JAMS Reviews

We use JAMS for technical and workload automation. It's sometimes used for transfer, but it's mostly for workload automation.

We did a POC for one of our customers recently. Our client had some SSIS packages that were hard to automate. They had to be manually executed periodically. They didn't have any automation. When I introduced JAMS, we learned how to integrate their SSIS packages. The solution made a great impression on the company.

We had a good session with the company and having or upon them having these JAMS. They have 500 different SSIS packages that need to have separate schedules. I showed them how easy it is to convert and store at a large scale. We can use code-driven automation to address complex scheduling requirements. It enables you to integrate multiple applications and API connections. If you need different kinds of schedules, you can accomplish this using the command list. That's helpful to our current and upcoming clients.

JAMS helps centralize job management because I can orchestrate different job types across multiple kinds of operating systems, including Oracle jobs and SQL jobs like the SSIS packages. Multiple types of scripts can be collected into one application. It provides a single pane of glass in its monitoring view. That's another advantage JAMS has over other solutions. The monitoring console provides the administrator with a broad overview of those channels.

When the data is ready to go wherever I need it, JAMS ensures the specific job should be executed on its given schedule. We can provide different notifications or set up recovery in case the job fails. We can always ensure there are other retries. We can configure it to run a set number of retries if needed. If the data still hasn't been transferred after several attempts, we can send an email notification to the administrator to take action. 

JAMS saves us time troubleshooting job failures. The logs are helpful, and you can select the verbose option so JAMS can provide lots of information about the issue.  It also reduces the number of monitoring tools we need. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems using its agents and database connectors eliminates the need for other monitoring tools.  Job scheduling in Linux and Windows can be orchestrated and monitored through a single pane of glass.

I didn't know about JAMS because I don't have a person with any challenges with the purchase administration. The feature or the user interface is user-friendly because of the readable icons or very descriptive icons. Although I'm a beginner user of JAMS, I did not have any issues using it. 

Whenever we propose JAMS to one of our clients, we always highlight its ease of use. The interface for scheduling jobs is user-friendly. I also appreciate its strong integration with Fortra's other tools. You can integrate it with the other products to create a total automation solution. 

I rate JAMS 10 out of 10 for its ability to make us aware of and handle common issues that can prevent jobs from running. I rate JAMS nine out 10 for exception handling. You can configure exceptions to the rules in the scripts. For example, the process might not be executed on specific national holidays or days the offices are closed. 

Our clients are impressed with JAMS's ability to operate across platforms. Most of them use Linux with a combination of SSIS or Oracle packages. If it's a Windows-only solution, the support will be very limited, but most customers do not use Windows anymore. Most of them are on the Oracle and Linux side. The fact that it's a multi-platform system helps us scale up our clients.

JAMS is highly flexible in terms of error recovery and job dependencies. That's something I typically stress in our demos. The use of workflows is easy to understand. While I don't have any experience with other workload automation solutions, I think JAMS can provide this high-end feature, where you can accumulate multiple jobs at the same time with different requisitions. 

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.

We have used JAMS for almost a year 

I rate JAMS nine out of 10. The software is stable, but it depends on the resources of the system where it is deployed. 

I rate JAMS 10 out of 10 for scalability. Most of our clients are small or medium-sized businesses, but we have used this for government clients, so we're confident it can scale. 

I rate Fortra support nine out of 10.  The support could be better. I have a favorite support engineer, and I wish the others could be like him. When I send an email, he responds in less than an hour. With some of their other technicians, it may be 24 hours. They are very responsive whenever I send questions or technical issues to their support team.

Positive

JAMS can be installed through Active Directory integration, so it's all straightforward. Any technical team or data center manager would not have any challenges installing JAMS. Typically, we can have it running in under a week. We needed two or three personnel to deploy it. The project manager handles it and there are one or two technical staff to assist. Afterward, we need to train every person who will be working with JAMS. 

I rate Fortra JAMS nine out of 10. We recommend JAMS to all our existing clients. We have 10 to 15 GoAnywhere MFT users, but by the year's end, I expect to demo JAMS to at least half of our current base so they can see how powerful this solution is. They can have GoAnywhere for their file transfers and JAMS for their workflow automation. 

Our GoAnywhere MFT clients need to automate commands, batch file transfers, and PowerShell scripts. JAMS gives you better insights and more options than natively executing commands in Azure MFT. 

We use Fortra's JAMS as a job scheduling tool for state agencies across the country. We primarily use it for scheduling jobs and development tasks related to taxation processes.

I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events. Customizable workflows with dependencies and variables allow for more complex task management. Additionally, notifications through JIRA and excellent customer support enhance the overall experience with the software.

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 have been using Fortra's JAMS for almost nine years.

We haven't had any stability issues with the solution so far.

Scalability in JAMS could be improved by enhancing word-of-mouth marketing and providing more training or demo videos for new users. Additionally, incorporating performance monitoring features could help users better scale their usage of Fortra's product.

Tech support for JAMS is generally good, with responsive and helpful engineers. However, there have been instances where the initial engineer wasn't able to address the issue and needed to escalate it to another resource. Overall, I would rate the support as an eight out of ten.

Positive

The deployment of JAMS was straightforward once we bought the solution. Additionally, the sales team responsible for handling licenses and project costs was also easy to work with.

