Am I the only person that has 8 open cases with jamf support?

We just made the jump to 10.7.1 from 9.101.x last week ... still feeling things out and finding a few head scratchers. Glad to hear other folks still lagging as feel less shame now ;) Needed support for iOS 12 and Mojave (we skipped HiC) ... and macOS VPP device channel support. We aren't crashing, so that's a plus. Made the jump to InnoDB (and clustering) years ago w/ assistance of Jamf support (good peeps!). Performance differences post 10.7.1 upgrade seem negligible so far ... but clicking on "Management" tab of given iOS device is pretty rough (I've seen it take up to 30 seconds to respond). We have around 16,000 Macs and 8,000 iOS. 3,000 freaking apps in mobile catalog ... ugh.

Jamf QA needs to improve and I do feel for the support folks these days.

*I'll add that we've had our share of internal issues (can you say network scream test?) and Jamf support have been helpful in troubleshooting some of that as well.

I'm with @snook and @ega on this.... the question we keep asking internally after every update: "Which features and apps that we are paying for can't we use with this update?"

We typically let conversations on Jamf Nation be organic discussions, but we do see and follow the threads. And although we try not to interrupt the community conversation, I wanted take the opportunity to chime in on this one. Plus, you asked us to :)

We hear you. We are here for you. It is essential that we at Jamf provide the best possible product to you, our customers. Our product isn’t just the software, but it also includes our technical support, professional services, training, integrations with our partners in the ecosystem, as well as the vibrant and unparalleled community that exists here on Jamf Nation. If we are falling short in any of those categories, we need to improve. We need to improve to not only meet your need, but exceed it. This is our responsibility and we do not take it lightly. We hear what you are saying and we will do something about it.

To start, we are reaching out to all those who are posting on this thread to ensure we fully understand the individual issues that you are experiencing with our product and processes and doing everything in our power to correct them. Additionally, we are aggregating all this data in a consolidated location to discuss any systemic issues that exist so that we can fix them. This is happening with cross departmental efforts and with strong representation from our support and services, as well as our product team. We will also be reaching out to @snook to make sure that we have the right people in the room to listen and talk during the session he is organizing at the JNUC.

On a personal note, it isn’t always easy to read negative things about the teams that you work hard with every day. Especially when they all truly have your best interests at heart. Despite that, I really appreciate this topic coming to light. It helps us get better. “Relentless self improvement” is a core value at Jamf, and this is helping direct us to a key area to get better.

If you have anything that you feel applies but do not wish to post to this thread, please email your customer success representative at success@jamf.com or directly to me at sam.johnson [at] jamf.com.

@sam Thank you for the response, I definitely share your sentiment that we have everyone's best interests at heart. We are as much partners as we are customers with JAMF, our personal success at our own jobs is directly tied to JAMF's success as well. And I have personally raised a glass or 2 of adult beverages with dozens of JAMFers in many cities and to the person I have enjoyed their company and they are great people and many are personal friends. In case it got lost in the threads, if anyone is at JNUC next week and wants to join the conversation, email me at snookkd [at] appstate.edu and I will share my contact info. Or hit me up in the JNUC app. We will find an area (at the bar?) and share ideas on how to improve things. There is a formal JAMF meeting being scheduled as well. We can take these ideas directly to the proper teams. Or just look for this ugly mug and yell SNOOOOOK!

@sam - thanks for chiming in. This is the reason I did:

On a personal note, it isn’t always easy to read negative things about the teams that you work hard with every day. Especially when they all truly have your best interests at heart.

This is how I feel at work when I try to offer the client(s) a service and in spite of not being the smartest admin here, I know enough to do most of what I need and I learn that which I don't. But when I let a client down, it hurts. Teammates say "don't take it personally" but that's not possible if you care about your work - and I bet everyone in this thread does - a lot!

Let's hope we can all work towards a more solid offering.

