Two-way sync of PDF annotations in group library

loesvs
My colleague and me would like to be able not only to share a library and accompanying PDF files, but also to both make annotations in the same PDF file. Unfortunately, this seems to fail repeatedly. Could anyone help us to set this up correctly?

What we did:

1. User1 created a group libary 'TestGroup', with settings:
- Private
- Library reading: any group member
- Library editing: any group members
- File editing: any group members
2. User2 was invited and added as a member (not admin; should we?)

3. Zotero of both users was set to sync group libraries via the Zotero Server

3. User1 created an item in TestGroup and attached a PDF
4. User1 annotated the PDF

5. The item with annotated PDF showed up in Zotero of User2
6. User2 added her own annotations to the PDF and saved it

7. Zotero of User2 now shows the PDF with annotations of both User1 and User2
8. The Group Library at zotero.org also shows the PDF with annotations of both User1 and User2
9. Zotero of User1 shows the PDF with annotations of User1 only (annotations of User2 are missing). Despite restarting Zotero and hitting the sync-button a gazillion times, the PDF is not updated.

Is there a way to make this work?

Note: User2 just exceeded her free 300 MB storage space. We thought that wouldn't matter as the Group Library is owned by User1, but could it affect this syncing process anyways? We're willing to upgrade her account, but only if the two-way-PDF-annotation is successful.

Another note: setting file-synchronization to either 'when necessary' or to 'at time of synchronization' does not change things.
  • adamsmith
    You're right that storage for U2 doesn't matter, so disregard that -- not need to upgrade their storage, at least not for this purpose.

    If the file with both annotations uploads to zotero.org, it should sync down to U1 for sure. Run through https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/files_not_syncing
  • loesvs
    Thanks!

    Steps 1-7 of that guide were fine, so I resorted to step 8: reset sync history for the particular folder. Afterwards, I re-synced and saved a debug log (debug ID D1550440708).

    During this resync, I got a sync conflict error: it said the file had been change twice (12:17 locally, 13:52 on the server) and allowed me to choose the most recent version. Yay!

    This fixed my issue for now... But I only got the conflict window after resetting sync history. In real-life context, I won't always know when my colleague might have edited PDFs. ShouId I reset sync history multiple times a day just to make sure we both have the most recent file? Or would this be a one-time thing?

    We'll re-test our annotate-and-sync-sequence with the current file and a new item, but my colleague is currently out of office. :)

  • adamsmith
    In expectation this should just work, otherwise something more fundamental is wrong.

    Could you just test the workflow a couple of times and see if that works? Otherwise @dstillman would have to take a look.
  • loesvs
    Here I am again. Unfortunately, no success yet. We tried the workflow a couple of times. U1 put two annotated PDFs (is two separate Zotero items) in the group library, U2 added new annotations, and PDFs containing annotations of both U1 and U2 showed up on zotero.org. So far so good.

    None did sync to Zotero on U1's computer after repeatedly hitting the sync-button. I then recorded debug logs:

    Debug ID D1931697312: regular sync of U1's Zotero, PDFs were not updated.
    Debug ID D2093031512: reset sync history of group library "TestgroepNele" in U1's Zotero, sync, conflict-window appeared, PDFs were updated.

    Would this help to identify the underlying problem? If something's wrong with my current Zotero installation, is there a good way to reinstall it in such a way that my libraries are kept but we get rid of the screwing-things-up-factor? My personal library is synced via WebDAV, and group libraries via Zotero Servers (supposedly).

    Anyways, Adam and @dstillman, thanks for your time and support!
  • adamsmith
    No, don't re-install. Let's wait for dstillman to take a look.
  • loesvs
    edited June 5, 2019
    Ok, thanks!

    In the meantime, I found out something's wrong with syncing files in general. When I set up Zotero to sync to our WebDAV server a while ago, all seemed fine: I could find PDFs and something looking like a Zotero database in our cloud. Afterwards, Zotero never gave any errors upon syncing (and I did use the sync button a lot, lately :)).

    However, when I just checked again, I noticed the cloud folder was only 8 MB whereas my local Zotero storage folder is over 4 GB. I reset sync history for that folder as well and it's syncing >2000 files now (cloud folder size is indeed increasing). Weird. I forgot to turn on debugging, but it's still syncing so I recorded a little part of that, in case it might help identify the issue (D1550440708).
  • loesvs
    If @dstillman would not have time to check this out, would someone else know what is wrong here?
  • dstillman
    Sorry for the delay. This is a bug in download-as-needed mode when the local file already exists. I should have a fix soon, but in the meantime, the easiest workaround is to do Show File and delete the local file and then double-click on the file again, which will trigger a new download.
  • loesvs
    @dstillman, thank you so much for your help and the promised fix!

    However, when my colleague and I were trying to use the workaround, we stumbled upon a new problem: not only download, but also upload seemed impaired. What we did:

    1. U1 put a new item (including pdf) in the group library
    2. Item and pdf showed up on zotero.org
    3. Item and pdf showed up in U2's zotero

    4. U1 edited pdf
    5. Edited pdf was shown on zotero.org
    6. Edited pdf was *not* shown in U2's zotero > workaround > edited pdf showed up

    7. U2 added annotations to the same pdf
    8. Annotations of U2 did not show op on zotero.org
    9. Annotations of U2 did not show op in U1's zotero
    We did not get this to work even with repeated sync attempts.

    9. U2 reset sync history for group library > pdf was successfully synced.

    We of course recorded debug logs again. As we did not know whether the download-as-needed versus download-at-sync-time setting is involved, we tried both.
    - First sync attempt ('at sync time'): D33653683 > file not uploaded on zotero.org
    - Second sync attempt ('as needed'): D1025191918> file not uploaded on zotero.org
    - Third sync attempt (after reset): D1688108696 > file uploaded!

    This turned out not to be reproducible however - when we repeated the exact same sequence with a new annotation in the same pdf, it was picked up by zotero.org immediately after hitting the sync button.

    I really really hope it would be possible to get this to work reliably. As soon as two-way sync of pdf annotations runs smoothly, the other people in our lab will switch to using Zotero group libraries as well.
  • loesvs
    @dstillman, would you happen to have any idea of what's going on with our impaired upload?
  • loesvs
    @adamsmith or @dstillman, would you happen to know whether this bug has been fixed yet? We already upgraded the account of one of our colleagues, but we're waiting to upgrade some others until we know this works correctly. :) Thanks!
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