I created four lists of Tasks in the Murena Cloud Tasks app and the lists synced to my phone. Tasks inserted under those categories – both in the cloud and on the phone (Fairphone 4, /e/OS 1.21) – sync fine. But when I change the title of a list in the cloud, the change is not propagated to the phone. I also deleted the list in question and created a new one with the correct title, but it was not propagated to the phone (and the old title persisted).
Again, items under these lists sync fine, so it appears that there is a connection between phone in cloud. But titles created originally act as if they are permanent. Refreshing the app in the cloud or on the phone, and rebooting the phone, have no effect on this.
I can create new lists in Tasks (in the cloud) but they don’t show up on the phone. But, again, if I add or remove tasks from the four original existing lists the changes are reflected immediately on the phone. There is some sync going on, just not at the level of list titles somehow.
It appears that new and renamed lists (folders) don’t show up automatically in Tasks, but can by synced manually at Settings > Accounts > [Account Name] > My Account > Additional Settings > [Account Name] > Calendar > [Refresh folders button].
Is that the only way to initiate this sync? Is there a shortcut? And why isn’t sync of list categories automatic?
The actual items under the various list labels sync fine, as far as I’ve seen so far.
you’re giving good testing feedback. It’s worth it to check if someone before you described this behaviour either in the backlog for the tasks app tag (open or closed) or the upstream apps issue tracker (but backlog is more specific to /e/ used version of the app and its murena-nextcloud setup).
I know this is work, but if you find it yet unfiled, a new issue either at /e/ or in the upstream tracker can yield results after some time.
Thanks for the helpful feedback. I did multiple searches looking for similar issues and didn’t find any. But I may well have been looking in the wrong place.
Update: It appears that Tasks sync issues are well known to users and /e/OS. The best workaround at this time seems to burrow down into the Settings > Accounts menu and manually sync tasks (which sometimes works). Others have suggested addition of a new sync button in Tasks to speed up this process, in lieu of automatic sync. Given that this issues is known and will, presumably, eventually be fixed I’m going to call this “solved” for now.
I played with the tasks app side-by-side with the webinterface and tried some list renames and found it’s only a matter of time if a sync is not forced. So this is mostly a timing problem in terms of user expectation, not dysfunctionality per-se, do you agree?
I tried some renames from the cloud side (the only way to do a rename, I believe) and list titles didn’t update for days. Eventually I did a forced re-sync that took care of the rename. So I haven’t seen a rename “just work.”
If your tests work in a shorter time (say, under the 15 minute default sync time I see in settings) then maybe I have a sync issue on my phone. I’m new to Android so maybe I’m blundering around here. I don’t think I’ve changed anything I shouldn’t have, but…
for the record - I did task-title renames on both sides and had them propagate to the other end. Server->Device even did this almost instantaneous (/e/-v2.0 beta though, so not a clean comparison possibly)
hard to tell. If you test more it will show (but yes, it’s cumbersome if you’re not in a bug finding mood to do all this).
I can confirm that sync is not working as you describe, for me. This morning I created several new categories on the web and populated them with tasks. Six hours later, none of those changes had propagated to the phone.
But I can instantly (manually) sync between cloud and phone at Settings > Accounts > etc., etc. (The “Refresh” button in the app itself does nothing.) So, I have a workaround.
Since this is working for you on the /e/-v2.0 beta, maybe that will solve my issue. I’m happy to debug further, but I can’t think of any further tests to run at the moment. Suggestions are welcome! Thanks for engaging with me on this issue, which may be peculiar to my phone and setup. I know you have many other tasks that are far more pressing.
Note: The eFoundation Services and Murena Cloud Services pages are reporting that all services are up and 100%, so I’m thinking it’s not the cloud itself that is at fault.
sorry I wasn’t a good co-investigator, I used tasks for the first time in earnest.
I did rename task-items, not the task-list itself. Your term “category” did wake me up to this. Now things are more clear. And yes, passing the renamed category-titles in the background doesn’t seem to work and has to be done explicitly (there’s some discussion on this upstream).
There are two ways, the one you described and through the Accountmanager (davx5) interface that is hidden, see screenshot. I’d guess the button invokes the same code via more accessible account settings.
Task-categories are simply full caldav calendars in murena / nextcloud. Their url endpoint doesn’t change even if the title changes (that I think is okay). As you create new task categories, it is synonymous with calendars.
There can be made the case for user-expectation to check task-list-title (syn. category / calendars) as regular as changes in task-items.
That is how I’ve been making Tasks work fully, through the “manually sync folders” button you highlighted. Ideally, any time a category is changed that sync action would be triggered automatically. But I gather that things aren’t so simple. So I will continue to sync manually until such time as it becomes unnecessary.
Murena has done great work as a relatively small company to piece together a suite of apps that is arguably more extensive than iCloud. Really amazing. So I can live with the occasional inelegant workaround.
I can confirm that the update to /e/OS v. 2.0 did NOT fix this issue for me. Items do not sync automatically between phone and cloud, even given time. New task categories do not sync if created on the phone (though they will show up eventually, after a manual sync, if created in the cloud).
I can still, laboriously, manually, sync Tasks between phone and Murena Cloud, but frankly I have given up doing so. The overhead is not worth it. I am keeping a task list solely on my phone in a local to-do list.
there’s no bug entry to get this addressed, so I wouldn’t expect any change from updates yet. All I did was adding it to the “known limitations/bugs” of the Tasks-App Howto, but not beyond. To get this behaviour changed it’d need to be campaigned for on the gitlab backlog issues
I have a workaround I’ll use instead, so I am unlikely to pursue this issue further. It’s just that it seems like a big flaw in a default, unremovable app.
