[upbeat music]
>>THWACKcamp.
>>One of the primary goals of your service desk solution
is to automate as much as possible,
but the word automate can carry many different meanings
in the context of your service delivery strategy.
In today's session, we're going to show you
where to start with some quick wins for automation
and how you can further evolve into advanced automations
that fit the goals and needs of your organization.
I'm really excited.
I have a friend and somebody
who I've worked with several times
through their evaluation, Azunna, with me today.
Hey Azunna, great to have you along.
>>Hey Liz, thanks for having me on as well.
>>I'm really excited about our session
together today, Azunna.
I know that you've actually gone through
and implemented SolarWinds Service Desk
in two different organizations
so I know that you have a lot of thoughts around
how teams can best look at automating with the service desk.
>>Right.
And just to be clear, I did a full evaluation both times
that I did it, right?
I didn't want to just assume that
because it worked for me one place,
that it'll work for me again in the second place.
But yes, I have adopted the SolarWinds platform
at a couple of different organizations
and frankly have made strong recommendations
to other colleagues of mine
that are looking for ITSM solutions.
And I know at least of a couple
that have adopted the same platform.
>>And I'm so excited to hear more of your perspective
on how you've gone through
and actually applied those automations
following your evaluation
and especially since you've been pretty well
ingrained with the platform, how you've continued to evolve
and expand your automation footprint.
So we've got a lot of ground to cover today
but before we dive into automations headfirst,
I think it's really important to lay the groundwork
for how you can optimize your people and your resources
in the service desk.
To me, so much of automation and optimization
really boils down to the user experience.
Which starts for lot of people where they work
and I've seen that,
and I'm sure that you can say the same,
on the portal.
>>Yeah that's a great place to start.
And it's not a traditional place, if you will.
But it makes perfect sense from an automation perspective,
so typically when I join an organization,
you know or I'm advising a client,
what I see is that they already have
some sort of shared mailbox kind of solution in place.
And so step one is to convert that shared mailbox
and now have those tickets now flowing
through the ITSM portal platform.
But the key to really driving the automation
is getting people to get comfortable
with the fact that they can go to one location
to make requests for services of IT,
whether that's a password reset,
whether that's, you know, a new piece of equipment,
whatever the issue is that they have,
they can go to this one place
and so we introduced the IT portal to them
in order to do that.
Now there's a chicken-and-egg kind of problem there, right?
So people are used to emailing.
It's very simple and easy for them to do that,
so how do you drive them to go to this place
to make their requests?
And one of the first things we do
is we actually build out an inventory
of solution articles, knowledge base articles,
whatever you want to kind of call them
but it's tidbits essentially around
how they can use IT within the organization.
You want to know how to reset your printer?
Well there's a tidbit there.
Or how to reset your password.
And so getting them familiarized with the portal
and knowing that they can actually do a bit of self-service
and find your answers, is that first step.
>>And I think, with the portal in mind,
as you mentioned it might not seem
like our initial starting point for automations
but again to me it's representative
of who you are serving:
the employee.
So having a pulse on your employees' expectations
and cultivating a positive experience,
I think is really helpful in determining
what and how you automate
and I think this is a perfect segue to talk about
what I consider to be some
of our foundational building blocks or pillars
to automation and how you can establish some of those.
So let's talk a little bit more
about some of our basic automations
that teams can be looking to achieve in the service desk.
>>The next step in terms of the evolution
of kind of the portal is automatic routing of tickets.
There's a couple of different ways you can do that
with the SolarWinds platform.
The first one we actually do is set up keyword searches
so are there particular systems
for example that are kind of unique?
And so we can put in a keyword for that.
Actually one of the very first ones we did
which was a carryover from the previous system
was we'd actually already trained our employees
to put the words urgent, critical, you know, moderate
in the title of the text of the ticket or request
that they put in and that would route it accordingly
so that it would show up in our queue
with the appropriate priority.
And so that was one of the first ones we implemented
but yeah beyond that, it was also
routing to specific, you know, subject matters
or things of that nature.
The other thing to keep in mind is
in my situation, I actually opened up the portal
not just to IT.
And so we actually have, you know,
parts of, you know, different teams
that are using the same platform.
And of course, that's not a ticket
that my team needs to kind of work on.
And so we also used the idea
behind categories and sub-categories to route it.
And it's an evolving thing that you kind of do.
We initially had them as sub-categories
within categories that we watched
and it was a little bit harder
to kind of differentiate, their quote unquote their tickets
versus ours and then we eventually just said
you know what, there should be
like a whole separate category
for each one of the individual teams.
They should have their own distinct categories
vs. the IT categories, but between the keyword searching
and implementing automated category assignments,
those were the first couple of areas
we used to automate the routing of tickets.
>>I love hearing that story as well.
And I think that's a great area
where any team, regardless of your experience
or organizational size can certainly take advantage of.
I particularly am a huge fan of the category
or as I also call it, skill-based routing
because that again contributes to that employee experience.
