Yikes, it's that scary dialog again
Dear OS X syncers…
... today we made a big update to our sync servers. Chances are that many of you will see this dialog box:
This is caused by the sync server sending contact information in a slightly different way (a better way™) than it used to. The OS X Address Book is scared of things that look like big updates so it will ask you to decide in its place what it should do. You can calm it down by pressing the “Sync Contacts” button while reassuring the address book with something like this: “Hush hush dear Address Book, it’s all right. It’s just Soocial syncing my contacts.”—preferably in a soft soothing voice.
Dear phone syncers, Outlook syncers…
... because this is a big update it might take a few attempts to log in or get your contacts synced. The first sync right after the big update might also take a minute longer than what you’re used to but after that, things will be as fast as before.
Highrise syncing back up for all users
As the title above says our Highrise sync is back up for all users. As we described here we had to switch off the Highrise syncing due to a bug in our syncing logic. However all of that is fixed and you should be able to happily sync highrise again.
If you do run into trouble please email us or post a support request on our community support site.
Highrise syncing disabled
Unfortunately our syncing with Highrise has been switched off the last few weeks.
There was a bug in our syncing with Highrise that destroyed data in Highrise accounts. The bug occurred if a user updated a contact and Soocial would sync it to Highrise by first deleting and then adding it as a new contact. For Highrise this is a serious problem because data is attached to the People you have in Highrise – for example your Cases. This bug was fixed quickly however the guys at 37signals (correctly) felt the bug was so serious they decided to disallow our syncing until the fix was proven.
Of course we take these bugs seriously and have been working together with 37signals to resolve this issue. Right now we have about 15 users syncing again with Highrise and syncing is working correctly and stable.
We want to respect 37signals request to wait with switching on all users until they feel the issue is correctly resolved and proven to be working. We are only switching on those accounts that users directly request to be included in the test group. If you want your account to sync again with Highrise let us know and we will add you to this list.
We hope all Highrise users can soon sync again and feel safe about using Soocial to do this. Thank you Highrise users for your patience in helping us improve Soocial!
New Outlook client released
After months of really hard work, we are proud to release our new Outlook sync client. Download the new version from our Outlook connection setup and let us know what you think!
From Alpha to Beta
We released the alpha version on November 12th last year. We got loads of positive feedback and saw a lot of traction. However we quickly realized that we needed to change our fundamental approach to getting software to work nicely alongside Outlook. So it took longer than we anticipated to bring things to a better and more stable beta state.
Changes
We have improved the look-and-feel, added an easier way to provide us with feedback and improved a lot of behind the scenes stuff. The actual syncing logic now works independently from Outlook and the only visible part of Soocial within Outlook is a small ribbon that you can remove if you want. The screenshots below show the new interface and features.
Version number is lowered
The new version is 0.9.86 and it can be downloaded from the connections screen in Soocial. A quick note about the new version number – we have switched version numbering schemes. The previous version is 1.1.14, the newer version has a lower number. Even though this is inconsistent we want to more accurately reflect the beta state of the software. We will move up to version 1.0.x once we feel confident enough that the client is no longer in beta status.
Screenshots
BlackBerry pre-beta client available
We have been working like a small pony on creating a BlackBerry client. The good news is that we’re close to ironing out the final details. We’ve had quite some people sign up to test the pre-beta BlackBerry client, but we’ve still got some slots left!
So if you’re interested in helping us to make it better please send an e-mail to support and we’ll send you an invite. Happy testing!
Bug report: missing fields in some devices
During the past week we’ve been running into problems with changes to our backend that have been plaguing some of our users. Rest assured we have not deleted any data in Soocial. Even if data is missing on your device you will be able to restore it. This post explains what went wrong.
We added a new backend feature called ‘Contact Massaging’ that is necessary to deal with the device quirks. There was a pretty big bug in this feature.
Contact Massaging
Contact Massaging is needed to handle quirks in phones correctly. It enables us to handle quirks better and gives us more control of handling field labels correctly. This is because many phones don’t support certain fields and/or field labels, a notorious example is the ‘other’ field. Another example is the upcoming BlackBerry client that only handles 1 url and a maximum of 4 email addresses. To make sure a device handles contacts correctly we often have to strip out contact information the device cannot handle.
The bug: missing contact fields
The bug that was introduced here has to do with the fact that devices identify their own capabilities. However they often do this wrong, saying they don’t support specific fields when they do. So our sync server “correctly” strips out the “unsupported” fields leading to losing fields in devices when they really should be there. We have now fixed this issue and you should get all the fields back in your devices. This issue affected Nokia S60’s (all N and E series Nokia’s), some S40’s (like the Nokia 6300), some SonyEricsson and our own OSX client. We feel horrible about not catching this before we deployed the contact massaging.
Manual update needed in some cases
You should not be seeing this behaviour anymore. However if you do, it means you have updated a contact that has been incorrectly massaged. It is easy to fix this. First go to our webapp, find the device in your connections list and select “Force update” for that device. The next time you sync Soocial will push all contacts with correct fields back to the device and you will have the correct contacts in your phones.
Future updates?
Contact massaging will really shine for future updates of Soocial when we start supporting photo’s in syncing. With contact massaging we can save the original photo in the background while sending a compressed smaller version to your device saving storage on the device and reducing sync times. When you update the picture we can tell based on what has been sent to that particular device.
The CTO is dead, long live the CTO!
We have some sad news, no nobody died(!), and some exciting news!
Simon de Haan will be leaving the Soocial Head Quarters in Amsterdam and moving to Cape Town, South Africa. Simon will stay a Soocialite and a part of our team, but the 6000 miles distance means that he won’t be able to carry the responsibilities of CTO. We will miss him, but not the music he’s been playing this last week.
The exciting news is that today, Soocial announces a new Chief Technology Officer, Norbert Crombach. Norbert will be leading Soocial’s technology strategy and kicking (soocialite) ass to roll out some really exciting features for you Soocial users this coming year.
Norbert Crombach, posing as CTO of Soocial
We’ll be throwing a goodbye party for Simon tomorrow (Friday the 30th) at 15:30 hours. Amsterdam start-up scene you’re welcome!
UPDATE: Location of our offices for those of you keen to come: Piet Heinkade 179, Amsterdam
