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P R E S E N T E D B Y

How I Harness the Power of Autotask Workflow Rules

Automation with Autotask

Brian KerhinPresident

Byte Harmony, Inc.

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!!FAST PACE!!

Q/A Right after the session

1:40 PM – 2:30 PM

Slide material will be available via the Autotask Community blog: Autotask LifeCycle

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Meet Your Presenter: Brian Kerhin

Iowa State University (Computer Engineering) Computer Networking Software Development

Network Administrator for Wendorff Bros Co Inc (MFG, 500 employees, $80 Million Gross)

Started Byte Harmony - IT business owner / operator for 10 years

Autotask Rock Star / MVP CompTIA SME for MSP Trustmark

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What do I have to do with Autotask?

CommunITy Volunteer (Top 10 Contributor) 2010 CommunITy Live Award Most Thoughtful Member Midwest Users Group Co-Leader (Norbert Doeberlein) Submitted more feature requests than all Autotask customers combined Trip to AT HQ

Presentation to all of AT: The Good the Bad And the Ugly CommunITy Engineering and User Experience Engineering (Walls)

Rock Star Award Consultation for companies that run on Autotask Operation Autotask Lifecycle: First and only blog exclusively for

companies that run Autotask Autotask Strategic Users Group Member Autotask Integrations:

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Poll: What do you use in Autotask?

Workflow rules with Speed Codes Workflow rules SLA system Workflow rules with an Autotask Integration

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Session Goals

Learn how to use Autotask to automate business Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).

Learn how to use Autotask Workflow rules to customize Autotask to meet your Company needs as much as possible.

*Learn how to use Autotask to assure employee compliance with SOP.

www.comptia.com

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Agenda Overview

Agenda 1: Speed Codes 2: SLA Engine 3: Workflow Rules 4: Integrations

Recommendation Keep it Simple - Less is more Keep it Consistent - Intuitive Keep it Communicated – Keep your staff informed

Approve and Post: Reconcile Billing on Contract

Workflow rules are a double edged sword!

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Example: Service Request

Order of operations on a Service Desk Ticket Set the Account (If you know the CI skip this) Configuration Item (CI, Config Item, etc) Speed Code

Deliverables Needed Documentation of Event

Account, Contact, CI, SLA, Reporting

Communication Billing

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Agenda 1: Speed Codes

Speed codes change values on the current edit screen in real time.

They can consistently enter data in fields like Source, Issue Type, Priority, etc. for further workflow automation

They can be a real time SOP tool There are different speed codes for different Autotask

Screens

Careful planning is needed to not make a mess of speed codes that aren’t used by anyone.

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Agenda 2: SLA Engine

What does the SLA Engine have to do with Workflow Rules? The SLA Engine trumps workflow rules

Setting due dates doesn’t work on SLA based tickets

Workflow rules can be used to Automate Status and therefore act on the SLA engine

Speed codes can be used to setup SLA components and workflow rules

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Agenda 2: SLA Engine

Workflow rules can enhance the generic SLA process Late notifications Idle timer rules 3rd party tool automation

What does the SLA Engine do: Timers based on ticket status that set the due date Timers that record: SLA Start, First Response,

Resolution Plan, Resolved – DONE: timers only run once

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Agenda 2: SLA Engine

If you’re going to use the SLA engine you must first accept how it works and then build your workflow rules around it.Remember: Keep it simple

Complicated SLA workflow rules tend to be problem laden.

Keep it consistent You have no control over the SLA engine and how it works.

Teach one thing and then build the rest around it.

Keep it communicated If people don’t know how it works the resulting reports will

probably show it.

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How to apply an SLA

Manually Speed Code Contract CI -> Contracts

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Ticket History Shows the SLA Engine at Work

The SLA Engine is the “User, Admin” The SLA Events are only MET the first time Integrations can also run as “User, Admin”

Integrations can trigger SLA events

New vs acknowledged

Reports show you your “Score”

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Agenda 3: Workflow Rules

Autotask programming without the API What makes up a Workflow Rule?

IF, THEN, AND (OR is on the drawing board)

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Why should I use a workflow rule?

