1. Pesky printer problems

Printers, notorious for triggering frustration, are a common source of technical issues. In fact, they incite such strong emotions that The Washington Post dedicated an entire week to exploring consumers’ intense dislike for them! MSPs can ensure their technicians are well-prepared by equipping them with passwords, tips, tricks and documented quirks for each printing environment. This empowers technicians to swiftly resolve printing-related problems.

2. User management and onboarding

Smooth employee onboarding is essential for both the success of new team members and overall customer satisfaction. By utilizing the Ticket Type rule variable, technicians can automatically access the necessary procedures, passwords and flexible assets when working on “New Employee” ticket types. This ensures a smooth and seamless onboarding process.

3. Secure access to remote services

In the current hybrid work environment, secure access to company resources is paramount. Technicians need quick access to VPN and secure edge information, especially when employees are away from the corporate network. Secure Edge ensures that end users can access corporate networks with the same security standards. These standards are applied no matter where users are connecting from. By using the Ticket Title or Ticket Description field to identify keywords like “VPN” or “Remote Access,” technicians can efficiently retrieve VPN flexible assets, documents and passwords.

4. Install or access Microsoft 365 services

Troubleshooting Microsoft 365 services often begins with confirming user licenses. Thanks to IT Glue’s integration with the Microsoft platform to automatically track Flexible Assets, Autotask users can create a rule that identifies keywords like “Microsoft,” “Office,” “Power Bi” or “Azure” in Ticket Titles or Descriptions, automatically displaying the Microsoft 365 License flexible asset. Your technicians will never have to jump through hoops to see what license they’re assigned again. To explore this integration further, you can read our blog post “Announcing Azure AD and Intune Integrations,” which showcases how you can consolidate and automate documentation of various asset types in your Microsoft environment with IT Glue.

5. Line of business application access

Different industries rely on unique sets of applications. Technicians may not be as familiar with these specialized applications as they are with Microsoft, Zoom or Google Workplace. By identifying keywords in tickets related to specific applications such as “Amicus,” “DealerSocket,” “Dentrix,” “Mindbody” or “Sage,” technicians can easily access Application flexible assets and the appropriate passwords, leading to quicker ticket resolution.

The Autotask and IT Glue integration has revolutionized service desk operations by eliminating information hunts and streamlining the process. Technicians benefit from auto-suggested IT Glue Documents, Passwords, and Flexible Assets directly in Autotask tickets, saving time and improving service quality.

Schedule a demo of IT Glue to see how this powerful integration can transform your service desk.

The post Supercharging Service Desk Operations with IT Glue and Autotask Integration appeared first on IT Glue.

There are two solutions that every MSP needs to conduct their everyday business — their documentation tool and their PSA. That’s why bringing these two together creates a more seamless experience for everyone involved, resulting in more fulfilled colleagues and happier customers.  

The Autotask and IT Glue integration is the ultimate pairing. It enables you to improve technician workflows, decrease ticket resolution time and maximize efficiency by streamlining repeated tasks and easily accessing the critical information needed to support clients.  

Consistently provide top-level service and resolve tickets faster

With this integration, you can quickly and efficiently resolve issues and reduce ticket volume so that your technicians can provide the best possible service while maximizing their time. As a result, all your business operations become more seamless. 

By consolidating the information from your documentation tool and PSA, you can reduce the cost-of-service delivery because you no longer have to waste time looking for data across multiple systems and platforms. 

You also get a quick view of all your data because all your critical information is centrally available in one place, with two-way syncs for organizations, contacts and configurations. One-way syncs are available for locations and tickets between Autotask and IT Glue. 

IT Glue Passwords and Documents in Autotask Ticket

By putting IT Glue Passwords and Documents directly in an Autotask Ticket, you reduce the need for technicians to leave the Autotask Service Desk to find the knowledge they need to resolve the request. 

IT Glue information is dynamically shown on tickets based on configured auto-documentation rules to ensure technicians use the correct passwords, processes and procedures pertaining to the ticket they are working on. This helps even the newest team members crush their tickets quickly and accurately.  

There are three out-of-the-box auto-documentation rules available to you by default to help you get started: 

• New hire onboarding 
• Microsoft 365 
• Printer management 

Do you have a specific process that you need technicians to follow every single time or a simple fix that everyone forgets about? Add these as custom rules to make sure you don’t waste time.  

Although different organizations and teams have different needs, there are endless instances where auto-suggested documentation can be extremely helpful. We encourage you to create custom rules to personalize auto-suggestions for your specific needs and take your service desk efficiency to the next level.  

