JAMS Scheduler Reviews

My main use case for JAMS Scheduler is scheduling daily RPA jobs, such as running an invoice process automation after the source files are available. JAMS Scheduler manages the job sequence and dependencies, and I use it to monitor the execution and handle failures.

One thing I find useful is managing dependencies between multiple automation jobs. For example, I can configure the RPA process to start only after the previous job completes successfully, which helps keep the workflow organized and reliable.

The best features JAMS Scheduler offers, which I found most useful, include job scheduling, dependency management, monitoring, and failure handling. In my day-to-day work, these features make it easier to automate recurring RPA workflows and quickly identify issues when a job doesn't complete as expected.

Regarding monitoring and failure handling, I find the alerting and notification system reliable. The alerting is useful for day-to-day monitoring, especially for failed or delayed jobs, and I can configure notifications for critical jobs so the support team can investigate quickly instead of manually checking every job.

The centralized view of scheduling jobs and their execution status gives me a clear picture of the automation workflow, which is helpful when multiple RPA processes are running on different schedules.

Although I don't have formal metrics, using JAMS Scheduler has reduced the amount of manual monitoring needed for our scheduled RPA jobs. It also helps reduce missed or delayed executions because jobs, job dependencies, and failures are handled through a centralized scheduler.

One area of improvement I see for JAMS Scheduler is making the user interface more intuitive for new users, especially when configuring complex job dependencies. Better documentation on advanced scheduling scenarios would also help reduce the learning curve.

For onboarding a new user, practical examples and step-by-step templates for common RPA scheduling scenarios would be helpful. For daily use, a simpler way to troubleshoot failed jobs and understand dependency issues would make the experience smoother for newer users.

I have been using JAMS Scheduler for around one year.

JAMS Scheduler has been stable for our day-to-day RPA scheduling. The scheduled jobs generally run consistently, and when issues occur, the monitoring and execution logs make it easier to identify and recover from them.

JAMS Scheduler has scaled very well for our RPA environment. As the number of scheduled jobs increased, we can manage multiple schedules, dependencies, and workflows centrally, which makes it easier to add new automations without significantly changing the existing setup.

The customer support experience has been generally good for the issues we have raised. For example, we had questions around job configuration or troubleshooting, and the available documentation support helped us resolve them without major disruption.

I would rate customer support eight out of ten. The support has been helpful for configuration and troubleshooting questions, although response times can vary depending on the complexity of the issue.

Before JAMS Scheduler, we mainly used basic OS-level scheduling and manual triggers for some automation jobs. We switched to JAMS Scheduler as the number of jobs increased, and we needed better dependency management, centralized monitoring, and failure handling.

I wasn't directly involved in the procurement or licensing negotiations for JAMS Scheduler, so I don't have enough visibility into the exact pricing or the setup cost. For the implementation side, the main effort was around configuration, jobs, dependencies, and integrations with our existing RPA environment.

We have seen a practical return on investment, mainly through reduced manual monitoring and fewer missed job executions. For example, a daily invoice automation that previously required manual scheduling and monitoring can now run automatically through JAMS Scheduler, saving the team recurring effort and allowing them to focus on exception handling.

We briefly considered using native Windows Task Scheduler and some other enterprise scheduling tools before choosing JAMS Scheduler. Ultimately, we focused on JAMS Scheduler because it provided centralized scheduling, dependency management, monitoring, and interaction capabilities that fit our RPA environment.

JAMS Scheduler's code-driven automation has helped handle complex scheduling requirements, which is important for our organization. This is because it gives us more flexibility than managing every scenario manually through the interface.

JAMS Scheduler has helped notify and handle common issues that prevent my jobs from running. Common issues include incorrect schedules, unavailable source files, failed dependencies, and connectivity problems.

I do use JAMS Scheduler's interactive agents, and adding interactive processes is important when an automation requires user input or interaction with a desktop application. In our RPA environment, they can help support processes that cannot run completely unattended while still allowing JAMS Scheduler to manage the scheduling and execution.

Running interactive tasks does help users focus on their business processes. This is important for our organization because it reduces the need to manually monitor routine automation tasks. JAMS Scheduler can schedule the interactive tasks at the required time while users step in only when their input or intervention is needed.