I'm not going to go off (again) about our experiences with PIs, but I did want to mention one thing that has really helped us (~29k managed Macs), and its great to see Jamf FINALLY bringing official, documented, support for: InnoDB. Let me say that again. INNODB! Since converting over from MyISAM to InnoDB (with Jamf's help), the overall performance of the environment is literally night and day. Yes, I still have several PIs open, and STILL have to clean cruft out of the DB manually on a semi-routine basis, but I can't remember to last time I maxed out my DB connections for my load balanced client-facing nodes. Table lock is the DEVIL! I refused to move to Jamf 10 until we completed the conversion. The sooner Jamf can help you on-prem hosted folks to make the conversion, the happier everyone will be.

just in relation to everyone's experience of support - im really pleased with Jamf support, i commented here after having started a thread and not being aware of the PI for my issue and a member of the customer relations team has noted it and opened me a support case and ive already heard back from support explaining my issue is addressed in 10.8 and providing how we could work round in the mean time. - i have to say thats pretty excellent for me, i know not everyone's been so lucky.

Similar experience. We recently moved to a cloud instance and I seem to constantly open ticket with Jamf now. Got about 5 open at the moment. Been using Jamf for 5/6 years and it's only in the last year or two that I've been having to open tickets. Everything seems to come down to a known "product issue". Sometimes a tomcat restart is all that is needed but I can't do that anymore as it's cloud based.

I've been seeing much the same experience as others. I've helped to identify a few product issues myself, and it seems a lot of what we've been seeing performance-wise, has been since we've moved to cloud hosting. Despite our testing, we all too often find ourselves surprised by a new issue with each update.

Just this past week, we had our JCDS apparently disconnect since Monday, and we didn't hear anything back for over 24 hours. I recognize you folks at Jamf are getting ready for the big show next week, but we do have to keep the lights on. When I'm asked about the status of our management suite, and all I can offer is a shrug, that does not inspire confidence.

If there is any discussion to be had at JNUC next week, I would very much like to be involved to share my thoughts.

I just avoid creating cases unless it is an absolute must. When I find bugs I don't submit them anymore via cases because we pay jamf, not vs versa. When they pay me to improve their product I might consider dealing with the headache of their tech support who don't understand most problems and don't read what you have written, replying asking about things you have already told them. I've finished bug report cases with "This is just a bug report. I don't want to have any further involvement in this issue. Do with it what you want", to have them request to do a webex to see 'whats wrong with my system'. And this isn't on complex problems. It has been something as clear as "When you check this box in the configuration profile, it does the opposite as what it says, and vs versa". Tech support will attempt to waste hours of my time with emails and webexs about it when all I wanted to do was to submit a bug report and not be bothered anymore.

Point is, the people who are paid to listen and help rarely do either very well, so I just don't bother reporting issues to JAMF anymore unless it's a show stopping issue.

I'm not trying to pile on... But I stumbled across this thread while searching to see if others were hitting the same PI that I am with Patch Management (which has rendered it completely unusable). And it is reassuring to know now that I'm not the only one that is feeling overwhelmed with the current state of affairs. I've had an unusually large amount of cases open this year, with many of the same outcomes listed here. I sincerely hope we see some change soon. I would be interested if there's a meet up planned for next week as well to also share my frustrations and help work towards a resolution.

Hi,

the most frustrating stuff for us is currently:
There are tons of PI's which aren't listed in the Known Issues lists. And having those Issues in the List doesn't even make sure JAMF seems to care about them.

How about making all those PIs publicly available in the Known Issues list (maybe with more then one sentence describing it) + a link to short workaround description (if available). This would reduce your ticket mess (the last ~10 tickets I opened were like "Ah we know that, there's a PI and a workaround here.." ... after mailing around 10 times with "have your tried this and that") as people can look at the list and find their potential issues themselves, we are all IT-Technicians.

The worst ticket I ever had was the one about Login Items and Automounting Network shares with 10.13.. I was given a script which worked in 10.8.x and doesn't work since 10.11 anymore. After that I scripted around that mess, told my support-ticket-owner to document my solution as it would help lots of other guys aswell. Nothing happend.

