ConnectWise Automate

Avantages

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.

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

There are many, many features in Connectwise Automate that will help you help your customers with their computer needs.

Inconvénients

Although the software is very feature rich, it seems very cumbersome and not easy to use from day one. In almost every step, we have had to take classes to figure out how to do things.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

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.

Avantages

Clients and Locations are organized in an easy-to-view tree, which allows easy access to a customer's inventory.

Several dataviews are available from a Client or Location to quickly gather information of an environment. For example, a list of 'scheduled tasks' configured on every system can be gathered from all systems to determine why a particular event occurs every Saturday at 4am.

Remote Control of a system can be envoked with standard tools such as VNC or RDP, as well as ConnectWise Control (formerly Screen Connect).

Reports of client environments are just a click away, whether a question regarding system health is of issue, or if all systems have the latest patches and Anti-Virus updated.

Inconvénients

Software runs on a MySQL backend, but only on Windows. Keeping MySQL tuned properly for environment size can be chore, whereas DB Engines such as MSSQL are a bit more automated and forgiving. As you bring more agents into the system, it's a good idea to run performance metrics on the MySQL server to see if any adjustments are necessary to maintain best performance of the system.

Telephone Support for the MySQL backend tends to yield different answers from each representative you talk to, and in my experience it was best to use general MySQL tuning documents that are available from Oracle.

Avantages

You can access it anywhere. If I am on vacation in Mexico and the office back in the states needs support, I just open up chrome and go to my custom made website that CW gave me and I am in. I can see everything about a persons computer by just scrolling side to side or double clicking. Their customer service is also 24/7 AND they assign you technicians to help with implementation along with connectwise university to ensure you are ready to use their product to the fullest extent!

Inconvénients

Its sort of difficult to learn. They have the university that helps with that, but some of their classes are outdated and some just sprint through the lesson in the hopes that you might have caught a thing or two that they just taught you. Also, their scripting language is their own(proprietary) and you have to learn it. So if you already know Java, C++, Python, etc, it doesn't matter.