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In Consideration

Allow ShipStation Connect to run as a Windows Service

Related products:Printing & Documents
  • June 6, 2017
  • 21 replies
  • 7 views
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I have ShipStation Connect installed on one PC in our office in order for all our other PCs to have access to a few printers. This works fine as long as my Windows user account is logged in (so ShipStation Connect starts up). However as soon as I log out, or if the computer must be rebooted and I'm not around to sign in to my account....ShipStation Connect never runs and nobody can access the printers. It should be possible to setup ShipStation Connect to run as a Windows Service instead, so that it starts with Windows, and not on a specific user logon. As it stands, ShipStation Connect is fatally flawed for anyone who cannot be present to log in after a system reboots! Hoping for a solution...

21 replies

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I concur. I imagine the solution was designed with the expectation that it is normally the same user or shared user account working on a printer connected endpoint. We have various users during various shifts and under regulatory rules we cannot have shared accounts... throughout the week we (support) spend about 5 minutes twice a day every day getting the connect applet running under a new user. Running as a service would be a vast improvement with a large payoff for our organization!
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  • Christina9
  • August 18, 2017
We need this for our implementation as well. Another division of our company uses Shipmate from Zenkraft and their print client runs as a service.
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  • will14
  • August 21, 2017
There is a way to get around this without having it act as a service (which I agree should be a thing). The shortcut is stored in: C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsAmazon.com Copy the "ShipStation Connect" shortcut that is contained in that folder Go To C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart Menu Paste the shortcut in this folder. Now when the user signs in it will launch Shipstation AutoMagically.
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  • wayne3
  • August 23, 2017
This sounds like the correct place for me to complain about Connect. I do not understand why a user needs to log into Connect for it to work. Maybe there is a great reason that can be explained to me, but I have asked your techs and am simply told that the Shipstation users needs to be the same as the Connect user, yet there is no easy way to do this. Also, one of our computers will not automatically load Connect on restart. This always creates issues, especially if the normal user for connect is not on duty. Our employees have their own Shipstation accounts, but switch computers depending on what they are doing. Connect is a time drag when it is acting up. Less than ideal.
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'@William Cohen, do you mean the C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuStartup folder? Also, how/why does this end up in an ...Start MenuProgramsAmazon.com folder? Your solution will work for most cases, but a service would be more robust. It really should just be a background process.
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  • mhtalk
  • April 9, 2018
@Mark Sicignano BrickOvenBaker.com commented · September 18, 2017 12:02 PM @William Cohen, do you mean the C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuStartup folder? The correct location in Windows 7 is C:UsersAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsStartup
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  • kschmitt
  • May 7, 2018
I'm voting for Connect-as-a-Service. As an Enterprise subscriber we have ShipStation connected (no pun) on more than a handful of computers. As we are a Microsoft AD shop we don't have assigned users on each system. Having Connect running as a service on the machine would help us greatly as it wouldn't be user-dependent. I've been told that only the computer connected to the local resources has to have Connect installed. I've also been told that all computers that need to use network resources have to have it installed. Which is it? I'd prefer to only install it on the directly connected machine and use it as a server for the other workstations. Thank you ShipStation for listening to your users.
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I agree with this. We have several users with their own login that use one computer. They are assigned orders. We cannot keep disconnecting ShipStation Connect and reconnecting everytime someone new logs on.
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Yep; this is such a pain needing to re-install shipstation connect nearly every day (and it does not work with usb printers as it should) we're currently evaluating ShipRush as a replacement. Other than shipstation connect, shipstation is wonderful!
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  • chaim1
  • December 12, 2018
I agree with this. it is kind of annoying that shipstation should disconnect each an every time I have to restart my computer
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  • store8
  • February 15, 2019
'+1 for this.
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  • bprigge
  • October 1, 2019
'+1 on this. No reply for 2 years. What's the status here?
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Add my name to the list of people that want this added.
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  • danny4
  • December 6, 2019
add me to list
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  • quietwc
  • July 28, 2020
Incredible that isn't done yet. Poor design at best.
SuperMgr-Sarah

Thanks for your patience with this idea! We have started work on updating our ShipStation Connect codebase. I'm checking to see if this will allow what you are asking for and will follow up with more details as soon as I know more. 

Sarah H.Austin, Tx
SuperMgr-Sarah

Quick update... 

 

The work we are currently doing to update ShipStation Connect is a step toward your use case, but the first phase of the Connect updates don't include this ability. Implementing this will bring up some new complications in how we manage the front-end experience, which will require some research and testing after we've implemented the new code base. 

 

That may mean we reach out for further input from interested users and even create a test group. If you are interested in being contacted for this in the future, please let us know in a reply. Thanks!

Sarah H.Austin, Tx
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  • supersix
  • June 2, 2023

Any updates here? This is very much a necessity.

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  • Webmenace
  • July 31, 2023

I agree, if I can't run this in the background by passing creds or install a it as a Window Service... its flawed for multiple use cases.

I have it running on a server that only has RDP access... RDP connections timeout. I can't start the dang thing after a normal patching schedule. So I have so wake up a 6am when our first teams arrive, and start it... then I have to babysit it all day to make sure that the RDP session doesn't disconnect.

I now there are many of ways to persist sessions, but the ERP clients will eventually bring everything to a halt if not reaped.

I've sent multiple questions to support about this, and I don't get an answer... like NO this is not currently possible and that is on our next update cycle..., which would be helpful...

I did get a call back recently from customer service... like:
"Oh sir, all you need to do in the morning, is just click on the icon and it will show up in your system tray" (grrr)

This needs to be able to be ran as a windows service... like now... Please?

(big sigh)

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  • HHE
  • August 28, 2023

@SuperMgr-Sarah how about now? Are we closer?

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  • Dale5
  • September 14, 2023

Hi All,

@HHE @Webmenace 

I have found a way to run shipstation connect on any pc without being logged in! I am currently doing this with our team without fault!
I am using PsExec (which is a MicroSoft tool) to run the process on the SBS via command prompt and once the process is running you can close the command prompt. This works well for me as I am running ShipStation connect on a server that does not get rebooted very often. (You will be running ShipsStation Connect as the native SYSTEM account, this is why you do not need to stay logged in or keep a disconnected session).

download PsExec on your remote PC (i did this on my laptop). Just google it and click on the link from Microsoft.
extract the ZIP to the C: drive of the same PC

Open cmd as admin
navigate to the PSTools folder via 'cd' ex: 'cd C:\Users\admin\pstools' (without the ' at the start and end)

Enter this command, change it to suit your environment.

psexec <servername> -u <username> -p <password> -s "C:\Program Files\ShipStation Connect\ShipStation Connect.exe"

example: psexec \\192.168.xxx.xxx -u admin -p ******* -s "C:\Program Files\ShipStation Connect\ShipStation Connect.exe"

**i believe that is the default location for the shipstation connect .exe file. if not, change the UNC path accordingly.

If you have entered this successfully, you will see the terminal do a whole bunch of stuff. Once it has stopped you will see the current version of shipstation connect in the terminal. You can close the terminal now.

Log into shipstation and reselect the printers that you want the users to print from.

 

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