FileWaveReviews of filewave.com

IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, Filewave is well suited for iOS and MacOS. Almost everything that I have tried dealing with Mac, which admittedly has been limited to creating filesets, has worked as touted and experienced. My difficulties have come on the Windows side. The following is not very positive, but take what I say with a grain of salt. I am sure that someone who knows Filewave inside and out would not have the difficulties that I have had, but there is the rub for me. I found the learning curve to be a little too steep for someone who has many, many varied responsibilities in our company that go way beyond just setting up and maintaining Windows machines, Perhaps, I could not just give enough time to fully learn FW. It would be nice if the documentation and tutorials were suited to newbies as well as old timers. But, I am a Windows guy. My experience with FW in the Windows environment has been unfavorable. Granted, I am not one for the deep dives into making FW work with Windows, but I have found the documentation for FW to be scattered and in some cases irrelevant. Often I cannot find documentation dealing with what I need to create or do. That may be my inability to grasp their site layout, but I don't have this issue on other products. I suppose that is to be expected when an operating system changes as much as Windows has from Windows 7 - 8.1 to Windows 10. I think that with more in-depth and relevant documentation geared specifically to Windows 10, my experience would be more positive. As it is, the online documentation is very hard to follow and in many cases gives the steps for doing things in Windows 7 and then making reference that it should work in 10 as well...when, indeed, it doesn't always translate well, especially when it comes to imaging. I have had spotty success with FW imaging in Windows 10. I also have found some of the filesets to be 'wonky' from machine to machine. Perhaps FW would be better to scrap their present Windows documentation...at least dealing with filesets and imaging, or at least make a version dedicated solely to Windows 10. They have committed to concentrating more resources to Windows than they have in the past, but it's a little too late for me. Our system is considering moving to Chromebooks and using online virtual machines that the Chromebooks can access when Windows may be necessary. As to Filewave's support, I find their techs to be quick and ready to lend support. Any time that I have reached out to them, they have quickly gotten back and given what support they could. I have no complaints about their support department.

Filewave is a robust MDM, and to the developers credit, they work very hard to implement as many features as they can, stay current with both Apple and Google in terms of managing devices, and innovate where they can to offer a great experience in managing your fleet of devices. There are many things they still need to do to make it a super stellar product: Key on my list are three things I would love to see: 1. Organization in the filesets Pane ( the ability to Color Code Filesets / Fileset Groups, being able to add Enclosing folders ( that cannot be accidentally associated to a client, but can just group filesets and fileset groups in a single place). 2. A better client piece experience, including a way to from the Client Info window, to send remote messages to the client ( Hey I'm logging in, Hey I need to restart the client, etc) and a way to from the Client Window Auto Kickstart the client when it isn't connecting to home. 3. Better division of tasks in the Profile Creation Setting. Several profiles are "lumped together" and should be broken out, to allow some settings to be separately managed. Where Filewave though keeps it self from being a five star company is their customer service / technical support, which is often haphazard, confusing, and sometimes non-existent. Their online Knowledge Base needs to be revised, with an emphasis on being a response to a customer's questions, not just a "brain dump" of Wikipedia style articles that often confuse, contradict, or do not elaborate on their topics ( ex. A step by step tutorial on Customizing the App Portal Kiosk with Video Walk Through desperately needs to be created, Troubleshooting articles are hard to find and comprehend, and some aren't even complete ( issues with Backup, Issues with Duplicates in the Database, Issues with Boosters not talking with the Filewave server are prime examples). And then the support agents: There are agents that are very good at their job, five in particular that provide great customer service, are willing to listen to your concerns, and do their utmost best to walk you through the intricacies of their product and are patient to your questions and work to try to find resolutions. These five should be training the other support agents in the support team how to interact with customers, how to address customer issues, and how to provide support. But if you don't get one of these five, it can be a crapshoot or frustrating, to get an issue addressed. I'd also like to take time to acknowledge and thank the Filewave Forum on Slack. It has been a tremendous help and I have turned to it when I've had issues that couldn't be resolved through FW Support. I would encourage any Filewave users to join the Slack channel for Filewave, the community of users really pull together to help each other with troubleshooting issues with the product and is a positive place to help foster an understanding of the product and engages users to continue working with the product positively. It is the Therapist, if you will, to address the "marriage" of customer and Filewave ( the Product), lol. And has been a good source of helping to maintain that healthy relationship and love of the product. I would rate it 3.5 stars out of five, and it would be one of the three recommended MDMs I would recommend to a colleague / potential client if asked.

UX experience is horrible. You know this though. :-)

We are just getting started so I think it is a little early for feedback.