What needs improvement with Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT?

Would love to see a more user friendly interface with a better ui/ux. Also, I had some issues with resetting password to access the admin portal. Other than that, there are no issues so far.

There are two main things I would like to see improved in GoAnywhere MFT. The first is the slightly poor customer technical support team, and second, the user interface needs to be customized because it looks somewhat outdated compared to other products. They could also consider adding AI features; I think they are working on that, but there is still more to do.To be honest, we don't have many complaints about GoAnywhere MFT, but as previously mentioned, the user interface needs to be changed. There is sometimes sluggishness because we have deployed it on the cloud, possibly due to weak connectors.

One of the main important improvements I need for GoAnywhere MFT is a better real-time monitoring dashboard and an improved user interface. I think a more modern and user-friendly interface would be beneficial, as multiple competing products have modern and user-friendly interfaces. Additionally, better debugging tools and clearer error logs would be helpful. When I started using GoAnywhere MFT, I experienced complexities for projects that required experience to create them. The error logs can be hard to understand at first sight. However, with continued use of this product, I became more familiar and comfortable with it. I believe GoAnywhere MFT could be more stable and enterprise-friendly overall. It is a strong and reliable solution for secure file transfers and workflow automation, offering excellent security features and dependable performance. The main areas of improvement are the user interface and debugging simplicity.

I feel there is not a complete new feature that GoAnywhere MFT can improve on, but I think they can improve the user interface. It should be more intuitive to use, with organized options, and the console should also be centralized. If you look at the documentation of GoAnywhere MFT about the user interface, nothing more detailed is written. I think the UI should be improved.We can also talk about security. Recently, Microsoft published an article stating that GoAnywhere MFT can be attacked by ransomware, indicating there was a vulnerability in the product. I think that can be improved by enhancing security and patching the vulnerabilities. These two areas, user interface and security, are what I think can be improved.

I think GoAnywhere MFT can improve in UI/UX redesigning and better cloud-native deployments. My environment is mostly built on the cloud, so if it were more compatible with the cloud, deployment would be easier for us. I have it deployed on the cloud, but it does not provide better features on the cloud. I would appreciate enhancements for Kubernetes and serverless compute services.

The UI in GoAnywhere MFT does not require improvements, but the backend side where file transfers occur should have one system used to transfer files from end-to-end, from end server to end system. We had a few activities or events in the past where threat actors or hackers targeted MFT solutions or systems or software by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. I would say that part should not occur with GoAnywhere MFT in the future. From 2023, I do not think there was any occurrence until now, but in the future, there should not be any because we transfer valuable data from our end-user system to our systems for analysis and all the reports that we generate. There should not be any vulnerability so that a threat actor will not gain access to our data or other things.

We can improve GoAnywhere MFT's API documentation and automation logs, which will make it more user-friendly and help people comprehend it much more effectively, reducing friction.

We keep asking them to implement a feature for our upcoming project, which would benefit all other companies using the product. One area for improvement in GoAnywhere MFT is that they don't have a real debugger. You have to manually walk through your projects. If you build a big scripting project, you have no way at the beginning to step through; you can't skip straight to a line, nor can you put a breakpoint and say, 'stop here' as in any normal debugging process. That makes handling complex projects very tedious. We are currently working to streamline a process for about 240 providers—our interface partners—and it's going to be very difficult because every time you run a project, you need to step through each line of code. If you're testing line 98 and are unsure what's going on, you must step through every single line each time you run it. That is its biggest downfall. What I would love to see in GoAnywhere MFT is the ability to compartmentalize some of the code, allowing you to call different pieces. Instead of building one project all within itself, you could insert modules that you can use in multiple projects. Currently, it's not compartmentalized, and you can't take a piece of code to use elsewhere without copying the entire thing. In my humble opinion, it would be much better if they had a class-based or class-oriented system so that you could easily transfer code from one location to another or use it in other places. You want modularity within the project, but that's not available right now, and this significantly slows down our development operations.

