This quarter, our product innovation focused on these key themes: Foundation, Business Continuity, Intelligence, Service Delivery, Automation and Client Collaboration.

Let’s dive into the details! You can also view the recording of the IT Operations Q3 Product Update HERE.

IT Glue’s suite of solutions

IT Glue has been a pioneer in IT documentation since day one. The platform has helped thousands go from disorganized spreadsheets to a central pane, and now, we are taking the lead in making your documentation intelligent.

In the same way IT documentation cannot succeed in a silo, IT Glue’s superpowers shine with our suite of products. Here is how each of our add-on solutions can help take your IT operations to new heights:

• IT Glue: Centralizes and secures your IT documentation so that you can turn information sprawl into actionable insights.
• Network Glue: Streamlines device and user documentation, automating mundane everyday tasks.  
• MyGlue: Provides secure password management and seamless knowledge collaboration with end users.
• myITprocess: Streamlines IT strategic planning and QBRs so that you can nurture client relationships and unlock new revenue streams.

Foundation

The core of IT Glue is to help you be more efficient in your day-to-day operations. We continuously update and improve our platform to keep up with your evolving business needs, allowing IT technicians to spend less time searching for information and more time on what matters most – your customers.

• NOW LIVE! SSO Role-Based Control: When onboarding a new user to IT Glue, ensuring correct permissions is crucial. That’s why we introduced SSO Role-Based Control earlier this year. This feature automatically matches IT Glue permissions with your SSO provider group permissions, eliminating manual work. Any changes in user permissions in SSO are automatically reflected in IT Glue, ensuring security and simplifying user onboarding.
• NOW LIVE! Microsoft Integration – Location Disablement: We recently enhanced our Microsoft integration to streamline your operations, knowing that most users rely on Microsoft products. If you avoided enabling this integration due to location sync issues, now is the perfect time to reconsider. Microsoft Locations are now optional, allowing you to opt-out while still benefiting from valuable features like license tracking and user auto-documentation.

• NEW! Password Policy Enforcement: IT Glue is most valuable when everything, including shared passwords, is securely documented. With rising cybersecurity threats, it’s crucial to ensure your password manager helps you effortlessly meet compliance standards. Recently, we introduced the ability to enforce password policies in IT Glue. Now, you can easily generate passwords that align with your business policies, choosing password type, character length and complexity to keep your data secure.
• COMING SOON! IT Glue Search Improvements: IT Glue is the only documentation solution with true global search, allowing you to easily find anything, from anywhere. As IT Glue has grown and your data has expanded, we’ve heard your feedback on how search could be improved. We’re actively working on a search enhancement project to ensure faster, more responsive and more reliable results that meet your expectations. This project involves updating our infrastructure and we’re committed to delivering these improvements soon.
• COMING SOON! Activity Logs Improvements: As your team grows, so does your activity log data, which is crucial for account security and audits. Larger accounts, especially those with IT Glue since 2016 or 2018, or fast-growing MSPs, often face challenges accessing older logs. We’ve thoroughly investigated this issue and are excited to announce that, starting in Q4, you’ll have uninterrupted access to all activity logs, no matter how far back you go, without performance issues.
• COMING SOON! Asset Type Selection for Runbook Generation: Another key feature of IT Glue is the ability to share documented data with your clients, often through Runbooks. We understand the need to exclude certain assets or archived items when exporting this data. That’s why we’re actively working on a feature that will allow you to select which asset types to include in your Runbooks, giving you full control over what you choose to showcase and include in Runbooks.
• COMING SOON! Mobile App Improvements: The big advantage of IT Glue is accessibility to mission-critical data, even on the go. If you lose internet on your work laptop, you can easily access IT Glue on your phone to find what you need. We’ve heard your feedback about mobile app issues and are actively working on an update. This will include design improvements, better navigation and the ability to access documents within the app. Some of these enhancements will be available as soon as September.

Business continuity

Maximizing profits and ensuring success means minimizing downtime. Whether facing structural changes or unforeseen events, you must keep operations running smoothly.

• NOW LIVE! Cross-Account Migration: Mergers and acquisitions offer financial benefits, but they also require significant work, time and resources to merge structures, technology, processes, culture and documentation. This process is often disruptive, but at IT Glue, we’ve developed a cross-account migration service to streamline this process. We help and guide you to seamlessly merge data, preserving asset relationships, tags and document structures, removing the administrative burden and allowing you to focus on more critical post-acquisition tasks.  
• NOW LIVE! Offline Mode for Passwords: With IT Glue’s Offline Mode for passwords, your team has secure 24/7 access to passwords, even during emergencies or maintenance, while preserving all security controls. We strongly recommend enabling this feature now, as it requires an internet connection for setup — waiting until an emergency is too late.
• COMING SOON! Password SafeShare: Later this year, we’re introducing the Password SafeShare feature, allowing you to create time-sensitive, fully encrypted, password-sharing links with control over who can access them. You’ll also have the option to automatically delete shared passwords from IT Glue if storing end-user passwords conflicts with your company policy.

Intelligence

In today’s tech-driven era, IT professionals need more tools and data than ever to do their jobs. This often leads to information sprawl and noise, making it challenging to stay organized. That’s why we’re enhancing IT Glue with true intelligence to connect the best parts of your IT environment for incredible accuracy and efficiency.

• COMING IN Q3! IT Glue and Datto Endpoint Backup Integration: Starting in September, IT Glue will integrate with Datto Endpoint Backup, offering enhanced visibility into your clients’ device backup status, last backup, subscription details, protected volumes and more. This integration will help streamline audits and speed up ticket resolution with comprehensive device backup documentation next to the rest of your information.
• COMING IN Q3! IT Glue and Datto SaaS Protection User Insights: Last year, we launched a Datto SaaS Protection integration for M365 and Google Workspace to bring in user backup information at the organization level. We’ve now enhanced this integration by adding detailed user backup information, such as last backup time, mail backup size and contact backup size, to help you safeguard user data and improve backup visibility.
• NOW LIVE! Cooper Copilot Smart Relate: With Smart Relate, Cooper Copilot for IT Glue automatically detects and suggests relationships between core assets. You can approve or decline these suggestions, and as you use IT Glue, Cooper Copilot will learn and improve, becoming smarter with each interaction.
• NOW LIVE! Smart Relate – Microsoft Users to Intune Devices: Earlier this year, we launched Smart Relate with targeted use cases. IT Glue now automatically detects which user belongs to which Intune device, creating relationships for you. When a contact leaves a company, Smart Relate automatically removes the relationship, eliminating the need to search in Entra ID and speeding up ticket resolution.
• NOW LIVE! Cooper Copilot Smart Create: Smart Create is another powerful feature of Cooper Copilot, which intelligently organizes and summarizes IT information. It provides a clear and concise overview of the IT environment through flexible asset templates automatically created by AI. Consider the task of compiling backup health across your IT environment. Instead of sifting through multiple pages and platforms, Smart Create automatically consolidates this information into a single, easy-to-navigate tab. This proactive approach allows technicians to identify potential issues before they escalate.
• NOW LIVE! Smart Create – Datto Networking Wireless Network: Traditionally, setting up a new network required manual documentation of Wi-Fi details, creating a wireless asset and tagging relevant information. With Smart Create, IT Glue now automatically generates a Flexible Asset that shows the network environment, eliminating the need to manually copy data already available in the networking interface.
• NEW! Smart Create – Datto BCDR Backup Health: We’ve now launched a Backup flexible asset through the Datto BCDR integration. This new feature is designed to streamline the backup health audit process for your team. It enables quick reviews of agents with failed backups, protected and unprotected disks, total disk space usage, appliance warranty status and overall system health — either by organization or globally. With this tool, you can proactively identify unprotected volumes, ensuring your clients’ continuity and safeguarding your reputation from potential risks.
• COMING SOON! Smart Create – Datto RMM Software Asset Tracker: Maintaining a comprehensive and accurate view of application deployment across all devices is time-consuming, especially with ongoing changes. Fortunately, starting in September, through Smart Create, IT Glue will automate the Licenses Flexible Asset, showing which applications are installed on each device. This ensures you always have up-to-date data and can quickly audit all clients to ensure devices are running only approved applications.
• COMING IN Q3! Cooper Copilot Smart Assist: After creating documentation, keeping it up to date becomes increasingly challenging as your team grows. To address this, we’re introducing Smart Assist, a Cooper Copilot feature. Smart Assist will help you identify and clean up stale assets, like documents, passwords and configurations, with ease through global views and bulk actions. Smart Assist will also intelligently highlight and surface the most used and valuable documentation to your team. Launching in September, Smart Assist will first be available for documents.

