Hey, mcmcleod1,
First and foremost, as you suspected, I don't think configuring a SAS metadata server is going to help you get SAS custom formats into JMP. There are lots of good reasons to set up a SAS metadata server, primarily to enable access to SAS to lots of people, but your ability to get custom formats should be independent of that.
The best way I know of to get SAS custom formats into JMP (as value labels) is to use File > SAS > Browse Data from JMP. This requires you to make a connection to local SAS or SAS running on a server somewhere. You'll get an interface that looks like this:
You can then select the library and data set that you want to import into JMP. When you click Import, JMP will import the SAS data set, and if it sees that the data set contains user-defined formats, it will attempt to convert them to JMP value labels. In order for that to work successfully, the user-defined formats need to be contained in a format catalog that SAS is configured to look for formats in, which may require you to have LIBNAME and FMTSEARCH statements in the autoexec.sas file that SAS uses when it starts up. But, if the format information can be found, JMP will do its best to map the user-defined formats to value labels.
Let me know if you have success with this approach.
Thanks,
Eric