ConnectWise Automate Erfahrungen

Vorteile

The feature set has been astounding from day one.
With the big rebrand and integration with ConnectWise Manage the duo are now all that much better, complementing each others previous, non-focused features.

Nachteile

Truly forward progress was the main issue. During the time we actively used LabTech/Automate was during the transition years of the name and aesthetic. Things are definitely driving into the right, unified direction for all of their tools and that is exciting to see!
Learning the tool, like most ConnectWise products, can be daunting but there are lots of resources to pull from and well worth the investment.

Again, I suspect due to the years of bringing the tools together, Automate seemed to somewhat stall/lag on added features for awhile. They certainly had the most initially so it wasn't a drastic fall-behind, but new tools were taking the slow moving to catch up and the market is certainly competitive again.

Vorteile

Allows for management of a wide view of devices across a variety of ecosystems. Easy to use and get up and running. Partner community is great.

Nachteile

Support leaves a lot to be desired. When can get in touch, takes several attempts to resolve issue.

Vorteile

The inclusion of ConnectWise Control is the single greatest part of using ConnectWise Automate. It is amazing.
The scripting features are very good. The ability to create custom processes is exceptional.

Nachteile

The ability to monitor and manage network devices is not good at all. Automate struggles to manage devices across subnets that other platforms seem to be able to do with ease. So bad that we had to bring in Auvik to do this task. It was money we would have rather just spent with ConnectWise.

Reporting is also a disappointment. The included reports are very simple and not geared toward a C level. They are also not easy to build or manipulate.

Vorteile

This software provides multiple connectivity options.
It can show a lot of information (see least favorite list below)
Great organization!
Easy integration with Connectwise Control and Manage
Lots of option for Scripting and API connectivity to outside applications

Nachteile

The interface was changed to a much less intuitive environment about a year ago. I use it and have started to get used to it somewhat, but it still is not what I would call good.
There's problems if you don't run the Control Center as an Admin, but it doesn't want to run as admin by default
The uninstaller for the client can sometimes not uninstall.

Vorteile

If you can imagine it, you can do it. It really does have all the tools to do whatever you desire remotely. You can access almost any aspect of a managed machine without even interrupting the end user. The built-in ignite monitors are pretty amazing on their own.

Nachteile

It can be incredibly slow at times, you have to have a lot of patience. The script editor being object and mouse based is very clunky, I'd prefer to learn the syntax and just type it all out, but that option isn't readily available in the GUI you have to dig into the guts to do that. If you use ignite monitors you'll need to parse out the noise they create for items you don't want to be notified about. Integration with Connectwise Manage is still a bit quirky but it works.

Vorteile

The ease of setup and installation for customers is substantial when considering this tool for MSP. New customers can be setup with ease, configured and once agents are installed Automate can significantly reduce information gathering for system resources, and discovery of behind the scenes issues. Scripting and Automating are easy to do with the built in examples and wizards, which makes customizing alerts and monitors a breeze.

Nachteile

The monitoring will come with lots of defaults right out of the box, so there will be a lot of "noise" to sort through and remove/adjust after initial installation.

Vorteile

It is a very powerful tool to manage our clients machines. It can run custom scripts and do a lot of proactive maintenance.

It is very fast when remote controlling other computers

The scripting engine is very powerful

It pulls a huge amount of data

It is very customizable

Nachteile

It can be a little complex for new users

The integration with Connectwise: Manage can cause some issues with ticket entries

Customizing it for your needs can be time consuming

I

Vorteile

Once setup it does what it does well.
Very few issue after setup and config.
Gives a wealth of information on devices managed.

Nachteile

Can be a burden to setup and config
Takes a good amount of training to really use it well
Being good a scripting is a must

Vorteile

It does a lot of things and helps us keep tabs on hundreds of clients. Remote access, patch management, remote diagnostics, integration with ConnectWise PSA and a host of other third party products.

Nachteile

Setup time can be cumbersome and some of the advanced features you really need to work with a lot in order to become a master at it.

Vorteile

It packs a bunch of features and it's integration with ConnectWise manage is nice. The scripting is powerful.

Nachteile

Tool is very complex and even simple tasks can be tricky. Support for Automate is not nearly as good as with Manage. The product is expensive.

Vorteile

Automate allows you to pretty much do anything you need for an RMM. It allows tons of customization and enhancement to increase its power. There are also tons of free and paid integrations that even make it work better. You can also script pretty much anything throughout the product.

