Skip to main content

Automating Tasks

Updated Jan 30, 2024 ·

Support Tickets​

Automating support tickets streamlines the process of managing and resolving customer inquiries and issues. By leveraging automation, organizations can improve response times, enhance customer satisfaction, and reduce the manual workload on support teams. This approach ensures that tickets are efficiently created, prioritized, and escalated to the appropriate personnel.

Ticket Creation

  • Automatically create tickets from various input sources, e.g. emails, chatg bots.
  • Categorize and tag tickets based on keywords and predefined criteria.
  • Assign tickets to the appropriate team or agent based on predefined rules.
  • Automated acknowledgment emails, confirming receipt of cusotmer tickets.
  • Ensuring all tickets are captured, categorized, and assigned.

Ticket Escalation

  • Escalation criteria is defined based on issue nature, urgency, and SLA.
  • Auto-escalate high-priority tickets based on predefined criteria.
  • Send automated notifications to relevant teams when a ticket is escalated.
  • Monitor the escalation process to ensure timely resolution.
  • Integrate with other systemsto ensure escalated tickets are handled efficiently.

Onboarding​

Automating the onboarding process of new employees can help:

  • Eliminate tedious manual tasks.
  • Reduce likelihood errors.
  • Consistent structured experience for every new employee.

Areas that can be automated:

  • User Provisioning

    • Ensure new employees have necessary access to systems and applications.
    • Sample automation process:
      1. Create the user's account.
      2. Assign the account with correct roles and access.
      3. Send out proper notifications and confirmations.
      4. Conduct continuous synchronization and updates.

  • Provisioning Equipment

    • Automatically generate requests for necessary equipment (e.g., laptops, phones).
    • Track the status of equipment orders and delivery.
    • Sample automation process:
      1. Requirements Analysis
      2. Resource Allocation
      3. Configuration and Customization
      4. Verification and Auditing
      5. Gathering Feedback

Other areas which can be automated:

  • Scheduling Training

    • Automate the scheduling of training sessions and orientations.
    • Send automated reminders and updates to new employees and trainers.

  • Managing Access Rights

    • Automate the setup of user accounts and access rights.
    • Ensure new employees have the correct permissions for their role.

  • Distributing Various Checklists

    • Automatically send onboarding checklists to new employees.
    • Track the completion of onboarding tasks and activities.

  • Collecting Feedback

    • Automated surveys, to collect feedback on the onboarding process.
    • Analyze feedback to improve future onboarding experiences.

Security​

Security automation involves the use of technology to handle repetitive security tasks and maintain consistent defenses.

Guardrails are automated safety controls to protect against insecure infrastructure configurations.

  • Enforce security policies, monitor infrastructure, and act on security violations.
  • Alert can be generated and predefined actions can be taken.

Security Groups act as cloud-based server firewalls that control incoming and outgoing network traffic.

  • Auto-assign instances to security groups with predefined rules.
  • Automated traffic analysis ensures compliance with security settings.

Service Access Management is a crucial area to prioritize in security automation for risk reduction and operational efficiency.

  • Automatic access review
  • Near-instant reaction times through automations.
  • Auto-restrict and disable access until a human analyst can investigate.
  • Automatic enabling/disabling of services for security.

Managing permissions involves ensuring that individuals have the correct access level corresponding to the designated role.

  • Often done through Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC).
  • Auto-updates user access for onboarding, transfers, and departures.
  • Automated compliance checks and adjustments.

Application Development​

Automating application development enhances overall quality of software products being released and deployed.

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Development (CD) are practices in software development that emphasize automation and collaboration to improve the speed, quality, and reliability of software delivery. Together, they form a pipeline that integrates code changes and deploys them into production seamlessly and frequently.

  • Continuous Integration (CI)

    • Automatically run tests on new code changes to catch bugs early.
    • Integrate code changes finto a shared repository several times a day.
    • Auto-compile and build the application every time new code is committed.
    • Provide immediate feedback to developers on the status of their code changes.

  • Continuous Deployment (CD)

    • Continuous Delivery is a part of the release stage.
    • In Continuous Delivery, deployment process is automated up to a certain stage.
    • Auto-deploy code changes to production environments after passing all tests.
    • Enable frequent and reliable releases of software to production.
    • Automated rollback mechanisms, revert to previous versions in case of issues.
    • Continuously monitor deployed applications and provide alerts for any issues.
    • Terms to understand:
      • Release - Enabling software installation and usage.
      • Deployment - Installing software to a new environment.