The interface could be more customizable.

From my experience, the platform is quite complete. It works well across different devices, including on the web, so you don't need to download the app. I don’t have any major issues to report about this software. Initially, the user interface was a bit complex, but after two weeks of training, I fully understood it. I became familiar with the system, and using the platform became more efficient and effective. Overall, I don’t have many complaints about the software.

Regarding data parsing on files such as XML and JSON, we mostly perform manipulations on the files themselves. I am unable to accomplish this with the predefined functions provided by GoAnywhere MFT, which is why I use shell scripting. It would be better if more predefined functions were included for these operations.

The pricing is high for GoAnywhere MFT, and speed can be one of the features they can look forward to improving. We are based in India, so for the Indian market, the pricing is pretty high. Large organizations which have large files can use it, but for mid-size organizations, it's a heavy cost. They can try implementing a feature of caching the data offline to the remote agents so that there should not be any loss of connectivity. This could be an improvement area.

The main area for improvement would be including better support. Support was horrible. When we needed help off-shift, at 2:00 in the morning, it was an hourly rate of $200, $175 an hour, and we waited an hour, hour and a half to get somebody on support. It was ridiculous. I'm accustomed to calling a support desk and getting immediate help. Every other application I've ever worked on was that way. GoAnywhere MFT, Fortra, their first-level support was just miserable. Another improvement would be their pricing models. We went cheap at Foot Locker and didn't include the reporting options, and we should have because the reporting was really fantastic. They should roll it all in, make one price model, include the reporting, and that will make all customers happy.

The cloud connectivity of GoAnywhere MFT to connect to different applications such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon, or Google Cloud could improve, as it's a little bit patchy right now. They do provide it, which is very good, but it's a little bit patchy. Apart from that, I don't think there's anything else that they can improve.

The support for GoAnywhere MFT is not consistent. There was a time I received a response, but it did not fully resolve the problems I had. The interface needs a makeover. When I have many workflows running simultaneously, the interface of GoAnywhere MFT can lag, which makes it take longer whenever I am working.

The implementation process needs improvement. When I wanted to implement GoAnywhere MFT and requested trials, I had to wait for a period of a day without reply, until I requested the demo. They should improve their customer support service so when someone wants to register or purchase this product, they should be faster. They should make sure that the start trial part is accessible to everyone when someone wants to get that trial. If they want people to first communicate with customer support, they need to ensure their support team is available 24 hours.

The speed could be better, and the user interface could be more user-friendly. In some areas, it's a bit complex and the learning trajectory is steep, so they can definitely improve on these aspects.

The application uses resources such as network connections to shared directories or SFTP connections. I would appreciate seeing utilization metrics for these resources. For example, when opening a resource, it would be beneficial to see which projects are utilizing that resource. A project transfers files from one location to another, and these locations are the resources. When opening the configuration for a resource such as an SFTP site, it would be helpful if it displayed which projects are utilizing that resource. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the product. We did have some issues a couple of months back where we were having some unscheduled outages, and the support team worked with me closely and provided a solution that appears to have fixed the problem. I haven't seen any issues in over a month now.

A drawback is that it is not as feature-rich compared to its competitor Sterling, which we used before. It has fewer features, though it is more intuitive. This was the compromise we had to make during the transition.

The technical support response time has room for improvement.

While I was happy with the training and support, more of it could be beneficial. We had some basic training and support. I talked with Fortra recently, and they said that they revamped and changed their training support. I have not used it since December. I got support in February and May of last year, and it was not bad. I was just not sure which questions to ask. Trying to learn this stuff on the fly as you are handed a project is always stressful. I like that you can tweak the interface so much, but it would be nice to be able to tweak it some more. The ability to further tweak the interface would be advantageous, as our end users had some questions about modifications that we could not address. Other than that, GoAnywhere seemed to fulfill its role as a simple solution for secure file transfer.

I am not able to go in and say 'forgot password.' I need to access the admin portal to change the password from there. I would like to be able to do MFA and reset the password via email.