Automation: Network Glue

With increasing demands from end users, it’s crucial to automate tedious tasks and manual labor to focus on strategic initiatives. IT Glue’s automation engine, Network Glue, takes care of these tasks to give you more time back.

• COMING IN Q4! BitLocker Key Auto-Documentation: In emergencies, it’s crucial to keep your assets safe and accessible. Coming in Q4, Network Glue will introduce BitLocker Key auto-documentation. This feature automatically syncs BitLocker Keys from Intune devices, ensuring your sensitive data remains secure and easily accessible with IT Glue. With this automation, IT Glue administrators can effortlessly manage BitLocker keys, enhancing control over device security and minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
• NOW LIVE! Automated Password Rotation: Regularly changing passwords is a simple yet powerful security measure. With Network Glue, your team can easily rotate Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365 passwords directly from IT Glue, ensuring they are never outdated. You can do this manually on-demand, such as during user offboarding, or set up scheduled rotations to maintain higher compliance standards.
• NOW LIVE! Per Organization Password Rotation Scheduler: We recognize that different clients have varying compliance requirements. That’s why, with Network Glue, you can now set a password rotation schedule for each organization. Once enabled, this feature automatically tracks and updates Admin and User passwords, eliminating the need for manual management.
• COMING SOON! Local Password and Service Accounts Password Rotation: We’re making IT Glue your one-stop solution for all password rotation needs. Later this year, you’ll be able to rotate admin and service account passwords directly within IT Glue, eliminating the need for third-party tools.

Service delivery

To ensure your team is as efficient as possible, documentation must be available at your fingertips within the core tools you use to troubleshoot and work on tickets.

• NOW LIVE! IT Glue Password Insertion with Datto RMM and VSA: With Datto RMM and VSA, your team can now search and inject IT Glue passwords directly into remote control sessions, on top of instantly accessing IT Glue documentation, in the same pane. This streamlined access to data saves valuable minutes during each session, allowing your team to focus on successful ticket resolution.
• NOW LIVE! IT Glue Auto-Suggested Documents and Passwords in Autotask and BMS: We want to ensure IT Glue information is readily available for your techs right next to their tickets. With Auto-Suggested IT Glue Documentation in Autotask and BMS, you can view IT Glue Passwords, Flexible Assets, Documents and Checklists automatically suggested inside an Autotask or BMS ticket, allowing technicians to resolve issues more efficiently by having the information they need right at their fingertips.

• COMING SOON: Cooper Copilot for BMS: We’re excited to announce three upcoming AI-driven Cooper Copilot product updates for BMS: Smart Ticket Summary, Smart Writing Assistant and Smart Ticket Resolution. With Smart Ticket Resolution, AI automatically generates structured IT Glue checklists based on the steps taken to resolve a ticket. These checklists are seamlessly integrated into your IT documentation, ensuring that similar issues are handled efficiently in the future. Smart Ticket Summary simplifies your workflow by generating clear, concise summaries of complex email threads, so you can quickly grasp the key points and decisions without wading through endless messages. Finally, Smart Writing Assistant helps technicians create user-friendly, non-technical summaries for customers, ensuring that solutions are communicated clearly and effectively, strengthening customer relationships and reducing confusion.
• COMING SOON: BMS Collision-Free Ticketing: Our upcoming BMS Collision-Free Ticketing feature is designed to enhance collaboration in complex IT environments. This feature provides real-time visibility into who is currently working on a ticket, ensuring that your team members can see exactly who’s interacting with it at any moment. With this clarity, you can avoid duplicating efforts, prevent missed steps and resolve complex issues faster, all while keeping everyone aligned and on the same page.

Client collaboration

Elevate your customer relationships with MyGlue for day-to-day collaboration and myITprocess for assessing clients’ technology risks and conducting QBR meetings for guaranteed project approvals.

• NEW! Device Lifecycle Management: The Device Lifecycle Management feature in myITprocess simplifies asset management and ensures your devices stay up to date with ease. This highly anticipated feature allows you to seamlessly track device warranty statuses, so nothing slips through the cracks. With automated warranty tracking and management, you can say goodbye to manual tasks. The Device Lifecycle Management feature now integrates with Cisco Meraki, Lenovo, HP, and Dell, helping you and your clients manage device lifecycles effortlessly. Later this year, we’ll expand these integrations to include Sonicwall, Fortinet, Ubiquiti and more, giving you a complete view of the device lifecycle and eliminating the need for third-party solutions.
• NOW LIVE! Integrated Executive Summary: myITprocess has recently introduced Integrated Executive Summary, a powerful feature designed to simplify the reporting process for MSPs. This tool streamlines data gathering, allows for personalized report customization and ensures that all reports maintain a consistent, professional look. Today, myITprocess’ Integrated Executive Summary integrates with a wide range of tools, including Autotask, BMS, Datto RMM, Network Detective Pro, KCM, Datto BCDR, endpoint backups and many more, ensuring that all the reports you need are at your fingertips. With these integrations, the data in myITprocess’ Integrated Executive Summary is always up to date through automated processes, eliminating the need for manual data gathering. Recently, we launched an integration with Graphus, and BullPhish ID will be included next, further expanding the capabilities of myITprocess.
• COMING SOON! QBR Builder: After gathering all the data from multiple solutions, creating budgets and roadmaps for various projects, and adding important updates on progress you’ve made, organizing all of this information you need to share during your QBRs with clients is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Turning it into a client-facing report is a huge challenge for many MSPs — especially when the data is stored in various disconnected sources and mismatched formats. Understanding this pain point, we’re excited to announce that in 2024, myITprocess will launch a report builder that allows you to consolidate and organize data exactly how you want, making it easy to share with your clients.

Interested in learning more about myITprocess? Get a demo and take your QBRs to the next level HERE.

By leveraging these innovations, IT Glue continues to enhance your IT documentation experience, providing smarter, more efficient and highly integrated solutions to meet your evolving needs. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and improve your IT operations.

Interested in learning more about IT Glue? Request a 1:1 call with a documentation specialist today.

The post IT Operations Q3 2024 Product Update Webinar Summary appeared first on IT Glue.

Time is of the essence

In today’s fast-paced world, end users are more demanding than ever, expecting swift and efficient IT services. Our survey reveals that 74% of IT professionals noticed a significant increase in user expectations for faster ticket resolution over the past five years. To meet these demands and stay competitive, IT teams must leverage tools that enhance efficiency, such as integrated IT stacks, automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Over 55% of respondents highlighted the importance of easy access to IT documentation for improving ticket resolution times. Additionally, about 31% of respondents said end users now expect almost instant resolution, and around 48% cited faster, easier ticketing interfaces as crucial to delivering swift service to end users.

The documentation dilemma

Inconsistent and incomplete IT documentation remains a significant challenge for IT professionals. Information sprawl and knowledge loss caused by employee turnover are the most frequent causes. This issue impacts knowledge retention, ticket resolution times and the onboarding/offboarding process. Just under 60% of respondents struggle with incomplete or inaccurate documentation, making it the top challenge for the second consecutive year. When performing tasks without proper documentation, two-thirds of respondents reported inconsistent procedures and outcomes, and 54% noted that documentation challenges adversely affect ticket resolution times. The value of an intelligent, structured IT documentation tool has never been greater.

Missed opportunities in IT strategic planning

Our findings show that a large portion of IT professionals are not conducting regular technology assessments or IT strategic planning, missing out on opportunities for growth and improvement. The primary barrier? Prep time constraints, cited by over one-quarter of survey respondents. This is a significant issue, as an estimated 35% of respondents do not currently conduct technology assessments, an increase from last year. A feature like Integrated Executive Summary in myITprocess could make the quarterly business review (QBR) process much easier for IT professionals. This tool streamlines data gathering, allows for personalized report customization and ensures that all reports maintain a consistent, professional look, allowing IT professionals to more effectively highlight their successes and reinforce the crucial role they play in their clients’ IT strategies.

Cybersecurity: The ever-present challenge

Cybersecurity continues to dominate as the top concern for IT professionals, whether they are managing their own infrastructure or supporting clients. A striking 74% of respondents identified cybersecurity as the top IT problem or service need for their clients. Looking ahead, 52% anticipate managing cybersecurity risks as a major challenge in the coming year. Additionally, budget constraints (35%) and recruiting skilled IT staff (32%) were also highlighted as significant challenges.