I rely on JAMS to help me identify and address common issues that may prevent jobs from running smoothly. I typically start by checking their support site and documentation for solutions. If I can't find a solution, I search for existing tickets or create one myself. It would be beneficial if JAMS provided a community forum where users could share and resolve issues together, enhancing support for all customers.

Agents are crucial for our organization as they enable us to scale and balance processes across multiple servers. They effectively bridge the gap between structured batch automation and tasks happening on desktops and web browsers. However, we encountered an issue with a specific server's agent, which was initially challenging to diagnose. While JAMS eventually identified the problem as a database issue, there was some initial uncertainty about the cause. Overall, while agents are valuable, there can be challenges in fully understanding and addressing issues related to them.

JAMS handles exceptions effectively, but it requires users to have programming knowledge to implement them. It is not a no-code or low-code product, so users need to understand programming languages to utilize its full capabilities. Simplifying this aspect could make it more accessible and user-friendly.

Centralizing job management across all platforms and applications is highly important to our organization. It ensures that schedules and processes are properly handled, which is critical for both our customers and the public, especially for public-facing processes. Effective management reduces the risk of errors and enhances accountability for all stakeholders.

JAMS's code-driven automation is beneficial for handling complex scheduling requirements. While the website documentation may not cover all scenarios, support tickets allow engineers to assist. However, the quality of the response can vary based on the engineer's experience, leading to different levels of resolution.

JAMS saves us a significant amount of time when troubleshooting stalled jobs.

JAMS has helped us eliminate the need for monitoring tools like AutoMate. AutoMate was a simpler tool we used in the past, but JAMS provided more advanced features and functionality.

JAMS has helped free up our IT staff's time by automating tasks, which reduces the need for manual QA and troubleshooting efforts.

Before purchasing JAMS, new users should consider the scale of their operations, including the number of jobs, servers, and agents needed. Understanding these factors will help determine the budget and ensure the system meets their requirements.

Overall, I would rate Fortra's JAMS as a nine out of ten.

We use Fortra's JAMS for scheduled tasks. We have over 100 virtual servers, and JAMS allows us to manage scheduled tasks from a single location. This means that we can create jobs and run them on any of those 100 servers. For example, we can create one job to reboot a specific server at a specific time, or we can create a job to reboot multiple servers at the same time. Once the reboot is complete, we can create chain jobs to kick off other steps, such as running a script or sending an email notification.

We have not had many problems with Fortra's JAMS. I think most of the issues have been due to trial and error. A lot of it depends on us, the users, to make sure our code is correct when we create commands. We need to make sure that all of the information is accurate. We have to double- and triple-check our code to ensure there are no issues that will prevent jobs from running.

Fortra's JAMS helps make our lives easier by allowing us to automate tasks.

Fortra's JAMS helps us centralize the management of all our platforms and applications. This is important because it allows us to manage all of our systems from a single location. Previously, we had over 100 virtual servers, each with its own set of scheduled tasks. This meant that we had to log in to each server individually to view and manage the tasks. With JAMS, we can simply open the client and view all of our jobs in one place. This saves us a lot of time and effort.

JAMS' code-driven automation is highly effective in handling more complex scheduling environments.

JAMS saves us an hour of time when troubleshooting stalled jobs. 

JAMS helps to free up our IT staff's time.

Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable. This means that we can schedule a server restart at 2 a.m. Once the restart is complete, we can have the job trigger another job that will send us an email notification. Then, we can have that job trigger another job that runs some SQL statements or Power BI queries. We can continue to chain jobs together in this way.

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.

I have been using Fortra's JAMS for almost three years.

We have not had any problems with JAMS. It has never crashed for us. If we have any issues, it is because of some of our PowerShell code or another error.

JAMS is highly scalable and could be used for a lot more than what we are currently using it for. We just haven't had the time to invest in it to actually use it properly.

The technical support has been excellent. They have always responded promptly and in a timely manner. We have never had to wait for answers.

Positive

We previously used the built-in Windows task scheduler before migrating the jobs into JAMS.

The initial setup was really straightforward and easy. I didn't run into any problems from a setup point of view. 

One person was required for the deployment.

We completed the implementation ourselves in-house with some clarification about some settings from JAMS.

We have seen a return on investment with Fortra's JAMS.

The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time. This makes it a cost-effective product.

I would rate Fortra's JAMS nine out of ten.

Five people are using JAMS in our organization.

Fortra's JAMS is a great cost-effective solution for automating daily tasks, such as rebooting a server, running PowerShell commands, executing SQL queries, and generating SQL statements. It can do virtually anything.

We have many uses for JAMS, primarily for jobs in our data warehouse, but also jobs for debt integration, ETL, moving data between organizations, scheduled archives and database maintenance, data quality work, and triggering analytics model updates.

We used to have a job scheduled to start at 03:00 AM, and it would run to 10:00 or 11:00 AM because we had to add enough buffer time between jobs to account for time variability in individual tasks. This often caused problems in production because the database would still be in use when our staff came in the morning, leading to user reports of sluggishness in the database. With JAMS, this process is completed by 06:30 or 07:00 AM, long before our users get in, so they're happy, and I'm happy. Everything is done by the time I get in to work, and I just have to take care of exceptions if there are any. JAMS is a win for our organization.

JAMS helps to centralize the management of jobs on all our platforms and applications; I transitioned everything over to it so we have a single application to control all tasks, which has been tremendously helpful.  

