What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?

The visibility and control that Automic Automation provides are good, but it could be improved. In case we run into performance issues, it is sometimes hard to find out what is the real cause for it. At the moment, the REST interface does not include everything. It was improved a little bit, but some functionality is still open. This is something that can be improved. There is nothing critical that is missing for that we cannot use Automic Automation.

The support has declined somewhat over the years due to various takeovers. It's not as personal as it used to be.

Integration with the cloud is an area for improvement. They have to make it somehow fit or usable for cloud use cases. Right now, it works great for our on-prem data center, but they have to come up with a very good reason why people should be using it in the cloud.

We can't migrate the users from one master to another master or from product to product. We have to do it manually. For a number of job executions, they aren't confirming the resources needed, like CPU, et cetera. We might find later that more CPU is being used and that can impact our whole plan. We've already communicated this to them, however.

The AI capabilities and predictive modeling aren't very good. I don't see a future for that. It's very basic. That's part of the reason we moved to Stonebranch. They have more analytic capabilities. The predictive modeling needs to be better. The electronic workload automation for managing processes is too basic. The UI could be better. It needs to integrate with other systems better. For example, the analytics part. If they could integrate with data lakes where you could leverage some analytics tools, that would be useful. The functionality and the ability to import processes customized by others would be beneficial.

People have started moving to Fusion Cloud or the cloud in general. I wonder how the software works with Fusion Cloud since I don't know if the tool is cloud compatible. I also wonder if the integration of the tool with the cloud is done via YC or if the product has an integration capability that allows it to integrate into an Oracle Cloud. My main concern is whether Automic Workload Automation is ready for the future. Since I use Automic Workload Automation on-premises, I need some clarity on whether the product can also be used on the cloud. The tool lacks interoperability features. I would like to add an interoperability feature to Automic Workload Automation, allowing one access to some messaging functionalities. I would like to see something in the product similar to Kafka. The tool should allow one to add subscribers. The tool would become very easy to use when you have multiple clouds in the mix, along with the interoperability feature. The aforementioned set of features in the tool can make it easy to register your different cloud consumers into the tool itself, and then based on the process, it could automatically go to the respective tool for the respective cloud.

Automic Workload Automation could improve the SaaS deployment. The vendor should provide updated features for customers to try on a trial basis.

The support could be better in the future. They should work to reduce pricing.

The manage file transfer area could be better. The file transfer area needs improvement. Other products like Control-M have some good features in this area.

The web-based edition is missing a lot of the most important features available in Automic, we have absence. For example, when I'm scheduling a job, there is normally a flag that you can toggle to activate and deactivate the task, but that doesn't work properly in the web version. It's missing a lot of the calendar and scheduling features. My organization used the tool for almost 10 years, but we were dissatisfied when we upgraded to web-based edition because it doesn't provide all the options. It's challenging to create a new job or edit and reconfigure an existing. The web version has to be improved on various levels. Previously, we were using Solaris with Automic, but now I think it's Unix and Windows. I don't know what version you are going to provide for the cloud. The cloud always supports Unix and Windows, so it means the tool is cloud compatible. In the web version, everything is moving from the on-premise server to the cloud. So in this scenario, the Automic tool has to be more cloud-oriented. We are not sure how it will work in the cloud. Since 2011 or 2012, we have been using Automic on-prem only. It would be nice to have more documentation about using the cloud version of Automic. The tool could be more user-friendly as well. Most people consider Automic to be a difficult tool to understand and use.

The interface could be made more user-friendly in terms of job creation and scheduling, especially when doing bulk job creation and modification. Drag and Drop to create conditions dependency between jobs

There are pain points, like anything else. Sometimes, things they say work, and sometimes, they don't work. You need to find out why they don't work and then go back and have them fixed.

In terms of what can be improved, we are in Israel, so we work in Hebrew. Now they are starting to move it also from English to Hebrew and to support the language, but for us it has been very difficult because the Hebrew looks like gibberish. So there are language issues. The price could always be improved. Now we are starting to check the AI, which is a new product there which can give us more information like Iosoft and other things. I hope it can help us because right now we cannot know when we can improve or not because we only see part of the data. I hope that if we can collect all the data we can improve and maybe use less CPUs in S400, but at least we can improve by knowing what happened in our batch processes. Meaning, how much time and how much CPU it takes not only for one month but to see all the information for one year. This can improve our flow.

