What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Tray.io is creating workflows to work with our Zendesk and our other application services.
A specific example of a workflow I have set up with Tray.io is that we use our employee tracking system to bring that information over to Zendesk every time an employee is hired or updated. One in particular would be signature change updates for their emails; when they make a change with HR, Tray.io provides the information over to Zendesk for our Zendesk ops team to make those changes.
Setting up that workflow presented some challenges; Tray.io is not necessarily the easiest platform to work with. We have been using it for a while, and some were set up before I started with the company, so tweaking them can take a little bit of work. It is quite a learning curve even with their academy, but once we get it up and going, it functions fine. The biggest issue we have with Tray.io is that it runs out of memory space and does not process all of our workflows.
If it is not just those basic things, it is primarily the system we use to communicate between all of our other systems.
What is most valuable?
The best features Tray.io offers include the drag-and-drop workflow builder that makes it a lot easier, and I think the automation capabilities are good. However, I feel that we would like it to be a little bit better, but we are making it work.
Tray.io has positively impacted my organization by eliminating a lot of the manual work that we were having to do daily. It has given our team opportunities to work on different projects, and the automation that Tray.io provides saves us a lot of time and solves some of the issues that we were having prior to using it.
I use the drag-and-drop builder across the board; we do the same process for all of our workflows that we have, so it is not one in particular that stands out. All of our workflows are pretty much the same: look at this, bring back this, bring back that, send it to here so that we can send it over to this system. We try to keep it as simple as possible.
What needs improvement?
To improve Tray.io, I wish that there was an easier way to download the information of our workflows to have it in some form of an Excel file that explains our workflows that we built, because we have been trying to find a way to document them to evaluate them, and we are basically having to use Miro to recreate the workflows there. It would be helpful to have a way for those who do not have access to Tray.io to look and see what it was doing and review whether or not we need to make some tweaks. Additionally, errors occur regularly when we have too large a number of employees that come over; for example, at the end of the year when our school staff is off for the summer, they technically go as inactive employees, and processing a large number of them bogs up the Tray.io system and leads to errors. We then have to go into all the Tray.io workflows to find out which piece broke and how to minimize it, so those limitations on how much data we can push overnight are frustrating.
I would appreciate better documentation; I feel that the academy or training I took when I started with the company through Tray.io was adequate and gave us the basics, but I have not really had much experience finding support documents to help when we have problems. Although digging through the logs that Tray.io provides does help, I wish there were more in-depth help to get our systems to work easier. We kind of just bandage it together to keep it working, but it is not something that makes me say I am so glad we have Tray.io.
I landed on that rating because we feel that it is mediocre; it does what we need it to do more often than not, but it does not impress us as it is not always reliable and hands-off. We do have to touch it quite often to make sure it keeps working, and I would love for it to be more powerful, particularly as we grow as a company, which is frustrating. Therefore, it is not something I would recommend to others as a great tool unless you are only moving small pieces of data.
Before we wrap up, I think my additional thoughts about Tray.io mostly repeat the same points I have made previously: it is a strong workflow automation tool that works well with some of our APIs, but I just have not seen it grow and change. This could be due to the fact that we are just not using it to its greatest ability. I think that pricing-wise it is fair; I would love to see a software system be beneficial and worth the money. Right now its flexibility is beneficial since it replaced one of our other systems, so it is better than what it used to be. The complex setup of its conditions can be difficult, but the drag-and-drop feature helps. However, I think it is hard for non-technical people to learn the software, and that is the biggest challenge; you really need to know what you are doing. If you are not using it regularly, it can be difficult to come back because there is not a lot of documentation. Additionally, there is not a clear way to provide individualized documentation. The limitations on data transfer volumes at particular times are also frustrating, and without an easy debugging process, it is hard to address issues. Finding the balance between the needs of a small company and supporting larger data transfers is crucial for setting appropriate expectations regarding what the software system can do.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Tray.io for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Setting up that workflow presented some challenges; Tray.io is not necessarily the easiest platform to work with. We have been using it for a while, and some were set up before I started with the company, so tweaking them can take a little bit of work. It is quite a learning curve even with their academy, but once we get it up and going, it functions fine. The biggest issue we have with Tray.io is that it runs out of memory space and does not process all of our workflows.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We then have to go into all the Tray.io workflows to find out which piece broke and how to minimize it, so those limitations on how much data we can push overnight are frustrating.
What was our ROI?
I estimate that we save over 40 hours a week thanks to Tray.io's automation, as it has even eliminated a position on our team because that person was no longer needed once we started the automations.
What other advice do I have?
Honestly, I am not sure that we have used anything that really shows how AI helps us with Tray.io at this point. We are still at the basic level of just doing the very basics and have not used any AI features on it to really improve it.
My advice to others looking into using Tray.io is that when you are getting ready to start using it, make sure that you are aware of the technical capabilities of the person that will be administrating it to ensure it matches the work that needs to be done. I would also say that if there are any automated workflows that AI can provide with Tray.io, that would be great to know because we are not necessarily using that; we do it all manually.
I provided a review rating of five for Tray.io.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other