JAMS Scheduler has helped centralize the management of jobs across all our platforms and applications. This is important because it gives the team one place to manage schedules, dependencies, and job statuses instead of handling each automation separately.

I would rate JAMS Scheduler an overall eight out of ten.

On-premises

JAMS Scheduler serves as our main solution for MIS management and IT management services within our organization.

For particular tasks and workflows, we have different requirements for IT management and MIS reporting, and JAMS Scheduler addresses both of these needs effectively.

Using JAMS Scheduler is not time-consuming as it provides quick responses, and for MIS reporting, it proves to be very effective for managing IT teams within our organization.

JAMS Scheduler offers features including reliability, cost savings, and time efficiency.

Whenever we generate reports through this software, the MIS reporting capabilities are exceptional.

The quick response from JAMS Scheduler helps with managing various operational aspects on a daily basis.

JAMS Scheduler enables our team to work faster and has made our processes considerably easier.

JAMS Scheduler operates effectively as it currently functions, and there is no need for improvement.

I have been using JAMS Scheduler for one and a half years.

Currently, we do not experience any issues with JAMS Scheduler as it performs well and the jobs run smoothly.

JAMS Scheduler is stable.

JAMS Scheduler's scalability is good.

Customer support for JAMS Scheduler is exceptional.

I rate the customer support of JAMS Scheduler a 10 out of 10.

We were not using different solutions prior to this implementation as we are using JAMS Scheduler for the first time, and it performs well.

We have saved both money and time with JAMS Scheduler.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for JAMS Scheduler are favorable.

We did not evaluate other options as we are using JAMS Scheduler for the first time in our organization, and it has proven to be reliable while saving time and money.

We are utilizing agents related to AI with JAMS Scheduler, and it is important to add an interactive process within our organization as it delivers significant value.

Current user focus on business processes is good, and it is very important to run interactive tasks for our organization as JAMS Scheduler excels in this capacity.

The requirement for JAMS Scheduler code-driven automation serves our IT management team effectively, and the organization is satisfied with this approach as it delivers quick response times.

JAMS Scheduler helps centralize the management of jobs across all platforms and applications, which is very important for our organization because it has improved scalability and reduced costs.

I rate this review overall at 10 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for JAMS Scheduler is to trigger integrations as well as send out alerts and reports.

For sending alerts, I typically query databases or look at folders to make sure that the expected behavior is happening. For integrations, some are on a scheduled basis, some are ad hoc. Some are database-based, some are file-based. When it triggers, we currently use BizTalk and are moving towards using Boomi.

We're mostly using PowerShell, which is usually used to do quick checks or run code in the background.

JAMS Scheduler has positively impacted our organization by allowing us to avoid building custom tools and use something that is more enterprise-ready.

Since adopting JAMS Scheduler, we were planning on building a reporting and scheduling tool for the users to use, and we saved six months in development by building Python scripts in the background and allowing JAMS Scheduler to trigger the reports for users to access as needed.

JAMS Scheduler has helped notify us of common issues that prevent our jobs from running, specifically files being backed up that need to be processed.

JAMS Scheduler's code-driven automation has helped handle complex scheduling requirements, and it is important to our organization because we need to get data to where it needs to be in a reliable time, and that all starts with making sure the proper things are triggered at the right time.

JAMS Scheduler has helped eliminate data slack across our applications, and it is very important to my organization that current data is ready to go when our users need it because we make decisions based off data, and having the most accurate data will provide us with that capability.

JAMS Scheduler does help save time when troubleshooting stalled jobs, but I do not have metrics on that.

The best features JAMS Scheduler offers are the reporting, the logs, the ease of use, portability, and overall interaction.

The dashboard of JAMS Scheduler allows me to quickly see if anything failed, and the reports can give me specifics on which report failed, the directory, and the error message. It also has the ability to allow you to create custom reports.

JAMS Scheduler can be improved by sectioning off credentials and also the web functionality and setting that up.

I have been using JAMS Scheduler for the past three and a half years.

JAMS Scheduler is stable.