This solution's out-of-box automation sets could be improved. They could be industry standardized out-of-box, or even runbook automation processes could be useful—just some plug-and-play automation processes out-of-box. It has many integration capabilities, from APIs to databases, but if the customer sees some out-of-box automation processes in it, it could be useful. As for additional features, a best practices library could be good. Also, maybe more technology connectors, in order to connect and run the automation, so more out-of-box integration points.

We found that some Actions Packs and plugins do not have documentation, are incomplete, or are of poor quality. In most of the packages available, it took time to study and gain knowledge of the features and resources due to poor documentation. This time could be reduced if the documentation was more complete. If the documentation is not well built, there will always be extra time for testing and some of these generate doubts that turn a simple job into something complex. With the project's schedules in progress, it is difficult to set deadlines, even if they are adjusted for more.

There are some monitoring features that could be added. For example, when we have some external dependencies from processes that were run the day before or one week before, these dependencies are always complicated to configure. Workload Automation should also have better RPA features, too. I think that would definitely improve this solution. Instead of having to have a separate solution for RPA, it would be nice if Workload Automation could handle it, too.

We would like a way to test our cloud-based automations on-premises, and then migrate them to the cloud after they have been tested, without needing an additional license. As developers, this would help us. In the future, I would like to see a system where each developer works on their own changes, and they are submitted to a controller. At that point, the controller has the option to accept or reject changes from each of the developers.

Its dashboard can be improved. In version 12, they have already moved to a web-based interface from a UI. We are looking into this feature now. We are also looking for available APIs that we can use to interface the engine into our other systems. There should be a subservice facility that we can use to interface with Microsoft Teams and send out authorization on job executions. We have seen a feature like this in other products that we are looking into.

The vendor support is really bad and should be improved. The engineers taking our vendor tickets are not knowledgeble enough of the product and occasionally not helpful at all. Tickets usally are bouncing back and forth with very little helpful information or investigation from their side for a issue we are experiencing/reporting.

There are always ways that technical support can be improved. I would like to see more types of Calendars in the next release of this solution.

We are currently at version 6.7.41. One improvement area that I can see would be a centralized licensing part. I've heard that has been already taken care of in the latest version. I'm not sure how true that is, but that's one thing that should be there: centralized licensing. Another issue is that at times there are certain jobs that are triggered one after another. It would be helpful to have a more user-friendly way of seeing how those jobs are connecting from one server to another. Suppose there is a workflow that is running between ten and 15 servers. It's always challenging to figure out which job is connected to which job on which server, for a newbie, if you haven't designed it. That has to be more user-friendly where you can see the complete workflow of a process or a job.

There were many bugs in the last version. For example, we could only use capital letters for searching for agent names. Also, we had a problem with ONE Automation where we couldn't use the PGA and SGA in Oracle Databases for resolving RAM because the last version didn't have this capability.

* New web interface is not fit for purpose * Users should continue to have access to the Java GUI * Support can be a bit slow responding to non-critical issues

CA needs to add a few more products in this suite, because right now they have automation, DR switching, and the third one is relief management. They could add change and release management.

The direction in which the UI is going is concerning to me. It does not offer the security context we would need to implement future versions. While I see benefit in the Web UI, the security it would lack in separating a user's experience from an administrator's experience is an issue for us. MFA functionality is required since we're dealing with connectivity to the POS and for PCI/SOX compliance. Another area for improvement would be SQL performance. While tracing SQL traffic, we noticed a lot of commands that cause contention/locks as well as forced waits. The efficiency of the SQL could be greatly improved (in some cases by simply replacing nested Selects and using NOLOCK hints). Finally, re-evaluating the security model that the ECC uses would be very beneficial. While granularity is very powerful, some intelligence around it is the only way it is manageable. I should be able to grant a user access to execute a job without having to directly list every include, prompt set, output scan, script, login, etc. An inherited read for execution purposes would accomplish the same results without making the admin list every single object every time, as well as deny the user the ability to edit.

There is one missing part in the product concerning recurring tasks. You can schedule a recurring task by a context action, and run it as recurrent, but it creates a time container which can be quit and disappears. So, it doesn't remain in the system. I would like there to be some time container objects which exist and remain in objects which you can also handle and add. For example, inside the schedule to be able to schedule recurring tasks.

