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Sync Tab

Karthikeyan Marappan edited this page Sep 27, 2026 · 5 revisions

Sync Tab — Running & Monitoring

The Sync tab is your control centre for running syncs and watching progress in real time.


Before you can sync

The Run Sync button is only enabled once both Apple Manager and Jamf Pro authentication have been verified (green ✓ on both Test Auth buttons in Setup). If either shows red or idle, go to Setup and test auth first.


Running a sync

Click Run Sync to add this environment to the sync queue. If no other sync is running, it starts immediately. If another environment is already syncing, the button changes to In Queue and this environment waits its turn.

Once the sync is active, the button changes to Stop Sync (red) and the progress panel appears.

Running multiple environments

Click Sync All in the sidebar header to open the queue popover. Select environments, click Add to Queue — they run one at a time in the order shown. See Environments for full details.

Queue progress banner

While any sync is queued or running, a banner appears at the top of the app showing:

  • Which environment is currently syncing and its position in the queue (e.g. Syncing 2 of 4 — Acme Corp)
  • How many environments are still waiting
  • Stop & Save — stops the current environment's sync, saves all progress, and advances the queue
  • Cancel All — stops the current sync and clears the entire queue

Both banner buttons show a confirmation dialog before acting.

The progress panel in the Sync tab shows:

  • The current step name (e.g. Fetching Apple Coverage [894/1348] FLXDF4772F)
  • A progress bar with the current count and total
  • Time remaining for the current step (bottom-right, e.g. ~3m 49s remaining)
  • Step elapsed time displayed next to the step label
  • Log entries appearing in real time as the sync runs

Dock badge

The Dock icon shows a step badge (1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4) so you can track progress while the app is in the background.


Stopping a sync

Click Stop Sync at any time. A confirmation dialog asks:

Stop Sync?
Any coverage data already fetched this run will be saved. The next sync will resume from where this one stopped.

Click Stop & Save Progress to confirm, or Keep Running to continue.

After stopping:

  • Coverage fetched so far in Step 3 is saved to the local database
  • Completed Jamf write-backs in Step 4 are retained
  • The last-run summary updates immediately with partial counts
  • If stopped from the queue banner, the queue advances to the next environment automatically

Switching environments mid-sync

You can switch to any environment at any time — even while a sync is running on another. The sync continues uninterrupted in the background. When you switch back to the syncing environment its Run Sync button correctly shows Stop Sync and the log window shows live output.


Progress indicators

Step label

Shows the current operation in detail. Examples:

  • Fetching AxM org devices — page 3
  • Fetching Jamf computers — page 7 / 14
  • Fetching Apple Coverage [312/1348] C02FN4P0DF91
  • Jamf Update [240/1348]

Progress bar

Fills as items complete. Blue during normal operation, green when the step completes, red on error.

Time remaining

Two ETAs, both shown once enough data has been processed to estimate the rate:

  • Step ETA ("~2m 30s remaining") — above the progress bar, for the current step only
  • Total ETA ("~2h 15m total") — bottom-right below the bar, for the whole run (v2.4 — this was computed in earlier versions too, but never actually displayed)

Last run summary

After each sync (or after a stop), the summary card shows six tiles (redesigned in v2.4 — see below for what changed):

Tile What it means
Apple Devices Number of devices downloaded from ABM/ASM this run — subtitle shows "fetched", how many came from cache, or "cache fresh"
Jamf Devices Number of devices downloaded from Jamf this run — same subtitle logic
Coverage Checked Number of devices sent to Apple's coverage API this run — subtitle shows the active/inactive split
Jamf Updated Devices successfully written back to Jamf — subtitle shows the Mac/Mobile split when both are non-zero
Jamf Failed Devices whose write-back PATCH failed — same Mac/Mobile subtitle
Duration Wall-clock time from start to finish

The completion timestamp is shown top-right of the card. The summary persists across app restarts (correctly per-environment as of v2.4 — see Release Notes) so you can always see when the last sync ran and what it did.

Changed in v2.4: the previous tile set included an "Active" tile that silently displayed whichever of three unrelated counters happened to be non-zero, and a "Released" tile that actually read live device totals rather than anything specific to the finished run. Both are gone; Duration is now its own tile instead of a small text line in the footer.


Live log

The log panel below the progress bar shows every INFO, WARN, and ERROR event from the current session in real time. Debug messages are written to the log file but not shown in the UI.

As of v2.4, the summary card above and the log pane below sit in a resizable split view — drag the divider to give the log more room during a long run. The log also only auto-scrolls to new lines while you're already scrolled to the bottom; if you've scrolled up to read something, new lines keep arriving without yanking your view back down, and a Jump to Latest pill appears so you can return with one click.

Log toolbar buttons:

  • Copy All — copies the entire session log to the clipboard
  • Open in Console — opens ~/Library/Containers/com.karthikmac.axmjamfsync/Data/Library/Logs/AxMJamfSync/sync.log in macOS Console.app
  • Clear (v2.4) — clears what's displayed in this panel only; the log file on disk and its rotation history are untouched

Log levels

Icon Level Shown in UI
✓ INFO Yes
⚠ WARN Yes
✗ ERROR Yes
· DEBUG File only

The level filter (All / Info / Warn+ / Error) gained Warn+ in v2.4 — shows warnings and errors together, which is usually what you actually want when triaging a run.

Log file

Logs are written to ~/Library/Containers/com.karthikmac.axmjamfsync/Data/Library/Logs/AxMJamfSync/sync.log with 0600 permissions (owner read/write only). The file rotates automatically at 10 MB, keeping the last 5 archived copies (sync.1.log … sync.5.log).

To open the log directory in Finder: Help → Show Sync Log in Finder or press ⌘⇧L.


Warning count badge

If any warnings were logged during the sync, a yellow ⚠ badge appears on the Sync tab showing the count. This draws your attention to devices that failed to update or coverage fetches that were retried. Check the log for details.


Notifications

When a sync completes, AxM Jamf Sync sends a macOS notification:

  • Sync complete ✓ — shows the device count, coverage fetched, and write-backs synced
  • Sync failed ✗ — shows the error message

The Dock icon also bounces once on completion or on error (both informational as of v2.4 — a sync failure never risks your existing data, so a continuous critical bounce was overstating the urgency; pre-v2.4 builds bounced continuously on error until you focused the app).

macOS may ask for notification permission the first time — allow it to receive these alerts when the app is in the background.

v2.4: the Sync tab icon also shows a small red dot whenever the last run didn't end in success and you haven't opened the tab since — a quieter, always-visible complement to the notification. It clears the moment you view the Sync tab.

A scheduled run (see Scheduling) additionally sends a Scheduled Sync Starting notification when it begins and a Scheduled Sync Complete summary once every environment in that run has finished — the per-environment Sync complete/failed notifications above still fire individually as each one finishes.

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