The second worst ticket(s) were about PreStage Imaging which turned out to be a total mess after jamfPro 10.(?).
You can't add directory bindings, you can't add configurations (or smart configurations). So you are back to add a few packages and do the everything else using policies(hell, this broke 20+ Sites in our Setup, this was a hell of a clicking mess in a SLOW GUI). Nothing documented, no public PI. Thanks JAMF. I wouldn't have upgraded if I knew this earlier, I would have fixed stuff before.

Now, new bug, which is known in slack but not really documented:
If you add a Smart Group which references another (non existant) Computer Group using the Classic API jamfPro carries out the order.
But now every SelfService isn't working anymore. -> Find the Computer Group using the queries mentioned on https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/articles/552/on-prem-jamf-pro-customers-upgrading-to-10-7 and fix the autopkg recipe which makes the mess.
Hell why is there a 10.7.1 if the API lets me produce f*cked SmartGroups again?
Yeah didn't make a ticket yet, because the answer will be "Yeah, there is PI-xxxxxx, ticket closed". (-> See Paragraph 2 of my rant)

I hope everything gets better with JAMF in the near future, else we gotta find another product which doesn't have minefield of bugs everywehere.

Cheers,
@bofh

@MrP you make some good points. I have spent hours upon hours of my time troubleshooting issues, at the cost of many other things not getting done. It's just me and my boss, we're in charge of only ~1350 iPads + all the other technology necessary to teach the K-12 students in our smaller district. I can't even imagine what it would be like if we were larger, as I know that many people now involved in this discussion are. I feel for support, as someone mentioned above, but I feel for us more.

The latest thing that really makes steam come out of my ears is a PI that makes apps show as having been removed from the App Store, and it therefore turns them into a brick in your app catalog, and removes them from Self Service. I blindly believed the system earlier this year, and a teacher believed me, and so we spent money to replace an app that we'd already paid for, that is in fact still available in the GD App Store. I told support they could send me a check to cover the classroom budget dollars that we wasted due to this issue and it was brushed off, but I was not kidding. It may seem like a small amount to such a large company, but to a teacher that spends money from her own pocket because budgets keep getting slashed, it is huge. I'm just tired of this.

Anyone interested in chatting can reach out to me at JNUC - I'll have either my vintage TMNT sweatshirt or t-shirt on, so just look for bright green :)

I was just reading everything and I felt compelled to interject. We have a great and supportive relationship with JAMF and overall happy. That said, I am not saying anyone has, but when you look at it, has the company lost its way from the basics? With all the fluff and pretty graphics, does the product still achieve the basics and do it well? Would my job be unpleasant without it?

My opinion is that as long as the basics are still running strong, everything else is icing as they say. I think it is up to each of us to define what those basics are as they might be different.

For me, it’s providing management capabilities over Macs similar to what SCCM and AD can do for Windows—providing a greater level of confidence that patches and other items are installed and corporate policies are maintained. Has JAMF done well? Yes and no. Yes because they provide a mechanism to get it done and it’s getting done; no because of certain issues within the GUI that haven’t been fixed yet. But my point is the basics are still met because I have a way of getting it done.

If I was to critique, I think JAMF and JAMF support needs to just understand, keep the basics working and bring value added changes to the product that simplify the typical workflows and workarounds we employ. And while there might not be a lot of upvotes on some feature requests (honestly the feature requests appear to get lost in shuffle) and not everyone is impacted by a PI, it’s the little and simple things that matter and can make the big meaningful difference.

Have a happy JNUC, everyone!

A classic case of sales running the show.

In response to the original question, I am currently down to 2 or 3 tickets, but yes, I had 8 open not too long ago.
Total, I think I'm over 120 tickets in 5 years.
I love Jamf and the support I get is top notch, but things that ought to work or that were working tend to break between updates.

@jrippy

things that ought to work or that were working tend to break between updates.