The rules can be based on various Autotask ticket attributes, such as title, description, tags, status, priority, queue, issue and sub-issue type. The first step is determining where you spend the most time and then building repeatable processes. 

Tip: Review the last 60 to 90 days of service requests in Autotask to identify patterns of requests. For the top issue types, make sure that:

1. You have all the necessary information documented in IT Glue for each customer to solve these requests.

2. You create related items between the assets so they can easily be found in IT Glue.

3. You create custom rules, so the documentation is automatically displayed on Autotask tickets that pertain to that request.

IT Glue Checklists in Autotask Accounts 

Through the Autotask integration, you can also easily view IT Glue Checklists directly inside Autotask Accounts, helping you standardize account activities and ensuring they are accurately performed each time.  

Standardize Autotask Account-level activities with IT Glue SOP-focused checklists, such as onsite visits or QBR presentations. 

All IT Glue checklists associated with the Autotask Account are automatically surfaced and can be viewed and managed directly in Autotask. 

Learn more about the Autotask integration in this Knowledge Base article.

Want to learn more about the Autotask integration? Get a demo to see it in action.

The post Supercharge Service Desk Operations With IT Glue appeared first on IT Glue.

Since your documentation in IT Glue is meaningful and includes a variety of different assets, you can leverage it to automate your day-to-day tasks. Purposeful automation that is focused on your core business workflows can save valuable time and boost efficiency. When your billing, ticketing and vCIO solutions work together with IT documentation, you don’t ever have to go back to doing these tasks manually.

In this blog, we’ll explore how IT Glue helps you automate your core business processes.

Automated Billing: BMS

What would you rather spend your time on – stressing about billing for completed services or supporting your clients to bring in more revenue? We’re willing to bet it is the latter. That is exactly what you can achieve with IT Glue’s integration with BMS.

You can leverage the already documented IT Glue Flexible Assets to automate usage-based cloud services billing in BMS. Instead of spending hours each month manually reconciling cloud services provisioned with spreadsheets and then manually updating the recurring service contracts to accurately bill customers, you can leverage the already documented IT Glue Flexible Assets to automate billing.

BMS will automatically pull the IT Glue Flexible Asset quantity directly to the contract you’ve added the service to, and you have the option to change the quantity in IT Glue as needed.

Live Ticketing: BMS and Vorex

With the sheer increase in the complexity and volume of IT tickets, technicians need a simpler way to manage their tickets and support users. Simplifying the ticketing process is a priority for IT Glue, and you can achieve that with Live Ticketing in both BMS and Vorex.

With Live Ticketing, you can now choose to work in either IT Glue or BMS/Vorex based on your preference. Since you are working in a platform you are most familiar with, you can boost your efficiency in ticket resolution. You can create, view, assign, update and close a ticket on both these platforms.

In addition to offering a similar look and feel, both these platforms offer the same in-line editing capabilities and allow technicians to update and log time in accordance with their work practices.

Technicians can also save a lot of time by integrating with BMS or Vorex as all relevant IT Glue information is now auto-suggested to them. As an IT Glue administrator, you can now create workflows that provide relevant context to any BMS or Vorex ticket, so you can easily access suggested related IT Glue documentation for quick reference. This saves you the trouble of manually searching for KB articles or SOPs when working on an IT ticket.

Automated vCIO: myITprocess

With the latest update to the myITprocess integration, you can now automate technology assessment processes with the ability to search and link IT Glue Configurations and Flexible Assets directly in myITprocess and save hours per client.

As a result, you no longer have to deal with copies of data that are already stored in your other tools. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about upkeeping information in several places. This integration will also let you automatically track any changes to your client’s environment and provide you with the ability to easily identify key projects for high revenue opportunities.

Automation is the way forward

The more processes you automate, the fewer resources you waste on repetitive, manual tasks. Documentation is not just about storing and retrieving information. By leveraging IT Glue assets the right way, you can do so much more in terms of automating your business processes and boosting efficiency. The automation of your billing, ticketing and vCIO processes, with the help of IT Glue documentation, stands testament to that.

To learn more about how IT Glue can automate your core business processes, request a demo.

Get your demo today!

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The ticketing integration for Kaseya BMS in IT Glue allows users to see all their existing tickets from BMS directly in the IT Glue window without ever having to switch between the two platforms. Quickly looking at relevant information stored in IT Glue to resolve a BMS ticket in that same window is a significant timesaver for IT technicians and help desk specialists.

Click to Download Feature Sheet!

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If you are an MSP, after-hours work is just a part of your job description since people expect IT to work 24/7 no matter what. While after-hours MSP support may sound daunting, it doesn’t have to be a painful process. With a well-managed service desk and some proper planning, you can come up with a strong after-hours support policy and meet your clients’ expectations.

