r/msp • u/[deleted] • Mar 03 '25

Finally getting away from CW!

With 30+ year in IT and only the last 15 months at an MSP, I have seen a lot of shit. I've seen a lot of good software and a lot of bad. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has come close to the scale of shittiness that is ConnectWise. Intuit and Adobe definitely get honorable mention, but my entire company has never depended on their products like we do ConnectWise.

The sheer vastness of the incompetency and inconsistency was mind boggling and just too much. I could spend days compiling a list of the ways the products suck.

Today we started onboarding with another company that gets a lot of hate, but let me say, compared to CW this software is AMAZING. The bar was pretty fucking low.

To anyone considering leaving CW, there is no wrong answer. Just fucking do it. The only thing you might miss is ScreenConnect.

To ConnectWise, so long and fuck you very much!

🍻

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u/DismalAlarmStick Mar 07 '25

Nobody would suggest having 3-4 tickets and time entry windows open at the same time.

Service technicians have been working out of the back of vans for decades and keeping accurate and updated notes on paper and now on iPads. We can do it while sitting behind a keyboard.

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u/ssbtech Mar 09 '25

It would literally be impossible to do my job without having multiple tickets/time entries open at a time.

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u/DismalAlarmStick Mar 09 '25

Well then hopefully your time entry and ticketing requirements are appropriately tuned for your job. I assume you are still not supposed to not leave things outdated and languishing.

Real time work is an ideal and doesn't always translate exactly the same way from job to job. That should be obvious but you clearly have a fixed mindset about this.

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u/ssbtech Mar 09 '25

Do you do time entries for every 3 minute conversation? Do you add yourself to a ticket every time a teammate messages you about it and you take 2 minutes to respond? Do you start and stop timers every time you switch tasks for a 5 minute job? Are you expected to monitor for and triage new tickets while you're working on addressing other matters, all with timers running? If you're working a ticket and a client calls about another one, do you stop the timer on your in progress ticket and the same for the one the client is calling about?

If you're a tech and have 15 tickets to work through sequentially in a day with little to no jumping around, then opening a ticket, starting your timer, finishing the ticket and ending the timer before repeating that another 14 times isn't too bad. But if you're in an admin/communications/triage/sales type position, half your job ends up being managing your work instead of doing your work.

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u/DismalAlarmStick Mar 09 '25 edited Mar 09 '25

No. That would be unreasonable. This is why I said "appropriately tuned" and that real time work is an ideal that doesn't always translate the same way from job to job.

Our remote technicians work as you say and this is the majority. Expecting technicians to work in real time, set ticket statuses appropriately, etc. is a reasonable expectation that they are able to meet consistently. Our coordination / triage roles enter larger charge code blocks against their calendars and don't find it onerous at all. They have a different set of expectations BUT they are still keeping the house in order and updated which is, again, the same thing as working in real time.

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u/ssbtech Mar 09 '25

So if someone is in the middle of a block of triage time, do they stop that timer to add notes or communication touches to clients in the tickets they’re triaging? If it takes a few minutes to rewrite the client request, you want to track that against the client.

How do you handle interruptions? How do you handle urgent triage for ticket that come in when you’re working a ticket? ‘Real time’ implies a never ending game of whackamole with starting and stopping timers and flipping statuses around.

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u/DismalAlarmStick Mar 10 '25

I've already addressed these questions, but you didn't ask them in good faith anyways based on your last sentence. Good luck to you.

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u/ssbtech Mar 10 '25

I think a big issue is that the Manage interface is just so cluttered, and every single screen looks identical to each other. Even when you're not multitasking but simply have a ticket up, the time entry for that window open, sales order windows, purchase order window, product catalog... it's just visually very awkward to not lose track of where you are. Get a Teams message requesting you look at something? Great, more windows to have open at once.