JAMS helped eliminate ''data slack'' across our applications, ensuring that current data is ready when users need it. Referring back to my previous example, the data warehouse job took until 10:00 to 11:00 AM to be completed, and users had to wait until then for full reports. Now, that's all done before they get into the office.   

The product helped to free up the IT staff's time, especially mine as the primary administrator. It saves me at least two to three hours a week on average.  

The product reduced the time it takes to carry out data warehouse jobs and send out reports by half. 

The ability to sequence jobs is excellent; it means we don't have to schedule them individually, and if one fails, it doesn't unwind the entire workflow.

JAMS is excellent for helping us be aware of and handle common issues that can prevent jobs from running. The solution notifies us when jobs go sideways, which is extremely helpful. Additionally, we can change our parameters if the network changes or if adjustments are made, allowing us to quickly alter a bunch of jobs just by updating a parameter. 

We use the solution's Interactive Agents; we deploy them on different servers to run the jobs directly. Adding interactive processes is very important to our organization.   

Running interactive tasks helps users focus on business processes. I'm the primary administrator for JAMS. It helps tremendously by allowing me to offload all the problems that can occur with jobs and all the associated rescheduling and rerunning of them. With JAMS, my job is much easier.  

JAMS is second to none when it comes to handling exceptions, exceptions meaning issues where a job might fail for one reason or another. I can dive into the job, and the log files are centrally located so that I can find the root cause very quickly. I can then address the issue, fix it, and rerun it all from one application.  

The platform's code-driven automation is excellent for helping us handle complex scheduling requirements. There hasn't been anything we haven't been able to do through PowerShell. 

JAMS helps us troubleshoot stalled jobs; it points us in the right direction as the centrally located log files allow us to see how far the job progressed and the specific point of failure. It gives us a good starting point for troubleshooting.  

Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement.

There are a few minor issues on the schedule for items to be fixed; there are workarounds, but I'm looking forward to a patch that will resolve them more conclusively. There's a built-in report executer to deliver reports, which we can send to an individual, but we can't CC other staff, for example.

We've been using the solution for a little over three years. 

The solution is exceptionally stable; I can't think of a time when we had any issues.

The solution is scalable, as far as I can tell. We don't do rocket surgery here, so we haven't had to scale, but we could if needed. We have three users in total; two regular and one occasional. 

The JAMS customer service and support staff are unmatched in their ability to assist us and help us resolve issues. I rate them ten out of ten. 

Positive

We previously used Windows Scheduler and SQL Server Agent, so these aren't really third-party products or competitors to JAMS as such.  

We didn't migrate from a third-party product but switched from using a SQL agent built into SQL servers. Those jobs are triggered by JAMS now. We did a POC before migrating, and it took about two weeks. 

The migration process was as easy as it could be. Migrations are never easy, but it was as easy as possible.  

I was involved in the solution's deployment, and it was straightforward; it took less than a day. We didn't have much of an implementation strategy as we're a small shop. Usually, one other employee and I work with setting up servers and installation. He did the server setup, and then we configured the product, making minor tweaks as needed.

We did not use a consultant, though we contacted support for some advice, and they were extremely helpful.

In time, we have seen an ROI with JAMS, and the ease of use is a significant factor here. I reflect on how much time it has saved me, two to three hours a week, but it likely saves much more time in terms of setting up jobs and so on. On top of that, the visibility into where jobs fail, and the ability to fix issues as a result, makes our entire process more robust.

The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons.

We did a POC with ActiveBatch Workload Automation, but JAMS is the more modern tool, the price is much better, and the ability to script using PowerShell is a big plus.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

My advice to others considering the solution is that they will be surprised by how much it will help.

JAMS did not help eliminate any monitoring tools because we had none.

Most of our use cases are for automating our SQL jobs to run and send an email.

It used to be really hard for us to set up SQL jobs to email, once they were done. Or, if there was a problem, we couldn't get it to do anything smart and intuitive because that's not the way SQL works. Once JAMS came along, we could set our SQL jobs to run at 1 PM every day. When a job runs, if it can't get its data or it takes too long — or whatever criteria we set up for it — it will email us and let us know that the job needs attention.

That really has helped. When I first started here 15 years ago, I ended up having to babysit SQL jobs all day long and watching for code that wasn't written correctly, or for a lock on something that stopped the job, or somebody didn't put timeouts on it. Once JAMS came along, we set up one set of criteria for quite a few jobs, and for every job we could say, "Here's your database, and run it with these criteria." That freed up our developers' time and my time, and we had a trackable source that would tell us what was wrong. It literally changed all of our lives.

I no longer have to wait for someone to give me all the information about a job that failed, wait for somebody to respond, or question somebody about what they're asking me to fix. It's all right there. The dashboard for JAMS is very intuitive and informative.

It's helped save time—in the extreme—when troubleshooting. Our jobs don't necessarily stall anymore because we've fixed everything that ever stalled. We now know how much of a timeout to put on certain data sources or certain procedures, but we would not have known that as easily without JAMS.

When we first began using JAMS, it freed up about 50 percent of my time, or 20 hours a week. And it saved each developer about 10 hours a week, and maybe more. There have also been some advances made in SQL that have helped. But because we've been using JAMS for so long, the savings are really immeasurable. We've relied on it for so long, and we'll continue to rely on it in the future.

