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DaveT

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Hi is there a use guide for Synergy 2?

when i first installed it it worked fine apart from some glitching between pcs, after a reboot however it wont work, i can see both machines on the front end of synergy but thats it, i can make one turn green, but i have no idea what this means?

There is no help option or clues in the software.

As a technician in the IT Trade i can normally figure things out but it looks as though this software has no options or configuration options.

I need a solution that works consistently or that i can tinker to get working seamlessly not just when the stars align.

can anyone point me in the right direction? The symless website offers no information, i couldn't even find these forums via the website, i had to google it!

First impressions. pretty damn poor 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/2/2017 at 2:54 PM, Kelvin Tran said:

There are many requests on the forums for user guides. They may be honored one day, but that will be up to @Nick Bolton and his team.

No documentation? Well, that's a fail of the highest order.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/18/2017 at 8:51 AM, Andy_P said:

No documentation? Well, that's a fail of the highest order.

I noticed that @Nick Bolton gave my comment a thumbs-down. That's developer hubris of the highest order -- the assumption that documentation is not necessary. In the meantime, in the "How on earth do you close Synergy 2" thread, there are many comments saying that documentation is required.

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15 minutes ago, lolmetimbers said:

Not having a user guide/manual is the dumbest fucking idea ever @Nick Bolton

Get over yourself and put a proper tutorial up on your website. 

Please refrain from profanity. This is a professional forum.

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On 1/4/2018 at 11:07 AM, Andy_P said:

I noticed that @Nick Bolton gave my comment a thumbs-down. That's developer hubris of the highest order -- the assumption that documentation is not necessary. In the meantime, in the "How on earth do you close Synergy 2" thread, there are many comments saying that documentation is required.

I disagree. I feel like he has a right to make whatever statement he wants to, and he has every right to achieve that by disliking something he disagrees with.

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7 minutes ago, Kelvin Tran said:

I disagree. I feel like he has a right to make whatever statement he wants to, and he has every right to achieve that by disliking something he disagrees with.

So you disagree with the need for documentation?

While the developer is well within his rights to basically do whatever he wants, including telling paying customers to fsck off, the reality is that Synergy is no longer a fend-for-yourself open-source project where documentation is an afterthought (or a neverthought). He's formed a company to develop and sell the product, and customers expect paid-for products to include comprehensive documentation. If product manufacturers want to reduce the number of support calls, they include that documentation, and on their support forums they include a FAQ. And the first answer is always, "Did you RTFM?" And hopefully that compels the customer to, you know, actually RTFM and find the answers to their questions.

Your signature says, "A high schooler. All that needs to be said." Perhaps when you've aged enough to acquire some wisdom, you will appreciate my position. 

(I wonder why they'd allow a child to moderate a forum such as this?)

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lolmetimbers

Agree or disagree. Like or dislike. Profanity or not. No documentation is an outright inane decision. 

The lack of information that came with the 2.0.2 client I used was so bad that I eventually requested a refund because there was simply no way for the user to 1. Understand how the product worked 2. Customize any settings 3. Troubleshoot as there was no documentation on website or even this forum (which is not even linked from the main website and found via google search)

If the developers wanted this product to succeed, have less complaints on this forum/support and foremostly make money, they would do well to heed common sense and provide transparent documentation on what the product is and how to use it. It is as simple as that.

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2 hours ago, lolmetimbers said:

Agree or disagree. Like or dislike. Profanity or not. No documentation is an outright inane decision. 

The lack of information that came with the 2.0.2 client I used was so bad that I eventually requested a refund because there was simply no way for the user to 1. Understand how the product worked 2. Customize any settings 3. Troubleshoot as there was no documentation on website or even this forum (which is not even linked from the main website and found via google search)

If the developers wanted this product to succeed, have less complaints on this forum/support and foremostly make money, they would do well to heed common sense and provide transparent documentation on what the product is and how to use it. It is as simple as that.

I understand your concerns. Trust me, I do. And I agree with them

There should be a post made on simple set-up instructions as a pinned post on the forums as a placeholder while instructions (official instructions, at least) are being made. Would this help you, if I were to make a post detailing set-up instructions for users on the Self-Support forum and pin it there along with some links to troubleshooting advice that has already been posted and pinned by @Nick Bolton? If it will, then I will go make that as soon as I get some free time for myself (which may be some days at the moment). Again, if that would help you, I may write it and paste it in this topic as well.

Thanks, and sorry you had to request a refund on Synergy 2! I can feel the frustration of the inconvenience there through my screen! :D 

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5 hours ago, Andy_P said:

So you disagree with the need for documentation?

While the developer is well within his rights to basically do whatever he wants, including telling paying customers to fsck off, the reality is that Synergy is no longer a fend-for-yourself open-source project where documentation is an afterthought (or a neverthought). He's formed a company to develop and sell the product, and customers expect paid-for products to include comprehensive documentation. If product manufacturers want to reduce the number of support calls, they include that documentation, and on their support forums they include a FAQ. And the first answer is always, "Did you RTFM?" And hopefully that compels the customer to, you know, actually RTFM and find the answers to their questions.

Your signature says, "A high schooler. All that needs to be said." Perhaps when you've aged enough to acquire some wisdom, you will appreciate my position. 

(I wonder why they'd allow a child to moderate a forum such as this?)

I hate the stereotype that just because I'm young, I don't know what I'm talking about.

I am a high schooler, yes, but I know more about technology than you might think I do and you gain my respect by earning it, not just because "you're an adult". I've done a decent job so far (right, @Nick Bolton?) and I hope to keep doing so.

I don't disagree with the need for documentation. You don't know this, but we have a moderation forum. I actively push for Symless to write documentation on their products, and don't think that just because I am younger than you, that I am not busy nor that I don't understand your desire for documentation that will help you with software. However, given the fact that you need documentation, I don't think it's in your place to call me dumb or inexperienced quite yet.

