Allow ShipStation Connect to run as a Windows Service

[reefnet]

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...

[integrations]

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!

[Christina9]

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.

[will14]

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.

[wayne3]

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.

[betterplace]

'@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.

[mhtalk]

@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

[kschmitt]

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.

[shipping153]

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.

[progressivedesi]

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!

[chaim1]

I agree with this. it is kind of annoying that shipstation should disconnect each an every time I have to restart my computer