OVERVIEW
While you generally want to sync as often as possible to keep your data up to date, sometimes some sync tasks are way more data intensive, and not necessarily as time-critical - such as importing invoices.
Other scenarios may include times when you need to run backups on your server or you might need to run your accounting software in "Single User Mode" depending on which accounting software you're integrating to the website.
Below are some steps that can help you manage the sync schedule to suit your needs.
STEPS TO MANAGE YOUR SYNC SCHEDULE
You'll need to be logged into the CMS back-end of the site, and you can go to the sync status by clicking on the "Sync" drop-down menu at the top, and then "Status" in the drop-down:
This will take you to the sync status window where you can see the list of coloured tiles related to each task that's scheduled to run via the sync - you can see how often the tasks are scheduled to run:
If you want to affect the timing of ALL sync tasks - you can use the clock drop-down at the top right above all the sync tasks to access the global settings for all the tasks.
However if it's only some sync tasks you need to update, you can click the clock-drop-down next to that task and select "Change Schedule":
In this example we'll set the schedule for product images, but you can use the same options for almost any sync task:
The options are:
- Use Default Schedule
- This will use whatever you have set in the global settings - Regular Intervals
- This allows you to set how often the sync will automatically run for this task. You can also set "black-out" times via the exception settings - this allows you to set a range of hours in the day the sync task won't run.
- PLEASE NOTE: you can't set an exception range past midnight - you can set it up to 11pm - or starting from midnight - eg. 8pm - 11pm - or midnight to 4am etc.
But you can't set it from say 8pm - 4am. - Daily at a Given Time
- Here you can set it to run once a day at a specific time of day. This is particularly handy for Invoice syncs as they can take hours to run and slow down your accounting software - we usually recommend scheduling the invoices sync at midnight.
Please note - there are a couple exceptions:
a) the Orders sync will always attempt to run within the minute after the order has come into our system (this may be slightly delayed if a sync is already in progress).
b) Some syncs need to run in 2 stages - eg. the images sync will firstly attempt to check how many images are needing to be synced, and if there are any new images, it will then kick-off the 2nd part of the images sync that's scheduled as "As needed"
You can't schedule the "Read Product Image" sync task because it's reliant on the "Product Image" sync to run first.
Extra Info:
Depending on which accounting package you're using - there may be several sync tasks that need to run "As Needed" - these are always secondary to another sync task by a similar name.
(eg. some ERPs require us to import products differently, so you may see a "List Items" task that's scheduled "As needed" - to schedule this, you'll need to look for the "Check Items" task and apply the schedule to that task.