The rise of AI

AI is rapidly emerging as a top priority for IT departments, reflecting its potential to revolutionize IT operations and enhance productivity. Our survey shows that 34% of respondents expect AI to be one of their top priorities in the next 12 months. Improving IT security (36%) and increasing productivity through automation (35%) are also high on the priority list for many IT professionals. Time-saving and accuracy-boosting AI tools like IT Glue Copilot will be invaluable for IT professionals in the coming years, as they eliminate manual processes, enhance accuracy and boost overall efficiency.

Discover more with IT Glue

Stay tuned for the full 2024 State of IT Report, launching in August. In it, we will dive deeper into these insights and explore the strategies IT professionals are adopting to navigate these challenges. In the meantime, see how IT Glue can streamline your operations and boost efficiency by requesting a demo.

The post Sneak Peek: 2024 State of IT Report appeared first on IT Glue.

In this post, we’ll delve into the common pain points of managing IT operations within the education sector, as highlighted by Nadir Merchant, General Manager and CTO of IT Glue, during a captivating Fireside Chat for Campus Technology. We will also explore the essential role that intelligent IT documentation and streamlined workflows play in building a future where educational institutions can thrive despite the obstacles. View the on-demand recording of the Fireside Chat here.

Streamlining IT operations is critical in today’s digital-first educational environment. By adopting intelligent documentation and streamlined processes, institutions can enhance efficiency, security and resource utilization. This approach not only tackles the common pain points but also paves the way for innovative educational experiences. Discover how IT Glue’s solutions can revolutionize your institution’s IT management.

Understanding the challenges

According to Nadir Merchant, resource constraints significantly impede IT progress within educational institutions, with limited budgets and staffing challenges at the forefront. Information silos and institutional knowledge barriers further complicate operations, creating inefficiencies and knowledge gaps. Cybersecurity emerges as another critical area of concern, with institutions becoming attractive targets due to the sensitive nature of student and staff data. The lack of cybersecurity awareness among staff and students exacerbates the vulnerability, increasing the risk of data breaches or a possible damaging, news-making cyberattack like ransomware.

Integration and scalability issues arise with the need to blend new technologies with legacy systems, often resulting in segregated data and operational inefficiencies. Institutions struggle to define workflows due to a lack of process standardization and documentation, leading to repeated work and inefficiencies.

Leveraging IT Glue for educational institutions

IT Glue’s documentation platform provides a robust solution to the myriad challenges faced by IT in educational institutions. By enabling the efficient documentation of institutional knowledge and streamlining IT operations, IT Glue enhances IT efficiency and security for schools of all sizes. The platform’s intelligent documentation system ensures comprehensive coverage of all facets of IT operations making mission-critical information readily accessible and actionable.

Here are some specific opportunities for streamlining and documenting IT operations that are often overlooked:

• Asset and inventory management: IT Glue offers a detailed IT asset management system designed to effectively organize and link various assets, simplifying the process of monitoring devices used by students and staff. This system is especially beneficial in educational environments where devices change hands frequently each semester.
• Grant tracking: With IT Glue’s efficient asset tracking and analysis of past grant funding, institutions can better manage resources and plan future investments, ensuring optimal use of financial and technological resources.
• Documentation of institutional knowledge: By preserving institutional knowledge, IT Glue helps IT departments secure and archive information so that they are protected against the risks of staff turnover or having a single point of failure.
• Seamless asset consolidation: Through seamless integrations with the most popular tech solutions on the market and the bulk of core tools used by IT professionals, IT Glue enhances information flow and decision-making processes, making it easier to manage complex IT environments.
• Enhancing onboarding processes: IT Glue simplifies the onboarding experience, providing new IT team members with a comprehensive understanding of infrastructure and operations, thereby streamlining integration into the team and ensuring they can be productive from day one.
• Improved resolution with accurate data: IT Glue’s approach to maintaining up-to-date documentation through intelligent integrations and automation not only speeds up problem resolution but also significantly lowers the likelihood of downtime, enhancing overall IT service reliability.
• Utilizing best practices intelligence: IT Glue enhances institutions’ IT documentation and operational efficiency by using a smart framework, along with a vast collection of ready-to-use templates and checklists. These resources are grounded in best practices and industry norms, providing organizations with the tools they need to effectively organize their IT environments.

By addressing these often-overlooked opportunities, IT Glue not only streamlines IT operations but also significantly enhances the strategic and operational capabilities of educational institutions’ IT teams. This comprehensive approach to IT documentation and operations management empowers educational institutions to navigate the complexities of today’s digital environment more effectively, ensuring a secure, efficient and innovative educational experience.

Innovations enabled by intelligent documentation

The real magic of intelligent documentation lies in its capacity to foster innovation and drive transformative outcomes. Here are some of the groundbreaking possibilities Nadir Merchant highlighted during the discussion:

• Streamlining and predictability in processes: Through automated workflows and detailed checklists, institutions can achieve a high degree of process consistency and efficiency. This systematic approach minimizes errors and disruptions, ensuring a smoother operation of IT functions.
• Improved resolution and uptime: Advanced workflow automations and efficient process optimization, such as expiration alerts, suggested documentation inside tickets and disaster recovery reports, ensure the integrity and reliability of your IT ecosystem. This significantly reduces system downtime and enhances the overall learning environment.
• Smart Relate: Bridging connections effortlessly: The “Smart Relate” feature exemplifies the innovation possible with intelligent documentation. By auto-mapping relationships between users and devices, especially in a Microsoft environment, Smart Relate simplifies the understanding of complex organizational IT infrastructures. This automation of relationship mapping drastically reduces the effort required to manually connect assets to one another and enhances the visibility of device-user connections, streamlining troubleshooting, onboarding and offboarding processes.

By integrating these advanced capabilities, intelligent documentation systems like IT Glue are setting a new standard for IT management in educational institutions. They enable a strategic approach to IT operations, where technology serves as a catalyst for operational excellence and educational innovation.

Embracing IT Glue: The key to transforming IT operations in educational institutions

Smart IT documentation offers educational institutions a way to navigate and mitigate the complexities of managing IT operations. As educational institutions seek to adapt to the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the importance of streamlined operations and robust cybersecurity measures cannot be overstated. IT Glue stands at the forefront of this transformation, offering a comprehensive platform that not only mitigates common pain points but also fosters a more efficient, secure and innovative educational environment.

By leveraging IT Glue’s advanced documentation capabilities and integration intelligence, schools and school systems can achieve a new level of operational efficiency and security. This strategic approach to IT asset management empowers educational institutions to focus more on their core mission of delivering exceptional educational experiences rather than being bogged down by IT operational hurdles.

Discover how IT Glue can transform your institution’s IT management by requesting a demo.

The post How to Streamline IT Operations in Educational Institutions appeared first on IT Glue.

Committed to this mission, we have been pioneering and setting the industry standard for how to manage IT documentation effectively. We leverage over 100+ integrations to bring in your critical information and an intelligence-driven framework and structure to help standardize your processes. All of this has been delivered on a platform that prioritizes security both from a platform perspective (SOC 2 Type II compliant) and a management perspective (with features such as password rotation, IP access control and Vault) to ensure your data in IT Glue remains completely secure.

IT Glue will always continue to improve upon and enhance its core functionalities to take IT documentation to the next level. The innovations and roadmap we shared on the IT Operations Q1 2024 Product Update webinar are a testament to that. 

Let’s take a look at what’s new on the IT Glue side. Meanwhile, you can also view the recording of the IT Operations Q1 2024 Product Update HERE. [Insert Webinar Recording Link]

By looking at industry needs and our customers’ feedback, we have identified the need to focus on innovation in these six categories:

Intelligence

Embracing the new industry trends of intelligence and automation is the key to working smarter — your tools should be able to handle a significant portion of the workload for you. Our latest updates focus on elevating intelligent, automated documentation to new heights by focusing on the three pillars of integration: intelligence, intelligent automation and actionable intelligence.

Integration intelligence

Over the years, we have been building a strong foundation for an intelligence hub by bringing in more and more information into IT Glue from your various tools and sources. We are moving to the next level by effectively leveraging all this consolidated information to automate workflows that will help your team in their day-to-day.