I have not worked with scaling JAMS Scheduler just yet, but it is working just fine with our smaller server at the moment.

The customer support for JAMS Scheduler is very reliable and very prompt.

I would rate the customer support a 10.

We did not migrate from another solution; mainly we used Task Scheduler.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for JAMS Scheduler was a good experience.

Before choosing JAMS Scheduler, I did evaluate other options, but I do not remember the name of those.

I would give JAMS Scheduler a nine on a scale of one to ten.

I chose a nine for JAMS Scheduler because it has everything I need, and it is very rare when it cannot do what I need it to do.

I have not worked with JAMS Scheduler's AI capabilities yet, so I cannot provide an opinion on its governance and security.

I have not used the AI capabilities of JAMS Scheduler yet, so I cannot comment on its accuracy and reliability of output.

I do not use JAMS Scheduler's interactive agents, so I cannot comment on how important adding interactive processes would be to my organization.

My advice to others looking into using JAMS Scheduler is to experiment with the different job types.

I give JAMS Scheduler an overall rating of nine out of ten.

On-premises

My main use case for JAMS is to install, set up, and configure for customers working with JD Edwards application.

A specific example of how I use JAMS during an install or setup for a customer includes setting it up on a JD Edwards system with the JD Edwards batch server agent and using the run UBE command to submit the jobs remotely from JAMS. I then set up jobs in JAMS and configure sequences.

I also add some high availability options to provide solutions for having redundancy with multiple batch servers, including leveraging JD Edwards virtual batch functionality.

Implement at customer sites rather than for ourselves however it improves on management of JDE batch processing and overall management at customer sites.

In my opinion, the best feature JAMS offers is enterprise-level scheduling.

What stands out to me about the enterprise-level scheduling is that it's relatively straightforward to set up, straightforward to copy and create new jobs, and I can easily understand how all my jobs are set up and configured, monitor them, look at their history, check the logs, and track what's going on across the system while also building in dependencies.

JAMS positively impacts my organisation because it helps make it easier to manage JD Edwards scheduled jobs and fills the gap that the JD Edwards application has with scheduling, resolving a lot of those issues.

To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH client connection in the current version, which has been a problem for a while. I suggest implementing tighter integration with JD Edwards virtual batch, catering for multiple batch servers in production versus non-production and different server maps.

Getting bug fixes pushed through into the product has been quite difficult, which has been challenging.

I have been using JAMS for over 7.5 years.

JAMS is very stable and we've seen minimal issues with the applications stability.

JAMS has some scalability even without the enterprise scalable options. We have been able to leverage the agents and hook into the JD Edwards virtual batch and that configuration, performing quite well.

The customer support is very good, reasonably quick, and very personal.

We have worked with other business partners and looked at other solutions, but JAMS was the recommendation solution based upon our analysis and the features and functionality of the production. I have worked with Tidal previously and had some exposure to RevSoft. Tidal was very good but very expensive, and JAMS looks like the best product that works with JD Edwards and also had some local contacts who I've worked directly with and this has helped with the relationship.

We were more of a business partner. However, as I mentioned before, we have looked at Tidal and RevSoft and some other solutions we have seen out there, but for any kind of enterprise scheduler with JD Edwards for any of our customers, we mainly look at JAMS first.

Relatively straight forward but need to leverage the knowledge base for additional support or client specific requirements.

I probably do not have visibility regarding a return on investment. Obviously, the expectation is that there will be a return based on the product and the benefits it has.

I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technical side rather than the commercial side.

Considered other products however costs and local support were a big factor after comparing technically

JAMS helps notify and handle common issues that prevent my jobs from running. The notifications help to a certain extent, although it could possibly add further details in the email, which would also help.

I have not had experience with the code-driven automation, although I have heard of it. I am predominantly working with the JD Edwards application, which is fairly straightforward.

JAMS does help centralize the management of jobs across all my platforms and applications. It is very important because I predominantly work with the JD Edwards application, but I have customers who leverage it centrally, making it a lot easier to manage and also have dependencies on different types of jobs, maybe hooking into third-party integrations.

