I am in IT and don’t know much about this software. It just became an issue because a terminated employee had this NSc Sync software running on their computer so when they left, apparently web orders stopped syncing.
As I’m looking into a “server solution” for this, as opposed to running it on some old laptop, I’m having trouble understanding how this program works.
Am I correct that this NSc Sync program has to run under a logged in user, in order for web orders to sync?
Shouldn’t this run as a service in the background or something?
Does it have to be dependent on a user logged into Windows for web orders to sync? I never seen anything like this if that is the case…
Thank you for your feedback. Please open a ticket on our Partner Portal and our support team will be happy to assist you with your NSc Sync installation:
I have opened a ticket but I haven’t gotten the information I need. The assistance is being provided on transferring the software to a server, but I don’t understand why there has to be an active user logged in for the sync to work.
Shouldn’t the service work for you without requiring you to login ever time you need to work? Similar to any other server technology?
Sync is not only a service. Active (re)configuration can be performed on an ongoing basis, which means it often requires user input.
For example, if you’re editing items, changing navigation, etc, you may need to tweak the field mappings, do manual syncs, or reset certain tables to reset them on the webstore. And, to give you some background, historically, much of the web-based configuration that we have now was done entirely through Sync.
Strictly speaking, given how much work is left to be done through the app, it should probably be a service, and we did actually develop a version that consists of two components: a service and a front-end. Believe it or not, there was so little demand for it, that it was not maintained beyond the first version.
I guess the reality is that, if a server is left running 24/7 anyway, it’s not so much of a burden to leave the app running with a logged in user. You can, of course, still lock the machine, and that it runs in the foreground makes it easier to manage the config on a day-to-day basis. I’m afraid this is not likely to change any time soon.
If you still are not receiving satisfactory support, please let me know here and I’ll follow up directly with the support team.
So would it pose a problem if this software was installed on multipl computers? Would that cause sync conflicts or just make things more reliable in case of one computer being powered off?
Or should the sync be installed on only a single person’s computer?
It’s best to run it from one computer. You could run into data and consistency issues otherwise – it uses caching to determine whether data needs to be uploaded and, if more than one instance is running, you can run into concurrency issues, resulting in data loss in terms of what’s on the store.
Thanks so is the common practice for this software for end-users to run it on their computers?
Or is it a common/best practice to run it on an unattended server with auto-login?
Thank very much for your time answering all these questions.
The usual approach is to run it on one user machine, so they can sync manually and do config updates directly. It’s usually the machine of the person responsible for maintaining the store
We run Sync on our server, it’s the only machine on reliably 24/7. We’ve done it this way for over 3 years, no probs, it’s in the start menu so is up when the server is up. For manual syncing and configuration, I just remote onto it. Works a treat.
Emma
@donogh
thanks for the recommendation, that makes sense to me as well. Seems like a waste to spin up a new server just for this. Also a domain-joined server will mean more Group Policy work and extra security if it’s set to auto-logon.
I’m considering RDS as well for this but I’m not sure how well it will run all day through remote desktop services method.
@emma
What server do you run it on? The SQL server? Is it a domain-joined server? A virtual server with auto-logon? Are you also the server owner or just an end-user of NSc Sync who’s been given access to Remtoe into the server? Is that RDP remote access, or RDS like launching a published application from the desktop or web browser?
So far in my environment nobody has come forward over requesting any config updates so I’m not sure that’s necessary but definitely something I’m worried about being easy for the end-users who are not technically inclined doing if it’s on a server.
