Is This The Kind of Program You Want Destroying Your Data & Your Business?

I Report, You Decide. (Sorry, Fox News Channel)

Just how screwed up is MarketCircle’s latest version of DayLite? Let’s try a simple test. This is the version we are using:

Here is the card for The San Francisco Chronicle, showing the AddressBook card for the same company also visible in the background. As you can see, the URL section is blank. AddressBook had previously been completely wiped out and 100% data is from DayLite synching all the data into it.

Now we will assume that DayLite was a reliable, normal, application that does not destroy your data or time and effort. Let us enter a URL for the newspaper in DayLite’s clearly visible URL field.

Now we click OK and the record is saved with the URL… we would ASSUME…

Sure enough, we see that the Chronicle’s card in DayLite is showing the URL both in the bottom of the window AND in the Electronic Addresses section of the card’s display area. A synch is also automatically taking place.

So, we would not assume that the card in AddressBook has been updated with the URL. I normally do this with AddressBook closed but kept it running just for the screenshots. So we first wait for Daylite to stop synchronizing (a process that can take MINUTES even if you made one minor change). Anyway, once synching is complete, we go to AddressBook or open it if closed. AB opens up and… hey, wait, the URL did NOT come into AddressBook even after AB was launched though the Daylite window at the bottom of the image still shows that the URL was entered. Of course, since Daylite’s views often do not actually reflect what the database shows unless you click on some other card and then back on this card… let’s see what we find….

I click on the Riviera Beach card above it, then click on the Chronicle’s card again…. and we see that the URL is still showing for Chronicle but still missing in AddressBook.

So we decide to double click on the Chronicle card in DayLite Organizations…. Showing that the URL was entered, and still shows…

So we investigate further and click on the Phones/Addresses tab of the window for this organization…. And find the weirdness that though we CLEARLY entered the URL in the URL field of DayLite’s organization window, it has marked it as having no “KIND” associated with it. Oh, OK, weird, screwed up, but not the end of the world… we’ll just manually enjoy fixing a few thousand cards like this…. So we click on the first pop up that currently shows Email, and select Web, since this is a web address…. And it automatically selects the “Home Page” field name from the pop-up below the Email/Web/IM pop-up. OK, that’s not so bad….seems to be fine now..

So we click on OK… and see that the field name of Home Page now is visible under Electronic Addresses showing the URL and, as you can see, it has started synchronizing.

Surely this means we will finally have the link show up in AddressBook…. But wait, WHILE we were waiting for synch to finish, the display changed a bit… and guess what… the URL has disappeared right from the DayLite record right before our eyes…. AddressBook is NOT running, nothing else is touching the data… here is the same part of the screen… as you can see that synchronization finished… and where the URL was previously clearly visible we just have the company name… the URL you typed manually, or pasted from a web page, or had someone tell you on the phone is now GONE. Your work was wasted. Your data was DESTROYED.

Well… maybe it showed up in AddressBook… let’s check… we start AddressBook or check it if it already running. And, weirdness…. The URL did make it to AB but was removed from DL….

Interesting. OK, so let’s try something else. Since DL is not so reliable, let us edit the next record over in AB, that happens to be the San Jose Mercury News.

It only has a mailing address, let’s call a friend on the phone in CA, spend time, money and effort and find out the URL.

Let us say it is http://www.sjmercurynews.com/FromAddressBook which will help us trace it. So we have now added the URL in AB in the home page field.

After another synch is completed by DL, we check out the display, it shows no URL or any Electronic Addresses for this paper, so we double click to open the card and are annoyed to find the URL field empty in Organization view.

So we try the Phones/Addresses tab…and that is blank too… how nice, what a joy to have done all that work for nothing.

Not giving up, we decide to add the URL in DL again, just to make it stick…and type in http://www.sjmercurynews.com/FromDayLite just to make it separate from what we had entered in AB. We also select the pop-up to change the Email type to Web type, and the No Value becomes a Home Page field name. We click OK, and see the URL showing up at the bottom of the display and a new synch happening…

So what did we finally get … of course we sit here twiddling thumbs for 4 minutes while this little change synchs (forever). And, believe it or not, the very place that we can see http://www.sjme visible in the picture above is now… with no URL!!

So all the NEW typing we did was also wasted. Let’s go over to AddressBook to see what happened there….

Now how’s THAT for an idiotic and stupid synch… AB now has TWO URLs called ‘home page’ and DL has none!

I have had instances of updates done that did NOT make it to the other side, and also deleted/disappeared from DL, wasting hours of effort of having found contact info for people, or calling people to get it again on the phone.

Here’s an example. Since the above frustrating experience was not bad enough, we go back into DayLite and create a THIRD URL attempt, this time using the electronic address type of “Web” and a field name selection of “Web” (as opposed to the above “home page” field names). The idea is that if THAT sticks in DayLite AND copies over to AddressBook, at least we will have one of three URLs in DL and all 3 in AB… so we type in a new URL of http://sjmercurynews.com/webwebFromDayLite to differentiate it from the other two we had made.

Sure enough, we click OK, it is saved, shows up in the DayLite Organizations’ window’s bottom, and as an electronic address, a synch starts up… when it completes, what do we find…we find ourselves ready to smack someone at MarketCircle…

Not only has the THIRD NEW URL not stuck around in DayLite, but though it has gone over to AddressBook BUT DELETED THE TWO EXISTING ONES, even though even the field name of “web” was different from the “home page” ones that existed there.

Yes, those previously researched, found, entered, typed, synched, two URLs are DESTROYED by DL. Your DATA IS DESTROYED.

Don’t believe me. Remember the earlier example we used of the San Francisco Chronicle above. If you remember, after all our attempts we found that data entered in DL did make it to AB, so we can be thinking at least that data is still there. So, let’s check. We did not make any changes to anything during this time except the work done on the San Jose Mercury News’ card. So the San Francisco Chronicle’s AB card should at least still have the URL that was entered into it by DayLite’s synch….

Sorry my friends… not only was the data in DayLite lost while we watched, but even the data (URL in this case) that was copied over to the AddressBook is now gone. See below:

Your data, your work, your time, your effort, your business critical information was lost, destroyed, and there is no way to find it without searching for it and entering it all over again, until DayLite DESTROYS YOUR DATA AGAIN.

This is NOT the only type of data destruction I have seen in DL. I have launched AB after some synchs that deleted EVERY single entry from AddressBook and I had to go through the whole process of starting from a blank address book and populating it with DayLite again and even THEN these problems persist. Your data IS at SERIOUS RISK.

Is this the kind of program you want running your business or life? You decide.

Imran