Why did Garmin decide to remove the sync button? Automatic sync is unreliable

EONDERDE

Anytime you send something to the device from Connect, make sure the Sync menu on the left is empty after a successful transfer. The items should be automatically removed but there are items in your Sync menu that may be responsible for the inconsistency. If you continue to have troubles follow the suggestions in the FAQ: What should I do if I am unable to sync my mass storage fitness device using Garmin Express?.


Curt
Trouble with the FAQ link?
Goto: https://support.garmin.com/support/searchSupport/search.htm and enter the title of the article in the Search box.

EONDERDE

The sync button issue has been decided by the developers. If you continually encounter sync issues it is best to get to the root of the issue. Sync issues usually center around data transfer issues, data either on the device, computer or coming from Connect. Since you have issues syncing on both platforms it would indicate there is an issue with this data. Part of my last post suggested you delete the items in your Sync menu in Connect and follow the instructions in the FAQ. My suggestion along with the instructions in the FAQ would clear the data that could potentially be causing the issue. Since the items in your Sync menu are still there I can assume the provided suggestion were not followed. Please contact Garmin Product Support by phone and they would be happy to investigate your issue.

Again, I am sorry for the troubles
Curt

I second this. I'm sure this has been hammered out ad nauseum, but since it's still an issue, I guess more comments can't hurt. I'll also re-iterate the suggestion that you re-read the OP. There's nothing in there about items in the sync menu.

I agree %100 with the OP - auto sync simply doesn't work. It automatically picks up my device(310xt) maybe %25 of the time. My PC is awake, not suspended, not locked - alive and active. My 310xt is on the menu page. Nothing. For hours. The only way I can (somewhat) reliably get it to work is by shutting down the 310xt and restarting it. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't work, I try again. At ~40% success rate, if I reboot 3 times, it will generally work. I must say this is better than pre-express, where sometimes it would NOT work no matter what I did, but it's still extremely annoying.

And like the OP, sometimes the sync, when it fires, just fails. And there's nothing in the sync menu. We would reallllllllly like to be able to click the button and have it retry.

And since when do developers alone decide what features go into or get taken our of a piece of software? Maybe in a 3 person, sil-val startup, but at the mega-marketer Garmin? Do you not have UI designers or does HCI not have a role in your feature selection? Marketing and sales have no input into the UI design or feature set? No feedback loop with customer service(to include these forums)? If developers unilaterally decided the UI design and the feature set where I work(as a software developer), we'd quickly have coded ourselves out of a job. Garmin isn't open-source with devs writing code for fun. You want to write software that will make people want to BUY your products.

If this is the case, it's no wonder Garmin has always had the cruddiest software. You've been able to get away with it this long because you've always had the best devices. But I hope you realize that the market is very crowded with many viable alternatives these days and people have plenty of places to go when all of the annoyances of the Garmin platform begin to add up...especially when feedback goes unheeded(and silenced, even...as indicated by the locked sticky). I hope you wake up soon, because I've begun to outgrow my 310xt and am shopping for an upgrade. I don't like the idea of switching my platform(running, multiple bikes...etc), but I'm also not inclined to shell out $$ on a new device that's sure to have bugs that will never get fixed.

Sorry for the rant, but I've been a Garmin user for a long time and had somewhat gotten used to the constant issues - and seeing the poor explanation for the removal of a much-needed feature(i.e. the sticky note) just rubbed me the wrong way and opened old wounds.

users make mistakes, any competent developers is aware of that

Dear garmin support,
I admit i'm the root cause of sync errors. Sometimes my PC fails, sometimes my network connection is unreliable, and sometimes I do not clear my old activities. The last, mainly because Garmin support request me to keep them to show/solve problems with my vectors, sometimes my USB cable is not plugged in properly, sometimes I cannot find my Garmin USB cable and try another one. And I make many more mistakes.
However all of these would be inconsequential if there was a sync button. For some reason the developers decide that a user (me) should be severely punished for their mistakes and they take away to one button they have to recover from their mistakes and actively prevent restarting the sync.
Additionally it really is appalling that one customer support officer from Garmin requests me to keep my fit files for problem diagnosis, while the next one tells me to delete them.
So please get your act together, and as an interim solution, especially for the normal human being that make mistakes, please reintroduce the sync button. And as an afterthought, please provide a clear priority list of the customer support advice I should follow and those I should ignore. As this is clearly not a problem caused by the customer (who in the end pays your salary) but by miscommunication, and inconsistence within the Garmin support organization

All in all I think the sync button needs to be restored

How long will Garmin continue to ignore the views of their customers? Listen to the userbase not your developers who are looking at this in isolation rather than truly from a user perspective.
Put simply your developers are wrong! If Garmin are having trouble admitting this internally then I suggest you get a User Experience consultant in to look at the product, read the forums and then tell you you need to put the sync button back. Stand up to the design/ Dev team and give your user based what they actually want rather than trying to force an ideological approach on them without the quality of developer to back it up. The sync takes ages to start and starts at random this is no good for users! It should poll as soon as a device is connected... speaking of which, it's not clear when a device is connected, only that the ant stick is plugged in; I can't tell if it's that the ant stick hasn't picked up the Garmin or that the software isn't starting the sync... maybe it's the developers that should look at the root cause of the problem in their own back yard first before telling us that it's our problem not theirs!

How about this to resolve it once and for all. Put a vote up on this site and give it a month for people to answer it. Advertise to the Express user community that there is a vote on and try to get as many people voting as possible. Then implement the will of the users.... I guess Garmin wouldn't dare