JAMS helps eliminate monitoring tools regarding the status of JD Edwards jobs, which are not very good at all built into the application. Thus, we have to set up custom scripting and jobs to capture that information. JAMS provides all of that and access to the JD Edwards logs as well as the JAMS logs, all in a central location.

My advice to others looking into using JAMS would be to review some of the documentation on JAMS, look at what it can do, consider the AI capabilities in the newer version, and evaluate how many agents they actually might need versus what they might have sold to ensure the correct number of agents based on the number of environments they want to set up.

I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

Private Cloud

Other

My main use case for JAMS is scheduling, which is the primary usage. I am mainly using JAMS for scheduling various jobs of all kinds.

I onboarded JAMS when I developed our custom framework of components, and I was not relying on JAMS capacities at that time. Since then, I have primarily utilized JAMS for scheduling a variety of jobs.

The best features JAMS offers in my opinion allow me to create dependencies to set very complex sets of jobs to run them in a particular manner. This is what I love JAMS for.

This feature helps my team day-to-day by running hundreds and hundreds of jobs on JAMS in a timely fashion, which is extremely important and sensitive, providing a lot of reporting to the entire firm and beyond.

JAMS definitely centralizes the management of jobs on all my platforms and applications, and it is extremely important because it helps to run a variety of jobs on different platforms and applications. That is why I value JAMS.

I appreciate the constant improvements in JAMS, its reliability, and it is a very powerful engine. I JAMS for that.

JAMS has greatly improved my ability to schedule jobs and relieved me from manual execution by approximately 50%.

I am fine with what JAMS offers and have nothing to suggest for improvement.

JAMS' code-driven automation is not widely used in the present environment, because I use my internally built framework components. As such, JAMS' provided code-driven automation has not been used.

I have been using JAMS for more than 10 years.

JAMS is stable.

JAMS is scalable.

If I come across any potential or real issues, JAMS support always addresses them, which definitely helps.

JAMS was a great improvement over what we used to have before. We had a scheduler called 24/7, and it had a lot of issues, but JAMS runs seamlessly and very efficiently.

Prior to JAMS, I had a different scheduler which was not satisfactory. It was 24/7, and it was not running smoothly. JAMS helped me a lot.

The overall migration process was easy because JAMS' support team provided all necessary documentation.

I have already shared the metrics that it saved IT time by 50%, and I think that is the most important improvement.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing was acceptable. I have gone with JAMS licensing for years now, and I am happy to have it.

Before choosing JAMS, I evaluated other options. I looked around at what is presently employed in the industry and identified JAMS as my best solution.

JAMS has positively impacted my organization in all of the above aspects. I give this review an overall rating of 9.

On-premises

Other

JAMS is used in my company for scheduling jobs like copying files from other customers to my company and to other databases or other systems.

My company has been using JAMS for quite a few years now, and I think it's really good for running long running jobs.

We exchange data files with customers every day, so we have critical, mission-critical jobs involving customer personal data and accounting transactions being in a finance industry.

We haven't gone that far yet. It's pretty much a very basic job, collecting information and transferring files.

I wouldn't say we've implemented advanced features yet because currently it's still very basic, just data transfers and storing locally on disk. We have other tooling for that.

I think what is good about this product is that it's a very well-consolidated tool that is on-premise, which includes scheduling jobs with support for Python. It also supports making API calls to cloud services like Azure, which is pretty much the main use case in my company. JAMS also has built-in SQL command lines, which attracted my attention as well.

The major benefits I see are the ease of management and having no scattered jobs around using different tooling. If this is an environment where you don't need a DevOps engineer or it's too expensive to operate with a DevOps engineer building custom pipelines, this tool is amazing. The best use case is usually for data engineers and data analysts who are not full-time or hardcore specialized developers. This tool will definitely help them a lot.

We have our own banking regulations in Australia, and we definitely have our own custom regulations and auditing involved. What I see as good about JAMS here is that it has all the trails of logs for each job run. That's very important.

Generally, with the audit logs and trace downs and email alerting, I think that's very handy to have for a non-developer centric kind of environment to run jobs.

The key benefits about JAMS is having the ability to run long running jobs on-premise as compared to products like Azure Data Factory. Azure Data Factory probably costs a few thousand per run depending on how parallel the job is. However, JAMS is different. It's licensed using a per license model.