The SSH agent is missing in version 12.1. Maybe it would be a good addition to see on the web client of the next version of Atomic.

We would like to see more dashboarding into the product, maybe an embedded Java API which we would be able to load on our own objects into the system. We were writing them on our own, but we would like this standardized.

The new user interface AWI could improve. It is quite easy to use and work around, but it has lost some of the functionality that we used to have in our Vim client user interface.

The new user interface needs improvement. The previous version was good and stable. Now, we have to check the new one before using a web browser. It is not stable. We have been waiting 11 years for release management, which will be in the next release.

I hope in the next release that they will solve all the bugs which they have found in development. I hope going forward they will make some changes to the documentation. I hope they will write into the documentation what has changed and what the new names are. For example, some features have a new name. I hope they will make a translation the names in the old version to the names in the newer version. This would be a very important thing.

The workflows should be clearer and more expressive. I need this going forward.

For power users, it does not work well for them at the moment. The event monitoring is very good. It has become a great part of the product suite. However, most customers rarely use it.

Some of the usual features are now not there, for example: For calendar details, in versions before, you could see it because it was a different color or different letter. Now, it is all similar icons, and some features are marking more objects than just one, which is making it not possible to see anymore. There are some features which were basic and are now gone. I heard that they are coming back. So, I hope it will get better. I would like the transport case to be in a new feature. This way, you can stage objects to be more flexible and with easy automation. Right now, it is not that easy to transport some things automatically. Thus, it would be nice if these were some of the features which will be offered as part of the critical path which is coming. It would be nice to set our own critical paths, so these workflows can be critical because there are some important workflows running. This is critical for us, but it would also be nice.

I am heading up the AWI. I desperately miss the possibility to show my read-only users on the Explorer side only their folders, not all the folders. This is something I would like to have on the dashboards (for example), where I can show them from an assembly side just their folders, not all the folders. They should have only rights to their folders, so why are they able to see all the other folders? It is confusing for them and not very comfortable. I told this to the developers already.

There are some problems when using the new interface, which is normal, as it is a new technology. In the future, it will be much better. Hopefully, Automic is working hard on the issue. We would like to see critical path analyzers. I am not sure if it is coming. If it does, out-of-the-box would be nice. We would also like improved SLR monitoring. There are SLR objects, but I can't define an SLR object plus one, or end days. I can only do it for one day. As we are time shifting to another day, it is not possible. This should be improved.

I would like a good AWI in the next release. The AWI is not fully functional at this time.

After the merger, it is getting more American. Now, they do not have support in French and have limited German documentation. This is a critical problem for companies who have older generations who did not have English in school. The big pain points are the AWI and the web interface. There needs to be a change with these features.

The problem is when you have a major update, afterwards you have small problems. This is with every software where you have to find some solutions for your problems after updates. However, after the problems are fixed, the stability is really good. We have some problems with updates where some functions are changed, so you have to check your whole system to see if everything is still running. The update process for us is around two months of testing and one day of updates.

Token-based authentication: Where we do not have to use a password, and can use tokens for authentication in other systems.

* We would like to have some features with the AWI with the founding technique, which cannot currently be delivered. * We would like some advantages, which we had with the Java UI, with the automation engine. * One topic, which we would like, is to be able to have more differentiate in the reorganization of SAP to more precisely view which types of objects and clients would be reorganized and archived. The archive file is not helpful for us. If we write the archive file, we do not use them because in the past the tools were not that satisfying. * Improvements also would be good in the area of performance measurement.The system overview and performance are not being measured because we can't derive any concrete information.

From Workload Automation, which is missing for me personally, is a workload portion. I can see dependencies of the job directly in the graphical view, therefore I would not have to use the search button to search for every object every time that I needed to see if it was a predecessor. For the user interface of version 12.1, I cannot find a lot of utilities and objects from previous versions, making me change my habits. This is not good.

* The search is sometimes a little bit slow. * The calculation of the calendars needs improvement, as I have problems from time to time. * I am excited about the new web GUI from the B12. However, I am not sure about it, except for the main client that we had before needs improvement.

Content of file transfers cannot be searched by the system, but has to be done by the user interface. This is not good, as it has been erased often.

