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Help Companionlink Problem

russmd

Newbie
Nov 13, 2009
15
0
I've been using Companionlink to sync my Google and my Outlook for almost 2 months and its been working fine. All of a sudden, with no changes to either system, the calendar entries which I add to Outlook DO NOT show up in Google (online calendar or Droid). If I add calendar entries thruu Google, they go to outlook. If I delete entries in Outlook, they delete in Google. They just WILL NOT ADD through Outlook. Contacts work fine in both directions.

I am computer savvy and have tried many things. I checked all the companionlink settings - all are correct and unchanged. I rebooted the pc.
Still having the problem.

Please help. Thanks.
 
Russ,

If what you are entering is past March 15th then that can be an issue. An update from CompanionLink may be needed to handle items in Daylight time. It is probably a good idea to update anyway:

Go to CompanionLink's website, select Downloads, then Updates, and Download CompanionLink for Google. Overinstall it. This will update the software and won't change any settings.

If the problem persists then contact CompanionLink tech support and they will tell you how to make a log file. That will tell us why/if data API is rejecting the data. Periodically Google makes internal changes to the API, which can cause issues with 3rd party software. Their hosting is distributed so it is common that some users get affected but not others. However, I'm not aware of any significant activity with the Calendar data API in the last 60 days, so I'm a bit mystified.

Tech support hours at CompanionLink are 7am to 4pm Pacific Time.

Wayland Bruns, CTO
CompanionLink Software, Inc.
www.companionlink.com
 
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Great. Success! Updating worked and all is back to normal. Thank you. By the way, I noticed the option now to transfer names as lastname, firstname. On the Droid, the contacts always show as firstname lastname and there's no option to do otherwise (poor thinking on their part). How does transferring as last, first play into this? Will it change anything in the Droid's contact manager?
Russ
 
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Companionlink is just bad. A product that does not work and apparently changes names on a weekly basis, functionality that all of a sudden disappears with an update and worst thing - a support that does not give a rats butt about supporting paying customers.

I submitted at least three tickets asking about why the google / Notes synchronozations does not work any more (it shows google error pages as the changing servers at google do not seem to be handled correctly by the software) - I did not even get a response after a week.

The software worked fine for a few weeks and now it is only throwing out error messages and is a complete waste of my hard earned money.

This company is just bad, bad, bad ... unfortunately they are not even BBB listed, so I may need to either get a lawyer or write off my money.

Thomas
 
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I submitted at least three tickets asking about why the google / Notes synchronozations does not work any more (it shows google error pages as the changing servers at google do not seem to be handled correctly by the software)

Tom, I'm so sorry you had these problems. I apologize that you did not get a response from email technical support. Although we handle more than 400 messages a day, I know for a fact that our support queues were cleared all last week. Maybe we sent responses that you didn't see? Did you check your "Spam filter" to see whether they went there? Be sure to add CompanionLink to your whitelist to be sure you get the responses.

First I apologize that we moved Lotus Notes support from our lowest end product to a higher price product. People who already purchased our product need to download CLX instead of CLG. We've set CompanionLink Express to honor the prior purchase automatically so you don't need a keycode and the upgrade is free. The reason is that we've discovered Lotus Notes is "higher maintenance" than Outlook so we are looking to align our pricing to match cost of covering the support demands of the customer base.

For the URL issue; we finally know the answer. Starting about Feb 20th, Google started changing Calendar URL's for certain users. You can't see it with a browser. But internally the Sync URL for certain user's Calendars got changed by a server-side modification in the Google Cloud.

CompanionLink has posted an update online at our website to handle both old and new urls so this change is now transparent. Also, if with the old software if you simply go to Calendar Settings, re-select your Calendars, this will also work. But for the last two weeks, about 3-4% of our users that selected their settings prior to about Feb 20, and then synchronized after Feb 20th, the software would report URL issues, because Google pushed a URL change from the server side.

If you need a refund, just ask for one. CompanionLink will cheerfully refund your purchase price right away.

Finally, if you are concerned that Google may make another URL change like this, I would suggest, that your problem is not with the sync system, but with Google itself. You can always switch to CompanionLink USB, which is a direct sync to your phone. This avoids any need for Google compatibility or any issues that occur from online pushes from the Google's Calendar team.

I hope this information helps.

Wayland Bruns, CTO
CompanionLink Software, Inc.
www.companionlink.com
 
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Thanks for the info. Yes, I understand that things changed with the way Google handles sessions/their server load and therefore updated the software - unfortunately nowhere anything about that Companionlink Google is not Companionlink Google any more if I want the Lotus Notes replication... Guess what - I bought Companionlink Google and downloaded the update for exactly that product and oops - no Lotus Noted in there any more...