I would definitely love to see a GitHub integration so that all the code written by developers is integrated with it. The jobs could be running the latest source code rather than the custom way we're doing it at the moment.

Not directly at the moment, but I'm looking forward to GitHub integration. I think a JAMS partner or sales manager that contacted my head of department mentioned that there's a GitHub integration coming in September, so I'm really looking forward to that.

Monitoring is not heavily used in my company.

Most of our services are in the cloud, such as Azure, which have their own monitoring in place, so we don't use any of the monitoring in JAMS.

Unfortunately, the monitoring features are not used as extensively as I think the tool is capable of. That's where I'm looking at hopefully having my colleagues venture deeper into all the other components, maybe the SQL server and Python integration.

Right now there's not much of an Azure integration with JAMS at the moment directly because we run separate pipelines. We were trying to revamp everything to use Azure Data Factory, but it's not cost-effective, and there's also data governance requirements that I foresee. Having JAMS is much more feasible with on-premise data needing to be on-premise.

I just started using JAMS about two months ago, from last month onwards and this month.

I contacted the customer service team when I requested a license key for the developer edition. There's a sales representative locally in Perth from JAMS that reached out to me. I also raised a ticket to the support team in JAMS scheduler, and I think they are very helpful and amazing.

We partially use another product called SAS as a scheduler. However, what I envision is to have SAS run everything because it's a simpler platform environment and it's much more open, having support for other programming languages like Shell, PowerShell, and Python scripts.

There's a mixture of SAS product, Azure Data Factory, and also Microsoft Fabric being used in our organization.

I think I will probably recommend others looking at JAMS for a hybrid architecture integration to run jobs with Azure cloud services or AWS or GCP or any cloud provider that they have. I think this is the bridge to all these services. Looking at the roadmap of JAMS scheduler, I see they are introducing more cloud integration. It's moving in the right direction, so having Git integration in the September release is very exciting. JAMS is really forward thinking.

On-premises

Microsoft Azure

We mainly use JAMS for monitoring purposes, to schedule, unschedule, and properly time the jobs at specific times they need to run.

From my project perspective, there are numerous setups and jobs that we run on a regular basis. For example, a setup name would be SYSCFG, and under that setup, there are numerous jobs again.

I can describe the bifurcation with an example. There are thousands of jobs, and within those thousands, there will be hundreds of jobs under one setup. As mentioned, SYSCFG is one setup name, and under that setup, we have around 200 to 300 jobs. Another setup name is METOP, which follows our naming conventions in JAMS scheduler, and we have defined the resources with the setup name.

The main expectation from our project is timely delivery, where we schedule jobs at specific times, and the jobs get triggered accordingly. Once completed, the data is delivered automatically into the tables, and users can access the data from the database.

JAMS offers features that stand out, especially when compared with Control-M monitoring tool, where JAMS is easily accessible and simple to understand regarding the setups and jobs being bifurcated, and we can bifurcate accordingly.

JAMS has been a beneficial monitoring tool for our project in terms of being able to deliver data that is essential for users. The jobs we trigger run on JAMS, but in the backend, they run in Informatica or in SAP. From this perspective, we have been able to deliver goods and services in a timely manner using JAMS.

As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functioning properly.

From the past three years, it has remained the same, but sometimes we face issues. If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services. After restart, the services will be up and running, and we do not observe any delay.

There is scope for improvement, specifically when there are a larger number of jobs running, as JAMS becomes slower. That is one area where it can be improved. Apart from that, creating resources, adding resources, creating setups, adding setups, or adding jobs, everything functions properly.

I have been using JAMS for the past three years.

Sometimes we experience crashes or downtime, but JAMS remains stable as far as I know.

JAMS can handle jobs effectively, with the only issue being occasional slowdown during heavy loads.

I have interacted with the support team regarding an issue where we canceled a setup but were unable to cancel it in JAMS. It was showing as canceling, but the status was not being updated. We contacted JAMS vendor, who guided us through the necessary steps, and after following their guidance, everything was resolved.

