Re: Re: [BUG] Changing recurrence day

[Eric Poulin]

#3690

When editing a repeating entry there is an option dialog that appears giving you some choices:
– Edit this entry only?
– Edit this and all future entries?
– Edit All Entries (including entries in the past)?

If you choose either of the last 2, you are affecting repeating entries.  If you select one of those, an additional option panel appears below as follows:

– Modify properties of existing repeating entries in this series
– Recreate all repeating entry dates based on repeating entry attributes

If you are actually changing the dates, you should choose the later option, to recreate the entries, rather than just modify then in place.
Probably you are leaving the default option to modify existing entries, which leaves them on the current date.

Why do we have these last 2 options, you may ask?
There are a few reasons, both of which are a little complicated.
1) If you move a single entry that was part of a repeating series to another day and you chose “Only this entry”, that entry is taken out of the repeating entry series and is now standalone.  Any modifications to the repeating entries now will not affect this loner.  Sometimes you may move future entries to a different date (if they fall on a holiday or weekend or for whatever reason).  So this future entry, if adjusted will be broken out of the original series.  Now, adjustments to that repeating series will not affect that moved entry. Also, sometimes you will delete a particular entry in the future.  Changing exiting will not affect the deleted entry, but recreating will recreate all entries based on the repeating entry settings.

Now, if there is a change to the repeating entry, you can choose “Modify existing” which will only affect those entries still in the series.  However, those entries broken off are unaffected.  If you choose “Recreate”, the repeating series will be recreated (same as delete and create) and then entries will fall on the new dates you specified in the repeat entry settings.  This will still not affect any entries that were broken off the series… so now you may end up with a few duplicate entries that will need to be cleaned up. 

Basically, we wanted to give you the option to “start over” with the repeating entry (recreate) or just modify some properties (if you’ve made date adjustments in the future or individual deletions).

2) Second reason is for performance.  If you are just modifying entries that are already in the right place… its really fast.
Otherwise we have to delete the existing ones and recreate them, which means the database is deleting (possibly 1000s of rows) and then creating 1000s of new rows.  Rather than have your browser sit there for 30+ seconds while the db is working, we decided is might be more convenient to give you the option. 

We did worry about the options being a little confusing, but decided to push for flexibility.  Is there a better way you think we can work the options?
Perhaps I can detect if the repeat properties (date options) have changed, then force a recreate, not modify.  I’m still a little worried about orphaned duplicates in this case.

Thoughts?