• NOW LIVE! Datto SaaS Protection Integration: Auto-document Datto SaaS Protection details for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services directly in IT Glue for complete visibility and protection of your managed IT environments.
  • COMING SOON! Datto SaaS Protection User Insights: With this new addition, IT Glue users can effortlessly access and manage critical contact details related to Datto SaaS Protection directly within their IT Glue platform. This integration ensures that all essential information, including contact names, emails and phone numbers, is seamlessly synchronized, providing a centralized hub for comprehensive data protection documentation.
• NOW LIVE! ADPassword Rotation Per Organization Scheduler: Those with a high level of compliance needs will be able to create unique rules defining rotation frequency and password complexity for each organization.
  • COMING SOON! Entra ID Password Rotation: Network Glue will let you set a schedule and rotate Entra ID passwords directly from IT Glue. ​Complimenting on-premises password rotation in IT Glue, you will no longer need to rely on third-party password rotation tools.
• NOW LIVE! SNMPv3 in Network Glue: As cybersecurity threats become more advanced, compliance requirements get stricter for your clients or organization. As a result, SNMPv3 has gained popularity among network devices and information collectors, providing assurance that all your devices will be discovered.

Discover how to automate your IT documentation at scale with Network Glue. Visit this page to learn more.

Intelligent automation

When your entire tool stack intelligently integrates with IT Glue, you will have your foundation set up, and you will be ready for intelligent automation that will skyrocket your team’s productivity.

The “Glue” of IT Glue collates all information in a single pane of glass through related items, improving operational efficiency and empowering your team to achieve predictable results when gathering information for ticket resolution. While linking related assets still involves manual efforts, this is going to change in 2024 as IT Glue is actively working on putting this task on autopilot for you.

• NOW LIVE! Datto Networking Integration: With the Datto Networking integration, you get real-time access to contextual hardware information alongside the rest of your documentation, allowing you to quickly identify the status of your hardware and troubleshoot any issues.
• NOW LIVE! Introducing a brand-new category in IT documentation — Smart Relate: Get real-time information on related items through automated relationship mapping.

• NOW LIVE! Datto Networking Access Points to Wireless Network: When you spin up a network, its Access Points will automatically get mapped to the Wireless Flexible asset inside IT Glue.
• COMING SOON! Microsoft Users to Devices: Microsoft 365 Contact will be automatically related inside IT Glue to their respective Intune devices.

Actionable intelligence

Once you consolidate and have all of your documentation connected, your team will be ready to perform effectively on tickets, projects and support. On that front, good quality documentation will help you set up predictable processes and results on your team’s daily tasks. This is where IT Glue actionable intelligence comes into play by streamlining your team’s everyday tasks.

• NOW LIVE! IT Glue Auto-Suggested Documentation in Autotask and BMS: With this feature, you can view IT Glue passwords and documents automatically suggested inside an Autotask or BMS ticket, allowing technicians to resolve issues more efficiently by having the information they need right at their fingertips.
• NOW LIVE! IT Glue Checklists in Autotask Tickets: This seamless integration allows you to access and utilize checklists directly from Autotask tickets, ensuring that critical tasks are efficiently executed every single time. This feature provides a centralized and structured approach to task management, allowing your team to stay organized and focused, reducing the time spent resolving tickets and troubleshooting.
• NOW LIVE! Datto RMM Web Remote Control and SNMP Data in IT Glue: Streamline your IT workflow with the enhanced IT Glue and Datto RMM integration. No more toggling between platforms — reduce ticket resolution times by accessing Datto RMM Web Remote and SNMP data directly within IT Glue. 

Security

In an era where digital threats loom larger than ever, ensuring the security of sensitive information is not just an obligation but a necessity. Our latest updates underscore our unwavering commitment to security, introducing advanced measures designed to fortify data protection while ensuring that your documentation journey stays effective and seamless.

• NOW LIVE! OTP Code – Copy Directly From Password List: With multifactor authentication (MFA) being increasingly leveraged all over the digital world, almost every shared password that your team uses will likely require a one-time password (OTP) code.​ Understanding the importance of OTP in your day-to-day work, we have launched a feature that allows you to copy an OTP code along with the password from the password list view. A more streamlined workflow with no more extra clicks.
• NOW LIVE! SSO for Offline Mode: Offline mode now supports offline MFA as well as single sign-on (SSO) as an authentication mechanism, ensuring a standardized authentication process for both the IT Glue web app and the Offline Mode browser extension. ​Enjoy a simplified user experience with enhanced security.
• COMING SOON! Password Complexity Selection: With this feature, you will be able to select a password complexity for password generation that is in line with your business requirements, including choosing the generated password type (e.g., passphrase), required character length and complexity.

Efficiency

We know that time is the most valuable asset for IT professionals, and that is why our latest updates are meticulously designed to optimize workflows and eliminate inefficiencies. These enhancements not only streamline processes but also empower IT teams to deliver superior service with greater speed and precision.

• NOW LIVE! New Flexible Asset Templates for IT Departments in Education — Student Asset Inventory and Grant Tracking: This is a feature that can be incredibly beneficial for IT teams in educational institutions.​ We have designed two Flexible Asset templates that will guide them through the process of documentation and structuring, offering benefits such as efficient device management, optimized resource allocation, personalized onboarding and support, and future growth planning.
• NOW LIVE! KaseyaOne SSO Auto-Provisioning: You can now automatically provision new technicians and other team members to seamlessly log in to any Kaseya module with a pre-defined role. You will no longer need to manually add new members to all the different tools in your stack one by one, wasting valuable time. 
• COMING SOON! Asset Type Selection for Runbooks: We believe that IT Glue as a platform should adapt to your needs rather than you adapting to our documentation​. For instance, when generating runbooks, you might want some extra flexibility to exclude passwords or to add certain flexible internal asset types and contacts. Soon, you will be in full control of deciding what asset types should be part of your runbook, whether for scheduled or manual generation.​

Client collaboration

In IT Glue, you can take your customer relationships to the next level by leveraging MyGlue for day-to-day collaboration and myITprocess for assessing clients’ technology risks and conducting QBR meetings for guaranteed project approvals.

Day-to-day collaboration with MyGlue

When it comes to client collaboration, MyGlue can save the day. It offers your clients a secure and flexible password management solution, allows you to securely share (SOC 2 Type 2 compliant environment) passwords or any other IT documentation with your clients that you already manage inside IT Glue, and empowers self-service through the MyGlue Help Center. ​It is particularly essential in co-managed environments as it provides transparency and allows you to collaborate on the same information so that important data is not lost.​

MyGlue was first launched as a solution for MSPs, but due to increased demand and industry evolution, we have now made it available for internal IT as well. IT departments can now leverage MyGlue to seamlessly collaborate with their end users across their organization, creating a secure company knowledge hub.

Make your IT team’s collaboration with clients and end users efficient, seamless and secure using MyGlue. Visit this page to learn more.

IT strategic planning with myITprocess

myITprocess is a tool that will guide you through running QBRs effectively. ​No longer will you need to manage a separate file and consolidate your notes manually. You can create meetings with automatically generated agendas, take notes and decisions while presenting to a client, and then automatically send a PDF file on approved projects upon the meeting’s completion. ​With myITprocess QBR management capabilities, you save at least two hours per client when it comes to scheduling and meeting management. ​

• NOW LIVE! Integrated Executive Summary: Consolidated reporting can transform your client presentations, save you time and ultimately, drive client satisfaction and business growth. With our latest feature, you can seamlessly include critical metrics from your core services and easily add these to your myITprocess presentations. Automatically include summary reports from Network Detective Pro, Autotask, Datto RMM and Datto Backup solutions in one pane directly in myITprocess, and easily present key stats of network risks, ticket resolution times and other insights on your service delivery performance. This feature will soon introduce summary reports from all IT Complete solutions, such as BMS, Graphus and more.
• COMING SOON! Device Lifecycle Management: Device lifecycle management provides MSPs with real-time asset tracking and secure access to device details. This will eliminate the need for yet another tool to find device warranty information for your clients. This feature will support Dell, Lenovo, HP and Cisco devices.​

myITprocess empowers you to elevate client relationships with client-facing executive summaries, IT roadmaps and interactive QBR presentations. Visit this page to learn more.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A)​

In today’s ever-evolving IT landscape, the M&A trend is skyrocketing, and we want to provide you with the right tools to ensure you can stay at the top of your game. The merging of two companies represents a significant and complex transition, with challenges in harmonizing disparate structures, technologies, processes and cultures. However, having all your documentation in one place will allow your team to serve your clients without dropping the ball.  ​

IT Glue offers two features that will significantly simplify documentation alignment and consolidation between two companies.

• GlueConnect: GlueConnect helps you link two IT Glue accounts together so that a user from one account can easily access, use, edit and create information in the other account. This ensures your team can easily onboard and support newly acquired customers through M&A. It also allows your help desk to be productive immediately, even before the final migration of data to a unified PSA and RMM​​.
• Leverage IT Glue’s cross-account migration service to automate the recompilation of already documented information from one account to another. This allows you to maintain all asset relationships like tags, related items and document folder structure so that you don’t have to spend time on relating assets and documents again post-acquisition.​ While this service was already available in North America, it is now available for our Australian and European data centers as well.