Let’s find out how you can do that.

Define the Scope of Your Work

The first step in coming up with an after-hours support policy involves establishing the scope of your work, which involves identifying your clients’ requirements and defining what can and cannot be done after business hours.

If any of your clients operate 24 hours a day, they need 24/7 support since they cannot afford any downtime. Likewise, if you support businesses that operate in different time zones across the world, you definitely need to provide 24-hour MSP support. In these situations, your support must be high-level and must be prepared to handle all major issues. On the other hand, businesses with regular work hours may not need such extensive support.

Establish Your Support Process

The next step involves establishing a clear process for after-hours MSP support. This step focuses on everything from how to get in touch with you to what type of services can be expected after hours. Clients use different ways to contact MSPs for support, with raising a service ticket being the most common one. However, support requests can also come through emails or phone calls.

You need to clearly explain to your clients how they can get in touch with you after business hours. If support for critical issues does not arrive within a specified time, you need to let your clients know who can be contacted for escalation. For rare cases of onsite support after work hours, you need to specify that there must be someone from the client’s side present onsite while the technician visits.

Once these steps are clearly outlined in the after-hours support policy, you need to consider how you can handle the support requests. Do you need a full-fledged IT service desk? What type of staffing is required to handle the requests? Can your support staff handle critical requests? These questions need to be answered clearly before you proceed.

For small MSPs with limited customers, having a dedicated support desk with 24/7 coverage may be a costly affair. In such cases, they can outsource the requests that come after work hours. GlueConnect is a feature offered by IT Glue just for that purpose. With GlueConnect, you can partner with MSPs from the other side of the planet to provide round-the-clock NOC service and ticket handling.

Pricing Your Service

Pricing is one of the biggest considerations when providing support after work hours. Whether you have a dedicated support desk or you have outsourced support to other MSPs, you are likely to incur incremental costs based on the level of support provided. You need to keep this in mind while establishing the price in your after-hours support policy.

This starts with defining what is considered to be your regular work hours. Typically, most businesses operate from 9 AM to 5 PM. Any requests arising within these hours can be considered normal, and support can be provided as per your terms in the SLA. Any service requests arising after these hours may not be included in the basic service contract and can be billed on an hourly basis.

The key thing to note here is how much to charge for your services. You may charge 1.5 or 2 times the regular price, based on your staffing costs and quality of service.

Key Things to Note

Consider the following factors when coming up with your after-hours support policy:

• Put everything in writing: You need to mention everything in your SLA regarding what your clients can expect from you and how much you will be charging.
• Focus on superior service: With superior service quality, you can command high margins, lower customer churn and boost satisfaction.
• Use documentation for efficiency: With a great documentation tool like IT Glue, you can instantly access the history of an issue and resolve it immediately. This reduces the amount of time wasted on identifying the cause of an issue.
• Establish partnerships: As more and more businesses have started demanding 24/7 coverage, work-life balance has become an issue for MSP technicians and owners. By using GlueConnect to partner with other MSPs, you can easily overcome this issue.

If you have a well-drafted policy and a solid work plan, after-hours support is not that difficult to provide. Always make sure that your SLA is clear and don’t be afraid to charge a premium price for superior service.

IT Glue is the leading documentation platform for MSPs, designed to eliminate waste, improve productivity and help you hit your SLAs better. Head over to the Features page to learn more about how we can help you deliver top-notch support.

View Features

The post How MSPs Can Handle After-Hours Support appeared first on IT Glue.

Our integration with Continuum Help Desk means one knowledge source for both your in-house and Continuum technicians. With one knowledge source, both parties are bound to save time they would have otherwise spent searching for the information needed to get the job done.

About the integration

Taking advantage of the Continuum Help Desk integration allows both your team and Continuum Help Desk technicians to access the same device information and knowledge in IT Glue, to service your clients with round the clock confidence.

To get started, you simply use our GlueConnect feature to grant Continuum Help Desk access to your IT Glue data. Essentially, this access allows them to be as productive as your in-house team, increasing all around efficiency for your clients.

This integration offers granular security control over which organizations you want to share with Continuum Help Desk, ensuring you still have complete control over your information in IT Glue. You will also have full visibility into Help Desk technicians’ activities, with detailed activity logs.

With all your information in one place, and available for both parties, you can start enhancing your productivity today. As always, you can access our Knowledge Base article here.  Note: Due to technical constraints, this integration is unfortunately available only in the North American market.

