Missing contacts on mobile with Zimbra backend

maxxer

From time to time we run into this problem with contacts: some are missing from mobile devices. The issue seems to happen more often on one account more than others, but it’s still persistent on other as well.

I’ve enabled debug for the most problematic account, yesterday I added a contact and it has yet to be visible on Android. I don’t see the contact in the debug data.
Mails and calendars are synced immediately, contacts once in a while.

-a list doesn’t show any error for the user.
Clients are Android-Mail/2019.12.30.289507923.release (Android 9).

Any hint on where to look at? Thanks

Z-Push: 2.4.5+0-0
Zimbra backend: 68

liverpoolfcfan

Hi @maxxer

That UA string would not exist by default in the zimbraMulitFolderUAs.php file, so the default settings would be used. The default is

    protected $_deviceMultiFolderSupport = array( 'message'=>true, 'contact'=>false, 'appointment'=>false, 'task'=>false, 'document'=>true, 'wiki'=>false, 'note'=>false );

so contact multi-folder support is not enabled. This means virtual contacts would be used.

There is a fix in Release69 that vastly improves the detection and notification of changes in shared and virtual folders so, if they use any shared and/or virtual folders I would recommend updating to that release.

Additionally, if you know the capabilities of the Android-Mail client you should add a line to the above mentioned file so it is handled most effectively.
You could register it as ‘Android-Mail/2019’ to match with multiple release dates for the same client. Try to order the config lines in the file in order of frequency of use - think most popular client first, etc. This will reduce the number of comparisons needed when running through setup.

maxxer

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

I’ve enable MultiFolder for that UA, but not for contacts. I knew Android didn’t support it, has it changed?

Indeed most of the contacts are from shared folders. I’ve upgraded to ZP 2.5.1 and backend 69, I’ll let you know.

Thanks for the help

liverpoolfcfan

@maxxer I only have Samsung Android devices and they do support multiple Contact folders. I cannot comment on other clients.

It should be easy enough to test it by adding a line to the configuration and then adding a new contacts folder for an account that uses that device UA. It should trigger a HierarchySync followed by a Sync. All the virtual contacts will be removed from the device but if the device supports multiple contact folders they should re-appear again quickly associated with their individual folders.

maxxer

@liverpoolfcfan I’ll check, thanks. I’ve enabled multifolder for contacts for that UA (it’s Gmail app). Should folders appear as groups in the address book?

I tried now creating a new contacts folder on my Zimbra account but I still have to see both the folder and the created contact on the mobile 🤔

maxxer

Enabling that UA didn’t change anything on my phone, and removed some contacts on my coworker’s!

Instead, using Samsung’s mail app works perfectly, we can also see shared contacts folders. And new contacts appear very soon on the phone.

Thanks again for the help

liverpoolfcfan

@maxxer Great. I have never tried to use GMail to sync. I always used the Samsung Client and have almost always found it works really well.

maxxer

It seems to work much better, it’s much faster in syncing. Yesterday I had problems of duplicated calendar events on mobile. I hope it was just a spot issue :)