When a job doesn't work, all I have to do is open JAMS and open the job and, 99 percent of the time, it tells me what I need to do, or what happened, or I know where to look. Before, if a job failed and just kept failing, we had no idea where to even start looking. We'd have to go to the logs on SQL Server, which meant everybody had to have admin rights to look at the logs. Now, we have just set up JAMS to run with a service account that has the ability to do that, and then everybody can look at their own jobs and fix them. Sometimes, it's just a matter of needing to rerun a job because something was down in the network.

By setting it up with a service account that has access to everything, we don't have to run it under my name or anyone else's name. We can set it up so that everybody has permission and I don't have to worry about granting someone permission. And I don't have to give them access to the email account where the failure or success email might be sent. Everything is done with the agent or the service account. And when a new data source comes online, we just give it to the service account agent, and that sets it up so that everybody has access.

Another way it has helped is that before a client logs in to see their daily reports, and they're not there because something happened to them, we're saved by the fact that JAMS emails tell us that it's happened. We can go in and fix it before the client logs in and finds out that something failed. Or, if something was down, like FTP, we can let the client know in advance so that if they log in, they will know that the data is not available and that we know already and are working on it. JAMS has made us look smarter to our clients.

For example, when you log in to your computer and do a local Google search for shopping, the results that you get can cost our client a lot of money. It is very hard to get the top result without spending a lot of money because what Google says is that your data integrity matters a lot. If your data is stale, or you haven't done a refresh on your inventory, Google will push you down in the results and move somebody else up. That means that stale data is a big concern for our clients. Some of our clients rely on Google for 90 percent of their business. If we have their data messed up, their business is messed up because of us. We have to know that their jobs are failing and why, and be able to tell the client, early on, that this is happening so that they can do some manual uploading until we fix what's wrong.

The scheduler is the most valuable feature. Using that, we can set up all of our data sources to be available. We use multiple different data source providers and they're already in JAMS. All somebody has to do is go into JAMS and say, "I want to use Adverity," or, for whatever client it is, that they want that client's data for these dates and these criteria. They can specify that they want it sent to this database or that FTP, and with only these column names. Whatever we want to do, we can almost write the code to do it in JAMS because we already have so much data in there. It's as if JAMS has made itself into its own picker.

It can also do exceptions, you just have to remember to program them in. As a rule, when you first start out with a job and JAMS, you probably aren't going to tell it what to do with errors until you see a pattern in your errors. And then you can say, "Try three times but wait five minutes each time." You go into the job in the monitor and it says it failed. Then you can change the criteria, such as how long it's holding, or repeat the job every 10 minutes until successful.

The code-driven automation for more complex scheduling requirements frees up time because it's really easy to use. It looks complicated, and when people start using it, it might seem a little bit overwhelming, but after you get all the definitions set up, it is very easy to do. It's almost like a stand-alone software that we can't live without.

JAMS is going to disagree with me about the following, because they think that this is not always a problem. But since COVID, we have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it.  They'll try to log in to JAMS and will tell me they can't and I don't know why not. Nothing has changed. 

I have to look at their access and what is wrong with their IP. We've discovered some problems over the years that have been the cause, and that's because it's all behind the scenes to us. We have two VPN servers and we figured out that one of the VPN servers didn't have the permissions for it to log in to the JAMS IP address. We fixed that. And sometimes, new people think that they can just log in to the JAMS server, but they haven't been set up with permissions. 

But JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server. The way it works now is that if you can't log in to the server, it brings up a long form that you have to submit. And nobody likes to submit a long form and sit back and wait.

We've been using Fortra's JAMS for at least eight years.

JAMS is scalable but the problem that our company has is that we have about 144 companies under one banner. For example, if we have an airline company under our banner, and another company has an airline under their banner, we can't be connected because that would be a breach of contract.

That means we can't share our JAMS server with another company under our banner. That's a limitation of the JAMS license because you can only use JAMS on one server at a time; one license, one server, that's it.

Given that we're paying all that money, it would be nice if we could have it installed on a couple of servers so that one airline and another airline could both use it but not be on the same system.

JAMS support is very responsive and they know who I am when I call, so I don't have to go through their making sure that I'm an authorized user, et cetera. 

JAMS has versions and they only work with certain other versions. For example, if JAMS 21 is the current version and I'm setting up somebody in it, but they're connecting to our on-prem server, they have to have JAMS 6 instead of JAMS 7. If I put them on the wrong one, they'll never be able to connect. So when I have to re-download an older version of the software if I don't have it saved, JAMS always reaches out to me and says, "Do you just need software or something else?" They take a proactive approach to their support, which I appreciate because sometimes, when they contact me because I have to do a download, I'll say, "Hey, I have a quick question," and I can throw that in without waiting for a couple of days.

They're really the closest thing that we have ever found to being like a coworker who is dedicated to doing nothing other than fixing and scheduling things and checking on all of our data.

Positive

We never had any monitoring tools, other than the fact that we could look at the SQL logs, but that's like reading a foreign language. Rarely does the log ever lead you to an actual solution to a problem, whereas the JAMS logs do. They tell you what happened and to look at this or look at that. Sometimes it will even let you know that a password has expired, for example. At times, it tells you everything you need to know. At other times, it gives you enough that you know where to look and you can see that the login is not working, or the source is down, or for some reason, there's no data there for the day.