Predictable cash flow

When you’re running a business, it’s important to get paid quickly. ConnectBooster is the ideal solution to help you with that. Once you’ve provided your IT services, ConnectBooster helps you cut time, save money and offer customer transparency, all while ensuring predictable cash flow. We’re excited to announce some new features that will make the whole process even easier:

• NOW LIVE! ConnectBooster Integrated Service Ticketing in Autotask and BMS: Receive important ConnectBooster notifications on Autotask or BMS service boards.
• NOW LIVE! Single Sign-On to ConnectBooster directly through your preferred SSO Provider. This is enabled via KaseyaOne. 
• NOW LIVE! Quebecois French Language Support: ConnectBooster partners and customers in Quebec can now experience their ConnectBooster portal in Quebecois French. 
• COMING SOON! UK Direct Debit Support (BACS): In addition to supporting credit card payments, ConnectBooster now supports direct debit, or BACS in UK. 
• COMING SOON! Credit Card Fee Adjustments Exception: You can strategically decide which clients should be exempt from credit card surcharges.

Enjoy streamlined and optimized financial operations, a solid cash flow foundation and unparalleled peace of mind with ConnectBooster. Visit this page to learn more.

The post IT Operations Q1 2024 Product Update Webinar Summary appeared first on IT Glue.

This past quarter, our product innovation focused on these key themes: Business Continuity, Automation, Service Delivery, Client Collaboration and Automated Accounts Receivable.

Let’s take a look at what’s new! You can also view the recording of the IT Operations Q4 Product Update HERE.

Business Continuity

To ensure business continuity for any IT team, it’s crucial that your operations continue to run even in the face of potential emergencies. Additionally, your entire team must have access to your IT documentation at all times. This requires round-the-clock access to IT documentation and comprehensive backup documentation consolidated in one pane. Having access to backup details alongside the rest of your IT Glue documentation makes achieving compliance and securing your assets a breeze.

• NOW LIVE! Offline Mode for Passwords: Offline Mode for Passwords gives you the confidence to ensure business continuity — with or without internet access. With the new IT Glue Offline Mode browser extension, information, such as user permissions, OTP codes, host-proof hosting and activity logs, will be preserved when using passwords during offline access.
• NOW LIVE!  Datto SaaS Protection Integration: Auto-document Datto SaaS Protection details for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services directly in IT Glue for complete visibility and protection of your managed IT environments.
• COMING SOON! Datto SaaS Protection Contact Details: With this new addition, IT Glue users can effortlessly access and manage critical contact details related to Datto SaaS Protection directly within their IT Glue platform. This integration ensures that all essential information, including contact names, emails and phone numbers, is seamlessly synchronized, providing a centralized hub for comprehensive data protection documentation.
• NEW! Spanning Backup for Google Workspace: With our Spanning for Google Workspace integration in IT Glue, you can view your Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive backup details alongside the rest of your contact information in IT Glue. You can easily determine the user protection status for Google solutions, along with other backup details in IT Glue, such as the last backup time, status, total protected asset size and asset backup time.
• NEW! Datto BCDR DR Runbook: Similar to our Unitrends DR Runbook, Datto BCDR customers will be able to run a Disaster Recovery runbook directly from IT Glue. This feature provides you with up-to-date information about the continuity devices protected by Datto that need to be recovered, giving you confidence that disaster recovery will be executed within minutes, instead of hours.
• COMING IN Q1 2024! Endpoint Backup 4 PC Integration: Effortlessly track your last image backup date and status, delve into your image backup history and ensure data security with backup verification. Stay in control with insights into backup status, adhere to your personalized backup retention policy, and enjoy additional functionalities to enhance your IT environment.

Automation

Your tools should enable you to work smarter, handling a significant portion of the workload for you — and this is possible through automation. Smart, automated documentation can be your anchor during times of uncertainty and help you maximize efficiency daily.

• NOW LIVE! 1-Click AD Password Rotation: One of our most anticipated features, 1-Click AD Password Rotation, is now live and available to all IT Glue users with a Network Glue subscription. This feature lets you easily rotate on-premises Active Directory passwords directly in IT Glue with just one click to minimize credential stealing. The new password you rotate in IT Glue will be automatically updated in Active Directory as well, reducing human errors.
  • NEW! Password Rotation Scheduler: Ideal for users with stringent compliance requirements, this feature enables the creation of distinct rules specifying the frequency of password rotation and the complexity criteria, ensuring robust security practices tailored to specific needs.
  • NEW! Password Rotation Custom Roles: To relieve administrators of the task of managing password matching, you can now delegate the administration of the Password Rotation feature to your technicians using custom role capabilities.
  • COMING SOON! Password Rotation Per Organization Scheduler: For those with a high level of compliance needs, you will be able to create unique rules defining rotation frequency and password complexity for each organization.
• COMING Q4! SNMP V3 in Network Glue: As cybersecurity threats become more advanced, compliance requirements get stricter for your clients or organization. As a result, SNMP v3 has gained popularity among network devices and information collectors, providing assurance that all your devices will be discovered.
• NOW LIVE! Datto Networking Integration: With the Datto Networking integration, you get real-time access to contextual hardware information alongside the rest of your documentation, allowing you to quickly identify the status of your hardware and troubleshoot any issues.
  • COMING SOON! Auto-Document Wi-Fi Credentials and Wireless Flexible Assets: Wi-Fi passwords are now automatically generated and stored within IT Glue as part of a Wireless Flexible Asset for a specific location. Additionally, all associated fields are thoroughly documented and tagged for the newly acquired site or sites. To keep this data automated and up to date, any information updated inside Datto Network manager will automatically be reflected in IT Glue.
• COMING SOON! Additional Flexible Asset Templates for Education IT Departments: This upcoming functionality allows educational institutions to customize their asset templates even further, addressing the unique needs and nuances of the education sector. Now, IT teams in schools and universities can seamlessly align their documentation with the specific requirements of their IT infrastructure, ensuring a more tailored and efficient documentation process.

Service Delivery

When it comes to your service desk, you want your team to efficiently manage tickets, decrease SLAs and reduce resolution times. You can achieve this by consolidating information in your documentation tool and PSA. Doing so will also enable you to reduce the cost-of-service delivery since you will no longer be wasting time looking for data across multiple systems and platforms.

• NOW LIVE! Datto RMM SNMP Data in IT Glue: Streamline your IT workflow with the enhanced IT Glue and Datto RMM integration. No more toggling between platforms—reduce ticket resolution times by accessing Datto RMM Web Remote and SNMP data directly within IT Glue. Gain real-time insights into CPU usage, memory stats and more, all in one centralized location. The latest update eliminates three-click processes, empowering your IT team to deliver instant support with ease.
• NOW LIVE! IT Glue Password Insertion in Datto RMM and VSA: This integration enhances the efficiency of technicians by eliminating the need to switch between platforms for password retrieval. Now, you can effortlessly insert passwords from IT Glue directly into Datto RMM and VSA interfaces, streamlining the authentication process. This feature not only saves time but also ensures accuracy and security by providing quick access to the most up-to-date credentials stored in IT Glue.
• NOW LIVE! IT Glue Auto-Suggested Documents and Passwords in Autotask and BMS: With Auto-Suggested IT Glue Documentation in Autotask and BMS, you can view IT Glue Passwords and Documents automatically suggested inside an Autotask or BMS ticket, allowing technicians to resolve issues more efficiently by having the information they need right at their fingertips.
  • NEW! IT Glue Auto-Suggested Flexible Assets in Autotask: In addition to seeing Documents and Passwords inside Autotask Tickets, we are adding an ability that allows you to set up rules for Flexible Assets, ensuring your team has all the relevant IT Glue documentation they need to resolve issues and close tickets faster. This is designed to intelligently recommend assets as you work within Autotask, ensuring that your documentation remains comprehensive and up-to-date without the need for manual input.
• NEW! IT Glue Embedded Checklists in Autotask: This feature seamlessly integrates checklists directly into Autotask Accounts, streamlining your workflow and ensuring that critical tasks are never overlooked, and can be easily replicated. With the ability to access and complete checklists within the Autotask environment, you can enhance collaboration, reduce errors and maintain a structured approach to your IT processes.
• COMING IN Q1 2024! IT Glue Checklists in Autotask Tickets: This seamless integration allows you to access and utilize checklists directly from Autotask Tickets, ensuring that critical tasks are efficiently executed every single time. This feature provides a centralized and structured approach to task management, allowing your team to stay organized and focused, reducing the time spent resolving tickets and troubleshooting.

