Contacts Vanishing in Projects! Eek!

[Ron Price]

I'm having a crisis... We're using a project to share a lot of contacts
between a few projects. Members of the address book who are associated with
multiple projects seem to be behaving erratically--being duplicated on some
machines with different project tags, remaining "multi-projected" on other
machines, even vanishing entirely off of the project server.

Am I doing something wrong (I do KNOW for a fact that nobody is deleting
these contacts--we're in test mode and nobody is deleting). I can't find a
common denominator with any of the things I've seen...

Thanks,

....Ron

 

[Dave Cortright]

I'm having a crisis... We're using a project to share a lot of contacts
between a few projects. Members of the address book who are associated with
multiple projects seem to be behaving erratically--being duplicated on some
machines with different project tags, remaining "multi-projected" on other
machines, even vanishing entirely off of the project server.

Am I doing something wrong (I do KNOW for a fact that nobody is deleting
these contacts--we're in test mode and nobody is deleting). I can't find a
common denominator with any of the things I've seen...

The problem is likely that what looks like the "same" contact to you, is not
the same to Entourage. Entourage uses GUIDs (globablly unique identifiers)
to track items shared out. So if user A shares out his copy of contact "Joe
Smith" as a part of Project X, and user B shares out his own copy of contact
"Joe Smith" as a part of Project Y, then anyone subscribed to both project X
and project Y will see 2 Joe Smith contacts. Then user A sees "wait, I have
a duplicate contact" and deletes it, which then deletes that contact from
the shared project and thus anyone subscribed to the project.

The workaround is to have *1 person* (and that is critically important) who
is subscribed to all of the projects clean up any duplicates. That way
everyone will have the same contact with the same GUID.

 

[Ron Price]

Sure, that makes sense. But, how does Entourage know to keep Joe Smith as
one contact when I add my one Joe Smith as a contact for two projects? Or
does it? I think that might be where my problem lies.

Currently, all the people we have monkeying with contacts are subscribed to
all of the projects. The glitches (using that in a general sense, not
suggesting an actual program glitch) occur (or seem to) when modifying
contacts multiple times in succession or adding things to multiple projects
(and then perhaps removing them from, or modifying them in, just one of
them). Is the system not really designed to have objects exist in multiple
projects?

Thanks, Dave. Appreciate your help.

 

[Dave Cortright]

Sure, that makes sense. But, how does Entourage know to keep Joe Smith as
one contact when I add my one Joe Smith as a contact for two projects? Or
does it? I think that might be where my problem lies.

Because it just tags that contact with both project flags. Projects work
pretty much the same as categories, so having multiple projects for any item
should be no different than multiple categories.

Currently, all the people we have monkeying with contacts are subscribed to
all of the projects. The glitches (using that in a general sense, not
suggesting an actual program glitch) occur (or seem to) when modifying
contacts multiple times in succession or adding things to multiple projects
(and then perhaps removing them from, or modifying them in, just one of
them). Is the system not really designed to have objects exist in multiple
projects?

The issue then might simply be that others are changing the contacts at the
same time you are, which makes it look like things are randomly changing. If
you can tell everyone else not to make any changes to the contacts (or wait
until everyone has gone home), then clean up the contacts yourself,
hopefully you'll get in a state that is stable. However, one rogue
subscriber can do anything they want to the shared data including changing
it and deleting it.

 

[Ron Price]

Right, but where is it saving the actual data? If a person is subscribed to
one project or the other, how is that person getting the info? Is the
contact info saved in each project, or is it somehow aliased? If, for
example, I used a different server for each project (I wouldn't, but it
seems like I could), the data would be duplicated, right?

I'm just looking for where the conflict might lie. I understand the hassles
of multi-user contact and calendar servers , and I don't think it's as
simple as somebody deleting a contact. I'll try to duplicate something
specific and post what I can get it to do...

 

[Dave Cortright]

Right, but where is it saving the actual data? If a person is subscribed to
one project or the other, how is that person getting the info? Is the
contact info saved in each project, or is it somehow aliased? If, for
example, I used a different server for each project (I wouldn't, but it
seems like I could), the data would be duplicated, right?

You are correct, if a contact is a part of two shared projects, an identical
data file for that contact will live in each share project data folder on
the server. You could be running into a sync loop where one project thinks
it needs to update the contact so it does, which causes the other project to
think it needs to update to contact, which it does... You can break the loop
several ways such as unsharing the contact from one project temporarily, and
then assigning it back.

 

[Bill Weylock]

Dave, isn¹t the process he is describing awfully common? Seems to me that if
it requires manual intercession in order to keep subscriptions among several
projects and several users, it could get pretty chaotic very fast. Is there
a better way of working altogether, because it would seem to me a lot of
people would have the same problems for the same reasons if not.

Need to get dedicated project management software if we are talking about
multiple projects for overlapping teams?

 

[Dave Cortright]

Dave, isn¹t the process he is describing awfully common? Seems to me that if
it requires manual intercession in order to keep subscriptions among several
projects and several users, it could get pretty chaotic very fast. Is there a
better way of working altogether, because it would seem to me a lot of people
would have the same problems for the same reasons if not.

The key word in my previous post is "could". I don't necessarily believe a
sync loop is happening. It's just another hypothesis since my first proposal
of multiple subscribers making simultaneous changes didn't seem to resonate
with Ron.

 

[Ron Price]

I should say that:

1) multiple subscribers making simultaneous changes is definitely a
possibility--just not DELETING them, which I know nobody is doing;

2) I'm not experiencing random contacts disappearing over the course of
normal usage. We are actively trying to break the software, just to figure
out what's going to screw us up in the future. By and large, things are
working as I'd expect them to; and

3) Thanks again for your help, Dave