Not an IT Glue partner yet? No problem! Sign up for a demo today to learn how our platform helps streamline your documentation and enhance your MSP’s overall efficiency.

Yes, sign me up for a demo!

Founded in 2013, IT Glue is the world leader in MSP documentation. Our integrations with leading PSA and RMM platforms, along with other communications tools, allows information to flow seamlessly throughout your organization, reducing the friction that creates wasted time for your techs. By eliminating this waste, IT Glue helps you improve your bottom line.

The post Introducing our Continuum Help Desk Integration appeared first on IT Glue.

This integration will allow Vorex users to automate much more of their documentation. Since many Vorex users also use Kaseya VSA for remote monitoring and management, this integration will bring more of their documentation into the IT Glue ecosystem, and allow them to improve their level of automation.

To find out more about setting up Vorex integration with IT Glue, please reference the IT Glue Knowledge Base.

If you’re a Vorex customer, and you want to learn more about how IT Glue’s documentation platform can make your IT service business more efficient, we recommend you take a look at the features IT Glue offers to help you leverage the power of documentation.

View Features

Founded in 2013, IT Glue is the world leader in MSP documentation. Our integrations with leading PSA and RMM platforms, along with other communications tools, allows information to flow seamlessly throughout your organization, reducing the friction that creates wasted time for your techs. By eliminating this waste, IT Glue helps you improve your bottom line.

The post Announcing Vorex Integration appeared first on IT Glue.

The Math

We looked at data from our recent Global Benchmark Survey, and some widely available sources online to examine the problem. The average MSP serves 1300 users, and on average 1% of users per day require a password reset. That’s 13 resets per day. A reset takes 3.5 minutes to execute, though it might take longer if you’re not using IT Glue. We just assume you are, because you’re smart.

Multiply 3.5 minutes per reset by 13 resets per day and you get 16.68 hours worth of labor per month, just for password resets alone.

Your Tier 1 handles these things, and according to the results of the Global Benchmark Survey a Tier 1 costs an average of $40,000 fully burdened. If they cost more, the cost to you of password reset tickets is going to be higher. Take that wage, converted to hourly, and multiple by the number of hours:

$40,000 / (52*40) = $19.23 per hour * 16.68 hours = $320.77 in direct costs. Then factor in the opportunity costs – the value that tech could be deriving for your company if they had all those hours back to do productive work. We use the same opportunity cost formula from our Cost of Waste Calculator, and the end result is an annual total cost of $9350.

There’s another source floating around that uses a different methodology and comes out with a slightly higher number, but the point is the same. You are dedicating ¼ of a full-time tech’s worth of resources to password reset tickets.

And it’s all waste.

According to Steven Zimmerman, the CTO of TSTEC, an MSP in Cape Town, “MyGlue has reduced the number of support tickets for password resets by an average of 50%,” and this is just in the first few months of rollout.

Let’s run those numbers, then:

Monthly cost of waste from password reset tickets is around $780. 1300 seats of MyGlue is $650, so you’re ahead of the game already. That’s if you give away MyGlue for free. But if you’re bundling it, and selling it for $2/seat, that gives you this math.

MyGlue is easy to set up, easy to deploy, and once you’ve signed up we give you a MyGlue Action Pack stuffed with sales collateral. The Action Pack will help you convey the value of MyGlue to your clients – and the value for them is probably even more compelling!

You can sign up for MyGlue in-app, or by contacting your IT Glue representative.

Alternately, you can learn more about MyGlue by signing up for an introductory webinar where we walk you through the product, its features and how it works.

Yes, sign me up for a demo!

IT Glue is an award-winning documentation platform that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of all the documentation you need to help your MSP run better. By integrating PSA and RMM data, we can help increase your efficiency, and reduce onboarding times by even more. By eliminating wasted time from your business, IT Glue gives you more time to focus on what matters – growing your business.

The post The High Cost of Password Reset Tickets appeared first on IT Glue.

But to truly visualize how these savings materialize is another matter altogether. Those who have IT Glue understand, but for those who don’t have IT Glue yet, we’ve put together a series to illustrate the different touch points IT Glue’s many features have on your daily workflow.

This is how IT Glue helps you create value through the different stages of your critical activities.

Let’s start with a basic ticket.

Generate tickets automatically

Where do tickets come from? Sometimes stuff breaks and your clients submit a ticket. But other tickets can be automated. Use IT Glue’s Workflows feature to set up automated ticket via webhooks for things like domain or SSL expiries. Not only does this eliminate a brutally boring manual process, but it removes the risk of missing an expiry. Our RMM and Warranty Master integrations will help you document all of your expiries automatically, too.

