The following article contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from WebTMA clients about moving to the TMA Systems Azure SaaS environment. If you do not find the answer to your question below, please open a ticket with our support team and they will be happy to assist.
Is moving from self-hosted mandatory or can we remain on-premise and still be supported? No. On-Premise clients who must remain that way will continue to be fully supported by TMA Systems. We know the business case to move to SaaS is compelling but there will be special circumstances for some clients that prevent the move to SaaS.
Will moving to the Azure SaaS environment (we are a current SaaS WebTMA5 customer) change any of our URL's for login or iSD? No. The URLs will remain unchanged.
Will the speed increase with this move? Yes, we are seeing performance improvements in all areas with the move to Azure.
Does the Azure SaaS environment support SAML SSO? Yes, our Azure environment supports Single Sign-on via SAML.
What single sign on capabilities will be available? OIDC, Okta, OneLogin, Azure AD, SAML, etc. We support SAML for Single Sign-On. This has become the defacto standard for most SaaS providers. Okta, OneLogin, Azure AD, etc. all support SAML.
Will 2 factor authentication be available? This is not currently on our product roadmap but is something we are considering adding.
Do you offer API integration with WebTMA? We are moving to an API approach for clients to push/pull data on a real-time basis. This will be built into the WebTMA7 version only. API's for service request related data were release in July 2022. We will be adding new API's regularly until we have all major data types supported (work orders, materials management, purchase orders, assets, etc.).
Are we able to run our own scripts to insert / update records in TMA if we are cloud hosted? For example, we have a customized program that grabs data from a different database and creates (inserts) a request into TMA. We are moving to an API approach for clients to push/pull data on a real-time basis. This will be built into the WebTMA7 version only. API's for service request related data were release in July 2022. We will be adding new API's regularly until we have all major data types supported (work orders, materials management, purchase orders, assets, etc.).
Can we still use an Access database to pull custom reports? Clients who move to our SaaS solution will have an option to purchase a direct database connect solution. Any client who purchases direct database connect can use Access or any other reporting/DB tool to connect to the data for reporting purposes.
Do you allow direct connections to the database so the customer and work with tables and views? Partially. With the direct database connection, clients can report off of over 450 database views. This contains all key data from a reporting perspective in the system. We do not allow clients to view all 3,000+ tables in the system because of the complexity of our data model. We also do not allow clients to insert data into any tables. Our published APIs and our Universal Interface modules are the only supported methods to automatically send data to WebTMA. The direct database connection service is read only access to the reporting views.
Will there be a charge for the direct database connect? If yes, what will it be? Yes, there will be a charge. The fee is variable depending on licensed products a client has an transaction volumes. We tiered the pricing so that clients using the connection more would have a higher price than those with relatively low usage. Please reach out to your TMA Sales contact for exact pricing for your organization.
Are you moving to a model where new features are released first in SaaS and way later on-premise? This is not a new approach. We have always done this. Because of the time involved in creating on premise installer packages, we always release it at least 2 weeks after the SaaS release. We are not currently supporting on-premise WebTMA7 clients. This will be coming in 2023.
Does the move to the Azure SaaS environment require clients to upgrade to WebTMA7? No. We support clients on both WebTMA5 and WebTMA7 in our SaaS environment.
If TMA hosts our iSD pages, how do we make the edits? We establish a process with our clients to test any changes and once those changes are approved, we can then update the page based on the requested time/date for the update to be published.
We have different environments currently on-prem. Such as a DEV environment, and another environment we use to train folks, how do additional environments work cloud hosted? What is the process to update these environments with production data? We offer additional environments at a deeply discounted price compared to production for clients who need it. A test environment comes with our Platinum and Diamond support packages. Most of our SaaS clients find two environments is enough, but we could add a third for a client if needed. There would be additional costs.
Is the TMA Systems Azure SaaS environment FedRAMP authorized and if not, are you seeking this with any other agency and what timeline would you be certified? The Azure environment is FedRAMP authorized but as an organization, TMA Systems has not completed the process for our company. We plan to start this process later in 2022.