Things have probably changed, but back then, if you had SQL 2016 and 2018 and you set up a scheduled job for data in 2016, some of it was bound to fail. With JAMS, we don't have to worry about that because it will automatically tell us what version it is, and even tell us it won't work so we can easily fix it.

The initial setup was very straightforward. I can also export from my on-premises JAMS and import them so that the jobs and all the data criteria do not have to be set up on a new server from scratch. That is very helpful and that's what we did when we put it on the Azure server recently. 

For that project, we initially set aside three days where four of us were going to work on it because it took years to get JAMS exactly how we wanted it and we thought it was going to take a while. But it was very simple. It was up in about two hours.

A lot of people in our organization use JAMS with the service account. But in terms of people who set up new jobs, we have six admin users. There are another ten or so who use just the service account.

When we first got the software, we had something like two half days with JAMS people over a screen share. We've always had a service contract with them and the couple of times we've ever had to reach out to them they were very responsive. When we set this up, on our Azure server. We did not have to reach out to them.

We have absolutely seen return on investment with JAMS. It comes down to the fact that our developers can actually spend time developing instead of troubleshooting and looking at why SQL or the data source isn't working. Or they can simply say, "Hey, I got this email from JAMS, Kammy can you look at it?" Or they can say to my boss, "We have to stop using this data because every day we're having problems getting into it. Can we have a meeting about this?" All of that is JAMS-driven.

In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime.

Several of us evaluated other options, but JAMS was what we all came back to because it was the only software we found that could do everything that we needed it to do for all the different kinds of data that we get. We deal with over 90 data sources with different kinds of data from different kinds of companies, and JAMS was the only one we found that really could handle them all.

JAMS doesn't centralize the management of jobs for all of our platforms because we have things that aren't built on SQL databases. We can't automate the login to some of the data that we work with because other places don't allow it. We would have to do that interactively with JAMS, so it would almost be pointless to use JAMS for something like that. But JAMS centralizes most of it. If you look at our scheduler compared to how many people used to have to run jobs manually every single day, or had to remember to do something and go back and look and see if it was successful, every single day, the difference that JAMS has made is tremendous. That is why JAMS is worth every bit of its very expensive cost.

My advice would be to understand that if you're spending hours a day or a week trying to figure out why

• SQL or automated data jobs or
• logging in manually and downloading data and moving data around or
• even archiving data (we do a lot of data archiving through JAMS because we can tell it: "if older than X, delete it.")

isn't working, JAMS can handle it all.

For anything that you code manually or have to pull up a script in SQL and look at logs for, JAMS can make it all easier, so that you don't have to do those things every minute of every day. You can spend about 10 minutes a day on them, whereas you might have spent three or four hours before.

It has set times for set jobs that have to run, jobs that previously would have been done by someone manually. JAMS covers that now. But it also helps afterward. If I have to run something on four or five servers at a set time every day, I would have to make it run, check a log file on that server, and flip about between all the servers. Now that I have it in a central location, that is much easier.

For my job, in operations, and for IT, it has definitely helped to centralize the management of jobs on all our platforms and applications. If it didn't do that, we wouldn't use it. When our contract with a competitor was up, we looked at other companies, like VisualCron, that were cheaper, but one of the main sticking points was the fact that they wouldn't have provided a central location for us to monitor across all servers. That was one of the biggest selling points of JAMS.

It enables us to scale quicker, and it has saved countless hours of manpower. I can actually fire-and-forget some of the stuff now. I know that JAMS is going to tell me if some of the basic tasks haven't succeeded. I can do more things with my day. It handles about 1,000 processes for us a day, processes that would require something else, and about half of them that would require a user or person on our side to do something.

It has helped to free up IT staff time in every way. If I had to do all the things that JAMS does for us, I might not get to do anything else. Four to five hours of an eight-hour shift are probably saved by having JAMS do things for me. Everything that JAMS does is what our entire team would do for the day. But because we don't have to do that, we're free to work on other tasks not related to operations, such as customer issues or our ticketing system. If we didn't have JAMS we would put something else in. There would be no way we could do everything without JAMS. Or we would do it, but it would be a nightmare. At least fifty percent of our overall staff's time, of seven people's eight-hour shifts, is saved.

JAMS is also giving us more access to data that was there. It has improved our ability to process and ingest it. We're a financial company and we run on schedules and set times and changes to data are important.

Another factor is that it certainly helps save time when troubleshooting stalled jobs. The fact that it will give you the log as it is written, rather than having to wait for something to finish, is helpful. At least you can see how far along the process or application has gotten and that gives us a place to go when troubleshooting. We have the ability to start and stop something if we need to.

The amount of time it saves us would depend on what has failed. We don't have a lot of failures because we can't afford to have failures. But it could save us about ten minutes on a job in investigating what step it failed at. When a process is running, if we know exactly where it failed, it means we don't have to go into a database or go look at logs to figure out how far along we are. Or if a job had to write 20 pages and we look at the JAMS log and it shows it has only written 10, we know where to go look. Whereas if it just said "stalled", we wouldn't know where it stalled.

Also, we had our own bespoke file-watch system, but the JAMS file-watch is so reliable that we use it for monitoring that sort of thing. It has removed personal monitoring of jobs and having to go in and look for things, but we needed to create JAMS into a separate monitoring system. It has definitely helped.