The biggest weakness I have seen in the product is scheduling. It is very limited in that aspect. It needs more flexibility and more ways to schedule. It is very strict with no customization options. The monitors are limited in how you can set them up. Handling errors is challenging as errors are hard to understand. The help guide does not cover error messages well. It is Java-based, so it is hard to understand Java error messages.

On the platform side, I would like to see some improvements in the dashboarding and telemetry data. We take a lot of that data today, and we end up writing some custom dashboards so that we can run the day to day operations. We are sending and receiving millions of dollars a day, and for us, the dashboards are a bit lacking. It works great if you have one job that needs to run successfully. However, depending on how you build it, there may be dependencies that fail, and you may need to do certain alerting to teams and things of that nature. What we are looking at right now is potentially rebuilding our dashboard a second time to improve it a little bit further based on the operations of the team. We would love to see some improvements there. That is one area where they could improve. Everything else is the best of the business from what I have seen.

For what we are using it for, it is doing the job, so I would not be able to say how to improve it. For us, it is perfect. It is a good solution that we are using, and we are going to continue to do so. However, it should be advertised more as a solution. I did not see it out there beforehand.

I tried to copy a file from an S3 bucket to another storage class. I don't know if it is a limitation from AWS, not the MFT. If I copy a file from the AWS S3 bucket to that storage class, it can't be transferred. It says that I can't remember the exact error, but it cannot be processed. I want MFT to be more compatible with cloud-based applications or services like AWS.

The reporting could be more customizable.

The technical support has room for improvement. It takes between three to five days to get a resolution from them. I would like better integration between GoAnywhere MFT and other MFT solutions. We request the ability to customize the user interface of Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT, specifically by incorporating our company logo. This feature would provide greater flexibility and brand recognition within the software.

My only technical difficulty has been finding certificates nearing expiration. While this suggests room for improvement in certificate management, it's more likely I just need to consult the documentation. Upgrading was a challenge and I ran into some problems along the way.

Fortra needs to offer more use cases for GoAnywhere MFT during training.

In some cases, the logs need deeper information. In terms of communication and checking, they need to go a little deeper. In some scenarios, when you are in a cluster environment, the load-balancing capabilities of the gateway need to be improved a little. This functionality needs some improvement. In general, workflow features are good, but when you need to use the transformation capabilities, there are some problems in terms of the way they manage the resources of the machine. There are some limitations in the size of the file, so the transformation capability has to be improved.

I want to be able to use GoAnywhere to create customizable reports that I can share with the MSP containing any information related to file transfers.

The solution's support for the Unix platform and AS2 should be improved. The solution's scalability needs to be improved as it has very limited scalability. The solution could include some multi-factor authentication (MFA), one-time password, or secondary authentication.

The security features must be updated regularly. The newer versions must be released sooner. The solution must add new features at least every year. The solution must provide integration with SSO.

The security could be upgraded to address novel cyberattacks. I'm not sure whether the product's security is being updated periodically.

I'm on the admin side of it, and one of the complaints is that it times out too quickly for the people who are using the internet-based part of it. It could be that there is a way to do it, but I just don't know how. One of the things that I wish is to not necessarily have to set up a username and password for people with whom we don't frequently share files. For instance, if I want to share files with a patient who is not somebody with whom we share files all the time, I would like them to somehow verify who they are and be able to push the file to them. I shouldn’t have to set them up as a user with a password. It should be almost like Dropbox.

Pretty much everything we've needed to connect to has been done fairly seamlessly. The only issue I've had with connectivity, database or otherwise, revolved around an SSH key. I tried to create a key, but it was incompatible with a vendor's SFTP. And when that vendor has tried to create a key and share it with me, I have not been unable to import it into GoAnywhere. I had to use a third-party app to create the key and find something that was mutually compatible. I've submitted tickets on that to GAMFT for consideration. They could possibly improve the error handling on jobs. Whenever it generates error logs, sometimes the error is very generic. It takes a little work to diagnose what's really going on. It may just say "IO Exception" and that doesn't really tell you much.