Interested in learning more about IT Glue? Request a 1:1 call with a documentation specialist HERE.

Client Collaboration

In IT Glue, you can take your customer relationships to the next level by leveraging MyGlue for day-to-day collaboration and myITprocess for assessing clients’ technology risks and conducting QBR meetings for guaranteed project approvals.

• NOW LIVE! Compliance Manager Risks in myITprocess: Automatically turn risks identified in Compliance Manager into client-facing IT roadmap items for fast budget, timeline and project approvals. This integration helps you keep your client’s IT environments secure by providing you with complete visibility into their compliance risks alongside the rest of their technology misalignments in myITprocess.
• NOW LIVE! Unified Executive Summary Reporting: Consolidated reporting can transform your client presentations, save you time and ultimately, drive client satisfaction and business growth. With our latest feature, you can seamlessly include critical metrics from your core services and easily add these to your myITprocess presentations. Automatically include summary reports from Network Detective Pro, Autotask and Datto RMM in one pane directly in myITprocess, and easily present key stats of network risks, ticket resolution times and other insights on your service delivery performance. This feature will soon introduce summary reports from all IT Complete solutions, such as Datto BCDR, BMS, Graphus and more.

• COMING SOON! Device Lifecycle Management: Device lifecycle management provides MSPs with real-time asset tracking and secure access to device details. This will eliminate the need for yet another tool to find device warranty information for your clients. This feature will support Dell, Lenovo, HP and Cisco devices.

Interested in learning more about myITprocess? Get a demo and take your QBRs to the next level HERE.

Automated Accounts Receivable

When it comes to getting paid, cash is king. With business owners having to wear many hats, it is important that business documentation, task automation, security and client collaboration are as streamlined as possible. Once you have completed your IT services, getting paid is the next crucial step — and that is where ConnectBooster comes in. ConnectBooster has been proven to cut time, save money and offer customer transparency all while ensuring predictable cash flow. To make things as seamless as possible, we are excited to introduce some new features:

• NOW LIVE! Dashboard Customization: With Dashboard Customizations, you will be able to customize your ConnectBooster Partner Portal to prioritize what you want to see. You will have the ability to select what analytics you would like to be displayed first, from Aging A/R total to Average Days Past Due.
• COMING SOON! PDF Invoice Option: This feature allows users to create invoices in a standardized, easily shareable and printable format. With the PDF invoice option, ConnectBooster users can efficiently distribute invoices to clients, facilitating seamless communication and record-keeping in a universally accessible file format.
• COMING SOON! Customer Checklist: The main goal of ConnectBooster is to help you grow and scale your business, but sometimes onboarding clients can involve a lot of manual and time-consuming work. For this reason, we created a checklist to help you structure and standardize the way you onboard so you don’t forget the important things.

Interested in learning more about ConnectBooster?

The post IT Operations Q4 2023 Product Update Webinar Summary appeared first on IT Glue.

During the IT Operations Q3 Product Update on August 22, 2023, we shared some exciting new features and updates released over the past few months. We also shared a product roadmap and a list of things you can expect from IT Glue, myITprocess and ConnectBooster in the near and far future.

This past quarter, our product innovation focused on these key themes: Business Continuity, Automation, Service Delivery, Client Collaboration and Automated Accounts Receivable.

Let’s take a look at what’s new! You can also view the recording of the IT Operations Q3 Product Update HERE.

Business Continuity

To ensure business continuity for any IT team, it’s crucial that your operations continue to run even in the face of potential emergencies. Additionally, your entire team must have access to your IT documentation at all times. This requires round-the-clock access to IT documentation and comprehensive backup documentation consolidated in one pane. Having access to backup details alongside the rest of your IT Glue documentation makes achieving compliance and securing your assets a breeze.

• COMING AUGUST 28! SSO Access Control Enhancement — Bypass Capability: The SSO Access Control feature allows you to enforce the use of SSO login for IT Glue should you wish to avoid local IT Glue logins. Coming soon, users on the SSO bypass list will be able to log in with SSO or with local credentials in case of an emergency.
• NEW! Password Export and Import With OTP Secret Key: With the IT Glue OTP feature, you can seamlessly access the OTP Secret Key, making the use of team-shared passwords easy and secure. OTP Secret Keys also allow you to import and export passwords, making onboarding a breeze and ensuring you can view crucial information even if you lose access to IT Glue.
• NOW LIVE! Offline Mode for Passwords (Beta Access): Offline Mode for Passwords gives you the confidence to ensure business continuity — with or without internet access. With the new IT Glue Offline Mode browser extension, information, such as user permissions, OTP codes, host-proof hosting and activity logs, will be preserved when using passwords during offline access.
• NEW! Datto SaaS Protection Integration: Auto-document Datto SaaS Protection details for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services directly in IT Glue for complete visibility and protection of your managed IT environments.
• NEW! Spanning Backup for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365: With Spanning for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace integration in IT Glue, you can view your Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Drive backup details alongside the rest of your contact information in IT Glue. You can easily determine the user protection status for both Google and Microsoft solutions, along with other backup details in IT Glue, such as the last backup time, status, total protected asset size and asset backup time.
• COMING SOON! Datto BCDR DR Runbook: Similar to our Unitrends DR Runbook, Datto BCDR customers will be able to run a Disaster Recovery runbook directly from IT Glue. This feature provides you with up-to-date information about the continuity devices protected by Datto that need to be recovered, giving you confidence that disaster recovery will be executed within minutes, instead of hours.

Automation

Your tools should enable you to work smarter, handling a significant portion of the workload for you — and this is possible through automation. Smart, automated documentation can be your anchor during times of uncertainty and help you maximize efficiency daily.

• NOW LIVE! 1-Click AD Password Rotation: One of our most anticipated features, 1-Click AD Password Rotation, is now live and available to all IT Glue users with a Network Glue subscription. This feature lets you easily rotate on-premises Active Directory passwords directly in IT Glue with just one click to minimize credential stealing. The new password you rotate in IT Glue will be automatically updated in Active Directory as well, reducing human errors.
  • COMING SOON! Password Rotation Scheduler: For those with a high level of compliance needs, you will be able to create unique rules defining rotation frequency and password complexity for each organization.
  • COMING SOON! Password Rotation Custom Roles: To relieve administrators of the task of managing password matching, you can now delegate the administration of the Password Rotation feature to your technicians using custom role capabilities.
• COMING Q4! SNMP V3 in Network Glue: As cybersecurity threats become more advanced, compliance requirements get stricter for your clients or organization. As a result, SNMP v3 has gained popularity among network devices and information collectors, providing assurance that all your devices will be discovered.
• With the Datto Networking integration, you get real-time access to contextual hardware information alongside the rest of your documentation, allowing you to quickly identify the status of your hardware and troubleshoot any issues.
  • COMING SOON! Auto-Document Wi-Fi Credentials and Wireless Flexible Assets: Wi-Fi passwords are now automatically generated and stored within IT Glue as part of a Wireless Flexible Asset for a specific location. Additionally, all associated fields are thoroughly documented and tagged for the newly acquired site or sites. To keep this data automated and up to date, any information updated inside Datto Network manager will automatically be reflected in IT Glue.
• COMING AUGUST 28, 2023! Asset Archive Automation — Workflow Notifications: To further ensure operational efficiency and allow you to concentrate on essential tasks, IT Glue will now automatically remove all archived assets from your workflow rules. This ensures you won’t receive any unnecessary notifications or false alarms.
  • COMING SOON! Asset Archive Automation — Runbooks: You will soon also be able to automatically remove archived assets from your expiration list and runbooks.

Service Delivery

When it comes to your service desk, you want your team to efficiently manage tickets, decrease SLAs and reduce resolution times. You can achieve this by consolidating information in your documentation tool and PSA. Doing so will also enable you to reduce the cost-of-service delivery since you will no longer be wasting time looking for data across multiple systems and platforms.

• COMING SOON! IT Glue Auto-Suggested Flexible Assets in Autotask: With Auto-Suggested IT Glue Documentation in Autotask and BMS, you can view IT Glue Passwords and Documents automatically suggested inside an Autotask or BMS ticket, allowing technicians to resolve issues more efficiently by having the information they need right at their fingertips. In addition to seeing Documents and Passwords inside Autotask Tickets, we are adding an ability that allows you to set up rules for Flexible Assets, ensuring your team has all the relevant IT Glue documentation they need to resolve issues and close tickets faster.
• COMING SOON! Datto RMM Web Remote Launcher in IT Glue: To enhance the integration capabilities with Datto RMM, you will soon be able to initiate a web-based remote device session directly from IT Glue. This will be especially useful if your team happens to be using IT Glue when troubleshooting is needed.
• COMING SOON! Datto RMM Managed Networking Devices in IT Glue: Datto RMM offers a distinct capability to seamlessly discover both machines and network devices. Soon, you’ll be able to centralize all this information within IT Glue. This means you’ll have the ability to import vital SNMP details for networking devices, including information like uptime, serial numbers, OID and names for switches, firewalls and routers. These details will be updated in real-time within IT Glue as soon as you load the page.

