For years and many versions, the weakest aspect of AutoMate's generally capable support of SFTP file transfers has been the low visibility into connection failures, particularly during the protocol negotiation phase of connecting. AutoMate's file transfer action only writes things to the optional FTP log file when a back-and-forth interaction is completed. Failed actions do not log what they sent to the remote server or the errors that come back.
Competing file transfer clients expose much more information about what protocols are offered, what agreements are negotiated between the two ends, and the progress through the negotiation and establishment of the encrypted channel. FileZilla is excellent in this. PuTTY's psftp is good.
I have asked HelpSystems/Network Automation about this several times over the years, and the response has always been "more verbose logging is not available". In some cases AutoMate support staffers have guided me in using FileZilla to get a clear log of what algorithms it negotiates successfully with the remote server, and then trying to specify those same algorithms for the AutoMate action. (Sometimes the same algorithms don't work for AutoMate, and I'm reduced to blindly guessing what other algorithms might work.)
I've got to believe that other users are frustrated by this. If you have struggled with this lack of transparency, please add your voice to this thread.
