JAMS is a centralized workload automation and job scheduling solution that runs, monitors, and manages jobs and workflows. Reliably orchestrate the critical IT processes that run your business from a single pane of glass.
N/A
VisualCron
Score 7.0 out of 10
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VisualCron is an automation, Integration and Task Scheduler tool. VisualCron combines many features into one product. VisualCron was founded in 2004. Through scheduling users can set Jobs to run on a specific time or event with the help of Triggers. The Tasks in each Job automate scripts to eliminate human errors. Through various Tasks users can integrate different systems through file transfer, encryption, compression and…
While VisualCron provided more guardrails and user centric GUI, JAMS had a better resiliency functions with their clustering and service polling and failovers. We tested this and were able to maintain a large library of jobs and data the seamlessly switches between data …
JAMS is easier to use, provides more features and was easier to manage form a central location. simple features in JAMS were missing from VisualCron such as a projected daily schedule. The install setup with a client and agents was better suited for us too
VisualCron
No answer on this topic
Features
JAMS
VisualCron
Workload Automation
Comparison of Workload Automation features of Product A and Product B
JAMS
8.0
45 Ratings
3% below category average
VisualCron
-
Ratings
Multi-platform scheduling
8.838 Ratings
00 Ratings
Central monitoring
8.543 Ratings
00 Ratings
Logging
8.343 Ratings
00 Ratings
Alerts and notifications
8.143 Ratings
00 Ratings
Analysis and visualization
6.941 Ratings
00 Ratings
Application integration
7.642 Ratings
00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
JAMS
-
Ratings
VisualCron
3.5
1 Ratings
54% below category average
API for custom integration
00 Ratings
4.01 Ratings
Plug-ins
00 Ratings
3.01 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
JAMS
-
Ratings
VisualCron
7.7
1 Ratings
5% below category average
Dashboards
00 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Standard reports
00 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Custom reports
00 Ratings
7.01 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
JAMS
-
Ratings
VisualCron
4.2
1 Ratings
52% below category average
Process designer
00 Ratings
7.01 Ratings
Process simulation
00 Ratings
3.01 Ratings
Business rules engine
00 Ratings
2.01 Ratings
Process player
00 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Form builder
00 Ratings
4.01 Ratings
Model execution
00 Ratings
1.01 Ratings
Business Process Automation
Comparison of Business Process Automation features of Product A and Product B
It's currently one of the best of the lower entry cost options out there, as it currently is a set license cost, not based on the number of jobs executed. In the hands of a good script writer and users with workflow experience, it's a powerful tool to accomplish just about any process that you have a need to complete.
VisualCron does accommodate continuous file processing. Like packing and unpacking compressed files, splitting or merging files, sending E-mail's and executing queries on databases. VisualCron in less suitable for performing very complex operations on files like, arithmetic with numbers, dates or amounts. Very complex job scripts become cluttered. Debugging Job scripts is not easy.
The Activity Monitor clearly shows the Running Jobs, and Jobs that are to run soon. Successful Jobs can be viewed as well. The Refresh of this monitor is completely customizable to your liking.
Job Definitions are very well organized by use of Folders. This simplifies the structure of how to best Implement JAMS Jobs, including the ability to provide specific properties on each folder - whereby Jobs will inherit these properties.
Connectivity to servers is well thought out by having Shortcuts to include Credentials and Connection Store for server information.
JAMS Jobs can be controlled via System Resources. This is very powerful and is a very useful configuration found in JAMS.
VisualCron should more specifically indicate the root cause of an error.
If copying a file goes wrong, VisualCron reports 'can't copy file'. I expect 'no read permissions from original' or 'no write permissions from destination'.
VisualCron offers no way to execute a Job script line by line
JAMS is a critical resource free up people to do other things and ensuring that processes and tasks are run consistently. We are also confident that procedures are run consistently and on time or as soon as the necessary data is available. With automated job failure notification, we are not required to check that jobs are running correctly.
JAMS is very user friendly; you hardly need to do coding. The only thing that I would say a challenge is setting it up, but that's because you barely know the product yet and, in every processing, setting up is the difficult part. But once you've set it up and you are going to use it, you will really feel that it is worth to invest in this kind of software solution, it really does it job very well.
We didnt really encounter any downtime, no issues encountered during 2 years of use of JAMs also our client barely raise an issue with JAMS, mostly the issues is on the batch jobs that jams executes. So I would gave it a perfect 10, very reliable hardly encounters any error and bug
JAMS performance is very great, there are no issues raised with the performance, it just like nothing happens on the job after integration it gives you this monitoring capability, no reports and bugs raised on the performance, we didnt do integration with other software only database and with use of JAMS agent to different servers
I've never had to wait more than a day for a response to any email queries submitted. We had a very positive experience using support hours during out migration process from v6 to v7. We've also recently had a weeklong group training course where all attendees were positive about the learning outcomes, a shoutout to Jose who did both the migration and the weeklong course!
Questions and problems can be addressed to VisualCron 's support department via E-mail. I usually get a good answer from them fairly quickly. There is also a VisualCron forum where you can ask questions that will be answered by other VisualCron users.
People that were involved in the POC found the training a lot easier to follow. I think most people would have preferred to just get the training material and run through themselves.
I Was not part of the original Implementation, and the persons did that are no longer with the Organization. But I was part of the recent Upgrade process a year ago and I am the JAMS admin and was very pleased
I had evaluated 2 others in 2010/2011, but I do not remember their names. This was the easier one to work with and had a better looking, sometimes more professional looking UI than what I was evaluating. JAMS was more scaleable and had the ability to make custom interfaces to more systems through Execution Methods that could be tailored.
For simple processes, VisualCron is easier to use and maintain. For complicated processes, Quadient Inspire offers more options. The graphical representations of waiting, running or completed jobs is adequate for both products. The logging of job actions is better in Quadient Inpire as in VisualCron.
The product is quite flexible. There are a number of features and functions that we use on a daily basis, and there are many features that are available that we have not yet needed or explored (like setting up jobs with the ability to do FTP or Sftp file transfers).
Using JAMS when working from home (initially COVID, and now permanent) gives me tremendous visibility into the running operations of our business without any loss in productivity for not being in the office.
With JAMS I can more tightly schedule evening batch jobs by running one job after the successful completion of predecessor, as opposed to the CRON like guessing at safe start times.
Central control on a monitored server in a datacenter for all job scheduling tasks has given us 99.9% uptime reliability, instead of herding cats on multiple machines.