Interested in learning more about IT Glue? Request a 1:1 call with a documentation specialist HERE.

Client Collaboration

In IT Glue, you can take your customer relationships to the next level by leveraging MyGlue for day-to-day collaboration and myITprocess for assessing clients’ technology risks and conducting QBR meetings for guaranteed project approvals.

• NOW LIVE! Automated QBR Management in myITprocess: Streamline your QBR meetings with myITprocess by automating the process of sending meeting invitations and creating agendas. After the meeting, post-meeting reports will be sent directly to attendees’ email inboxes. This automation removes the need for time-consuming administrative QBR tasks, making it easier to gain client cooperation and hold them accountable. This streamlined management of your meetings, from beginning to end, allows you to concentrate on discovering missed revenue opportunities and nurturing profitable client relationships.
• NOW LIVE! Autotask Automated Opportunity Creation in myITprocess: Automatically turn client-accepted myITprocess recommendations into Autotask Opportunities. This way, you can clearly track the progress of each recommendation and ensure the lifecycle of any project is seamlessly handled and executed on time, every single time.
• NOW LIVE! Compliance Manager Integration in myITprocess: Automatically turn risks identified in Compliance Manager into client-facing IT roadmap items for fast budget, timeline and project approvals. This integration helps you keep your client’s IT environments secure by providing you with complete visibility into their compliance risks alongside the rest of their technology misalignments in myITprocess.
• COMING SOON! Network Detective Pro Integration in myITprocess: Effortlessly link Network Detective Pro Executive Summaries to myITprocess QBR invitations and seamlessly present them alongside your client-facing myITprocess presentations within your IT Roadmap. This will make it easier for clients to visualize, track and understand different project proposals and quickly get them on board.

Interested in learning more about myITprocess? Get a demo and take your QBRs to the next level HERE.

Automated Accounts Receivable

When it comes to getting paid, cash is king. With business owners having to wear many hats, it is important that business documentation, task automation, security and client collaboration are as streamlined as possible. Once you have completed your IT services, getting paid is the next crucial step — and that is where ConnectBooster comes in. ConnectBooster has been proven to cut time, save money and offer customer transparency all while ensuring predictable cash flow. To make things as seamless as possible, we are excited to introduce some new features:

• COMING SOON! Customer Onboarding Checklist: The main goal of ConnectBooster is to help you grow and scale your business, but sometimes onboarding clients can involve a lot of manual and time-consuming work. For this reason, we created a checklist to help you structure and standardize the way you onboard so you don’t forget the important things.
• COMING SOON! Notifications to Autotask and Kaseya BMS: To better streamline internal admin workflows, we are offering the ability to create a ticket on a service board in addition to or in place of an email. Some of these will also be capable of automatic resolution, helping save you time.
• NOW LIVE! Dashboard Customization: With Dashboard Customizations, you will be able to customize your ConnectBooster Partner Portal to prioritize what you want to see. You will have the ability to select what analytics you would like to be displayed first, from Aging A/R total to Average Days Past Due.

Interested in learning more about ConnectBooster?

The post IT Operations Q3 2023 Product Update Webinar Summary appeared first on IT Glue.

For this past quarter, our product innovation focused on these main themes:

• Platform and Security
• Business Continuity
• Automation
• Services Delivery
• Client Collaboration
• Automated Accounts Receivable

Let’s take a look at what’s new! You can also view the recording of the IT Operations Q2 Product Update HERE.

Platform and Security

Not only is IT Glue SOC-2 Type II compliant, but it also has security features, such as enforced MFA, IP Access Control, SSO, permissions and Password Vault, that once set up will allow you to have confidence in protecting your most important assets.

Coming in June 2023, we are launching a security-focused workflow, Password Threat Notification, that will notify you if a certain amount of passwords were accessed within a specific amount of time. This will give you peace of mind, knowing that if there is any suspicious activity for your passwords, you will automatically be alerted and can take immediate action to ensure maximum protection.

Business Continuity

To ensure business continuity for any IT team, you need the ability to continue running your operations despite potential emergencies by enabling your entire team to have access to your IT documentation at any time.

• Offline Mode for Passwords — Beta Access NOW LIVE: Access to passwords is mission-critical for IT professionals to do their job. Offline Mode for Passwords gives you the confidence to ensure business continuity — with or without internet access. With the new IT Glue Offline Mode browser extension, information such as user permissions, OTP codes, host-proof hosting and activity logs will be preserved when using passwords during offline access.
• COMING SOON! Automated Account Backup With OTP Secret Key: IT Glue Account Exports will soon include One-Time Password (OTP) Secret Keys, ensuring business continuity at all times. You can have peace of mind knowing that if you lose access to IT Glue, you will still be able to get the OTP Secret Key, so your team can still obtain crucial information to carry out their tasks.

Bringing backup details next to the rest of your IT Glue documentation makes compliance and keeping your assets secure a breeze.

• COMING SOON! Spanning Backup for Google Workspace: With Spanning Backup for Microsoft 365, you can view your Microsoft Mail, Calendar, Contacts and OneDrive backup details altogether alongside user information that’s already in IT Glue. You can soon expect Spanning Backup details from your Google Workspace to be readily available in IT Glue as well, all in one pane, further enhancing your backup documentation.
• COMING SOON! Datto SaaS Protection: Auto-document Datto SaaS Protection details for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace services directly in IT Glue for complete visibility and protection of your managed IT environments.

Learn more about the Datto Continuity, Unitrends and Spanning integrations in IT Glue HERE.

Automation

Your tools must enable you to work smarter and should do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. This is possible through automation — smart, automated documentation can be your anchor during times of uncertainty and help you maximize efficiency daily.

• One of our most anticipated features — 1-Click AD Password Rotation — is now live and available to all IT Glue users with a Network Glue subscription. This feature lets you easily rotate on-premises Active Directory passwords directly in IT Glue with just one click to mitigate credential stealing. The new password you rotate in IT Glue will automatically update in Active Directory, reducing human errors.
  • COMING SOON! Password Rotation Scheduler: For those with the demand for a high level of compliance needs, you will be able to create unique rules defining rotation frequency and password complexity for each organization.
• With the Datto Networking integration, you get real-time access to contextual hardware information next to the rest of your documentation, so you can quickly identify the status of your hardware and troubleshoot any issues.
• In IT Glue, you can now manually archive assets like configurations, contacts, flexible assets and passwords. Later this year, with Asset Archive Automation, you will be able to automate this process, making you and your team more efficient. In addition, we plan to remove any workflows that were previously set up for archived assets.

Service Delivery

When it comes to your service desk, you want your team to efficiently manage tickets, decrease SLAs and reduce resolution times. You can achieve this by consolidating your information in your documentation tool and PSA. It will also enable you to reduce the cost of service delivery because you no longer have to waste time looking for data across multiple systems and platforms.

• With Auto-Suggested IT Glue Documentation in Autotask and BMS, you can view IT Glue Passwords and Documents automatically suggested inside an Autotask or BMS ticket, allowing technicians to resolve issues more efficiently by having the information they need right at their fingertips.
• With IT Glue Embedded Checklists in Autotask and BMS, your technicians can standardize help desk activities and ensure they are accurately troubleshooting any issues, each time.
• With the Datto RMM and VSA 10 integrations, your technicians can easily access the IT Glue passwords and documents that are needed to remote control a device, investigate a problem or execute a patch update.

Interested in learning more about IT Glue? GET A DEMO

Client Collaboration

In IT Glue, you can take your customer relationships to the next level by leveraging MyGlue for day-to-day collaboration and myITprocess for assessing clients’ technology risks and conducting QBR meetings for guaranteed project approvals.