Yes, I also tried the Companionlink Express - the problem is not only the same as with the old software, but also lacks the automatic background synchronization (which makes the software useless for me).

The problem by the way is not with the calendar but with the contacts. When synchronizing the calendar alone, it works, as soon as I add contacts, I get the 403 error message below. When taking that URL directly to a web browser, the "401 Authorization required" error comes up.

I rather get a working product (that was the reason why I initially spent the money) than a refund, but again, with the effort I have seen so far in regards to resolving the problem, I do not feel that the issue actually will get resolved.

Also, the USB version does not work for me as I need the synchronization while travelling.

I did not get a response - my spam filter does not delete e-mails and I manually cross-check before deleting them.

Regards,
Thomas

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Unable to connect with Server.
Status code: 403
Internet Error: 0
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<HTML><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<TITLE>ERROR: The requested URL could not be retrieved</TITLE>
<STYLE type="text/css"><!--BODY{background-color:#ffffff;font-family:verdana,sans-serif}PRE{font-family:sans-serif}--></STYLE>
</HEAD><BODY>
<H1>ERROR</H1>
<H2>The requested URL could not be retrieved</H2>
<HR noshade size="1px">
<P>
While trying to retrieve the URL:
<A HREF="http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/<removed my data here>">http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/<removed my data here></A>
<P>
 
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Companionlink Google is not Companionlink Google any more if I want the Lotus Notes replication...

Tom,

I apologize for the confusion. Indeed, we just recently removed Lotus Notes from our lowest end products.

If you email me your computer id directly to wayland@companionlink.com I'll send back a keycode for CompanionLink Professional. It does Notes, Autosync and a lot of other things. Also I'll be able to backtrack our support emails to see why they didn't get out.

The problem by the way is not with the calendar but with the contacts. When synchronizing the calendar alone, it works, as soon as I add contacts, I get the 403 error message below.

I'm having a tech look at this now.

Wayland
 
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Same issue, keep getting the unable to connect with server - status code 403. I would think after all the postings on here and other places that Companionlink would directly address the problem on the support section of their website and offer some solution to the issue. The tech that I spoke to seemed to be well aware of the issue and wanted to escalate to a level 2 tech pretty quick. Looks like it could be a good product if Companionlink ever got the bugs worked out.
 
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Same issue, keep getting the unable to connect with server - status code 403. I would think after all the postings on here and other places that Companionlink would directly address the problem on the support section of their website and offer some solution to the issue. The tech that I spoke to seemed to be well aware of the issue and wanted to escalate to a level 2 tech pretty quick. Looks like it could be a good product if Companionlink ever got the bugs worked out.
I wrote to CL tech support; got the following reply. I did all on the list that were applicable and now CL is syncing with Google. Not sure what fixed it, I suspect turning off my Anti-virus program in combination with Purging Contacts.

If you are seeing password error or error 403 that mentions bad login/password, please follow these steps:

1. In your web browsers, go to http://www.google.com/ and in the upper right hand corner of the screen, click on Log Out. Then press Log In and make sure that the login that you are entering in CompanionLink works in this browser.

2. In CompanionLink, make sure your using the full Gmail address, exactly as you do with Google. For example, use "bob@gmail.com" not "bob"

3. In CompanionLink Setup, turn off sync to any public calendars (weather.com, US holidays, etc.) as they may use different login names and passwords.

4. Try turning off any firewall or antivirus, or configure your firewall to allow companionlink.exe access to secure sites.

5. If you're using a proxy setting; check your proxy info to make sure it is correct


If you see the text "Generated ... by phishing-warning-site.com ....", please follow the steps below:

1. Open http://www.google.com. In the upper right hand corner, click on Settings, then Search Settings. Change the option for Safe Search filtering to: Do Not Filter. Save the settings and exit.

2. Clear Internet Explorer cookies as well as Firefox if you have Firefox installed

3. Manually clear out the contacts from the Google account, and set CompanionLink to Purge and Reload.
 
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I have a new android tablet and use Companion link as a third part to synch to Time and Chaos, software that I have used for 20 years. No matter what I try, the computer says that it cannot sync because it doesn't recognize the IP address, even though it is the correct one, using DejaOffice. I don't know where to turn, after escalating it to level #2 at CL. What other third parties do people recommend?
 
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I have a new android tablet and use Companion link as a third part to synch to Time and Chaos, software that I have used for 20 years. No matter what I try, the computer says that it cannot sync because it doesn't recognize the IP address, even though it is the correct one, using DejaOffice. I don't know where to turn, after escalating it to level #2 at CL. What other third parties do people recommend?

Could you send me your ticket number from support to social@companionlink.com? I'd like to look into this for you and personally ensure it gets in front of someone who can help!


- David
 
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