How to get started with automation in Rewst: 5 Crates to boost success

Organize your MSP chaos and ensure automation success by implementing these 5 Crates.

As a Sales Engineer, my job is talking to many MSPs looking to start their journey into automation. Each MSP exhibits unique characteristics and brings varied perspectives on their primary automation objectives, particularly in the early stages. Some prioritize maximizing time savings through automation. Others focus on enhancing the accuracy of manual processes by removing potential human errors. Then, there’s a third type of MSP I talk to frequently: the MSP who needs a helping hand “getting their henhouse in order.”

From my conversations with this third type of MSP, it’s evident that many face challenges in precisely defining their client base and priorities. Despite hesitance to admit it, their primary need often revolves around organizing their operations effectively. If this sounds familiar, Rewst can help you quickly address this issue with pre-built automations packaged as Crates.

In this article, we’ll highlight five Crates designed to give you visibility into the customers you support so you can bring order to the chaos.

5 Favorite Crates to get your henhouse in order

Setting yourself up for long-term success from day one is crucial when starting your automation journey. To do that, it’s important you address the most vulnerable aspects of your organization first. For most MSPs, those vulnerabilities come in the form of unmet security measures, lack of compliance, and disorganization.

To address those issues, we’ve come up with five Crates you can install and run during the earliest stages of your Rewst journey to get you set up for success.

Crate 1: Microsoft 365 MFA Reporting

By now, it’s widely acknowledged that Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is crucial, especially with many platforms utilizing Microsoft’s OAuth for authentication. However, MSPs may find themselves in situations where they’re required to disable MFA for certain users, only to overlook reactivating it later, posing a serious security risk to their organization.

Luckily, this Rewst Crate addresses that challenge. We know that MFA is best practice and that it is important to identify weak security points. That’s why we designed this Crate to provide MSPs with essential visibility into all their accounts using MFA. With additional Crates in Rewst also leveraging MFA, gaining control over MFA adoption represents an excellent starting point for organizing your MSP operations and enhancing security measures. As a bonus, enhancing security posture also increases clients’ confidence and trust in your organization.

Crate 2: Document M365 Environment

Sticking with the M365 theme, every MSP needs insight into the environments they’re supporting, especially if you want to set up and run automations effectively. M365 is likely the most important aspect of this environment scenario as most MSPs use it in some form or fashion. However, with various licenses, user access points, and permissions, it’s easy to lose track of M365 compliance measures. That’s why I recommend starting your automation journey with the M365 Environment Crate.

This Crate provides MSPs with comprehensive insights into Microsoft 365 environments by listing active users, documenting guest accounts and privileged groups, tracking license usage, documenting domains, and more. A detailed overview of your client environment lets you streamline your support management processes, saves dollars on compliance and resource allocation, and enhances your ability to support clients effectively.

Crate 3: Alert on Stale Users

I have a question for you: Who are you truly supporting? If you aren’t sure, finding out is one of the first steps to getting your MSP organized for automation. In an ideal scenario, your clients would have an evolving list of their end-users. They would also promptly notify you when employees depart for a seamless off-boarding experience. However, reality often presents a different challenge. Technicians find themselves scrambling to identify active users and those requiring off-boarding. If only there were a more efficient solution for handling this scenario…

Well, now there is. Our Alert on Stale Users Crate tells you what your customers often forget. It identifies users who haven’t logged in for an extended period and alerts MSPs accordingly. This ensures you have visibility into potentially dormant or “zombie” accounts, allowing for proactive account management and off-boarding processes.

Crate 4: Clean up Global Address List from Disabled Users

This is truly one of my favorite Crates, and that’s because it just makes sense to implement as soon as possible. It logically follows the previously mentioned process of identifying stale users because the goal of this Crate is to remove disabled users from your address list, showing only those active in your system.

It’s highly likely that a tier 1-tech currently performs this manual removal process for your MSP. Having been a tier-1 myself, I can attest to the mind-numbing drudgery manual removal requires. This Crate helps you maintain an accurate user database, improves billing accuracy, and detects potential security risks so your techs can focus on other service initiatives that satisfy customers.

Embarking on your automation journey with precise billing and boosted revenue sets a strong foundation for success. Furthermore, the favorable retention resulting from contented technicians and delighted customers adds another layer of value to your efforts.

Crate 5: Prompt to Combine Similar Tickets

PSA “noise” is a significant challenge that many MSPs encounter. It’s not just an annoyance; it can disrupt the success of future automation operations and hinder productivity. Whether it’s incessant backup success alerts or notifications from an EDR system, some products flood you with alerts. These excessive notifications make it difficult for technicians to discern crucial information from the background noise.

Rewst’s Prompt to Combine Similar Tickets Crate streamline and consolidate these alerts, effectively minimizing noise and alert fatigue. This Crate identifies and merges duplicate tickets, so technicians can focus on the most critical service issues. With its intelligent alert highlighting feature, technicians can effortlessly avoid redundancy fatigue, ensuring efficient and effective client management.

Optimize your operations and embrace automation success

While organization and automation often go hand in hand, it’s important to recognize that as an MSP you must actively invest effort to initiate the process. Despite the inherent connection between the two, achieving optimal results in the automation journey requires thoughtful initiative…cue these 5 Crates.

Each of these Crates holds immense value for any MSP, and Rewst boasts well over one hundred others in its arsenal today. Even if your primary motivation for embracing automation is time savings, eliminating tedious tasks that consume valuable time achieves precisely that, while also significantly enhancing overall operations.

Providing your staff with the capacity to devote more attention and effort to serving customers yields invaluable benefits. Happier customers are a direct result of improved service quality. Technicians find greater job satisfaction as they can focus on developing their technical skills rather than being bogged down by mundane tasks. MSP owners experience enhanced contentment as they can dedicate their energies to business expansion instead of micromanaging operations that should ideally occur automatically. Robust automation, even in its early stages, is a win-win for all involved.