Some of the valuable features for us are the

• automation
• scheduling of tasks
• file watching
• dependability.

It's basically a super version of Windows Task Scheduler.

Adding Interactive Agents is extremely important to us. Running interactive tasks gives us a central location for multiple processes across multiple servers. If we didn't have JAMS, and we were using just a standard Windows Task Scheduler, we would need some way to log in to multiple servers at the same time, look at jobs and check if one had finished and then kick off another one. You can do all of that by just following one item in JAMS. You can set sequences with a dependency on one thing finishing before something else will start.

It's very good at bridging the gap between structured batch automation and processes happening on desktops. That's really what we do with it. It does its job and it does it very well.

I also like the way it handles exceptions. It can handle its own exceptions, but we can also configure it to handle exceptions from our bespoke applications. If there's a certain return code, we can get bespoke errors. That means it can either give you a JAMS error saying, "Something happened within this job", or it can give you, as the error, what happened within your application. That's very important to us because we hook it up to a different system and what comes out of JAMS goes into a different system separately. It works.

The documentation is not super. There are things that I want to do in JAMS, but I just haven't gotten my head around them yet. For example, I keep saying that workflows would be really handy for us. We can't risk moving our production stuff or testing stuff there. But when I'm testing in the UAT environment, I run out of jobs. They have examples that don't apply to my situation when it comes to running things. The documentation is probably all there, but it's not the easiest to navigate through. It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be.

Their support team is a live chat and they are top-notch. I can say I have a job that's failed because of something, and they can probably give me a pointer, really fast, on what's happened, but I wouldn't use them if I'm trying to learn a new functionality or process. I wouldn't ask them to give me a complete step-by-step. That's not their function. They would probably point me to some documentation that would be a massive PDF or some support page, but I just lose the will to live reading them.

I've been using Fortra's JAMS for two or three years.

The stability is fine. I have had no problems with it. It's one of those things that has never gone wrong for me.

It's very scalable. You would only be restricted by the number of jobs that you are licensed for. You can buy a license for, say, 10 jobs and scale to 10 jobs. You could buy a license for 2,000 jobs and scale to that. The costs go up massively, though. The ideal would be to have unlimited jobs; that would be amazing. Technically, JAMS can be as scalable as your infrastructure will allow, but it's probably not as scalable due to what your wallet will allow.

Their technical support is excellent. They're a straight-up 10 out of 10; really good. I've only ever contacted them via email and live chat. Once, when I couldn't get through on the live chat, the guy made a Teams meeting with me, we shared screens, and he went through it, because there was some strange error I was getting. 

Those guys are brilliant. And if you don't get them on live chat, someone picks you up on an email very fast. I can't say enough good things about JAMS for support.

I wouldn't bother them with questions about how I should do something. I would only use them when I have set up something and it's not running as I think it should and I don't know how to make sense of it. But if I've done, say, 80 percent of the work and it's still not working, they will say, "Oh, well, you've missed these four configurations."

Positive

JAMS has made us more productive. We didn't have to hire someone new to do some of the stuff we wanted to do because we could pawn off some of the work on JAMS.

Once you get all the basic server permissions in place, the setup is easy. It pretty much does it itself. You install the main client and a few files. You configured it a bit, and then installing the agents is easy. It's more about the infrastructure you have set up. That is where your main issue will be.

It's on-premises. We deploy a central client on a server, and there are agents that go onto production servers, like an application server, a database server, or a web server. You can set all your jobs from the central location and it will run them on the actual production server. Take, for example, a PowerShell script. You put all of that into the main client and it just runs that wherever you're asking it to. That's what the agents are.

From "blank" to actually getting JAMS working took half an hour. But it depends on how far you're going with it. If I wanted to just get the JAMS client and one agent set up, that would take half an hour. But we have loads of servers and we're constantly adding to it. Per agent, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes.

We didn't migrate to JAMS from something else. You configure all the jobs, but you wouldn't want JAMS to help you with that because they're your jobs. You're telling it what to do. We went from manual tasks. It all depends on the size of your deployment and how much you want JAMS to do, as well as on the complexity of your jobs. Some of your jobs could be one-liners and some of them could be multiple steps and they can go up to massive complexity.

We did it in-house. We knew what we wanted to do with it. Most of our stuff is command or PowerShell, SSIS, and SQL. And if anything goes wrong when trying to set up a job, we talk to their support team, but we're fairly handy with what we are doing.

Installing the actual application took two or three people, and included someone setting up permissions and someone configuring things. But in terms of setting up how our JAMS works compared to a blank JAMS, everybody gets involved.

I'm sure we have had ROI in terms of how productive we are and what our output is, but I wouldn't be able to quantify it.

Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job. That job count is where you're limited, per day. 

You purchase a number of jobs in your license. You can be clever with that by combining things into one job. If you can configure it right, you can get around those limits and save some money.

There are loads of other applications that do similar things, like Octopus Deploy, but they are for installers.

Our shortlist came down to VisualCron, which we tested as well, and JAMS. The reason we went with JAMS was that if I have JAMS open, I'm probably on a page called monitor. That is the list of upcoming jobs that it's about to run or jobs that are executing. After a job has run, it will sit there for about ten minutes and then it will go to a historical page. That monitor page is vital because it shows us what's coming up and how something is executing as it's happening. It gives you a log of updates and you don't have to wait for that until it has finished the job. You can see the log in progress.