I would like more training on workload automation, because I do not have a complete insight of the product yet. The user interface could be a little more user-friendly, as it is not the best out there.

I need better stability.

Depending on the properties of the jobs and pre- and post-conditions, there needs to be more flexible and richer conditions that I can check for. This would be a great addition.

It does not have the same functions as the old version, which makes our developers angry because because they must work with this tool. We going forward it may not be possible. CA has missed the product's focus. We have a lot of developers in our company, and we are experiencing the same problem. However, the CA company has not seen that developers and clients are having a problem, which is not good for the product that we do. CA took over the Automic company last year, and we do not think this was a good direction for the product. I would like to see the rich client with the product for the developers. It is more important for us to have a longer, stabler releases. We do not need so many features. This is a problem of bigger companies where the management wants new features, but the product has no stability after that. It would be good to have a mobile app, where you can monitor your process, just to see if it is running or if it is blocked. The user interface on the web is not good for the developers. Features are missing, and for the client, it is too complex. At the moment, we build our own UI. We have programmers in Java API, and we have a Client which works on the mobile phone. It can start jobs, make the schedules stop and start, and see the statistics on a smartphone.

Documentation is not great. It was previously much better. I would like to see features from "Prompt" sets in read Masks.

I do not think it is as valued as it should be because it is not user-friendly. There could be a better user interface for end users. They should make it more intuitive, not based on Java. They should also fix all the bugs.

There are too many functions and features in the system. The basic must run first. Refine the basics instead of adding more features.

The web interface needs improvement.

The forecast and long-term planning could be made a little better when you work with it in the future.

I am hoping version 12.2 has everything that we need. We have had some problems with the SQL handling that should be fixed. The calendar also has some problems in it. There are some other little problems, but they should be fixed in 12.2. I would like to see more stability in the product and have the transition between versions be more seamless. Every time we have the same mistakes from one version to the next version. It is terrible. You have to test it every time for the same mistakes when a new version comes out.

I would like to see the following in future releases: * Workload Automation in a cloud * Solutions for the smaller applications.

The stability needs improvement.

We have a lot of file transfers with Quest. Hopefully, their product management can add this feature since we do the file transfers now with SharePoint. We want to establish a service where we can be a file transfer expert for everything. We want an automation engine that we can use within our company. We would like to use this particular software to provide file transfer service.

The versioning and support for the lifecycle of Automic's developed solution is what we were missing. However, this is coming in version 12.2, so I am looking forward to seeing how it works.

We not use all features nor all the add-ons.

The user interface has room for improvement. I would like to see the event engine in the next release.

It is very difficult to migrate. We want to buy one package. The release automation should be in one package.

The one big issue that we have is around passwords and not being able to update passwords through a different tool. This is not available yet. It is packed in there with 12.2 and the login objects, but not with the connection object, which is a big thing for us to allow us same password updates without having to manually update them.

There are some scripting elements that could be added like being able to reset a task in a schedule through Automic scripting. Also, some of the things we don't use are mainly because we don't know how to use them. Hands-on training can be expensive, so we find other ways to work around things to forgo the hands-on training. It is also an issue because we are a Linux shop and most trainers are Windows-based.

My biggest complaint is that there is no list price. We work with Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, etc., and all of them have list pricing. Automic, right up until today, has never had list pricing. This makes things difficult, because we need to plan budgets for the next year and can't. The lack of list pricing is my number one complaint because it is very difficult to plan anything.

The only thing that we would like improved is the FTP agent. It only supports SOCKS proxy, and we would like it to also support an HTTP proxy. We would like the feature to implement the privileged access management. However, we have heard that it is already supported.

Today, we use a rich client for this product. In the future, or for the next release, they will be using a web interface. This web interface is not as scalable as the rich client for us. The web client is not 100 percent programmed as we need it.

* While the cost is competitive, there is always room for improvement. * It has a very complicated interface, which could be made to be more user-friendly.

In terms of additional features, it's probably stuff they already have available that we haven't started utilizing yet. I really like the idea of the Zero Downtime Upgrade, but really excited to be able to use the centralized agent upgrade. That's probably one of our biggest pain points right now. When we go to a new version, the agents have to all be upgraded. We have several thousand agents and that's a painful process because it's slow and time-consuming to upgrade. Now they have the ability to automate it, we're working on getting to that point. The analytics that are available show great potential.