Automate control of activity in Autotask (SOP) Timers

If a ticket is late, idle to long, etc

Detect Events If an employee works on a ticket more than the estimated amount

of time

Automate changes when events take place Email2AT

Automatic email response to client

Taskfire Automatically dispatch emailed tickets to Taskfire users

RMM Tools (Status)

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Programming Statement:

If

New ticket is created AND Queue Name = Client Access AND Source != Email2ATC

Then

Send email to Ticket Contact from support@byteharmony.com using Template “A new Ticket has been created in Client Access”

What are Workflow Rules

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If it was this presentation wouldn’t have been in the “Advanced” track.

CRM

Projects

Service Desk

Is it really that easy?

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What are Workflow Rules

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Agenda 3: Workflow Rules

All workflow rules have the same basic parts (*not all have to be used) Events *Conditions *Actions *Notifications

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Service Desk

Client Access Idle 1 Business Day

Complete Monitor Customer replied Past Due date Waiting Customer

Waiting Vendor SOP

Work past Estimate Time Work done on

Delinquent Account

The service desk is by far the most powerful Workflow module section. We’ll start here with some great SOP workflow rules

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Agenda 4: Integrations

Communication Email2AT Client Portal / Taskfire (Technically not an Integration)

RMM NOC – Zenith InfoTech Quoting

QuoteWerks

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Email2AT / Client Portal / Taskfire

These are the primary tools used by customers to tell us electronically they have a service need.

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What communication is desired?

Your Company Support Address / Client Access Portal Send to Client Custom Email Notification with Ticket

Information Send Dispatcher an Email with new Ticket Information

Your Clients Support Address Allows for customization of responses (no response) Allows for customization of notification

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Taskfire / Inhouse Specific Issues

Your Clients Taskfire Support Address / Client Portal Dispatch Tickets to our company First Dispatch Tickets to Taskfire resource First * Rule to Dispatch Tickets to your Client Access Portal for Escalated Tickets

Tickets Created via the client access portal do not show up in your Autotask until Escalated even then the ticket statuses are completely separate.

Tickets Created via Email2AT will exist in your Autotask but should be generated such that they don’t get in the way: Status must not be in your Client Access Queue until Escalated (one rule)

Escalated tickets will change the status to “New”, you can use this change along with Queues to create a custom workflow rule to dispatch the service requests upon escalation.

Once placed in the Client Access Queue SOP should be used to address primary resource issues and further escalation

Recurring tickets can be Automated for Clients Taskfire tickets have no Due date, Autotask tickets do and that’s how workflow

rules automate dispatching them.

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RMM with NOC and outsourced VSD

2 Queues Noc::Monitoring - Tickets with status “New” or “Noc Info

Needed” are placed here Noc::Support - All other ticket statuses like: Noc

Scheduled, Noc In progress, etc. are here.

Status changes by the RMM vendor fire workflow rules and can update SLA information

Some manual labor parts are needed: Speed Codes from a Ticket Time Entry can not affect the

Edit Service Ticket Components No UDF Support: When supported Automation is possible

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RMM with NOC and outsourced VSD

Setup system statuses Clone Status Mapping Status Sort Order Setup SLA Engine Processing

Setup needed workflow rules Noc – New -> Email Notification (Account Owner) Noc – Info Needed -> Email Notification (Account Owner) Noc – Complete & Queue: Noc::Support -> (Quality Check)

Complete Monitor 2 & Noc::Monitoring Alert Workflow: When dispatching a ticket to the NOC switch to the

Queue to Noc::Support (NO UDF Support yet)

Zenith, Live Help Desk, Dove, etc.

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Recap

Keep it Simple Keep it Consistent Keep it Communicated

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What Will YOU Do Next?

Test an A Client with automated SOP: Speed Codes SLA(s) Workflow Rules

Goals: Learn to automate business SOP Learn to assure employee compliance with SOP Learn Workflow Rules to meet needs (Customize)

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If This Session Was Valuable… Also Check Out:

Reporting (ACL, Autotask) Taskfire (ACL, Autotask) Survey and Benchmarking (ACL, Autotask) RMM tool integration (Vendor / CommunITy) Email2AT or Email2DB (Vendor / CommunITy) Autotask Lifecycle (http://blog.byteharmony.com)

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Questions and Answers

And don’t forget to fill out the session survey!

Q/A Right after the session

1:40 PM – 2:30 PM

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Service Desk

Complete Monitor Customer replied Past Due date In progress and idle Waiting Customer Waiting Vendor

SOP Work past Estimate Time Work done on

Delinquent Account

The service desk is by far the most powerful Workflow module section. We’ll start here with some great SOP workflow rules