The benefit of VisualCron was that it gave us an unlimited number of jobs, but an updated scheduling page like that literally wasn't feasible.

We didn't test the other solutions we looked at mainly because of cost. Our main requirements were cost and the number of processes we could run a day.

If you're looking at JAMS, you probably know what you're looking for. It's a scheduling tool that probably integrates with whatever you're already doing. It takes the manual stuff out and it can connect to just about everything Windows already, including SQL Server, PowerShell, and the command line.

If you have a lot of manual tasks that you run, JAMS can probably run them for you. You'll want something reliable like JAMS.

We run application software for auto finance companies, banks, and the auto company's financial departments. We use JAMS to schedule all the nightly and repetitive batch processing. We run around 10,000 jobs per day.

We've had batch schedulers before. We’ve had CA7 on the mainframe. Our on-premise data center had another product. They were a little more cryptic and not as intuitive to look at. We couldn’t figure out what to do. In JAMS, we can figure out whatever we need to do pretty easily. It has a really good user interface and straightforward scheduling functionality.

JAMS is easy to use. We came up with various scenarios for scheduling. With a little bit of thought, we figured it out and implemented it pretty simply. Calendars, building new jobs, and crisscrossing dependencies are easy to update. If something fails, we can rerun it or skip it with just a couple of mouse clicks. The information displayed on the monitor is very informative. I have a team of 24/7 operators. The team members watch it run and make sure everything's on time. If anything fails, they address it. The product is pretty good for them. It’s pretty easy. I like the solution overall.

The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen.

I have been using the solution for three to four years.

I haven’t experienced any stability issues in the solution.

We're running ten thousand jobs and haven't had any capacity issues. We don’t have it on the busiest server. I'm sure we could run it on a larger server, and it would get even faster. However, it seems to be doing well, and we keep adding to it every day. The operations staff are the users.

I had an amazing experience with the technical support team. The team members respond right away. They answer the phone usually without going into a queue. Their support is amazing. That is one of the key reasons why we selected JAMS.

Positive

We were using AutoSys on-premise. We didn't really do a full POC. Once we had the demos and compared the features, we decided to go with JAMS. Since it was the first thing we were doing in the cloud, the testing was like a POC. The whole environment was brand new.

The migration wasn’t difficult. We have documentation on all our jobs. It was just a matter of building them out. Once we finish a few jobs, we can clone what we've done and make minor tweaks for the next one. It's pretty easy.

It took us a little less than three months to choose the product and start using it. There was a lot of discussion about how to build the firewalls between servers and get access to the servers that we would put the agents on. All of that was new to us. It took us a little bit longer than someone who already has that established and is just swapping one tool for the other.

Everything is in the Azure cloud. We have three instances. One instance is for DR, one for prod, and one for non-prod. Lewis Diaz helped us get going when we first went live, did training, and helped us talk about how we had it built. From there on out, we've been self-sufficient.

We had all our clients in an on-premise data center in Atlanta, and we started with our first client in the Azure cloud. We built them out, and they went live in April 2020. Little by little, we kept bringing clients from on-premise to the cloud. We were ready to go in less than three months. It probably could have been done sooner, but the migration and coordination with our clients took a lot of time.

One of the support persons from JAMS had come to our organization. He gave us a three-day training and reviewed what we had built. He gave us suggestions on how to do things better. We have one main person who is an administrator. Another person and I are a backup to the administrator. I am a manager. It doesn’t take a lot of people to maintain the product.

The product is giving us a lot of value for the money we're paying.

For what it does, the product is priced very well.

We evaluated AutoSys, but we weren't thrilled with it. However, we included it in the comparison to consider the pros and cons. Security was a key concern.

JAMS servers run our main software, and agents are installed on separate servers where our code runs. The license came with five agents out of the box when we bought the license. It was plenty. We're balancing our load across three servers right now. We had another office in Buffalo with just a handful of jobs we set up. It will run there until we can get those into the cloud, too. We're not even using all five.

It's pretty easy to set up a new agent. Most of the workaround is related to firewalls, getting access, and security. Once it's up, we can run things in that environment. We watch for capacity on the servers that we have the agents on. We're running a ton of stuff currently, but we haven't had any real issues where servers hit high CPU or memory. Performance has been good. We use JAMS only for traditional batch-type operations.

We have alerts for long-running jobs and jobs that could not even start. It's error handling. It has different levels of errors, like informational errors and critical errors. We can mix and match and set up emails to be sent to our team according to the alerts. The tool's alerting capability is pretty good.

The solution has an alerting feature to let us know about exceptions. We've even been able to set up what actions it has to take in different scenarios. It's great.

We're using the product to centralize the management of jobs on all our platforms and applications. We're about ninety percent there. It is important to our organization, especially from an employee standpoint. We need one tool that everybody can be trained on and know about. Having multiple tools across different platforms and having people learn more than one thing is troublesome.

In some of the really difficult situations regarding scheduling and everything, we were able to put something in and get it to work with just a little thought. We did not have to spend too much time on it. It was pretty easy. I like the integration with PowerShell. We use PowerShell a lot. If we're supposed to get ten transactions a day, and we only got five, we run a PowerShell job that checks that count once an hour. If the hourly count is under five, then we fail the job. We use it a lot for monitoring our applications.