• NOW LIVE: Automated QBR Management in myITprocess: Conduct QBR meetings effortlessly with automated meeting invitations and agenda creation directly from within myITprocess, and post-meeting reports delivered straight to the attendees’ inboxes. Save time by eliminating QBR administrative tasks, easily get client buy-in and hold clients accountable with effortless meeting management from start to finish so you can focus on uncovering missed revenue opportunities and cultivating profitable client relationships.
• NOW LIVE: Autotask Automated Opportunity Creation in myITprocess: Automatically turn client-accepted myITprocess recommendations into Autotask Opportunities so you can clearly see their progress and ensure the lifecycle of any project is seamlessly handled and timely executed, every single time.
• Coming Soon! Compliance Manager integration in myITprocess: Automatically turn risks identified in Compliance Manager into a client-facing IT roadmap for fast budget, timeline and project approvals. This integration helps you keep your clients’ IT environments secure by having complete visibility into their compliance risks along with the rest of their technology misalignments in myITprocess.
• Coming Soon! Network Detective Pro integration in myITprocess: Easily attach Network Detective Pro Executive Summaries to myITprocess QBR invites and present them alongside the rest of your IT roadmap with the client-facing myITprocess presentations. This will make it easier for clients to visualize, track and understand different project proposals and quickly get them on board.

Interested in learning more about myITprocess? GET A DEMO

Automated Accounts Receivable

When it comes to getting paid, Cash is King! With business owners having to wear many hats, it’s important that things are streamlined as much as possible. This is applicable to documentation, automation, security and client collaboration. Once you have completed your service, getting paid is the next crucial step and that is where ConnectBooster comes in. ConnectBooster has been proven to cut time, save money and offer customer transparency all while ensuring predictable cash flow. To make things as seamless as possible, we are excited to be introducing some new features:

• Coming Soon! Customer Onboarding checklist: The main goal of ConnectBooster is to grow your business, but sometimes onboarding clients can be a lot of manual mundane work, so we created a checklist to help you structure and standardize the way you onboard so you don’t forget the important stuff and make it more systematic.
• Coming Soon! AutoPay & Customer Notifications: To get even more out of your solution we are excited about the AutoPay & Customer Notifications Scheduler. This will give you the ability to select when to process autopay, and when to send out certain notifications.
• Coming Soon! Dashboard Customization: With Dashboard Customizations, you will be able to customize your ConnectBooster Partner Portal to prioritize what you want to see. You will have the ability to select what analytics you would like to be displayed first from Aging A/R total to Average Days Past Due.

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If you are a mature Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a key metric to measure. Why? An SLA commits your business to an acceptable level of service to your clients.

Few things drive a client crazier than submitting a ticket and having it disappear into a black hole. Non-responsive or ad hoc support are short roads to dissatisfied clients. Agreed upon SLAs helps frame expectations and communication helps manage these expectations. Once you have SLAs in place you are also in a position to work towards consistently exceeding them in order to wow your clients with world-class service.

Why are SLAs important to your customers?

An SLA is typically written into the contract, and in some cases, the contract may have a cost claw back. In the IT service space, this is often not the case because of the general unpredictable and limited control that the service provider has in dealing with another company’s infrastructure. Regardless, the SLA is a contractual obligation and repeated breach of this agreement is cause for termination of the agreement.

The importance of having an SLA is to have the client and provider agree on what the expected turnaround times for support should be. Typically this is:

• 8hrs for most support issues
• 4hrs for urgent issues
• 1hr for emergency issues

Once defined it is important that the SLAs are communicated to the primary client contacts as well as the users. This leveling of expectations can curb issues where someone submits a ticket and 1 hour later goes storming off to their boss’s office when it hasn’t been fixed yet.

Never make your customer wait!

As an IT provider, managed or not, you are a service organization first and a technology company second.

How long a person waits for service is a very tangible measure of the quality of service a person receives. Think of all the places that are notorious for poor services, the DMV, Call-Centers, food service. “We’ve waited 15 minutes and no one has come to the table.” “I’m number 214. They are currently seeing number 167.” “We are experiencing higher than normal call volumes.” I have a question, when are they not experiencing higher than normal call volumes? The theme is the same, people hate waiting. People especially hate waiting when they have no feedback to manage their expectations.

Communication is critical to effectively managing expectations around SLAs. If you are a ConnectWise user, Brightgauge has a great visual guide on setting up SLAs, and provides a great monitor of SLA performance.

Always work to overachieve on your SLAs

• World-class IT service companies achieve SLA >90% of the time
• Average SLA achievement is 75%
• Underperforming companies are around 50% and below

With this as a reference, let’s explore strategies to help you overachieve in the eyes of the client.

1. Manage the psychological contract

If a user is upset about how long something took to get fixed, NEVER dismiss their concern saying, “This was completed within the SLA.” The SLA is only ever useful before a problem exists or in an after-action review.

Communication is the key to managing the psychological contract with the user. Acknowledging a support request with an auto-responder does little to dampen the client’s concern, it only acknowledges that an email or ticket submission was received. Auto-responders should not be used as a measure of response time.

Direct contact is a far better measure. It may look something like this, “Hi Jane, I understand from your ticket that you’re having trouble opening an attachment. I’ve scheduled a tech to review your request and you should hear back from them in 2 hours.” You’ve now acknowledged the issue and scheduled time for follow up. This allows the user to expect when they will hear from someone.

The trick to this is maintaining that expectation and following through with the communication. Regular updates will buy you grace from the user, but not indefinitely. One of the best ways to manage this accountability to tickets is a dispatcher. Someone that can focus on juggling support requests, who those requests get delegated to and assisting with client communication.

2. Repeatable process

First call resolution is the best way to streamline your techs time and your clients time. The most powerful way to manage this is with well-structured documentation and standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Most of the issues that techs face are not some rare event that no one has ever seen before. In fact, most support issues are recurrences of a previous issue. Having a clean and easy to navigate documentation system like IT Glue drastically reduces the burden on techs of searching for the information.

SOPs act as a script for resolving typical issues or executing procedures. So rather than each tech re-inventing the wheel for each problem, a repository of information exists for them to reference. This is especially important in:

• System builds (server/laptop/desktop)
• Application installation
• User creation/decommission

These procedures get done a lot and have detailed requirements. Just allowing staff to wing it on each one will inevitably lead to error, which increases the time required through re-work or escalation. Missing details from an SOP can also create a poor perception with a client. “You guys have done this dozen of times. How come you get it wrong so often?”

Distill the knowledge from your team’s experience into SOPs. This will reduce the time spent looking for a solution and therefore the resolve that issue.

3. Escalation path

A defined escalation process is important to ensure someone doesn’t end up burning a bunch of time on an issue that might be out of their capability. Staff should know how long they should spend on an issue before asking for help or passing the issue up to the next support tier.

Great team members will often hold a high degree of personal accountability for the issues that they are given. They truly want to be able to solve the problem and help the client.

The dispatcher also plays a support role in keeping the team accountable to the escalation times and ensuring communication to the client. The service manager should be reviewing the tickets that miss the SLA and determine if there is an opportunity to update or create an SOP that would make that type of ticket easier in the future.

4. Low costs, high value

Some issues will require escalation, but a focused effort on reducing the number of escalations is important to drive up your “first call resolution” numbers. This strategy will facilitate hiring more entry-level (tier 1) technicians.

Here are the costs to demonstrate why this is important:

• Tier 3s cost $75,000 – $80,000 a year. They tend to deal with complex issues and thus close fewer tickets in a day, say 5-8 tickets
• Tier 1s cost $35,000 – $40,000 a year. They should be closing 15-20 tickets a day

Therefore: 2 x Tier 1 techs who cost no more than $80,000 = 40 Tickets per day. This means the tier 1 approach is guaranteed to drive better results and help achieve your SLA goals.

Clean and logical documentation is critical to ensure the tier 1 technicians are being set up for success. It starts with team member onboarding. One of the reasons more seasoned technicians can resolve issues is that they know where to look. A good documentation system will ensure techs have a clear view of the client environment, assets, dependencies, and other related information. There are a number of options available such as Dropbox, Google Drive, using your RMM or PSA, or IT Glue.

The on-ramp time for new people that have access to the collective knowledge of the team will also be dramatically higher. This is preferable to new folks having to rely on a steady drip of experience with each environment.

Finally, since the team knowledge is captured,  the tier 1s are more likely to be able to close issues on the first call. These quick closes mean SLAs are exceeded, clients are happy that they don’t have to wait and high-performance team members feel the success of blasting through issues while getting high-quality feedback scores on their work.

To find out how IT Glue can help you master your documentation and hit your SLAs with ease, sign up for a demo or get in touch with your Account Manager.

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IT Glue is a proven, best practices-driven IT documentation platform packed with features designed to help you maximize the efficiency, transparency and consistency of your team. With so much of your business productivity lost each day in search of vital information, let IT Glue secure this information and start Freeing Minds.

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