Buddy list when importing from MacDive 2

[SeaHermit]

Howdy, not sure where this should go, if it's here, in the Dive Log Manager section, or even over with MacDive!

But seeing as the data is "kind of" there, I'm starting off here - feel free to move!

I've been playing around with MacDive 2, and did a fair bit of tidying up of the data across a lot of my dives (consistency for buddies, dive sites, etc.) so I re-imported the whole lot into Dive Log via the newly released Dive Log Manager, which worked great - all of the dives are there, and all the dives have all the data that I can tell (tank size isn't, but I expect that's due to MacDive doing something entirely different with tanks for the moment, so not worried about that)

What I did notice, was that in all the dives, the buddies are populated correctly, and even have the little green icon to show they're linked to the address book, which is great, but they don't appear in the Buddies list, nor in the statistics section.

I can get them to turn up in the statistics section if I go into a specific dive, go to buddies, hit edit, Add Buddy, then cancel out of all that and come back to the dive- then the buddy turns up in statistics. These buddies (that have been touched if you like) will then turn up in the Buddies list if you manually add a buddy (I did a linked one from my address book) then after adding the buddy, the buddy list populates itself. But then these manually added buddies don't turn up in the statistics list...

I'm I missing something fundamental here, or is this due to me using beta/most recent versions of everything?

Ben

[support]

Howdy, not sure where this should go, if it's here, in the Dive Log Manager section, or even over with MacDive!

No worries, here is as good a place as any !

(tank size isn't, but I expect that's due to MacDive doing something entirely different with tanks for the moment, so not worried about that)

You've guessed correctly on the tank data. MacDive2 now manages tanks information is a separate "gear" table so we have a little more work to do to dig the tank size and working pressure out of the gear table. It shouldn't take too long to get that integrated in Dive Log Manager.

What I did notice, was that in all the dives, the buddies are populated correctly, and even have the little green icon to show they're linked to the address book, which is great, but they don't appear in the Buddies list, nor in the statistics section.

This issue is similar to the problem discussed in this blog post about Dive Site/City/Country entries. The Buddy entries are imported from MacDive (all the other importers work the same way) as "string" values. When you view the entry for a given dive, Dive Log on iPhone parses that string, separates it into Buddies and tries to match them up with existing contacts in your iPhone address book. It does not automatically save them as new buddies though. The steps that you detailed here:

I can get them to turn up in the statistics section if I go into a specific dive, go to buddies, hit edit, Add Buddy, then cancel out of all that and come back to the dive- then the buddy turns up in statistics. These buddies (that have been touched if you like) will then turn up in the Buddies list if you manually add a buddy (I did a linked one from my address book) then after adding the buddy, the buddy list populates itself.

are appropriate to save these buddies to the buddy table within Dive Log. We don't do this automatically because some user might prefer to keep some of the buddy list strings out of their buddy table (depending on how they originally chose to use that field in MacDive). We did add support in Dive Log Manager to automatically convert Dive Sites, Cities and Countries into fully relational entries in Dive Log (with an option to turn it off selectively) and we need to extend this feature to Buddies as well. The only reason that it has not happened yet is a lack of resources ... but it is on the list!

But then these manually added buddies don't turn up in the statistics list...

We'll take a look at this and make sure that there isn't a bug. Any Buddies that show up in the Buddies tab should also show up in the Statistics tab as long as they are assigned to at least one dive (note that the Statistics filters out any Dive Sites/Cities/Countries/Buddies or Dive Types that are used 0 times).

It is possible that there is a problem with some of the iOS4 changes that we didn't catch. iOS4 significantly changed the way that changes to the address book are propagated so it is possible that there is an error in the way the Statistics list gets updated in certain circumstances. You can force everything to reload by causing Dive Log to actually exit (vs just going into the background). To do this, press the "Home" button on your iPhone as normal to leave Dive Log and return to the home screen. Then press the Home button twice quickly to bring up the iOS4 task manager (the most recently run applications will be listed across the bottom of the screen). Then press and hold on any of the icons in the task manager until they start moving around and gain little red "quit" icon (the minus sign in a red circle). Then tap the "quit" icon for Dive Log within the task manager. This will cause Dive Log to exit completely so that it restarts from scratch the next time that you run it. Let me know if Buddies that you have in the Buddies tab do not show up in the Statistics after the restart as this may indicate a different problem (if you can send details to our support e-mail address that would be great!).

Thanks for your feedback and your questions. We really appreciate hearing user feedback and use it to prioritize our development efforts. We'll try to get your concerns addressed as quickly as we can.

Cheers,

Greg

[SeaHermit]

Ah- so this thread really should be over in the Dive Log Manager bit - where I've just noticed another thread on the same topic.

Doh!

I've only just found the Locations sync option (I didn't click on where it said "Import" until reading your post!) and that does all the syncing of the locations well - a similar feature for buddies as you suggest would solve everything! I'll be patient

And on the buddies - your explanation about the parsing of the strings completely solves that one as well - the buddy I'd added I added as a buddy by himself, and then when you look at the dives which he was with me on, he pops up, and you can hit on him and it goes to his address book card - so I figured it was all linked. But if you go to edit and then save it, it parses it, turns him into a proper buddy, and all works as it should - so it's back to the same as the original problem. Just got a bit confusing when you can see the buddy as linked, but he's not really.

Thanks for the quick response, I'll let you get back to work now

Ben

[support]

Hi Ben,

Just a quick update to let you know that we've just posted an update to Dive Log Manager 2.0 beta (version 2.0.4) that addresses the issue of linking Buddies that are imported from MacDive 2 (or any of the other importers). You should be able to get the update using the "Check For Updates ..." menu item in the current version of Dive Log Manager or you can download it from this page.

Cheers,

Greg

[SeaHermit]

Woo! Works great, thanks!

Happy linked buddies now