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AMS

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ALB
Veteran Member
Posts: 130
Veteran Member
1/23/2015 2:43 PM

    We have AMS for our Landmark environment, but we are supporting our S3 environment.  The Infor manager of our AMS project had a couple meetings.  I thought the process would have been explained as to what our roles were.  The meetings were cancelled a couple months ago because she is part of the project meeting.  It seems like the process keeps changing, and I never know when I am to do a task until it has to be done today or when I am late.  Our environment has been built, and we have not been presented with an exit document.  I asked the question why our DB was not built where we expected and received a draft version of the exit document stating the DB was built where we expected but the configuration files showed otherwise.  None of the links except for the Rich Client worked.  Yesterday, I had to get the Candidate Canvas up and operational, and I thought AMS was to get the system up and perform the testing.  I have never seen the system, so I do not know what to look for.  I assumed the links did not work because it was not complete.  It turned out that the URLs were wrong in the exit document (draft version), and I had to have some ports opened.  I obviously do not want to continue in this mode.  I thought that AMS would tell us the port numbers we need to open when there was an issue.

    In addition, I thought I could ask the project team questions when I did not understand something.  Now, I am told I need to put in Infor Xtreme incidents for questions and for work to be done.  I thought I would be putting in incidents to AMS when something was not functioning.  I thought the Infor project team would be the ones requesting additional data areas or fielding questions.

    Does anyone know how AMS is supposed to work?  I am told one thing one day and something else the next.  I am frustrated.

    THANKS!

    Woozy
    Veteran Member
    Posts: 709
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    1/23/2015 3:25 PM
      Hi AngelaC,

      That sounds very frustrating. AMS Support costs big bucks, so that level of support doesn't sound right to me.

      We are under AMS for both Landmark and S3. They can be challenging to work with, but our understanding and expectation is that THEY are responsible for everything associated with the environment, database, and application. This includes install, monitoring, issue resolution (of environment issues), database rights, data refreshes, etc. We've pretty much been told that we should NOT be futzing around trying to get stuff to work - that is their responsiblity (though we push the envelope sometimes).

      In cases where they didn't do things they way we asked them to, we expect them to undo it and do it right.

      Whenever we need AMS to do something, we enter an AMS support ticket. Even if we've discussed it over the phone or whatever - a ticket is always required. Also, we know that for all "routine" maintenance we need to provide plenty of advanced notice, meaning 48+ hours. If it is anything significant, like patches, upgrades, data refresh, etc. we try to give significantly more warning, like 7+ days, so they can schedule resources accordingly.

      We have (and you should have) a person in AMS who has overall responsibility for our account. He doesn't necessarily do all the work, but he will work with the team to get it done. When we have issues, we escalate to him. He has been an outstanding partner for us...in spite of the fact that we can be difficult to work with because we have high expectations. We have an official call with him once a month to discuss anything related to our AMS support and applications. On our side if the call we include our Application Analysts, Developers, Security, Infrastructure team. In addition, we always have email/phone access to him if we need it. Frequently we will just email him and say, "please look at ticket xxxxx. Will you see what's going on with it?"

      In situations where he is not able to help us, we escalate up to our Client Support Manager (we are under Silver Support).

      It sounds like you need to have a conversation with your Account Representative and let them know you aren't happy so they can get it fixed.
      Kelly Meade
      J. R. Simplot Company
      Boise, ID
      Peter O
      Veteran Member
      Posts: 69
      Veteran Member
      2/17/2015 6:58 PM

        Hi Angela,

        Our organization also uses AMS for S3 and Landmark. We have had a lot of problems with them as well, but they have been improving recently.

        We've had problems with them identifying dependencies, doing what they say they will do, sticking to timelines, ensuring outsourced resources are available to commit changes after hours, and other issues.
        many times we'll find all sorts of issues with our grid first and when we had system issues, AMS was often the last group to know about any problems.

        Our industry is a 24/7 industry where we need to know everything about our systems for regulatory and compliance purposes. So it has been a painful experience to work with vendors who do not share your organization's concerns or want to accomodate those needs. In hindsight... we probably should have hosted our environment internally.

        We've had all sorts of frustrating issues arise. PM me if you'd like further detail about what to look out for.

         

        But again, I'd hate to end on such a negative note, because Infor has been proactive in trying to resolve many of our issues (though not always successfully).  I've never worked with a vendor who has said what they did at Inforum 2014 [paraphrasing]- "[We know there have been problems with our relationship with some of our clients, and we want to fix that. Please help us fix those issues]". I do need to give them credit for that.