showing different documents. Why would this be happening?

Jay

I’ve been testing everything I can think of and can’t manage to reproduce any sync problems, no matter what I try.

SamMarrocco More information would be super helpful. If you or anyone can find a pattern to any sync problems to help reproduce it, we will fix it ASAP.

Jay

I think this is happening because when the app comes online it looks for changes since the last synced item, and changes made while offline are sometimes saving the timestamp as if they synced. So there should not actually be any data lost, but just clients are missing some items/documents while syncing. You can see the “true” state of the synced database by opening in an incognito window, and signing out and back in will reset to the synced state.

There have been a few reports of this here and there but I’ve never been able to reproduce any problems myself. I do have an idea, and we will make this top priority to investigate and fix.

Can you tell me more about when you were creating these documents that didn’t all sync? Were you offline at the time, or was your connection spotty? Did you make some changes to MainList while offline on PC2? Did you make Document D on the iPad? Or was that something you deleted on a different machine and the delete didn’t sync?

SamMarrocco

Jay,
I understand the insability to duplicate the problem without samples.

Would it help if I ‘gave’ you access to my Legend account? I would be willing to do so if it helps you resolve the issue. I have nothing of import in my account presently as I’m still testing, so it merely contains small chunks of my (current) Workflowy outllines that I have duplicated for testing.

I also understand the potential issue of the app “waiting to come online”, syncing before, after, etc. If I could make a suggestion:

Legend (and other ‘synced online cloud apps’ need to be much more obvious in the UI about exactly how/if you are connected. From a user standpoint, the last thing I want to find out is that all the work I did at a picnic table isn’t going to show up when I get to the office because the wifi wasn’t connected. That’s a simplistic example, to be sure, but you get my point.

Some thoughts on this……
Perhaps there should be a settings option for “Allow Offline Operation” (the default as it is not. BUT, when unchecked, you wouldn’t even see a UI until you get a connection. Currently I see this issue in Workflowy, Dynalist and Legend, where my UI appears, I start typing something, then the UI changes suddenly as it update. Apple in particular encourages app developers to ‘show a UI as fast as possible’, even if it isn’t complete to give the ‘illusion of fantastic device speed’. Personally, I think an ‘in progress bar’, ‘loading wheel’, etc is more desirable than the current disorientation of a UI that appears, then changes suddenly, leaving you wondering if it done (yet).

I know that I myself would never us the app offline, especially if there are potential issue like this, so that option of “Allow Offline Operation” being disabled would rule out the possibility of a mistake.

Obviously, all of this would be moot, although maybe still desirable, if you can fix the bug of the offline items saving an incorrect timestamp (assuming that is what the issue is).

As for what I was doing at the time–I don’t believe I was ever working offline, since 99% of my testing has been on devices with hard wired internet connections (i.e, PCs or Mac), but occasionally I have been on an iPad or iPhone so it is possible something was made on a device that wasn’t connected for a few minutes. Regarding your specific question, changes to MainList were never made on a device that was disconnected from the internet. Other items may have been deleted elsewhere. I will try to reproduce the issue myself, as I can keep several PCs and Macs open at once with my current VNC/Remote Desktop systems.

Let me know if you would need my account password so you can examine my data closer for testing.