Suggestion: DON'T disable auto ORDER IMPORTING if an update fails (Selling Channel/Store Connection)

[shipshipper]

Shipstation permanently disables auto-updates (order importing) for a store connection if there is ever any connection error. You have to realize updates have stopped, then manually refresh the connection to fix this. To make it much worse, there is no notification when this happens.

Over the years this has caused me to miss new orders repeatedly, sometimes for days, resulting in late shipments.

Example: Recently my Amazon store connection failed. No specific reason, maybe server maintenance somewhere. Connecting worked immediately when I manually updated: no fix was needed, it was a temporary hiccup, auto-updating orders should not have been turned off. The only way to know orders had stopped importing was to notice a tiny exclamation point in the corner.

There are many easy ways to fix this. Just one of the following would be an adequate fix:

1. If a store connection fails, send me an automated email so I can investigate and am aware of the issue.
2. If a store connection fails, show a very clear message in the Shipstation interface warning me.
3. If a store connection fails, in the left panel for that store, change its text to red, grayed out, etc.
4. If a store connection fails, just have it retry the connection again every few hours. (don't disable auto-updates)

[shipshipper]

Just wanted to mention that lately Amazon store connections have been randomly, and temporarily failing (1-2 hours) much more often, highlighting this issue more for me.

Manually refreshing the store with no other changes makes it work again, and auto-updates work normally after that. If Shipstation just kept trying to attempt an auto-update once every few hours after one failure, everything would work perfectly. 

Why does Shipstation disable store auto-updates just because a connection fails once?

I can't see any advantage to disabling the connection after just one temporary failure.

[KParker]

Sounds like it would be beneficial for ShipStation to add additional attempts within a specified window when the initial attempt fails. Should be a loop until the connection was passed as successful.

At minimum add you would expect a growler message to the UI and email notifications for users to call attention to the failed connection.

[shipshipper]

I completely agree @KParker

I've been trying to contact Shipstation support about this for a couple years, but hitting a dead end every time.

Anyone reading, please use the thumbs up button if you think this should be fixed. Support says the dev team looks at the votes in this ideas area.

[shipshipper]

The recent widespread Amazon connection downtime highlights the continued need for this issue to be addressed.

It was clearly known there was a temporary, widespread issue with Amazon connections--widespread enough that a notification was sent out. However even though it was known to be a temporary issue, the auto-update for the Amazon store connection was permanently disabled until I remembered to manually go in and do a manual order import. This can easily lead to missing new orders because they aren't importing automatically like normal.

Just have the connection retry automatically once every few hours instead of permanently turning off, problem solved.