CW Automate is a product written by a genius (Greg Buerk) for his own use. My team needs a tool crafted for ordinary people to reliably do a great job - so while Automate does a lot, and has cunning shortcuts, they are not clear, and they are not well-documented. And sadly, getting your environment set up "clean and simple" is a massive undertaking - setup support from Connectwise is worse than useless. However, with all that, we're still using it and swearing at it 6 years on - coz, like democracy, it seems to be "the worst system around, except for all the rest" (especially when you count in the cost and risk of change)
The fixed client for Automate is slow. The web client is not very intuitive. It could use some updating and some thought around the UX. Also, with the scripting, I would like to see something where it could have third-party scripts already pre-built, and all you have to do is say, "Hey, I need this," and go load it. It's not as automated as I'd like it to be.
There is always room for improvement. I haven't had any problems, and they're doing a great job, in my opinion. They're doing quite well. In most cases, when we discover an issue, we report it to their engineers, who then schedule a fix. Normally, when we request something, I can see it happening within three to four months. This is a raw system. Of course, it has some flaws that could be improved. But, it's something that we will have to work with to get to the point where we need this, we request it and they do their best to make it happen. There is a lot of integration with other applications through Automate, and I believe they are working with all of the industry leaders to get the integration going. I am very pleased to be working with them.
Associate Director NSOC at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Dec 8, 2021
The scalability on offer could be improved. While it's a good tool, in the environment that I was using it there is a lot of customization required. If there's a bad implementation and excessive customization, you can run into issues. However, I have seen this with other tools as well. It's not unique to Connectwise. Maybe they could improve the capability to be multi-tenant. Mainly, on the part related to the process, the BPM part inside ConnectWise, we'd like to figure out how we can write the process inside in a way that can be correlated both inside the environment and outside of it.
Senior NOC and Automation Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
MSP
Nov 5, 2021
Patching and reporting need improvements, especially reporting. The reporting engine is quite outdated, so you end up having to use your own dashboard. It should have an Azure functionality because, at the minute, there is no Azure functionality we can automate. It is missing the Azure functionality out of everything. Other than that, it's great.
Information Security Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Sep 1, 2021
I don't know whether it's a third-party provider, however, the reporting, et cetera, is not what I would expect. They offer their reporting outside that system. I would say that either it's not turned on or not configured. I don't actually have the licensing for that product. That's my MSP, however, in terms of what I'm able to see and what I could see, I would say that it really needs to improve on it. They need better visibility and reporting and alerts and different things. They basically need reporting and transparent overviews and management of analysis tools and different things like history graphing. They could use some automated alerts particularly when we're talking about an MSP that might shoot over. It would be good if they could say "Hey, we've had a cluster of incidents," that would trigger our automatic updates. That would be really good.
In Patch Manager, there should be more reportability so that it is easier to see the updates that I have applied to a machine and when the next update will happen. A lot of times, it seems like all the information is kind of thrown all over the place, and you can't really see it all at the same time. There should be a simplified patch data view that allows us to quickly confirm that our various clients are getting patched as they should be. We would love to get feature updates and cumulative updates fixed. I know they aren't really supposed to be pushed with Patch Manager. We've got recommendations from ConnectWise to use the scripted feature update installs, scripted KB updates, etc. Having these in Patch Manager itself would be great. The wait time for a support ticket to be addressed needs to be reduced. They take a couple of days to get back. It is a little frustrating when we have to wait for a couple of days. A lot of times, the issue is critical for us. If we're reaching out to their support team and submitting a ticket, it is because we need it handled quickly.
I have issues with the menu, a lot of the time it doesn't load properly on initial login and I have to refresh and reload everything before I can actually search through agents. It can just sit there and spin on you at the initial login. I know we get some false positives at times, where things report offline and then when we connect to them with control they're connectable. They're definitely online, the agent just fails to report sometimes. I don't know the specifics of why it does that.
I have a problem with the reports available on the solution. I don't understand how to work with the reporting functionality. For example, when I want to give a report for a specific machine, ConnectWise doesn't seem to have this as an option. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if the reporting functionality is just poorly conceived. In the future, it would be nice if they also had a Service Desk integration between ConnectWise Manage and ConnectWise Automate. Some tickets should be automatically created in Automate and then passed to Manage.