If the ticket comes in outside of office hours, and you have a GlueConnect partner, a lot of time they’ll be able to handle the ticket for you, if the information is documented in IT Glue. No overtime!

Identify assets

So a Tier 1 grabs the ticket and identifies the problem. They search in IT Glue, and identify the different core and flexible assets that pertain to the issue. They then look up the different SOPs for handling the ticket. IT Glue also provides a template library for building out your SOPs, along with Word and LucidChart importation, so it’s easy to document all this.

Fully documented SOPs

Now your Tier 1 has the asset information, passwords and SOP to solve the ticket. How long would it take without IT Glue to get all that information together? That depends on the state of your documentation. IT Glue provides you with a Documentation Completion dashboard, and our Engagement feature will encourage your techs to document as much as possible. You have oversight into all of this.

Also, because documenting in IT Glue is so easy, your techs are more likely to do it even without incentive. BrightGauge and CrewHu have built integrations with IT Glue to provide incentive and oversight as well.

Escalation #1

Now let’s say the ticket needs to be escalated. Your Tier 2 is going to be able to go through much the same process of dealing with the ticket. One of the keys to how IT Glue saves you so much time is the Relationship Mapping feature.

Creating related items in IT Glue is as easy as typing “@”, and once you’ve built out the relationships between assets, users and locations, finding the information you need is even easier. If you need to go on-site, the IT Glue mobile app can be a big help, too.

Escalation #2 – now it’s serious

Should the ticket require further escalation, to your Tier 3, we’ve got your back. Document your vendor details in IT Glue so you can get hold of the right person to help you with minimal delay. We’ve got a public API if you need to build a solution, too. And our PSA integrations allow you to track all of this work, so you can be sure to get the billing right, especially for complex issues that require extensive work.

So you can see, that’s a lot of areas where IT Glue helps save you time and effort. You save time on each ticket, and that is multiplied over the number of tickets you do each month.

This isn’t the only way we save you time, either. Next week, we’ll show you how IT Glue saves time on project-based work, and we’ll follow that with an overview of how IT Glue saves money over the entire customer life cycle.

How does IT Glue save you money?

Learn More about IT Glue!

The post MSP Value Chain: The Ticket appeared first on IT Glue.

If you’re taking too long to find, hire and onboard the talent you need, you’re probably leaving money on the table on the growth side. But there are things you can do, not only to shorten the hiring cycle, but also get better results as well.

In the first two parts of our service desk series, we looked at the ways the service desk contributes to profit and how to handle after-hours support. In this post, we will examine the process of hiring and onboarding top talent for your service desk.

Focus on fit

Finding great people is the most difficult issue, and every labor market is different. But there are some universal things to keep in mind. Fit with the culture is commonly cited as being one of the most important hiring criteria, and with good reason. You need everybody on the entire team pulling in one direction.

It is more important to get the right person with the wrong skills than to get the wrong person with the right skills. By why is that? The fact is, training people and getting them to pro level is a lot easier than it used to be.

Make internal knowledge transfer powerful

The reason that onboarding is easier than it used to be is that the mechanisms for internal knowledge transfer are much more robust than before. Where even just a few years ago, a new tech would have to learn from other techs, now that knowledge can be stored in a platform where it is readily accessible. The easier it is to transfer internal knowledge, the easier it is to bring new techs on board. And when you’ve really got your onboarding dialled in, your Tier 1 techs can be as productive as Tier 3s.

Here’s how much the onboarding process for new techs has been transformed in the past couple of years. Doing things the old way meant that a tech would have to learn information, basically by rote. A lot of information. And that took time, memorizing key information about each client, and where all of that information is stored.

Learn process, not information

Now, a new tech doesn’t need to learn information to the same degree — they learn processes, in particular the process of how to find the information that they need. But once they know how to find information, they can do it themselves, which is much more efficient than running around the office tapping shoulders and guessing where the key information is.

That’s the secret sauce to onboarding — teach your techs how to teach themselves. If you’ve got all your clients’ information documented, you’re well on your way to that goal. If you have your training manuals documented so that new techs can learn on their own how to find key information, then you’ll save even more time.

New techs working at 80% just a couple of weeks in? That’s what a great service desk looks like today.

To find out more about how IT Glue’s documentation platform helps shorten your onboarding process for new techs, sign up to watch a demo below.

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IT Glue is a documentation platform that helps you to streamline your processes, record and organize information, and reduce the amount of time your techs waste looking for information. IT Glue’s partners report efficiency gains almost immediately after launching the platform. Watch the demo to find out more.

The post Service Desk: Tips for Hiring and Onboarding New Techs appeared first on IT Glue.