Positive

The project requirements determine the solution used. Previously in our project, we used Control-M as the scheduling tool, and after my project changed, I have been using JAMS monitoring tool for the past three years.

The setup primarily focuses on smoother scheduling, with jobs running at particular times. I did not observe any return on investment because access to pricing, setup cost, and licensing information is limited to higher management levels.

If anyone asks for advice about using JAMS, I would recommend it as a monitoring tool where everything operates smoothly and effectively, and it is a reliable product that we can use.

The factors which I have shared would suffice to summarize what JAMS offers. On a scale of 1-10, I rate JAMS a 10.

We use Fortra's JAMS as our orchestration and scheduling platform to manage workloads executed on various timelines, from daily to every few minutes. Additionally, we incorporate ad hoc workloads, manually scheduled by individuals as needed.

JAMS support has been among the most helpful and knowledgeable we've ever worked with. They're always eager to assist and quickly find solutions. While a few minor issues required escalation, we've been able to resolve them all within the current version of JAMS. 

After initial misuse, we have optimized the use of several agents deployed in our environment. This improvement was made possible through collaboration with internal stakeholders and guidance on JAMS best practices. While agents might appear to directly solve user problems due to their ability to perform custom tasks on machines, in our cases, they operate behind the scenes, unseen by users.

JAMS handles exceptions well, especially when calling PowerShell scripts, successfully bubbling up errors.

It centralized our job and orchestration management functionalities into a single control plane, providing visibility into previously siloed work. This consolidation streamlined operations and enhanced oversight through a unified dashboard. Additionally, JAMS empowered us to build advanced processes by effectively managing retries, workflows, and sequences. Without JAMS, replicating this functionality would have been manual and inefficient, lacking the comprehensive visibility and control JAMS provides.

Data Slack refers to delays in data pipelines caused by disparate and siloed processes. Using JAMS, while powerful for scheduling and orchestration, can exacerbate this issue if teams break down processes into isolated tasks within different tools. This fragmentation leads to data sitting in queues and folders, awaiting processing. To improve efficiency and timeliness, it's recommended to consolidate these fragmented processes entirely under JAMS. This allows JAMS to execute the entire workflow from start to finish within a single execution, eliminating data slack and ensuring timely data delivery.

JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful.

I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly. This efficient feature has been invaluable, enabling us to streamline our workflow and enhance productivity.

JAMS' flexibility by allowing the use of PowerShell scripts adds to its value.

The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me. I also need better tools to adopt version seven. Another area for improvement would be the addition of source control for jobs internally, as this feature would solve several problems for me.

JAMS has some quirks. It has a bit of a learning curve.

Some exceptions are not intuitive, such as when a job is terminated due to exceeding its defined runaway time limit. This generates a misleading exception message that is difficult for new users to understand and requires experience to interpret correctly.

Stalled jobs present a unique challenge, particularly when pushing a system like JAMS version six to its limits. While rare, these instances occur when jobs become unresponsive despite appearing in API queries but not in the monitoring console. Although workarounds exist, they highlight the need for improved native monitoring capabilities within JAMS. Currently, the system assumes flawless operation, necessitating supplemental monitoring tools to detect issues like excessive pending or stalled jobs, ensuring timely intervention by our teams.

I've been the platform owner of Fortra's JAMS for four years now. Before that, I used JAMS at Fortra for several years.

Through our outdated JAMS version 6 installations, we process approximately half a million executions per hour, significantly exceeding the supported capacity. Despite surpassing the rated limits by five times, we generally maintain stability. However, we experience periods of major incidents annually due to capacity constraints, which result in job failures. These performance concerns are attributed to the high execution volume. Conversely, our version 7 environment, which handles fewer jobs, has proven to be much more stable.

If I am below those capacity issues, JAMS scales very well. However, at higher capacities, like over three hundred thousand executions, there are significant performance issues.

The customer service is of high quality, and their response is prompt, exemplifying how support should be.

Neutral

The initial deployment of JAMS is deceptively easy. However, there are some caveats, particularly regarding SQL permissions when setting up the database, which my team encountered. Beyond the permissions aspect, the process is straightforward; my team completed the initial setup in less than a week, with most of that time spent resolving permission issues. 