ConnectWise Automate is an IT management tool that helps deliver IT services at the speed of business. Our remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform provides powerful automation to discover & manage devices, monitor for problems, and automate action. Deliver streamlined reactive and proactive managed services, stop putting out fires, and start focusing on what matters most. See why over 5,500 partners worldwide chose ConnectWise Automate by visiting ConnectWise.com or calling...
CW Automate is a product written by a genius (Greg Buerk) for his own use. My team needs a tool crafted for ordinary people to reliably do a great job - so while Automate does a lot, and has cunning shortcuts, they are not clear, and they are not well-documented. And sadly, getting your environment set up "clean and simple" is a massive undertaking - setup support from Connectwise is worse than useless. However, with all that, we're still using it and swearing at it 6 years on - coz, like democracy, it seems to be "the worst system around, except for all the rest" (especially when you count in the cost and risk of change)
The fixed client for Automate is slow. The web client is not very intuitive. It could use some updating and some thought around the UX. Also, with the scripting, I would like to see something where it could have third-party scripts already pre-built, and all you have to do is say, "Hey, I need this," and go load it. It's not as automated as I'd like it to be.
There is always room for improvement. I haven't had any problems, and they're doing a great job, in my opinion. They're doing quite well. In most cases, when we discover an issue, we report it to their engineers, who then schedule a fix. Normally, when we request something, I can see it happening within three to four months. This is a raw system. Of course, it has some flaws that could be improved. But, it's something that we will have to work with to get to the point where we need this, we request it and they do their best to make it happen. There is a lot of integration with other applications through Automate, and I believe they are working with all of the industry leaders to get the integration going. I am very pleased to be working with them.
The scalability on offer could be improved. While it's a good tool, in the environment that I was using it there is a lot of customization required. If there's a bad implementation and excessive customization, you can run into issues. However, I have seen this with other tools as well. It's not unique to Connectwise. Maybe they could improve the capability to be multi-tenant. Mainly, on the part related to the process, the BPM part inside ConnectWise, we'd like to figure out how we can write the process inside in a way that can be correlated both inside the environment and outside of it.
Patching and reporting need improvements, especially reporting. The reporting engine is quite outdated, so you end up having to use your own dashboard. It should have an Azure functionality because, at the minute, there is no Azure functionality we can automate. It is missing the Azure functionality out of everything. Other than that, it's great.
The product needs to offer more integration with other tools. Their support needs to be better.
I don't know whether it's a third-party provider, however, the reporting, et cetera, is not what I would expect. They offer their reporting outside that system. I would say that either it's not turned on or not configured. I don't actually have the licensing for that product. That's my MSP, however, in terms of what I'm able to see and what I could see, I would say that it really needs to improve on it. They need better visibility and reporting and alerts and different things. They basically need reporting and transparent overviews and management of analysis tools and different things like history graphing. They could use some automated alerts particularly when we're talking about an MSP that might shoot over. It would be good if they could say "Hey, we've had a cluster of incidents," that would trigger our automatic updates. That would be really good.
In Patch Manager, there should be more reportability so that it is easier to see the updates that I have applied to a machine and when the next update will happen. A lot of times, it seems like all the information is kind of thrown all over the place, and you can't really see it all at the same time. There should be a simplified patch data view that allows us to quickly confirm that our various clients are getting patched as they should be. We would love to get feature updates and cumulative updates fixed. I know they aren't really supposed to be pushed with Patch Manager. We've got recommendations from ConnectWise to use the scripted feature update installs, scripted KB updates, etc. Having these in Patch Manager itself would be great. The wait time for a support ticket to be addressed needs to be reduced. They take a couple of days to get back. It is a little frustrating when we have to wait for a couple of days. A lot of times, the issue is critical for us. If we're reaching out to their support team and submitting a ticket, it is because we need it handled quickly.
I have issues with the menu, a lot of the time it doesn't load properly on initial login and I have to refresh and reload everything before I can actually search through agents. It can just sit there and spin on you at the initial login. I know we get some false positives at times, where things report offline and then when we connect to them with control they're connectable. They're definitely online, the agent just fails to report sometimes. I don't know the specifics of why it does that.
I have a problem with the reports available on the solution. I don't understand how to work with the reporting functionality. For example, when I want to give a report for a specific machine, ConnectWise doesn't seem to have this as an option. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if the reporting functionality is just poorly conceived. In the future, it would be nice if they also had a Service Desk integration between ConnectWise Manage and ConnectWise Automate. Some tickets should be automatically created in Automate and then passed to Manage.
The project management needs improvement and there's a section of the product called "configuration" that also needs to be improved.