If I put in a ticket that is of a hardware-based nature,
I know that it's going to get handled by somebody
who's well-equipped to tackle my reported hardware issue.
Whereas if I am reporting something
that's specific to my network connection,
that's going to be handled by the right folks.
It's also helpful for your technicians
because then they don't have to spend time
in the queue triaging the various inquiries
that are coming around. >>Yep.
>>They're able to get their work done efficiently
and effectively. >>Yeah.
At a high level and there are other features
that SolarWinds has that I'm a big fan of,
you can do the Preview button
and see kind of the details of the ticket.
But it's one thing for it to kind of come in
pre-packaged and pre-categorized.
It's one less thing for the technician to do.
And to be able to jump right in and to be able
to assist kind of the clients.
Frankly, even if you have a smaller firm,
small-medium business like mine
where we kind of work as one team,
but certainly if you have a much larger team
where you have distinct kind of functions, it's helpful.
But you know you touched on a point
which was the customer experience.
In my organization, not every single application
is actually managed by IT.
Some of those are actually managed
by individuals outside of IT.
But you know I wanted to make sure
that it was a seamless experience
and I personally hated that hand off
and I didn't want us to kind of do it
and so I invited those team members
to be part of the same platform
so that if you make a request around an IT system
and it's not one of the ones that, quote unquote, IT manages
well the end user doesn't need to know that.
At the end of the day, it just needs to get routed
to the right person who can act on their request
and that's what we've instituted with the platform
by inviting those other teams
to be part of the same solution.
>>We're again, constantly looking for ways to alleviate
some of those manual or potentially redundant inputs
for more streamlined motions.
So beyond those basics of automation
that we were just talking about,
the pandemic certainly made it clear
that there were some areas where we needed
to meet our business objectives and day-to-day operations,
but we were going to have to change the way
in which we handled that as we all quickly pivoted
to remote operations.
So during that transition period, Azunna,
what are some of the ways in which your team
was handling that with automations?
I think you and I had talked before
that you had to quickly make a pivot in terms of
how you guys were delivering assets
or even onboarding new users.
>>Yeah, both of those.
So as it relates to assets, right, so you know,
we've been in this pandemic for a few months at this point.
But it was still brand new at the time.
So if I recall correctly, it was a Thursday
that we made the call that the office would go fully virtual
beginning the following Tuesday.
And you know, one request that came to me
from my leadership was well, can we let people
take their assets home?
Their monitors, their docking stations,
so that they have a way to kind of work remotely.
And you know, my initial response was yes but, right?
And the but being it's an asset
that belongs to the organization.
I want to make sure that the organization
is kind of protected and we have proper accounting for that.
So we spun off a service catalog, right?
You know, my team and I we thought do we do a survey,
do we send an email out?
Do the people send us emails?
So we, it was actually fairly quickly, right,
you know I just jumped in to the portal
and I spun off on these service catalog
and then we communicated that as our message.
Hey, we understand that some of you are considering,
you don't have home office setups
and you're considering how to, you know, work
in a pandemic remotely because at the time,
we only thought it was only going to be a few days,
or maybe a few weeks.
But we had no idea.
But the point was, whatever you took back
we wanted to make sure
that we had a proper accounting for it.
And so the service catalog was fairly easy.
You know, obviously who you are, you're the requester,
what location you're taking assets from,
and what assets you were kind of taking.
And we intentionally did it that way
with kind of minimal fuss and minimal approval
just because of the size of our organization, right?
Again, thinking about that customer experience,
we could have said, well come down to IT
and put in a request and then we'll walk back up to you.
Well, you know my team would have been running around
all day or we did what we did, which was put in the request
and we'll go back
and independently validate it afterwards, right?
So we'll make sure that we properly associate the assets
with that service request, things of that nature,
but that worked very well.
>>And I was going to say, I think that's a perfect example
for kind of the next step up in what teams can be achieving
with automations in their service desk.
You have these processes that you've had implemented
for quite a long time about how you hand out assets
be it in-person or remote.
But another example which I know
that you were going to speak to as well
was with onboarding.
But I think the service catalog, just like you said,
it's easy, you're able to centralize and specify
what information you need upfront from the requester
but then you can automate that process.
That way you can begin to seamlessly delegate
who's responsible for tackling what
in that checklist, if you will
to make sure the user gets what they need
so it doesn't disrupt their day-to-day.
>>Absolutely.
So you know when I started, every week
and I kid you not, every week, I would get a request
that said, you know, well Susie Q is in department ABC
and they're supposed to have access to this system
and they don't.
And that was because you know
we're were using an antiquated checklist process
that was very much paper-based
and we actually hadn't captured all the steps
that were kind of involved.
And so you know this is not just a technology solution,
so I'll be very clear that it starts with an engagement
with the business and so we really had
to have that conversation, I had that conversation
with my team to say,
what do we need to do our job?
What pieces of information do we need
in order for us to satisfy the request
and make sure we do it in excellence, right?
You know, the right way the first time
so that people aren't asking us for things, you know,
on day one of their start.
