Zulu 2/Reset SyncData

Sometimes your Sync Data becomes corrupted due to low disk space, or too much time has passed since your last sync. Resetting your sync data, the internal database Zulu uses to track changes, may be your best option to resolve these issues. Resetting the sync data is the best or only solution for certain issues, but should never be considered a regular part of your work flow. When in doubt, contact 360Works directly!

Preparation

First, make sure you have Auto-Sync turned off. We don't want a sync running while we are deleting events. Second, make a backup of both your FileMaker File and your Google Calendar. A FileMaker backup is absolutely essential if it is the most up to date.

FileMaker backup

Export your Events table to a local file, or download a copy of your hosted database.

Google Calendar backup

Google has good documentation for exporting a Google Calendar and importing events back into a Google Calendar

Resetting the sync data

First, determine which side of the sync is most up to date. Do your users primarily use FileMaker to input events? or Google? This will help in figuring out which side should be used to recover.

FileMaker is the most up to date:

1. Make sure you have backups!
2. Go to the Zulu Admin page.
3. Click Reset Sync Data
4. Run a sync. Zulu will attempt to match up events in Google and FileMaker based on Summary, Start Date, and Start Time. If these have not changed since Zulu went down, the merge will be successful and you can stop here.
5. If the merge was not successful, since FileMaker is the most up to date, we need to clear out all the events in the Google Calendar without deleting it. Utilizing Zulu, we can do this.
6. Delete all records in FileMaker, and run a sync. This will delete all events in Google, but keep the calendar intact. (Note: Sometimes Google will attempt to insert events into FileMaker when you do this because Google has a habit of modifying events after they are inserted. Just delete all events in FileMaker again, run another sync, repeat, until there are 0 events in both Google and FileMaker)
7. Now restore your events table from that backup we made earlier (told you it would come in handy)
8. Run one last sync, pushing all those imported events up to Google. Done!
9. Run a couple manual syncs to confirm, but that should do it.

Google is the most up to date:

1. Make sure you have backups!
2. Delete all events in FileMaker
3. Go to the Zulu Admin page.
4. Click Reset Sync Data
5. Run a manual sync. This will bring all the events down from Google, restoring your sync.