Duplication of local contacts iOS?

[syarbrou]

Has anyone else had issues with iPhone's (BYOD) that have local contacts and after enrollment they suddenly have repetitive copies of most of their contacts in the iOS Contacts app?  Even with Boxer installed and local contacts disabled in the app it does this.  Unenrolling it doesn't go away.  Also whatever the Caller ID feature of Boxer s that's disabled as well.  When I click on one of the duplicate contacts in the notes it says:

This contact was created to enable caller ID for VMware Boxer contacts.  No changes made here will be reflected on your account.  If you modify the notes field you may have duplicated contacts.  You an turn off Caller ID in Boxer settings  Then has some kind of logID.

Anyone?

Thanks.

Steve

[yrp5675]

I have the same problem Steve and haven't been able to get around it - when I try to manually delete some of these duplicate contacts my iOS screen freezes for about 30 seconds prior to deletion... it's really frustrating and we also can't delete or remove the Boxer option under the Outlook mailbox since the first time we enrolled these devices into EMM. Even though we don't use Boxer anymore we still can't remove the option....
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Bobby

[syarbrou]

I would delete them from icloud.com  faster.  That said they will keep coming.  I was told by VMware that we should create an application configuration for boxer with AppDefaultCallerID set to False.  Since that is a setting that applies on first install and doesn't seem to effect an already setup device, I also under More Email Settings set Caller ID to restricted.  That turned it all off.  Hope it helped but I don't have the problem myself so can't see. 

Steve

[yrp5675]

Thanks Steve
I'll give that a try.

[salisa]

I'm facing the same problem. However, the duplication seems unstable.... Two days ago, some had more than ten duplicate contacts, but since yesterday they turn out only doubles. I also notice that ' Notes'  I save in my one contact has been replace by ' This contact was created to enable caller ID …' . did not check the others but that frustrated me.

Bobby, please share the result if Steve's solution works.

[KevinMigliaccio]

I had same issue with a user that had so many duplicates they had over 64,000 contacts in the native contacts app. how i was able to rectify it for my user was to first verify in boxer all contacts are there correctly one time each, then on the device  turn off back up of contacts for icloud and turn off backup of boxer for icloud.  delete the boxer app from device. then log into the users icloud account and go to contacts where you can right click and select all. then delete them.  return to device and go to contacts and verify they are all gone from device.  reinstall boxer via push or download from your corporate app catalog.  you can then verify that all the contacts are there correctly. NOTE: i did not enable caller id or local contacts in boxer again and told the user they can do what they want but i suggested not activating these features until we are sure problem won't repeat.

[yrp5675]

Thanks for all your responses - so far I've done all the suggested solutions above and not even using Boxer anymore and still have duplicates. Barring from deleting all my contacts from the device I’m not sure what else can be done.

[syarbrou]

Bobby, without completely removing everything which sounds like Kevin did, you have to go in and delete them all from icloud.com manually. Question is, did you implement what I posted above and are they still growing or are you just struggling with deleting all the dupes?

[yrp5675]

Hi Steve,
I disabled backup mode for Boxer & Contacts - made sure Caller ID in Boxer is turned off - Removed Boxer all together from my device - deleted all my contacts from my iCloud contacts... I still have duplicates, something within our devices (iPhone XR) is just hanging on to this ' Boxer ID'  parameters.  The good news is that the numbers are NOT growing.

[syarbrou]

Good news I guess.  The new version of Boxer is scheduled to be released tomorrow the 4th.

[SvenMurmannSven]

Hi,
after the Update to 5.11 all duplicate IOS contacts are gone.
But now - not any Boxer contact is in my IOS contacts.
Is there a solution?

[salisa]

After updating to 5.11 and disabled all contact sync, backup, caller ID, mine still has the duplicate contacts. I think my case has to be manually deleted since ' VMware Boxer[….]'  contact group is under ICLOUD.

[TorbenVolkmann]

There is still a bug in version 5.11. This is what I received from support today:

Hello everybody,
I ran in the same problems. This is the answer from support today:

I'd like to inform you that we recently got to know that this issue is identified as a bug in 5.11 version of Boxer. It might be related to the recent changes in iOS 13 permissions to access contacts' descriptions.

The product team is actively working on releasing the fixed version of Boxer i.e. 5.12.

Thank you so much for attaching the screenshot of the issue. I'd request you to send us the Boxer logs as well.

You can always reach out to us and get to know the status of this bug by providing the reference number i.e. BINXI-12295.

[SvenMurmannSven]

I deleted Boxer and installed it directly out of the IOS Store.
The export of the contacts works now !?!?!

[salisa]

Reply Torben,

Mine happened before the release of iOS13. I own an iPhone and an iPad that use contact sync over iCloud. Not sure if it causes by multiples enroll and unenroll during testing Airwatch system since no user has reported about duplicate contact yet.

[Scream529]

I have no iCloud contacts sync turned on, still I have the problem.

[syarbrou]

So people are still seeing the duplicate contacts growing?  Since we updated the app haven't seen duplicates growing.  Found an app that users could use to find and remove duplicates and so far they are saying they aren't coming back.  Also made the changes VMware suggested above as well on the server side but don't think that helped.

[JordonC]

What are some apps that people are using to clean up the contacts.  The couple we have tried all crash when trying to analyze the contacts.  We are trying to figure out a solution without telling users to wipe their phones.  But in the current state when an end user opens theirs native contacts app it just hang because their is too many to process.  Even the new IPhones 11 can’t process all the contacts. 

[syarbrou]

Same here.  After I excluded all the apps that eventually asked for an in app purchase to clear the contacts, and those that kept crashing trying to load them, ended up with Smart Merge Contact Cleanup.  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/smart-merge-contact-cleanup/id1381305655

It was far from perfect but one after trying 10 of them that would actually remove stuff.  Note it does have what looked like a minor flaw that in some cases it found two records a duplicate if the first name was the same between contacts, but these ' different'  contacts that it listed as the same may have been as such just maybe the name was slightly different but the rest of the data was the same.  No clue but our users were happy with it.  Only negative kind of you have to delete each named duplicate one at a time.  Only thing it didn't do was delete them all in one shot.  It grouped all the duplicates by name and have to delete each one.  So if you have 300 contacts and each one is duplicated 500 times you will have to do 300 deletes in the app.

[JordonC]

Thanks for the suggestion.  That app freezes up on me as well and closes.  Any other suggestion?  I’m not sure how AirWatch is going to fix without creating a mail merge tool of their own.