My experiences with Honeywell have never been great. From the intrusion line to the more pro stuff. I am more recently involved on the pro side, Pro-Watch and MaxPro, and I don't find it much better.
Granted some of my issues are internal, within my own company. I am not certified myself, nor do I know all of our dealer ID's, so phoning or contacting Honeywell is a pain that way. That's not Honeywell's fault, that my company doesn't want to send anyone in for certification. But if my experiences with Lenel Certification mean anything, it may not help much anyway.
They(Honeywell) are a huge company, but sometimes act like a small start up in a way. Every product line is like it's own department, and they don't all seem to like dealing with one another. Documentation, of any kind, is getting harder to obtain, especially when it comes to integrating their products together. And even if you do find a document how to integrate x Honeywell Product with y Honeywell Product, sometimes they send you to the wrong version, or a very key and crucial step is missed completely.
For example, after my bosses being told for years you can integrated Pro-Watch with MaxPro VMS (and how easy it was), they finally task me with setting it up. Great, sounds easy from the way my bosses describe it. No documentation included with Pro-Watch. No Documentation included with MaxPro. Go to My Web Tech, the go to place for Honeywell Documentation. Can't really find anything, I find one little document that has the how-to set up on ProWatch. I follow all the steps, and nothing. Can't connect to the MaxPro server.
Now I can admit, I can be a little stubborn and try for quite awhile to figure things out on my own without involving tech support, but eventually I give in, get the Dealer ID from my boss, and call tech support. I tell them my problem, and right away they ask "Do you have a MaxPro VMS client on the Pro-Watch server". Well no, I don't, why would I? "You need one" they say. Oh...well is this documented anywhere? "Yeah, it's on MyWebTech" they say. I could not find it, I reply. About 20 minutes later the guy does find the document, and sends it to me. So it was there, but even the Tech Support guy had troubles finding it.
So great, at the end of the day, yes Honeywell did help me. But this took much more time than it should have. An easy to find document, or even included document would have saved us both a lot of time.
If I had a choice in the matter, I would rather use just about any other Access Control product. I don't have the choice, aside from changing jobs, which I would rather not right now. Luckily some one else deals with Pro-Watch for the most part, and I don't have to so much.