Nachteile

In order to get the full power you really need to dedicate the time and resources to add what you want to it. Reporting is abhorant and got even worse with the new reporting engine. There seems to be more increasing bugs in later releases and all new patches focus on bug fixes rather than any enhancements so the functionality of the product really isn't improving.

The quality of first level support has also slipped. They used to be able to address most issues, now it tends to be limited what they can help with.

Vorteile

It has a large interface composed of various options that enhance its use, it works well enough to carry a monitoring on your devices, you will have detailed information of each action that this takes, you can even display any action by means of commands.

Nachteile

CW Automate is a fairly complete software, but with a support team that leaves a lot to be desired for certain problems, the resolution of problems is not very complete.

Vorteile

The reporting and amount of data in the program is insanely big. Through PowerBI, I've been able to display a lot of this data to show our customers just how much we know.

Nachteile

The GUI hasn't had an update for so long and it does now fee very dated. It also slows down, he more clients you add.

Vorteile

- Mostly intuitive GUI
- Packed with tons of functionality; Been using the product a little over 2 years now and still learning neat tricks/tools to use
- Great asset management
- Great at pushing remote commands
- ConnectWise University offers tons of training on their products

Nachteile

- Because it is so powerful, there is a lot of training that needs reviewed to become proficient in working and navigating
- Been experiencing an issue where I need to re-launch the control center because otherwise the agent tree will refresh forever
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Vorteile

I like that the management of a lot of computers

Nachteile

Not really much to not like about it, but sometimes the windows updates aren't always working correctly, and sometimes it reports disk space critically low when there's is 50+GBs left on the system

Vorteile

Connectwise automate is by far the best RMM tool on the market, It allows you to create a ton of custom monitoring alerts and the wizard makes it super easy to accomplish.

Nachteile

The implementation can be very dry but just hang in there as it is all worth it.

Vorteile

Nothing.

The only thing that works well is a product, Control, which they didn't develop themselves.

Nachteile

Stay away from this product.
You will always need technical support, but the support is very very poor.

Look for products with less functionality, but more stable and with better support.

Vorteile

The format of the software and also how it keeps you updated to current events going on. The layout of the product is great and easy to understand.

Nachteile

Some of the reporting is off but mostly it pretty accurate. Also noticed when a user is inside a ticket and they change it the notes disappear.

Vorteile

Ability to remotely monitor client sites. This lets us run scripts and install patches remotely. The integration with connectwise control improves our process.

Nachteile

The product is poorly designed for the user experience. The UI is not intuitive, so finding what you can do makes developing solutions difficult.

Vorteile

Single place to manage your workstations. Great patching product, great control product, awesome scripting engine.

Nachteile

Most of the rich automation is done in a fat client that is heavy and slow to launch. Once in the product everything performs well it's the startup that can take some time.

Vorteile

I love the reports and information it gives me about each PC. It is also much faster to install SOME programs though LabTech because it will push it to every PC.

Nachteile

The lack of things actually working. Many items are setup and do not work or do not work the way that Labtech says they will. The software doesn't really work on Mac's even though they say it does.

Vorteile

Provides you the tools that you need in order to streamline your systems and automate a lot of your processes as a MSP

Nachteile

Overwhelming for new users, need to introduce them slowly to all the features that it includes

Vorteile

Feature set is large and allows a lot of system administration tasks to be done without needing to remotely control the computer.

Nachteile

Inferface can be clunky
Updates often break more things than they fix
Support can take days to resolve issues when the issue is a work stopage

Vorteile

It has SO MANY options and can do pretty much everything that you would need maintenance-wise. Powerful scripts, lots of dashboards. You can see everything that's going on with that device and avoid costly on-site visits. The automatic remediation is great once you get it set up.

Nachteile

It has SO MANY options (yes, I know I also listed it as a pro), therefore it's not very user-friendly and easy to lose yourself among the plethora of tabs and buttons and doo-dads. It HAS come a long way from when it was still LabTech, but still. User interface needs a facelift.

Vorteile

I love how easy it is to use the software. After training we have been able to apply blanket policies to each client (ie push all windows 10 updates via one policy) and control server updates differently.

Nachteile

The software can be extremely hard to use at first and requires training from Connectwise in order to understand how it fully works.