We have tons of file transmissions, but we use a different product. JAMS has a really good file watch feature that we utilize all the time. The job runs as soon as the file arrives and does whatever it needs to do with the data. Then, it's available for the business to do what it needs to do.

JAMS helps save time when troubleshooting stalled jobs. The job log is easy to access. We can get that to our programmers if needed. There are many screens showing the job name, but we can't cut and paste it. I'd love to be able to cut and paste the job name from anywhere it shows. It will help us send it to our developers without going elsewhere to find or type it out.

We upgrade every two years to the current version. It's a lot of effort for us to upgrade our products or tools. That's why we're on a two-year rotation unless a major security update would come out. Then, we'd have to upgrade right away.

The product hasn't eliminated the monitoring tools but has augmented them. We only use Azure Monitor. We don't spend a lot of money on monitoring tools. Azure Monitor is included with our Microsoft Azure license. Most of our stuff is set up around that. Our jobs are set up in JAMS. It scans the Azure logs for certain buzzwords. It's all mandated. It's never going to make it go away.

Everything we run in prod, we run in non-prod ten times more because we have ten test environments. We've always had that with whatever product we had. It does help. The developers don't have to manually run a thousand test jobs in a release. However, we always had that configured no matter what product we had.

People looking to buy the solution must get somebody to come out and do the demo. Everybody is very knowledgeable and very professional. They know their product. They're definitely great ambassadors. They put on a good show, and then they stick to it. They back it up with reality.

Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

We utilize Fortra's JAMS to automate tasks within our banking organization.

We utilize a range of jobs for different tasks. Specifically, I possess 1,500 jobs that handle file movements. Additionally, we have approximately 600 SQL jobs, consisting of SQL commands, SSI jobs, and various other types of jobs. Our jobs run on Linux and Oracle, and perform functions such as encryption, decryption, zipping, unzipping, and uploading or downloading through SFTP or FTPS. Furthermore, we employ some visual basic jobs.

Fortra's JAMS enables us to identify and address common issues that may impede the execution of our jobs. This is of great significance to our organization.

The interactive agents are critical components since we cannot use a JAMS server for SQL jobs due to permission issues. Therefore, we delegate this task to another server. However, this causes the job to be offloaded from JAMS' scheduler, hence the need to distribute the process to another server.

We centralize all of the tasks in our bank, which include Microsoft Windows tasks, scheduled tasks, batch jobs, and scripts. This is a replacement for the SQL job that we previously scheduled across approximately one hundred servers. By centralizing and scheduling these tasks together, the entire process is visible to everyone in the bank. This is critical because if the system goes down, it would affect all banking processes, including ACS payments, ATM, reporting, and other functions. This software is essential for the bank's operations, and without it, we cannot function properly.

Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution. Managing permissions has always been an issue, but we've now centralized permissions for all jobs based on department.

Code-driven automation assists us in managing complex scheduling needs. The system includes a built-in template form. Fortra's JAMS provides the ability to improve the form within the code. This feature is beneficial because we can create our own custom scripts and add them to the system. However, it would be even better if we could add additional forms to the system.

Fortra's JAMS helps to eliminate data inconsistencies across our applications. Essentially, all of our activities occur at the system level, primarily through batch processing. We are not end-users and they do not directly access our system. Instead, we upload reports to SharePoint or similar systems, from where end-users can access them. However, end-users access our reports indirectly and not directly through the JAMS server. We typically share our reports with customers via email, by sending attachments, or by uploading them to SharePoint, OneDrive, or a shared folder. End-users do not directly access our system.

Fortra's JAMS saves us time when troubleshooting. Using the sequence log I have 14,000 jobs running every day.

Fortra's JAMS streamlines our monitoring processes by centralizing scheduling and management, eliminating the need for multiple tools.

Fortra's JAMS freed up the time of our IT staff. Previously, we had 20 servers, each running a different type of application. However, we have now consolidated all of these applications into one system.

Fortra's JAMS saved us the costs of a few full-time employees.

All the features are valuable and we utilize all critical features of the solution, such as scheduling, automation, and notifications.

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.

I have been using Fortra's JAMS for nine years.

Fortra's JAMS stability is great.

Our requirements are met by Fortra's JAMS, and we have not experienced any scalability issues.

The technical support is great. They respond quickly even after hours and are knowledgeable.

Positive

Before we switched to Fortra's JAMS, we utilized a MOVEit SQL Server. However, we found that JAMS is a superior solution.

The initial setup is straightforward. A single server can be set up within a few hours while deploying multiple servers may take a few days to complete.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a great return on investment with Fortra's JAMS.

There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable.

I reviewed several solutions online before going with Fortra's JAMS because of the features and price.

I give Fortra's JAMS a nine out of ten.

There are 50 users in our system, but only my team has administrative privileges. This means that while all users can access the JAMS client and run, release, or cancel their jobs, they cannot delete or modify anything. The remaining 46 users are simply managing their own jobs, whereas my team of four has the ability to modify settings.

I used Fortra's JAMS successfully across a variety of jobs and it is highly recommended. The solution saved me a significant amount of money, time, and effort through effective monitoring and other features. Overall, I believe Fortra's JAMS is a great product that can benefit many people.

I have come to understand the importance of centralizing management within our organization for the benefit of both the company and its employees. This facilitates prompt troubleshooting and efficient communication of notifications.