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BEWARE of iOS and EAS Calendar problems
Problem reported by Neal Culiner - 6/24/2019 at 2:50 PM
Resolved
I've been struggling with calendar issues far too long so I finally created a support ticket. It is confirmed there is a major problem with calendar with iOS and EAS. Try creating an appointment starting on Date 1 at 2 PM going to another date DATE 2 at 11 AM using Windows 10, Microsoft Outlook, or any client other than iOS using EAS. Now look at your calendar in iOS such as an iPhone or iPad and you'll see your appointments likely start or stop on the wrong date and/or show ALL DAY vs. appointment times.

This is beyond critical. I've already double booked one overnight stay in my travels from suffering from this unreliable calendar system. BEWARE of your appointments!

ST has had years to get EAS working properly. Don't dare blame this on flaky EAS or iOS, this is purely an implementation issue. If this is all done via hacking like it seems had to be done to figure out MAPI, what is the likelihood MAPI is going to work on par with Exchange? 

I've already gotten quotes from Dell and CDW for Exchange licenses. I'm hoping ST can quickly fix this issue but this product simply cannot be trusted for business OR personal use. ST developers should have working over the weekend to correct this critical bug that could affect all iOS users and I'm sure there are plenty.

Now the question is why didn't they see this problem before I did? Why can't they create an appointment from EAS and then see how popular clients show this test? Testing continues to be an epic failure with ST and I've been here for years and cannot believe they rely on the community as the test system instead of their own logical tests such as if existed would have clearly identified this bug long before I did.

Not going to trust MAPI, can't trust EAS which is not new. Very very sad from a long time customer.

5 Replies

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Sébastien Riccio Replied
Since we updated to v100, customers also reported issues about calendars. We first thought it could be a mail client problem, but reports about issues increased over time since then.

It's taking way too much time for us to debug issues and report them, when it was working quite well in v16... 




Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com
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Andrea Free Replied
Employee Post
Hi Neal, 

This issue has been addressed in the latest release. We found that it occurred because iOS does not put the timezone name when it syncs created/modified appointments. It includes only the UTC offset, and there are many timezones that share the same UTC offset. In Build 7117, we added the code to better handle this. For modified appointments, SmarterMail will try to use the existing timezone. For new appts, it will check whether the user's timezone is included in the list of potential time zones with the same UTC offset. If not, it will check the server timezone. If that fails, it will fall back to using the first timezone with the specified offset.

I'm sorry to hear that we've lost your trust in SmarterMail. We take your feedback seriously and hope this is something we can rectify.
Andrea Free SmarterTools Inc. 877-357-6278 www.smartertools.com
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Neal Culiner Replied
The change log is actually incorrect, if you create appointments from any EAS client it was in error. In my work with Kyle I clearly explained appointments created from MS Outlook and also Win10 mail had the same issues (all EAS clients). It is NOT an issue with appointments created from iOS. I suggest you all continue to work this issue as I think your hack is destined to fail again. iOS probably doesn't use Windows timezones nor does Android. They use Olson Timezones such as Windows Eastern is America/New_York in Olson timezone. It's not "flaky EAS" as your staff want to pawn this issue on, it's your implementation or lack of understanding of the API per client. In addition simple testing would find this before us. 
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Kyle Kerst Replied
Employee Post
Hello Neal. I wanted to chime in here because I noticed something that needed clarification. You have mentioned before that these issues stem from any EAS usage, but I was unable to reproduce this through extensive testing. It was only when the iOS devices involved in my test lab were used that we started seeing timezone issues and shifts in dates/times. I believe this issue on the iOS side essentially "bubbles up" over time causing further shifts as additional edits/updates are completed. 

Now that the timezone selection issue has been resolved there, we believe the remaining shift issues should clear up as well. Can you please retest sending updates from your different clients and let us know if you still see these issues? In my own testing I am now unable to reproduce the issues you were seeing at all. As you're aware this is both a good and a bad thing as it makes testing a little more complicated. Happy to help get to the bottom of these issues though. Thanks in advance Neal!
Kyle Kerst System/Network Administrator SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com
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Neal Culiner Replied
Prior to the fix: Create an appointment in MS Outlook starting on Day 1 at 2 PM and ending on several days later at 11 AM. No time zones selected. View the appointment on any iOS device and it showed an ALL DAY event. The event as outlined above did not have to originate on an iOS device, any EAS device creating an appointment would do this. iOS would READ the appointment wrong and show it as an ALL DAY.

After the new build that fixes this I had to go into each calendar appointment, turn on all day, turn off all day, verify times and resave. Something was synced to the server odd either with time zones or ALL DAY that had to be reset per above. So far my appointments are stable but I'll monitor as time goes on.

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