What needs improvement with JAMS?

Improvements could be made in the service desk's knowledge and communication skills among engineers to better address customer needs and ensure issues are fully resolved. Additionally, reintroducing or offering a mobile platform could enhance accessibility and usability for users.

I am also supporting and reselling Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT and am interested in Genesys' file-transfer solution of Genesys. Compared to GoAnywhere, Genesys has limited options. The tabs in the JAMS file transfer could be clearer. It would help us demonstrate to our client that JAMS not only automates jobs but also does fast transfers, and it's an alternative that supports and filters different kinds of platforms. Filtering file transfers will be highly beneficial to them.

While JAMS's cross-platform capabilities are good, my only concern is the need to download an ODBC driver to connect to specific databases. It would be highly beneficial if JAMS natively supported these connections, eliminating the need for separate driver downloads for each database. With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting. While JAMS offers helpful guides, the technical barrier remains significant.

As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs. Many applications are moving to web-based GUIs, so it would be convenient if we could use JAMS without having to install a client on our machines. We could simply go to our local servers or website and manage everything from there.

It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added. Fortra's JAMS has an encryption code, but they are not compliant with the open-source GPG program, which is a requirement. They are planning to add the GPG program by customizing and bundling it with JAMS, which would be great. Currently, we are using open-source software, and it begs the question of why we are using JAMS. JAMS has an encryption code, but it lacks a PGP engine in the server or an extra connection. They have added it, but version 7.3 is not functional. However, version 7.5 offers more job features, increased connections to the store, and enhancements to the cloud base, such as Azure, which makes it easier to access the cloud.

The ACL or access permission area needs to be improved. When it comes to defining and providing security permissions, it's a bit confusing if you are new to JAMS. JAMS needs to improve the features for security access or permissions.

JAMS lacks source control features. Our previous solution had job control language, but JAMS doesn't. When migrating between versions, JAMS doesn't migrate all the data, like job change history, etc. Also, the scheduler doesn't have a way to make jobs invisible, so you can temporarily turn a job off if you decide not to run it today.

I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better. If I open one of JAMS' pre-installed reports but don't launch it on the server where the scheduler's installed, it will take forever to load through our VPN connections. It may be related to how we have our servers set up. I don't know if that's an issue with JAMS or not, but I need to be careful about where I open the report designer. Otherwise, I will sit there with an endless blue circle. I can open it on my workstation or use a remote desktop to access the server and open it via that. It would be helpful if the data in that report designer could be leveraged in Power BI. I don't know if they have that already, but that could be one way to improve the reporting and dashboards. Maybe there's already a way to do that. I should look at their website first or contact support because Fortra's support is fantastic and always super helpful.

In the version that we are using, it does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed for obvious reasons. However, there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail. Where is that dependency? Right now, it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way. Getting information with details of the failure would be very helpful. Also, sometimes the interface is slow. It will lock up the application for no apparent reason.

When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing. Sometimes it's difficult to find which workflow or workflows a job is in which could be improved.

The UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user. Sometimes, when we used to search for jobs, it did not give us the status. There was system slowness or something like that. I am not sure if that had to do with JAMS, but that was something that we noticed.

I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic. It would be awesome to have a simple one.

The biggest area with room for improvement is the area that my organization benefits the most from using JAMS, and that is in custom execution methods. I happen to have a very good C# developer. Ever since we got JAMS, he has spent a lot of time talking to JAMS developers, researching the JAMS libraries, and creating custom execution methods. He's gotten very good at it. He is now able to create them and maintain them very easily, but that was hard-won knowledge. If I ever lose this developer, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods as well as he can since there really isn't all that much help, such as documentation or information, available on how to create custom execution methods. I really think that they could benefit greatly by being much more transparent about C# development, maybe by making a JAMS cookbook or a developer portal where they could throw ideas at each other. One of my complaints with the marketing around JAMS is that it says things like, "It integrates with Teams". They talk about integrating with a lot of things, but marketing doesn't tell you that they are talking about JAMS running PowerShell jobs. Since PowerShell can automate things like SharePoint and Teams, that is how marketing gets away with saying it has so many integrations. JAMS doesn't have as many built-in integrations as they advertise. I think they should build more of them, and improve on the ones they have built.

JAMS handles exceptions fairly well but there are some areas where it might improve a little bit. It has to do with being able to automatically handle exceptions, out-of-the-box, rather than having to code them. I'd also like to be able to do different things, based on what the actual exception is. In our current version, there's a placeholder where you should be able to do some things along those lines, but we've never actually been able to get it to work. I've seen in the 7.x versions that that has been fixed. In terms of automation, there are some scenarios that we're still working on trying to automate and we just haven't been able to find an applicable solution through JAMS for those yet. I'm excited to see, once we get to that point, if we can do those things in the newer version.

The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do. We have to know where it is. This is really the functionality that I think is lacking.

The client needs a complete revamp as it is not the most intuitive of methods of setting up jobs. We have encountered situations like options disappearing and with no obvious way of getting it back, we have had to open up a Support ticket just to figure out how to get the missing options back