Skip to content

2023

Update

Fixes

  • Recently, Microsoft changed the response they send after deleting an event in a way incompatible with ChronoLink. Since then, connections failed whenever they had to delete an event (for example, when an event had been deleted from the source calendar).
    • This has now been fixed. Affected connections will resume within 24 hours.

Housekeeping

  • Building on the improvements to the retry mechanism from the February 5 update, we have now shortened the minimum retry delay from 24 hours to one hour. The maximum retry delay was likewise lowered from 30 hours to 4.

New Data Center

Today, ChronoLink moved to a new data center in Germany. For now, this new infrastructure just makes it easier to improve performance. However, this move also enables us to deal with any future growth of our user base in a more cost-efficient way.

All accounts and connections of our beta testers have been migrated.

Update

Fixes

  • ChronoLink now saves all-day events correctly.
    • Previously, they had the proper start and end time, but did not work correctly in Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook regarding notifications or when travelling to another time zone.
  • When an error occurs during a scheduled run, ChronoLink now automatically plans another run for the next day. This retry attempt is useful because in most cases, connection errors are temporary.
    • Previously, a connection did not run again until you either triggered it manually or edited and saved it. You can still do that to force an immediate retry.
    • As before, if the last run failed, the connection is displayed with a ⚠️ status icon. The retry run will still happen, and if it is successful, the connection status is displayed as ✔️ again and the regular schedule resumes.
    • We have collected several kinds of temporary connection errors so far. Over time, we will add detection code for them, allowing ChronoLink to retry affected connections with a significantly shorter delay.

Housekeeping

  • The connection queue system was rewritten from scratch. While nothing of this is visible to users, it is an important prerequisite for the next round of performance improvements. More on that in a future update.

Update

Improvements

  • When users try ChronoLink for the first time, we want them to see the results of a synchronization connection as quickly as possible. To achieve this, we are reducing the default synchronization time frame:
    • For new accounts, events dated more than 14 days prior to the signup date will no longer be synchronized.
      • Users who are interested in historic data can contact support to change this.
      • Existing accounts continue to synchronize all events starting January 2021 (unless the connection settings include a daterange condition with a later start value).
    • Connections now have a setting that specifies how far ahead they should synchronize. The default value is "2 weeks ahead".
      • Existing connections were set to "3 months ahead", which is identical to previous ChronoLink behavior.

Fixes

  • Non-meeting events created in the desktop version of Microsoft Outlook are now synchronized properly.
    • Previously, ChronoLink skipped those events because it mistook them for meeting invitations without a response by the calendar owner.

Moving to Open Beta 🥳

For the past few months, our main focus was preparing ChronoLink for Google's verification process. A few days ago, we finally had all the pieces we needed and applied for verification, and yesterday, ChronoLink was approved by Google!

This approval changes two things:

  1. Google accounts no longer have to be manually pre-registered as testers - instead, anyone can now sign up to ChronoLink totally on their own.
  2. Google calendar authorizations no longer expire after 7 days - instead, it will remain active until it is revoked explicitly via ChronoLink or via Google’s account management page.

With these changes, our Google integration finally is as easy to use as the one for Microsoft.

Therefore, as of today, ChronoLink formally moves from Closed Beta (invite only) to Open Beta (self signup). 🎉

So if you don't have a ChronoLink account already, feel free to create one with just a few clicks! Please find more information in these two newly published documents:

Update

Changes

  • Google "One Tap" login was removed. The login process now uses redirects instead of a popup, just like with Microsoft.
    • If your browser no longer displays the "Sign in with Google" button, please clear the cache.

Improvements

  • In the future, browser caches can no longer mess with ChronoLink updates as we now send proper caching headers. Whenever the script or style files that make up the UI are updated, browsers are forced to load the new versions.