I disagree with your statement complaining about @Nick Bolton disliking your post, as I believe that he has a right to do so. Maybe I don't have the "wisdom" to deem this to be true or not, but I believe he has the right to dislike posts that he disagrees with on his own forum. That's explicitly what I said in my reply to you. Now, please go read my one-liner post very carefully rather than complain about how they let someone underage moderate the forums, will you?

That being said, again, I wholeheartedly agree with your desire for documentation, but please refrain from attempting to attack the members of the community that are chosen to staff the forums, as I assure you that will not end well.

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Andy_P, when you've reached Kelvin's level of technical expertise, perhaps your personal comments might make sense. Ah...no. You probably will never and the personal comments also will never make sense.

Documentation is not a new idea or request. I would say that we are all there. However, with the recent beta releases and the rapidly released version updates, documentation would have to constantly be re-written. Synergy is being developed by a small, very competent, group of developers. Drawing one away to be what would end up being nearly a full-time job of a technical writer, just doesn't make sense at this stage of development. Not the optimum allocation of human resources.

As product development continues and version 2 becomes what it is envisioned to be, you will have documentation. It may even be 'tweakable.'

Meanwhile, Version 2 is probably not the product for you right now. It is being developed to be a Consumer level product, not the advanced technical version that 'Version 2' might imply. AS IT STANDS RIGHT NOW, Version 1 is a better fit for the technically minded or the IT professional. Version 2 will get there, but right now, with your expectations, you'll just be butting your head against a wall. That hurts, drop back to Version 1.

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7 hours ago, GranPaSmurf said:

Andy_P, when you've reached Kelvin's level of technical expertise, perhaps your personal comments might make sense. Ah...no. You probably will never and the personal comments also will never make sense.

You're right, my level of technical expertise will never match Kelvin's, or yours, it appears, so on that note, I bow out of this discussion.

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I feel the frustration too!

First of all, i can't get synergy 2 to work. S1 used to work just fine. Also, i don't understand the GUI of this one, not even any tooltips or other describing text. The only thing i've noticed is i can right click on the blue to "Send log", right click on one of the computers to "Share from <computer name>" and there is a small white dot on the bottom on the screen/PC where i clicked on the mouse/keyboard last (probably to show which PC is currently "controlling" the others).

There's also a "progress bar" that pops up on the screens in the GUI sometimes.... What's that?

I don't get what the "Share from <computer>" means, from what i understood you could "hotswap" PCs and use all of them to controll all of them?

I also don't like the fact that i cant seem to turn off the application, especially combined with the fact that this is a program that's listening to keystrokes and mouse and is "allways online". I've had some issues with certain games and Synergy version 1 earlier, and it was nice to simply turn synergy off to fix the problem.

If these issues doesn't get fixed "soon", i'll ask for a refund and go back to v1. I read somewhere that Symles w going to implement "settings" in 2.1, i hope this is true! I've also read people saying it doesn't work if you are not connected to the internet (have to be on LAN ofc..), i also hope that is possible to disable or something in future versions.

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  • 2 weeks later...

"documentation would have to constantly be re-written. Synergy is being developed by a small, very competent, group of developers. Drawing one away to be what would end up being nearly a full-time job of a technical writer" oh the pain!, well I'm sorry but this surely comes with releasing a product and charging for it. Its just another part of running a business which you should budget for and employ someone to do this. What a ridiculous excuse you are making. I just paid for this product and I cant find any instructions whatsoever, very poor. Version 2.04 Disappointed.

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58 minutes ago, C PP said:

"documentation would have to constantly be re-written. Synergy is being developed by a small, very competent, group of developers. Drawing one away to be what would end up being nearly a full-time job of a technical writer" oh the pain!, well I'm sorry but this surely comes with releasing a product and charging for it. Its just another part of running a business which you should budget for and employ someone to do this. What a ridiculous excuse you are making. I just paid for this product and I cant find any instructions whatsoever, very poor. Version 2.04 Disappointed.

Just return it and get your money back. At least that part of the software is well documented. I plan to keep an eye on the forums here and if/when the software becomes usable, I will buy it again. But until then, I will just wait and I recommend you do the same.

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I am still writing a unofficial user guide as a moderator and a daily user of Synergy 2 for schoolwork.

However, instead of complaining about a lack of documentation, perhaps you should contact one of their support channels or better yet, post a thread in the self-support forum and have other Synergy users that may have fixed the same issue help you to fix it as well?

One of the most common issues I've seen with S2 is an error saying "Failed to connect to background service" or the two clients simply remaining grey and not connecting at all.

If this happens, there are pinned posts on the Synergy 2 self-support forum describing general troubleshooting steps. Have you looked there? That post will tell you that the tilde (~) key will show a realtime log of everything (even debug info) that Synergy has to display.

Sometimes, your client will try to connect to 127.0.0.1 (local address) even if you've set another computer as server. If this happens, go to Task Manager/Activity Monitor/*nix or bash command line and perform the appropriate steps to kill EVERYTHING associated with Synergy 2. If you continue to have issues, again, contact support or create a thread in self-support, have a moderator approve your post in an effort to ensure that no inappropriate content or rants end up in Self-Support and then work with our friendly community in an effort to fix your issue.

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  • Synergy Team

In Synergy 2.1, we're introducing a settings screen. At which point, documentation begins to make sense, so we'll likely introduce it at this stage.

If Synergy 2.0 doesn't work, then you're experiencing a bug. In this case, please open a ticket: https://symless.com/contact/customer-support

If you're experiencing a bug that stops you from using Synergy 2, then we'll happily issue a refund (unless you want to wait for the bug fix).

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