I have experience with Ansible, which can handle similar workloads as JAMS. Both have their pros and cons.

I would rate JAMS a six out of ten. It is a solid platform with caveats in scalability.

First, understand the inheritance system in JAMS, as it is not apparent. Then, consider using execution methods to streamline processes and reduce variance between jobs. 

On-premises

We use JAMS to replace manual scheduled tasks on our server environment. It serves as a centralized environment to manage scheduled tasks for around 1200 jobs that perform various functions. I'm one of the administrators, and we also use it for smaller tasks on our end as engineers. JAMS handles SFTP uploads and data copying, among other things.

The most valuable feature of JAMS is its user-friendly interface, especially after upgrading from version six to seven. The monitoring tab allows easy monitoring of various jobs, showing where they might be stuck and their progress percentage. The overall audit trail makes it simple to find jobs that didn't run as expected. The user-friendly logging system includes more in-depth logs if needed. Their support is also excellent.

A major improvement would be the integration of AI to help us accomplish various tasks. AI could assist in simplifying operations and could potentially enhance the tool's capabilities.

I have been using JAMS for approximately eight to ten years.

The initial setup was easy and took about four to eight hours to establish the base environment, excluding job migration. We went through a migration with JAMS's professional services. I installed the environment myself, while they helped migrate the jobs and users.

Being on the new version, there's been zero downtime. We have a DR server for emergency use, but using it once a year is rare. JAMS is very stable.

The scalability is adequate. We might be underutilizing it, but as more jobs require processing, additional servers would be necessary. It meets the current needs effectively.

The support is top-tier. They are responsive, even for generic issues, and are very quick to respond depending on the issue's severity. Support is a significant factor for us.

Positive

We previously used Windows scheduled tasks, which were unorganized and lacked management and alerting on failures. Switching to JAMS was a significant improvement.

The initial setup was easy, taking around four to eight hours for the base setup. Recently, in a migration, JAMS's professional services helped migrate jobs, while I set up the environment.

The implementation was carried out in-house with help from JAMS's professional services. It was primarily done by one person, though I have a counterpart as backup.

They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionality and importance of the tool, although the increase did unsettle our management.

During our transition from Windows scheduler, we did not evaluate other solutions; we were focused solely on JAMS.

I would rate JAMS an 8 out of 10, providing room for improvement. It's very user-friendly and powerful, and for new users, there's not much advice needed due to its straightforward nature.

On-premises

We primarily use JAMS to coordinate jobs between our JD Edwards environment and SSIS packages that we had built to process packages through our SQL server. 

JAMS enables us to organize all these jobs. We have so many jobs that need to run in a specific order, and it's nice to have one place to put them instead of having to look in 18 different places. I still have jobs that aren't in JAMS, so we must go to each machine to find which jobs are running.

Before we had JAMS, we had a set of jobs running in JD Edwards' scheduling system and SQL jobs in its scheduling system. Those two sets of jobs were constantly interrupting each other. If the SQL jobs stopped running, the JD Edwards jobs would stop, so we had to troubleshoot and restart them. It was the same for JD Edwards jobs. JAMS allows us to coordinate the timing between them so the JD Edward jobs finish before the SSIS package runs or vice versa. 

JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it. While we haven't eliminated monitoring tools, JAMS has freed up staff who were previously responsible for monitoring the systems. It's hard to estimate how much staff time has been saved, but we've been running JAMS for so long that we've probably saved years.  

The solution eliminated data slack because we can rerun some of these jobs as soon as they are completed, making the data more flexible and available to the end user. 

JAMS can save time when troubleshooting jobs. It depends on the case. Usually, it's an issue in the database, where someone entered an incorrect value. JAMS can't fix that because it's a human problem, but it brings the issue to our attention much faster because we get a failure report. It helps us solve the problem quicker once we notice something is broken. 

The JAMS agents are extremely important because we use them to run most of the jobs for the SSIS packages and anything coming out of our JD Edwards environment. It helps our users focus more on their business processes because they don't need to worry about figuring out what's working and what isn't. 

