Need to Programatically Detect If Insync Needs User Intervention

#1

Greetings,

FYI, I’m running Insync 1.3.24.36188 on Windows 7 Pro x64.

We have a need to programmatically detect if Insync needs user intervention. Specifically, we need to detect these two cases where user intervention is needed: 1) A sync error (Red Badge?), and 2) Incoming shares (Blue Badge with avatar?).

I’ve tried detecting these states using the Insync command line interface (CLI):

However, the CLI seems to be inoperative. For example, when I run this command:

Insync -get_status

nothing happens. No error, no status, no message whatsoever (see the uploaded screen capture):

2018-07-21_174637
2018-07-21_174637.png832×536 11.8 KB

How do you recommend I programmatically determine if Insync needs user intervention (an error of some type or an incoming share, etc)?

Regards,

Jeff Salisbury

#2

CLI is only available on Linux.

I wrote a simple Windows CLI tool that can detect Insync status based on its system tray icon:

1 Like
#3

Hey @Jeff_Salisbury!

Tagging our engineer @Rajat for assistance. :slight_smile:

Amazing job on the Windows CLI tool, @Hawk! :star_struck: What drove you to create it and how does it fit into your workflow?

#4

I mostly use it in my computer’s shut down script to avoid accidentally shutting down the computer before all changes in the Insync folder are synced. Otherwise, work done on one computer may not be accessible on another computer (at a different location).

This actually happened to me a couple of times before, slowing my work progress. It’s not specific to Insync. Any cloud sync clients can have this issue. One actual incidence happened when I was using Dropbox.

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#5

That’s interesting! It really does make sense to make sure your files are done syncing before shutting the computer down. I’ll be sure to let our team know about this use case. Thanks for the awesome feedback, @Hawk! :slight_smile:

#6

Thanks so much, Hawk, for sharing your work!

This solves an important problem for us! We have Insync installed on our small server machine that is usually unattended. We need to know if Insync requires user intervention to complete a sync. For example, is there an incoming file? Is there a sync error that requires manual intervention. Sometimes we’ve gone many days without realizing there’s a problem. In the meantime, our local and remote users aren’t aware that there’s an incomplete sync.

We’ve incorporated your tool, Hawk, into a customized script to kick out an email alert whenever Insync needs user intervention.

It’s our hope that Insync will soon implement this email alert feature as a native capability.

2 Likes
#7

Hey @Jeff_Salisbury!

We’ve taken note of @Hawk’s awesome tool and it’s great how you were able to use it to create a customized script for email notifications. We’ll definitely take a look at this moving forward. Thanks so much for the feedback! :slight_smile:

#8

After using @Hawk’s awesome tool for 5 years, we’re starting to run into some problems. His tool is returning Insync’s status as “offline or connecting”. However, Insync itself shows the green icon in the system tray, and when I open Insync, it shows no Errors, Conflicts, or Actions. And, Insync’s feed shows normal, successful sync activity. I’m running v3.8.6.50504.

By chance, does Insync yet natively provide a way for me to programmatically detect if Insync needs user intervention?

#9

Could Insync please add a setting to send an email notification whenever Insync’s status is anything but the green icon? We want an email notification if there’s any kind of error, or if there is action needed.

Or, some programatical method. @Hawk’s tool seems to have a limitation if I change my Windows 10 screen scaling.

1 Like
#10

@Jeff_S Hi Jeff. Thank you for that feedback regarding Insync’s way of communicating its status to users for easier detection. I’ve forwarded this feature request to our engineers. While we can’t guarantee if/when this would be considered for development, rest assured that we will communicate feature releases accordingly.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

#11

Full circle back to my original message from 8 years ago: Are there any CLI options to retrieve the current status? Programmatically obtaining the status, especially on a remote machine, is critical. Implementing either the email option or a CLI option shouldn’t take more than a few hours. This request has been pending for 8 years—please prioritize and make it happen.

1 Like
#12

@Jeff_S Thank you for bumping this thread. Allow me to forward this feature request to our engineers so we can see how this can be included in their pipeline.