Resolving conflicts across devices
Although iCloud is quite prompt and efficient at keeping all devices in sync, it is primarily designed around supporting a single user moving between devices, rather than multiple users editing a file at the same time.
Consequently, if you are regularly switching back and forth between devices, you will need to take some care to ensure the last set of changes you made on one device have been synced before you start working on your new device.
The same care needs to be taken if using Dropbox to sync across devices.
Under normal circumstances, this process should only take a few seconds, so typical use should not be a problem. But you may encounter an issue in situations such as:
- Two people attempting to work on the same timeline file on different devices at the same time
- Working on very large changes (e.g. making changes to very large attachment files) that may take longer to sync
- Working in a slow network environment, or offline, where changes may be queued up on a device and unable to be synced back to the iCloud/Dropbox servers.
iCloud
If iCloud does detect that there are multiple conflicting versions of a file, the user will be shown a prompt asking them what they want to do with the conflicting files. Available choices are:
- Select to retain one version of the file. The other file will be discarded.
- Select to retain both (or multiple) versions of the file. One of the files will remain in the same location. The other files will be saved as a new file (e.g. "My Timeline" and "My Timeline 2").
- Cancel the operation so you can resolve the conflict at another time. In this case, the conflicted timeline will close. You will not be able to continue working on it until you choose one of the two options above.
Dropbox
If two users save the one timeline file, Dropbox will save the original file as well as a second version which has the same name, but appended with "conflicted copy". This way all changes are preserved, just stored in separate files.