Technology has played a critical role in reshaping businesses ever since the dawn of the digital revolution. With improved technology, businesses can streamline their operations, provide better service, and maintain strong relationships with customers.
While technology often comes at a price, it has also delivered significant return on investment for businesses. For instance, various IT tools have helped tackle complex business problems including cybersecurity, system uptime, resource management, and regulatory compliance. However, if these tools function without good workflow level integration across products, businesses cannot achieve the desired level of operational efficiency.
Seamless workflow integration of IT management tools is critical if businesses wish to drive profitability and boost growth. By integrating the most important IT management tools, such as endpoint management, service desk and knowledge management systems, IT teams can manage the growth of the business and drive down IT operating costs.
With the help of a Unified IT Management (UIM) solution, even a small IT team can manage their entire IT environment from a single pane of glass. In this article, we’ll look at three workflow integrations that can save time and effort for IT teams.
Integration Between Endpoint Management and Service Desk Solutions
Fast, easy access to remote management function to troubleshoot incidents
Endpoint management tools usually provide remote management capabilities to allow accessing endpoints in any location, as long as they are on the Internet. Workflow integration between endpoint management and service desk solutions allows technicians to easily go from a service ticket to the remote management function to troubleshoot an issue on an endpoint. As shown in the image below, click a button in the service ticket to go straight into the remote management function on the endpoint related to that ticket.
Another boost to end user productivity can be realized with a remote management connection that doesn’t disrupt the user. The technician can work behind the scenes on the IT issue, while the user also continues to work. All of this ensures quicker troubleshooting and resolution of tickets, and greater user satisfaction.
Automated Service Ticket Creation from the Endpoint Management Solution
Your endpoint management tool should allow you to monitor events and conditions on each endpoint (via an installed agent) and then automatically respond to alerts that occur. The response can take several different forms, including:
- Generate an alarm
- Execute a script on the endpoint (via an “agent procedure”)
- Automatically create a service ticket
- Send an email to the support staff
For example, you may want to try to auto-remediate an issue by executing a script on the endpoint. In some infrequent cases, the process may fail and you’ll want the endpoint management tool to automatically generate a service ticket in the service desk tool. And perhaps, have it send an email to notify the support team to get involved at that point to resolve the issue. In most cases, the incident can be auto-remediated, saving time for both IT technicians and helpdesk staff and significantly reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR).
Access Asset Information from Endpoint Management Tool in Service Desk
Inventory data from endpoint management tools can be provided to the service desk solution. This aids service delivery and faster resolution of tickets. IT asset information can include:
- Memory
- CPU
- Disk usage
- Last reboot
- Asset location
- Model and serial numbers
Having access to this data in the service desk helps improve the productivity of the IT team. For Managed Service Providers (MSPs), this data can be used to automate the process of generating invoices for device based billing.
The Need for Seamless Workflows and Unified IT Management
The above examples illustrate how seamless workflows between endpoint management and service desk solutions improve IT operational efficiency. The third core component of the Unified IT Management platform is Knowledge and Configuration Management.
To learn more about the benefits of fast access to IT documentation and asset information in both the service desk and endpoint management tools, download the infographic: Strategies to Streamline IT Operations.