I tend to avoid updates unless is has a specific feature or bugfix I need for that exact reason. Every update is like another beta that's not better than the last, just shuffling issues around. Then they go and do things like create a new interface that looks nice on the surface, but once you start using it you realize how half-baked and unpolished it is, all the while leaving hundreds of PI's unaddressed. No one wanted or needed a new interface, and they didn't even do that right.

@MrP - if you're on Jamf's Cloud, you get no choice. They update when they say they're updating, and while I understand it to an extent, I wish the schedule were more flexible - or make me believe that the new update won't break more than it will fix.
When I have a meta-stable environment, and an update busts things, it's a bear.

Of course it's impossible to release new, perfect software, but maybe you could request to be held off of the upgrade schedule until a x.1 comes out or the like. Keeping everyone on the same major release I get, but I'm being pushed more quickly than I feel comfortable with at times...

I've had similar sentiments for a few years now about support quality dropping off. I've mentioned it in a few feedback areas/surveys but never addressed it with anyone specific at Jamf.

It's felt to me like you have to fight through a lower tier of support that is cutting their teeth and learning the ropes - in order to get to the higher tier support that can actually resolve your issues. So if it's not a critical issue a lot of times I won't bother contacting support because it's not worth the frustration. I'll only keep pushing if it's something worth my time of running the gauntlet of newb support.

We've been a JAMF customer since 2012 and have had a great relationship with JAMF, especially support, until recently. I hope that JAMF is listening and will react to this thread. We are a K-8 school district that made the decision to utilize JAMF because of the level of support they provided. However, the silence from support leads me to believe that JAMF may be moving away from providing support at the level we were used to. We had 1 ticket open created 10/11/18, but the ticket has been suspended? The problem has not been resolved and remains suspended even though I had a face-to-face conversation with my "Customer Success Specialist" who told me that the ticket would be unsuspended and also assured me that I would hear from them by today. The ticket remains suspended and I have received no email from support. So.....I've opened a 2nd ticket requesting information regarding the suspended ticket. Bottom line: I agree that "sales" may be impacting the level of support and not in a good way - especially for education customers who are not profit driven and do not have the ability to adjust by hiring more in-house techs. Dependable (good) support equals happy customers who continue to pay for and use the product as well as recommend it to others.

@sam Just to chip in, have also noticed the level of support becoming worse unfortunately. Have had increasing more problems with Jamf Pro 10.x which no one seems to be able to resolve despite being escalated to engineers. Currently have two cases open which haven't heard back for a long time. The previous case I had open was a high priority one as we couldn't access the Jamf web server plus self service wasn't working across the company and support promised would hear back the same day, unfortunately they didn't get back to me. Luckily managed to solve the issue my self however it does not give much confidence. The support used to be fantastic, but nowadays struggle to get any reply. Still waiting for a response for two open cases.

Thanks for post, am lost, uncertain where to begin. A new installation jamf cloud, maybe where are these composer and other apps i seem to remember from our evelyn wood primer class. I just cannot find and any search in this venue return bupkiss

@kahuna If your Jamf Nation account is connected to your organization's Jamf account you will find the Jamf Pro software downloads under the My Assets menu item displayed when you click your name in the banner across the top of this page.

version 10 has been extra buggy. They need to focus more energy on fixing existing bugs before implementing new features. the list of PI's.

Just as a feedback for the community.
Short after our/my post here, jamf reached out to us.
Actually I was surprised that jamf reached out to us within a few hours.
We were asked what our specific issues were, asked about the PIs we are hitting (atm).
And what they could make to have a better life using jamf.

Thats the impression I got from jamf in the beginning (fast reactions!) and that's the way it should go (again in the future). Thanks very much for taking our complaints that serious and keep the ball rolling to change stuff which isn't in your intention aswell.

For all here: I learned: Fill in those feedback forms you get after tickets get closed. (Maybe we will find a way to give Feedback WHILE the case is running aswell in the future)

I'm sure other guys from here got contaced from jamf aswell. And I think if we open this thread and discuss stuff like service quality, we also should mention that jamf did something as an reaction on this.

Cheers and a nice weekend to all of you,
@bofh