Vincent syncs!

Vincent syncs at last! And there was much rejoicing! Vincent has a T5, which has been having trouble synching since he first got in touch with us 98 days ago. We've been researching all kinds of possible reasons why this could be happening for him, but nothing was making any difference, and he was having the problem on more than one machine. We were pretty sure that the problem was not in Life Balance code because it was not something that affected all our customers, but we still wanted to help him out anyway.

Vincent syncs at last! And there was much rejoicing!

Vincent has a T5, which has been having trouble synching since he first got in touch with us 98 days ago. We've been researching all kinds of possible reasons why this could be happening for him, but nothing was making any difference, and he was having the problem on more than one machine. We were pretty sure that the problem was not in Life Balance code because it was not something that affected all our customers, but we still wanted to help him out anyway.

Today, we were able to open his latest archive of data, and we were able to determine a pattern and that the Datebook data was definitely corrupted in a very unusual way.

There were notes that contained an LB number that had been copied to virtually every datebook record entry, without necessarily flipping the bit that says that there IS a note there at all. Many of the affected records appeared to be birthdays. It was like a string containing an LB number had been inserted at the end of many of his datebook records. We were in the process of trying to figure out how we might be able to repair the data!

So, imagine our delight when he got in touch saying that installing the most recent T5 update 1.1 from PalmOne, resolved his problem!

PalmOne even specifically mentions that one of the fixes in this update concerns birthdays and recurring notes! Hurray! Today after 98 days, we have for Vincent, a measurable symptom of a particular kind of datebook corruption, a plausible reason for Life Balance to fail during hotsync intermittently, and a working answer for what to do about it.

To give you an idea of how unusual this problem was, our average resolution time for questions that come into the Life Balance support center is somewhere around 2 days, with the majority of questions and issues being handled within 24 hours. The helpdesk software we've been using since March reports the statistics, which is great. It is nice to be able to show objectively that the support center has been a benefit not just to us but to many of our customers who have been using that channel to talk with us. It's simply efficient.

Just to give you some idea of the extent of the support we do to help our expert customers through a tough problem, here's a summary of the log for this particular customer's support thread!

Ticket Audit Log

Tue Jun 28 2005 02:56PM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Tue Jun 28 2005 12:26PM: Requester responded to ticket.

Sat Jun 18 2005 03:20AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Tue Jun 14 2005 03:09PM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Thu Jun 09 2005 10:55AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Thu Jun 09 2005 10:55AM: Ticket reopened by requester.

Thu May 05 2005 03:56PM: jblakew changed status to resolved.

Tue May 03 2005 11:49AM: cewhite changed status to awaiting-reply.

Tue May 03 2005 11:46AM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Sun Apr 17 2005 09:22AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Fri Apr 15 2005 10:45AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Thu Apr 14 2005 04:43PM: jblakew changed status to awaiting-reply.

Thu Apr 14 2005 10:15AM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Thu Apr 14 2005 09:54AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Tue Apr 12 2005 05:02PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Mon Apr 11 2005 02:07PM: jblakew changed status to needs-followup.

Sat Apr 09 2005 12:11AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Sat Apr 09 2005 12:11AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Thu Apr 07 2005 04:12PM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Thu Apr 07 2005 01:47PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Thu Apr 07 2005 01:42PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Wed Apr 06 2005 03:01PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Tue Apr 05 2005 11:15AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Tue Apr 05 2005 07:53AM: jblakew moved to queue Support.

Mon Apr 04 2005 01:04PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Sat Apr 02 2005 06:37AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Fri Apr 01 2005 11:42AM: cewhite moved to queue Hotsync reports.

Thu Mar 31 2005 04:57PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Thu Mar 31 2005 11:24AM: jblakew changed priority to Critical.

Thu Mar 31 2005 11:23AM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Thu Mar 31 2005 03:28AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Wed Mar 30 2005 08:39AM: cewhite changed status to awaiting-reply.

Wed Mar 30 2005 08:39AM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Tue Mar 29 2005 11:10PM: Requester responded to ticket.

Tue Mar 29 2005 11:08PM: Requester responded to ticket.

Tue Mar 29 2005 09:57AM: cewhite changed status to awaiting-reply.

Tue Mar 29 2005 09:56AM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Tue Mar 29 2005 09:40AM: cewhite replied to requester(s).

Mon Mar 28 2005 08:25AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Sun Mar 27 2005 05:39AM: Requester responded to ticket.

Sun Mar 27 2005 05:39AM: Ticket reopened by requester.

Thu Mar 24 2005 01:56PM: jblakew changed status to resolved.

Tue Mar 22 2005 04:14PM: jblakew replied to requester(s).

Tue Mar 22 2005 02:44PM: jblakew commented on ticket.

Tue Mar 22 2005 11:42AM: Ticket created.

UGH! Who wants to go through all that! So, if you have a T5 or a Treo 650, please do yourself a favor, and check for and download all the updates that apply to your handheld! It may take a little extra effort upfront to download and install those patches from PalmOne, but you'll save time for yourself and everyone in troubleshooting all kinds of strange and rare problems that might otherwise crop up.