This topic covers various cases where adding or changing Outlook items don't affect Digital-Clay as expected.

Inactive ClayStation

Changes made in Outlook can only be synchronized with Digital-Clay while ClayStation is loaded and not in a disabled state. Is it possible the changes were made while ClayStation was temporarily disabled?

I.e. check that the ClayStation toolbar appears in Outlook and that it responds to mouse clicks.

Note that changes made to Outlook items while ClayStation was unloaded may still be synchronized next time ClayStation loads as long as the Outlook item was linked to a Digital-Clay item beforehand.

Digital-Clay refuses synchronization due to validation errors

Validation errors: If required fields were missing or new values failed to pass Validation Rules, the Outlook item may be out of sync with the Digital-Clay item until the values are corrected in Digital-Clay.

Synchronization errors: If the above errors were received while synchronizing with ClayCentral, the offline database may be out of sync with the online database and therefore the Clay values while online may not match the Outlook values until the validation errors are corrected.

Multiple Outlook folders

ClayStation currently can only work with one Outlook folder at a time for each type of item (Task/Appointment/Contact). By default Digital-Clay uses Outlook to define its default folders, but this can be changed in the ClayStation Options. Folders may also be disabled in the ClayStation Options so that specific types of items in Outlook will not be synchronized.

Go to ClayStation's Tools/Options/Outlook and check that the folder configured there matches the folder you are currently working with.

Insufficient permissions

Permissions: Ensure that the user has permissions to add and change Tasks and/or Contacts in Digital-Clay using the Permissions tool, otherwise he will receive an error message and the item will not be synchronized with Digital-Clay.

Special Outlook items

Special Outlook items that aren't handled by Digital-Clay:

• Any item marked as Private. This allows a user to specify items that should be ignored by Digital-Clay.

• Tentative shared Meetings/Appointments that haven't been responded to yet in Outlook. This behaviour can be changed in ClayStation Options using the “Handle meetings awaiting a response” setting.

Unsynchronized deletions

Deleting Outlook items doesn't delete the corresponding Digital-Clay items. This is by design since:

1. Typically, users do not have permissions to delete items in Digital-Clay.
2. Digital-Clay is a shared environment with items used by several people, and it typically also needs to track historical information.

Therefore:

• Deleting an Outlook Task/Appointment will set the Digital-Clay Task Status to Abandoned
• Deleting an Outlook Contact will not affect Digital-Clay Contacts at all since Contacts are usually shared by many.

Recurring Appointments

A recurring Outlook Appointment is handled differently by Digital-Clay since, essentially, it is a single Outlook Appointment with patterns and exceptions handled internally. In this case, Digital-Clay adds only a subset of the Tasks from the recurring pattern to the system. See Outlook Recurring Appointments for details.

Bulk Outlook changes

Due to a limitation in Outlook, Outlook plugins do not receive a notification when more than 10-15 items are pasted into an Outlook folder in one go. This means that if you copy & paste over 10 items from one Outlook folder to another, Digital-Clay will not be able to add them to the system automatically.

In this case, to add multiple items to Digital-Clay, use the ClayStation Tools/Import-Export tool.