The solution's code-driven automation is pretty good. We've had a lot of success with it. 

They recently made changes to JAMS global search feature that I don't like. The search function helps locate jobs. I enter a query, and it gives me a general idea of where it might be instead of having to click the jobs folder and look for it. They changed this with the last update. 

We used to do a thing called "setups." I inherited the system, so maybe this is just how they did it before me, but in the old days, they built a setup for each job. The setup would manage the job in case you wanted to add more jobs. Now, the setups are only good if you want to run multiple jobs in a chain or in parallel. If you are running one job, you should schedule the individual job. 

We still haven't cleaned that mess up. I'm unsure if that's an issue for anyone else, but we have lots of single-setup jobs running in JAMS. JAMS sees that as two instances, assigning the same amount of resources and memory to the setup and the jobs running under it. If a setup fails, it doubles up the resources. That has almost brought us to our knees a few times when multiple jobs fail. We're using twice as many resources when all the setup is doing is ensuring that the jobs launch. 

On the one hand, it's our fault because we need to change how we do things. On the other hand, the older version focused on using setups for everything. It would be nice if they had a tool to convert the old single-job setups into one job.  

The JAMS automation code isn't so clean. 

The error handling is good overall. Sometimes when there is an exception, the error messages are a little vague, but not nearly as vague as Windows. However, I'm not sure it's a JAMS issue. It may depend on the system it's talking to, such as JD Edwards, SQL, or SSIS. JAMS will tell you that a job broke and you may want to look into it. I generally don't have any issues with its internal reporting, which is straightforward. 

I have used JAMS for about six or seven years.

The downtime has been minimal. Sometimes, we manually kill off jobs and the machine runs slowly because all the memory and CPU resources are at capacity. I would love to have a command line tool that just resets everything. Our biggest issue wasn't JAMS' fault. We didn't pick up where other people were. Now, I watch it. I check the nonproduction server once weekly to see if any jobs are hung and kill them. I report the issues to the appropriate people, but it's a nonproduction server, so it isn't life or death. 

It has been extremely stable aside from that. The only time it breaks is when we let it go too long. It's like a 5-year-old with a box of crayons. You can't leave it in a room too long or it will start throwing them at the walls. It does a great job as long as you keep an eye on it. 

JAMS scales well. It has a little scheduling screen you can open to see what's running. We have around 12,000 jobs a day, and we're a small company. I can only imagine what larger enterprises are doing. The scalability is only limited by the amount of memory you have and your servers' performance. That's the only thing holding us back at this point. 

I rate Fortra support eight out of 10. I talked to support yesterday. Typically, I'm not calling them about something critical, but I had a few serious cases. I can usually get them on the phone immediately in an emergency. They respond quickly, and I've been pleased with them overall. 

Positive

I wasn't involved in deploying JAMS, but I understand it was a significant mindset change for us. It took about six months to integrate JAMS with our ERP and SSL. From what I've heard, they loved it. We keep using it and just upgraded to the newer version of JD Edwards. Upgrading was a somewhat painful process because it involved a lot of conversions. JAMS doesn't require much maintenance aside from the occasional upgrade and checking on the jobs once weekly.

All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck.  

We looked at another tool when we were upgrading our document management solution OnBase from an on-prem version to the cloud. One of the requirements was that we had to scan the documents through our copy machines and put them on a network. We had to put them into a ZIP file and SFTP it to the cloud API server, and stick it in the right directory. 

They had me look into two companies, and I started researching SFTP automation. One of my searches turned up JAMS, and I called support to ask about transferring SFTP. I also talked to the other company, and their tool was awesome. It was highly intuitive, but it would be another $15,000 to $20,000 for one set of processes. We already had JAMS in-house, so we decided to use what we had. 

I rate Fortra's JAMS eight out of 10. I recommend reading the manual from front to back. I did that when we were preparing to upgrade, and it helped tremendously. It gets you in the right mindset and helps you understand the requirements. For example, we have JD Edwards, which requires a special setup. In addition to deploying the agent, you need to do more work on your enterprise servers to integrate JAMS correctly, so it knows how to talk to JD Edwards correctly. JD Edwards is very temperamental. 

On-premises