Build 8025 Critical MAPI calendar date issue (again)

Problem reported by Sébastien Riccio - 1/7/2022 at 6:34 AM

Resolved

After reading about the worrying MAPI date issueI decided to do some tests on some customers accounts we were pushed by SM to migrate from EAS to MAPI.

Damn, they are also afected:

Here is one entry in the webmail:

Here is the same entry in Outlook (I'm testing with Outlook 2021 LTSC):

There is 1 hour difference (Outlook shows it one hour before the webmail).

EDIT: To try to know if the correct date is the one displayed in the webmail, I configured the same account with EWS in emClient to compare:

It displays the same date as the one in the webmail. My guess would then be the issue is really at MAPI level...

Hopefully, we had no complaints yet as most of these MAPI users are still on holiday. But when they will be back monday, that will be catastrophic. If they are missing appointments we are DEAD! Really, how can we trust this roduct for professional use ...

Where can be downloaded the build for fixing this as stated in another thread ? This is CRITICAL.

Sébastien Riccio

System & Network Admin

https://swisscenter.com

15 Replies

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Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/7/2022 at 6:50 AM

As for obtaining the build we need to open a ticket and this is the weekend... Would anyone with the build download link be kind enough to share it ? (I don't understand why it's not shared publicly by ST as it's a critical issue)

We need this to be fixed before people come back to work from holidays....

Thanks a lot in advance for the help.

PS: Again, can we please have a stable build where everything works as intented and freeze it as stable, and only backport valitated bugfixes to it and not being betatesters for other non-critical changes? It's years we are requesting this.

PS2: "Build 8025 may be one of the best SmarterMail Builds we have ever released."

Tim: Sorry, it is not as it is putting us in trouble.

PS3: Yes, I am very angry and I have my reasons. Due to SmarterMail answers "Switch to MAPI" when submitting minor issues with EAS on Outlook, we put much efforts into convincing our customers to do the switch. For what, we had only troubles since. We got rid of some of the minor EAS issues bug won major issues, almost lost customers due to this. Things were back to stable right before the end of the year.

Now we have this new issue with dates in MAPI and if we can't fix this fast engough we'll definitely lose these customers. We should have kept them using EAS for now.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Robert Mathias Replied

1/7/2022 at 7:24 AM

Ami I missing something here?

SM 8025 with

Microsoft Outlook for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2111 Build 16.0.14701.20254) 64-bit

I entered an appointment in Outlook for tomorrow, then another in SM web. Here's are the entries in Outlook:

Here are the entries in Smartermail:

As you can see, they match. Seems to work fine for us in the UK.

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/7/2022 at 7:30 AM

Hello Robert, I am glad you're not affected by the issue. It maybe depends on the timezones and the DST status.

On the other thread I've read people talking +8 hours shift, +5 hours shift.

In our case it's -1 hour shift, it's not much but still critical for missed appointments of our customers.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/7/2022 at 7:42 AM

As my tests were done with already existing apointments, I went ahead and created a new one from the webmail and checked the result in Outlook. Same story.

This also bring another issue about missing (french only?) translations for some text placeholders. This is also new. It's a less critical issue but still...

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/7/2022 at 7:47 AM

Also quite interresting. If I create the appointment from Outlook and check on the webmail the date/time matches.

But then if I edit the appointment on the webmail, and change the title. The appointment date shift -1 hour on Outlook with the new titile. On the webmail the date/time remains the same.

In this state the product is useless :( and it worries us a lot about if we can now trust the appointments date/time. How can we, or the customers know if the date/time of an entry is the correct one ??

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/7/2022 at 7:55 AM

Robert, I've re-read your post. You seem to have created the appointment in outlook first.

Can you maybe try the reverse case.

- Create it in the webmail then check outlook (or edit and change the title from the appointment you created in outlook before, but from the webmail)

- Check it on outlook when it updated.

EDIT: Ok you already tried both ways, so it seems your installation or timezone is not affected.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Zach Sylvester Replied

1/7/2022 at 6:54 PM

Employee Post

Hello,

Thanks for posting to the community. We have a custom build that fixes this issue. I saw your ticket regarding the past appointments I will work with my team and see what we can do.

Kind Regards,

Zach Sylvester Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/7/2022 at 8:07 PM

Hello Zach,

Thanks for the feedback and looking at the issue.

Kind regards.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/9/2022 at 8:44 AM

Hello Zach,

Any update on this critical issue ? Tommorow most people will be back at work after holidays and it will be catastrophic if their appointments date/time in Outlook using MAPI are wrong...

Thanks in advance for the update.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/9/2022 at 3:39 PM

Hello Zach,

I spend some time trying to figure out how to fix the issue for the previous appointments and noticed that if I completly remove the account from Outlook and re-add it, the dates are now correct in Outlook, which is good and bad news at the same time.

