1. Home
  2. Workload Automation Software
  3. JAMS Reviews
  4. User Review of JAMS
Quick Jams feedback
Updated March 06, 2024

Quick Jams feedback

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with JAMS

We mostly use Jams for reboot scripts and simple scripts like checking if certificates are out of date.
  • Integrates with PowerShell
  • Can be called remotely
  • Has stored credentials
  • When setting up new jobs, what each option does is quite confusing as it can take a while to luck across it working sometimes.
  • The online documentation for Jams needs to be considerably improved. I want to look up a field and know what it does, what input is expected, and what things to be careful of when submitting it.
  • There needs to be much more done to provide in-application support documentation. The biggest problem my team has with it is frustration that they don't have the time to mess with why a job isn't running and they logically can't tell why.
  • I job should never run and not show something in the monitor. If submit is clicked, the Monitor should say something helpful why it did or didn't run.
  • It gives our users the ability to run tasks that are defined in scope the way we want.
  • It gives central management of things so Task Scheduler doesn't run on every machine.
  • Support has been pretty responsive.
I can't give it a higher score because there have been many times that teammates have abandoned scripts because Jams wouldn't take what they were testing and gave no clear reason why.
It can take a while to get an agent, but the support option isn't buried away from customers, and when you do get an agent, they have been pretty good at helping.
We use Kace also because it has an agent on every machine, so tasks that push out installations tend to go there. I'm not sure if Jams can do that, but if it does it's not clear that it does.

Do you think JAMS delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with JAMS's feature set?

Yes

Did JAMS live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of JAMS go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy JAMS again?

Yes

Jams needs much more documentation when creating jobs and clearer feedback when running jobs that it didn't like the parameters/settings of. I've had times when I clicked from one tab to another and the script block was empty when I came back. That was infuriating. Otherwise, it schedules things, does what it was tested to do, and sends notifications, so there's utility in it.

JAMS Feature Ratings

Workload Automation
7.5
Multi-platform scheduling
Not Rated
Central monitoring
9
Logging
7
Alerts and notifications
7
Analysis and visualization
7
Application integration
Not Rated

Using JAMS

2 - It Operations
1 - PowerShell, API call knowledge, security
  • scheduling reboots
  • performing certificate checks
  • Running reports of API status calls
  • rebooting servers
  • checking certificate statuses
  • getting server status reports
  • I don't see an expanded use right now
It's good for scheduling scripts, but there are so many other applications that cover other needs, that we barely use Jams. It's good for getting things out of Task Scheduler and into a single console that has a web frontend.

Evaluating JAMS and Competitors

Not Sure
  • Product Features
It allowed us to move things out of Task Scheduler and into a single pane.
It was already implemented when I arrived.

JAMS Implementation

It works. We only use a single server with two agents, no high-availability.
  • Implemented in-house
Not sure - I didn't implement it. But I bet we used a working session with Jams support.
  • I wasn't there.

JAMS Training

  • No Training
There are some issues with functionality that weren't intuitive to me, but it mostly works fine without training.

Configuring JAMS

Not being able (and I'm not on the latest version) to schedule a job with prompts is a drawback. I've heard of workflows, but that's not intuitive. Jams support has been excellent when called upon to configure what wasn't clear, though.
Allow for prompt answers to be part of scheduling. I have a fair amount of processes that need to know what environment, or some other minor criteria, needs to be selected. However, I hard-code that value and make a copy of the job for each instance needed, which is redundant and annoying when maintenance is needed.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - Minimal interface customization has been attempted because there just isn't time to devote to that. However, the interface could really use modernization. It feels a few decades old and could use a fresh look.
Yes - we have added extensive custom code - That is the extensive use of Jams to us...make it run a PowerShell script.
Not at this time.

JAMS Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
I don't know. Our parent company pays for that and I'm not privy to that information.
Yes - Yes, Jams support is good. Resolution is usually pretty fast.
I don't know what Fortra is. I'm guessing that's the parent company of Jams. I can say that Gennaro Piccolo and Alfred Malone have helped me with a high level of professionalism and success.

Using JAMS

Jams is rather user-friendly. However there are times when deep features exist, but simple things aren't there at all, like being able to schedule a job that has parameters. If you have parameters, you have to go through some sequence thing instead of it just doing it as part of the standard scheduling process.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Feel confident using
Slow to learn
Lots to learn
  • Copying a PowerShell script in.
  • The logs are pretty good.
  • Calling a job from a web interface.
  • Scheduling a job that has parameters
  • Jobs sent to an agent renames the log file that was expected.
  • If you copy a job to another folder, if something with that name is already there, it doesn't warn you, it just overwrites it.
  • The online documentation is way too simple and optimistic, meaning if you have anything with any complexity at all, the documentation isn't helpful.
Yes - Works good enough for us.

JAMS Reliability

It's reliable. I have no complaints or concerns there.
Performance is fine.

Integrating JAMS

Not enough information about the integration to answer this.
We haven't really integrated it, though an integration with XLD and XLR would be great.
XLR and XLR as well as WebEx.
Make it clearer in the application that integration exists.

Relationship with Fortra

I only work with Jams support and they have been great.
Customer service has been great.
All good here.
I'm not sure what this is asking.
I wasn't part of the purchasing of the product.
None as I am a user of it, and not involved in vendor relations.

Upgrading JAMS

  • We are still on an old version and afraid to upgrade because we don't know if that will break anything.
  • Not sure, but it would be nice to be on the newest version.