Constant Refreshes in TouchDown for Android

Products

• TouchDown

Issue/Introduction

Some users face the problem of TouchDown looping to perform refreshes, resulting in a higher battery drain and slower operations.

This can also result in TouchDown displaying the message "Push Throttled, too many timeouts in 1 minute".

Resolution

The following are the reasons we have found for this occurrence

• Your server is down or unreachable

If your server is not reachable by TouchDown, it attempts to connect repeatedly. However, if it tries and fails 5 times or more in a given minute, it gives up and waits for about 8 minutes before trying again

• Your server returns an error when TouchDown connects

When TouchDown attempts to connect to the server for push notifications, there are some situations where sever misconfiguration can cause the attempt to fail. If TouchDown fails to connect for some reason, it will attempt a few times, and then throttle itself for about 8 minutes

• Your server is constantly telling TouchDown there are changes waiting

In some cases, if your server has an Antivirus installed on it, and if the Antivirus has not been configured properly to exclude certain exchange folders from scanning, this can happen, and TouchDown will constantly think there are changes and try to sync these changes. If it happens more than 5 times a minute, it will throttle itself.

A few details about this issue can be found here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827615 or http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245822

• Certain issues with corrupted messages in Exchange 2003 server in HTML mode (THIS CAN AFFECT BATTERY LIFE)

Sometimes certain types of messages seem to be generating inconsistent messages in Exchange 2003 in ActiveSync. The typical symptom would be EXTREME sluggishness. Here is a workaround for that.

1. Disable Push
2. Kill TouchDown application (you can use any task manager to do this, go to Android Settings/Applications/Manage Applications/TouchDown and tap Force Stop button, or you can simply reboot the device)
3. In Touchdown settings>Synchronization uncheck Enable HTML Email
4. Enable Push

To Troubleshoot

• Confirming the problem

First go to the main touchdown screen, and leave it there for about a minute. If you see the bottom right indicator constantly switching to green and after about a minute you get the "Push throttled" message, chances are one of the above issues are present.

• Generating a Diagnostic log

To generate a diagnostic log, please follow the steps below

1. Go to the TouchDown main screen, click Menu/Diagnostics
2. Check the box titled "Log Next operation"
3. Go to the main touchdown screen and wait for the Push Throttled error, or simply wait a few minutes
4. Go to Menu/Diagnostics (this may take a long time to load)
5. On the Last operation Log box, press down long enough to get the copy/paste menu. Choose "Copy All".
6. Open Gmail and create an email to YOURSELF, paste the contents of the clip board on to the message body and send it
7. When you receive the email, please mask out any PASSWORDS (if using Exchange 2003 connection mode, your password may appear in a URL, so please search for it and mask it)
8. Email the sanitized log to us ([email protected])
9. When you are done, go to the diagnostic view and UNCHECK Log Next Operation