Could it be because the MAPI accounts in outlook are configured "offline" (local copy/cache) and the past appointments were transfered before installing the update that fix the issue ?

Then removing and re-adding the account force a re-transfer of all the items, this time with the correct date/times.

It then mean the customers will have the same issue and should remove/readd the account to clear things ? That would be kinda problematic to force all customers using MAPI to do this and most would need to call their IT guy to do it.

It would be handy to have a way to issue a forced re-sync of all items. Is that something possible ?

Of course if my "theory" about the cause of previously added items are still showing wrong datetime in outlook is correct...

Kind regards,

Sébastien

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Tim Uzzanti Replied

1/10/2022 at 8:05 AM

Employee Post

Believe it or not, we are about 98% capable of making this happen!

The protocols were never intended to do this and Microsoft's approach has always been to delete and re-add accounts whether there was a server or client issue. They did try adding things like "Sync Folder" to accommodate some issues they have, for example it can recover missing items (sometimes), but that doesn't work for bad data.

We have been trying to work with Microsoft on a way to accomplish this for years and they believed it wasn't possible. However, over the last couple years we have moved beyond what the Microsoft protocol teams know.

Our solution will allow you to go to a user in a domain and toggle them to re-sync via webmail.

This will re-sync all protocols. This should fix probably 8 out of 10 issues. If a client is really screwed up, like it got disconnected so bad or local OST or PST's got corrupted, there is no way to recover from that.

As you can appreciate, this requires a crazy amount of testing and it's actively in QC and we hope to release it shortly.

Oh, another thing that it won't help with is when companies who have clients connected to Exchange and then move to SmarterMail but don't have their clients re-connect to SmarterMail. Even though SmarterMail is Exchange, Exchange holds certain keys and data that SmarterMail will never know about because it's not sent via the protocols. We have seen 1000's of these over the last month by a variety of companies transitioning to SmarterMail. That is a non recoverable situation.

The same would be true if a company went from SmarterMail to Exchange: The Outlook client would need to be delete and re-added to the new Exchange server even if it's using all the data server addresses, etc.

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/11/2022 at 12:05 PM

Hello Tim,

Thank you for your reply. This is great news as it's always a bit difficult to ask customers to trash and re-add their accounts to fix an issue when a simple forced resync of the items could do the trick...

Of course a OST/PST corruption is another story. However in the most cases we had it was because the items were syncrhonised with incorrect data due to a bug and after a fix is provided server side clients seems to need a full resync to fix the locally existing items ...

Kind regards,

Sébastien

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Proto Replied

1/11/2022 at 12:29 PM

Is there an update to the Build 8025 coning in the near term that incorporates the fixes in the custom build?

If so, is it another general release with other additions/deletions/fixes or is it just the 8025 with fixes?

SmarterMail(tm) MAPI over HTTP - Let's flesh it out for Outlook with a full set of Exchange like features!

Sébastien Riccio Replied

1/12/2022 at 12:22 AM

Hello Tim,

I received the custom build with the new feature to force a resync, thank you.

We are going to test in on some of our own mailbox before running it against customer mailboxes. I'll let you know how it goes.

May I ask how is SmarterMail triggering the resync, does it increment some object serial on every items so Outlook "thinks" there is an update on the objects and pull the data ?

It's not that I want to "steal" anything, but I just like to know what is going on in the backstage in case something goes wrong and need troubleshooting.

Kind regards.

Sébastien Riccio System & Network Admin https://swisscenter.com

Tim Uzzanti Replied

1/12/2022 at 6:38 AM

Employee Post

I would test one account at a time, not 20 like we max it at right now. Verify with the user/ account if all his clients synced (EAS, EWS, DAV, MAPI). IMAP and POP are not affected.

We limit to 20 for a reason, and this isn't supposed to be used frequently. It's a tool to fix issues. There are a lot of proprietary methods and trickery going on that we have developed over the last couple decades. Having 20 accounts, often using more than one client per account, download all mail (though you must open mailboxes completely) will increase memory and cpu and should be done off hours. So, this feature should be used wisely. It's not "fire and forget".

In addition, this new functionality only works with clients that are in a good sync state. Microsoft Outlook likes to go wonky for its own reasons, which is why there are tools to repair and fix OSTs and PSTs. Outlook also introduced re-syncing folders to fix simple sync state issues and/or data issues. What we're introducing could/should help companies fix about 8 out of 10 issues with clients from the server side.

This is a pretty special feature that other mail servers don't have. We do a number of things for various protocols to make this all happen but they're all methods we've used in the past when we have upgrades to protocol versions. To end users, they never knew mailboxes would re-download when we adopted a new major version of EAS or EWS, etc.

Next month, we have an exciting BETA updating EWS to the latest and greatest. That will seamlessly happen for all EWS users like it has in the past. A LOT more exciting stuff coming in that BETA as well :)

Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

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