They need to increase the number of Cloud Connectors and speed up their development of them. Also, there are a number of built-in tasks in GoAnywhere. One, in particular, the write to CSV task, is slow. If you have, say, 100,000 records in your row set and you want to write them to a CSV file, it takes a long time. That definitely requires performance improvement.

Apart from ICAP, it will be more efficient in terms of marketing if a native integration opportunity can be provided with DLP solutions currently used by customers.

There's one persnickety issue about NAS permissions. That is a problem we have run into with GoAnywhere. I would like to see more focus on compatibility with/enforcement of user roles and access permissions across NAS, among other things. We have filed a couple of tickets on that in the past.

GoAnywhere's interface could be a little more intuitive. It can be hard to grasp at first, but once you have a decent understanding, it's pretty straightforward.

When it comes to GoAnywhere's workflow features, there are a couple of areas where I'd like to get a little more consistency. The two aspects of scheduling that we use are scheduled jobs and monitors. And there's cross-capability between the two. We've done some philosophical thinking about when a function should be handled by a monitor and when it should be handled by a scheduled job. When a monitor invokes a project to accomplish something, that gets logged as a job. I've had a little difficulty figuring out where to look to see the monitor's activities itself, to see if the monitor is having a problem. For instance, if an account on a secure FTP server has expired, the monitor that uses that account doesn't announce to us that it's having a problem. I want to work with them on this to get it fixed. Another aspect would be greater visibility into exactly what's happening. But part of that is because we haven't learned how to look at it. I still need to establish some training for my people who support this. We've learned a lot and done a lot with the documentation, which is pretty good, but some formal training would really help tie together a lot of the little tidbits of knowledge in our heads.

It doesn't need much improvement, other than tiny idiosyncrasies. I've run into one or two things for which I've put in change requests to the software developers at GoAnywhere, but they are very minor things, the types of things that don't come up much. We've created in the neighborhood of 80 to 90 projects in GoAnywhere and, out of all of those, there have only been a couple where we've run into something and that made us say, "I wish they could improve this little thing here." For example, when it comes to interacting with files, there is a function referred to as write CSV, to write a general text file. In this scenario of creating a simple text file, I ran into a situation where, if the product saw a quote or a double-quote in the data, it started wrapping all the text fields in double-quotes. The request I put in asks them to provide a feature that leaves my data alone and does not interpret anything. If I don't want double quotes, please don't put them in. It should have the option, on certain write CSV operations, of not inferring anything.

There's not a lot of improvement I can think of. Maybe in the tools section, there is a SQL Wizard which works really well. I think that the SQL Wizard could use some improvement- it's little slow when moving from page to page.

Its user interface can be improved. The current user interface is a little basic for some of the use cases. We have to use an external component to enhance it. When we need a more appealing user interface, we use an additional component, and that works okay.

Until now, I think the solution very good for me and my clients. If I had to name one thing that I think should be improved, I think it is that there are quite a lot of features and we do not use all of them. So a thing that could be done to improve this situation is maybe for HelpSystems to offer a lite version that also costs a bit less.

I think that this product has most of the features we require, although the license is expensive. DNS support needs attention. If the hostname has a dash in it then it does not work. Without a dash being included, it works fine. This is something that needs to updated in the next release. The shared mailbox support for OWA in the cloud needs to be improved. The shared mailbox does not have a password, and we cannot use it. If there is a password for it then it works well. if you have host name with example aaa-fgju than in web user ip filter list the name aaa-fgju will not work. If you have host name fghhg1 then it will work. The agent is good feature but license is bit expensive.

In using this product, I have not found many areas of the product or service that need to be completely improved. However, with any product, improvement of a service or product can always be reviewed. If one were to look to improve it: * Continue to look forward and listen to its customers. * Improvement in support or product relies on being ingenious, supportive, and listening to its customer base.