CODAP interaction with Google Drive

[Andee Rubin]

I have two questions about CODAP’s interaction with Google Drive:

1. I have a shortcut on my Google Drive to a Google folder on another Google drive.  That’s what happened when I tried to add that folder to my drive – Google just put in a shortcut.  However, CODAP doesn’t see the shortcut, so I don’t have the option to save CODAP files to that folder.  I tried saving the CODAP file to my drive and moving it into the other folder, but that didn’t work (I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I remember I had to pull it out again to work on it.)

2.  Relatedly, I did a lot of work yesterday on this same CODAP file and it was saving (or so I thought) to my drive – not through the shortcut.  A while later I had a tech problem and Chrome shut down in an ugly way.  When I reopened the file this morning, none of my changes from yesterday were there.  Any ideas??

[Bill Finzer]

Hi Andee,

I’m not surprised that CODAP doesn’t allow you to save through a shortcut as its use of the Google Drive API is quite limited. Did you try logging out of one account and logging into the other where you actually want the file?

Regarding loss of work—that’s mysterious. CODAP auto-saves incrementally so it shouldn’t be possible for a crash to set you back as you describe. I don’t know of anyone experiencing something like that.

Bill

[Jonathan Sandoe]

Hi Andee,

Regarding the lost work, Google Drive gives the user the ability to see the version history of any document. Right click on the file in Google Drive and then click on “Manage Versions”. You may be able to figure out whether the document was ever updated yesterday. One possible explanation for the disappearance of your work is that two copies of the document were open, somehow. If this happens the last version to update wins. The “manage versions” history may help with this.

Jonathan Sandoe

[Andee Rubin]

A few follow-ups on this.

In terms of the first issue (can’t save through a short-cut), the folder I wanted to save to was shared with me from another account, but I can’t actually log into that account.

On the second issue, I am really mystified by the following:  I’ve been working on the very same file I mentioned above to reproduce the work I lost.  Everything was fine and it was updating on Google Drive until this afternoon, when I noticed that the screen said UNSAVED.  I waited, but nothing happened.  I decided to force it to save and CODAP dutifully asked me if I wanted to overwrite the old version – to which I replied “yes” – but it didn’t get saved and the document still says UNSAVED.  I looked at the version history and there are 100 versions there – since I did a lot of work – did I overrun a stack?  I’ve attached a few screen shots, but I don’t think they’ll really tell you anything.

Attachments:

1. 

   Screen-Shot-2021-01-25-at-5.08.48-PM.png
   

2. 

   Screen-Shot-2021-01-25-at-5.09.17-PM.png
   

3. 

   Screen-Shot-2021-01-25-at-5.09.36-PM.png
   

[Bill Finzer]

Hi Andee,

I don’t know enough about the subtleties of working with Google Drive to understand what is going on here. I hope you were able to preserve your re-worked document.

Thanks very much for letting us know that this kind of thing can happen.

Bill

[Jonathan Sandoe]

This is quite mysterious. I don’t think the number of versions is the problem, nor the size of the document. Andee, have you had trouble with other CODAP documents saving to this account? Are you able to save other documents, now? Occasionally, users with multiple user accounts have had issues connected with being authenticated on the wrong account, but we have not seen many issues of this kind.

Jonathan

[Andee Rubin]

Let me do some experimenting.  One thing I did try yesterday was to rename the file – but that didn’t get saved either, so I guess that’s one piece of information.  I do have multiple Google accounts, so that could be part of the problem, but I thought I was logged in to the same one the whole time I was working on the file.  I’ll poke around a bit more and let you know if I find out anything helpful.

 

[Andee Rubin]

I just tried to save this same file as a LOCAL file so that I could do some experiments without losing everything – but it won’t save locally either.  I choose “local file” but nothing happens when I click “download” – it stays grey and only Cancel is available to choose.

[Jonathan Sandoe]

Interesting. There must be something unusual about the document. I wonder: can you create a “shared link” for the document? (Upper left menu->”Share…”->”Get link to shared view”)

I expect this will fail, too, but its worth a try.

Jonathan

[Andee Rubin]

Sent you a message – I tried that, but it seemed to get into an infinite loop.

[Andee Rubin]

I’m not at all sure what just happened – but I minimized one graph and now it seems to be saving, both on Google Drive and locally.  I did have a lot of graphs open (8 or 9) and a text box – could that have been a problem?   Most of the graphs had multiple attributes graphed on the Y-axis; one of them had 5 attributes on the y-axis.  Since that’s a newish feature, could it possibly have been the issue?

 

Here’s a link to the shared view, which is now working.

 

<span style=”color: #000000; font-family: Montserrat, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre; background-color: #eeeeee;”>https://codap.concord.org/app/static/dg/en/cert/index.html#shared=https%3A%2F%2Fcfm-shared.concord.org%2FaIZKCkAQZr81ECE8kcEu%2Ffile.json</span&gt;

[Jonathan Sandoe]

Hi Andee,

I am sorry, but I am at a loss for suggestions. It seems that CODAP itself has come to be in an inconsistent state. Its unusual, as far as I know, for document save to fail so completely. It is especially distressing when, from the screenshots, it looks like a pretty normal CODAP document.

Jonathan

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