And so that's what we did.
We went ahead and implemented,
we figured out what data we needed,
we figured out who needed to be there.
We actually had a meeting with the business
with the different pieces right?
So our accounting department certainly is part of that
because they're, they gotta set people up in
the time and billing system.
Our HR and recruiting, that's traditional, right people
you know side in terms of what information they had.
But we had those conversations and then we documented
that workflow and then we also gave visibility, right?
I was very transparent and said
you will now have transparency
so that when you put in a request
and tell me that somebody's starting in two weeks,
we'll include you in that process
because there's certain activities that you have to do
and there's certain activities that we have to do
in order to make sure that person is effectively onboarded
and I kid you not,
I mean, yes we worked through some of the kinks,
but it didn't take more than a month,
but we've literally had a seamless onboarding experience
since then.
People come in, they get exactly what they need,
because we got exactly what we needed
in order to make that determination.
We've gone through and we've worked with the business
to really understand
this person needs this type of equipment,
this person needs this access to this kind of system,
and have that.
And now it's all in a repeatable workflow, right?
I don't have to look at a piece of paper,
I can always go back in the same ITSM platform
to be able to see did we check off all the steps
you know, in order to onboard this individual?
>>Definitely.
And I think that's a great story not only on how to achieve
that second level of automation
but also for advocacy with those other departments.
So that was a great overview in terms of
where teams could initially dip their toes
into the waters of automation
but as we think about what's been happening
in our environment with the pandemic,
it's forced many hands to consider
how they could alleviate some of their manual inputs
or potential redundancies and digitize their processes
and operations.
With a lot of teams, I think a great area for them
to level up their automations was with the service desk.
So finding an avenue to automate their processes,
ranging from the intake of service requests
all the way through delivering them.
So let's buckle down and take a look
at some of the additional creative ways
that we can take our automations one step further
using resources like the API or native integrations
to other resources.
Azunna, I know that you have done
some pretty intricate API scripts
to further automate some of the processes
that you guys have in place for hardware.
Tell me a little bit about what you've done
with the API and your service desk.
>>Sure.
The API was actually--my background's in software
development, so the API was actually a compelling feature
for me in terms of being able to kind of get into the
back end and really be able to manipulate the system
beyond whatever might be in the user interface.
One area in particular was around
importing and updating kind of hardware assets.
The user interface allows you to import them
was certainly the management of them can be
a little bit more complicated or you know, kind of involved.
And so SolarWinds actually puts out Ruby scripts
I think there are a couple of different languages
that they support as well.
There's a GitHub repository that has that.
And so I've leveraged that not just for hardware, right?
Importing new hardware, whenever we get, you know, batches
like not one-offs, as well as in particular
for our user base.
I have looked at other solutions,
you know, Active Directory type solutions,
SSO type sign on solutions,
and we just didn't feel like it was enough of a reason
for us to do it and so instead
what I do is I literally take an export
out of Active Directory, I have a Ruby script
and we just run, have that run on an automated fashion
you know roughly once a week.
We'll keep titles in sync, we keep locations in sync,
you know levels, things of that nature
for our employee pool.
And that's actually worked very, very well.
I made it so that Active Directory is the system of record
for the organization at large
and this just is one of many systems
that are inheriting, it's just that
because of that API, it's a lot easier
to actually keep that data up to date
than you know having to write something else,
write database scripts or things of that nature.
Absolutely, and I think that's a great way
to look at some of the other methods
that teams could consider when bringing and adopting
more automation into their service desk platform.
Some of the other cool ones as well
have been with native tie-ins.
So I look to teams that have also integrated
with their communication platforms
like Slack but then beyond that
there's other ways, just as you mentioned,
bringing other teams into the service desk fold,
leveraging their monitoring solutions
like our native integration with Orion
and being able to automatically populate data
around an alert to take action on an incident.
>>Yeah, completely agree.
I mean another one that you didn't mention
is the remote viewer.
So SolarWinds has a built in kind of remote viewer session.
Because one of the things that we run into right now
is a request comes in and the first thing my team will do
is you know, Skype IM them
and then do a TeamViewer session.
And so that's obviously outside the platform
and just for my purposes and for documentation,
I ask you know the team they'll take a screenshot
or something and say I messaged the client.
But now with an integration like remote viewer,
it's nice because it'll automatically log
that that transaction happened, right?
And so I can assume that if my team
connected to a person's computer,
they have at least attempted to resolve it even if,
or resolved it.
>>That's super awesome to hear.
Thanks so much for your time today, Azunna.
I really enjoyed our conversation
and I think a lot of people will be able
to walk away from their session feeling a bit more empowered
to take a look into how they can automate
their service desk further.
>>Yeah, thanks Liz.
It's always great catching up with you.
It's always great kind of talking to you,
it's always nice to learn about the new capabilities
that kind of SolarWinds is rolling out
>>Absolutely and really loved hearing
how you started and continued
to push the envelope with automations.
Thanks so much for your time, Azunna,
it was great catching up as always.