Get up and running with PowerOn Pro.
This quickstart is designed to help you get your first Symitar connection created in the PowerOn Pro extension. Through this quickstart, you will learn:
How to get PowerOn Pro installed
Overview of some of the basic concepts of PowerOn Pro
How to use a Remote Sym
There are two methods for installing the PowerOn Pro extension.
Next, select "Click to manage connections..."
Select "Add new Connection +" followed by either "SSH" or "HTTPs" depending on your connection preference and capability of your Symitar host.
This provides a brief overview of each input box you'll receive while creating an SSH connection.
Symitar Hostname
The endpoint by which you connect to the Symitar host
93.455.43.232 or symitar
Symitar Username
Your username for the AIX / Symitar host
libum
Symitar Password
Your password for the AIX / Symitar host
hunter2
Sym Number
The directory (aka Sym) number for your connection
627
Symitar User Number
Your "Symitar Quest" user number (just the number)
1995
Symitar User Password
Your "Symitar Quest" password (just the password)
Please refer to the Required input (SSH) for the context on the majority of the required inputs as they're nearly identical with the exception of the following:
Symitar Application Server Port
42627
Select "Open Remote Sym" and you should expect to see a menu giving you a selection from available Symitar connections.
After selecting the preferred connection, you will find a list of available Syms (based on the individual connections you've created) as a menu as well.
Selecting a Remote Sym here will automatically do the following:
Create a new directory ( /<symitarHostname>/<symNumber> ) using the configured Local Symitar Path as the root
Update the VS Code workspace at that local folder
Begin synchronizing the configured directories (e.g. /HELPFILES, /LETTERSPECS, or /REPWRITERSPECS)
All of the available commands within PowerOn Pro are listed on the PowerOn Pro Commands page and can also be listed by opening up the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P) and typing "PowerOn Pro".
To create a connection (SSH or HTTPs), use the Manage Symitar Connections command
brings a complete language server, direct integration to Symitar, and an incredible UX to level up your credit union's development toolkit through Visual Studio Code.
More of a TL;DR developer? Feel free to jump down to the section where we cover the "essentials" for getting up and running.
If you run into any challenges or have questions getting started, please join our on Discord.
Using the install link on the Visual Studio Marketplace (ref. )
Selecting the Extensions button ( ) in VS Code and searching for "poweron pro"
Start by clicking the PowerOn Pro logo ( ) on the bottom left of the VS Code status bar. This will launch the PowerOn Pro menu for you to be able to manage your connections.
What's the difference between SSH and HTTPs? In the context of a Symitar connection, uses what we refer to as the Command Line Interface (CLI) over the SSH protocol (aka Symulate or Episys Text Mode). This is nifty utility but unfortunately is explicitly disabled for some credit unions and can sometimes be unstable. Additionally, we aren't sure how much longer it will around.
For a connection over , an API over the Symitar Application Server is used to make direct calls to the Symitar host. This is a much more stable design pattern and should generally be available to every up-to-date credit union.
Once you've gone through the prompts, you should expect to see ( ) in the status bar of VS Code (bottom left). Anything different means you may have had an issue connecting or have only be able to establish a partial connection.
Having trouble connecting? For any consistent connection issues or even general questions, feel free to let us know on or by emailing us at .
The port which your SymAppServer communicates over. This is typically 42 + symNumber unless you're running at the SYSTEM level.
Read more on .
Really quick... Before you get started, you will need to set a root path via the setting. This will act as the location to store all of your Remote Sym folders for PowerOn Pro to manage.
From the activity bar (on the left-hand side), select the Symitar Explorer button ( ) and if you've already followed as well as the required dependencies installed on your machine, you should see the "Open Remote Sym" in the view.
Appreciate File Icon theming?
We've created a custom File Icon theme for VS Code (extends the default vs-seti icons) that will turn this:
into this:
Just open up the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P) and type "File Icon Theme" and select to enable it.
If you want to open a Remote Sym you'll need first set a root path in the setting as well as have both rsync and sshpass utilities via WSL (ref. )
