How Absolute transformed its business with Pulseway

Mobile App

“The mobile app was a big selling point for us when we were just managing servers”  says Seth Morris – a senior technical consultant who has been with Absolute for 10 years. Seth and colleague who maintained servers really appreciated how easy and convenient it was to manually run updates on their servers.”

“I'd be sitting there watching the TV on a Sunday and I'd be rebooting a server, look at my phone. It's back up. Okay, let me move on to the next server. Updates, restart, and kind of go through our process. Just having that convenience of the mobile app has been very beneficial to us” 

The Mobile App also means that the technicians be proactive before clients start their day. “I don't want any of our clients to call and say, "Hey, our server's down." I want to be the one to call them and say, "Hey, your server's down."Because that's what they pay us for, and we're just making sure they're getting taken care of.”  Mobile also allows them to respond immediately they are aware of an issue.

Automation Workflows

Seth has also made significant use of Pulseway Automation. “Before Pulseway we would typically spend about an hour setting up new computers – remove bloatware, install Office, Run Windows updates etc” . Now this manual task has largely been replaced by a workflow that Seth developed using the Pulseway visual workflow engine.

“The workflow starts when a new computer is registered. It removes the majority of the bloatware and it will run all the Windows updates that I need and it will go and install Office.”  Absolute also use Pulseway third party patching and so the workflow also installs Adobe, Firefox, Office and other applications. In addition the workflow runs scripts that Seth has developed for tasks such as installing printers.

“The workflow installs Pulseway and then does most of the other work. I just tell the other techs "Look, just let it do its thing, come back in about an hour”  – that’s definitely saved our time”

Before they used workflows, the Absolute team would physically check their customers’ computers for software that should not be there – such as games and uninstall it. “Now with the workflow that we have with Pulseway, when an application gets installed, we get notified of that and we have scripts that will uninstall that software if we don't feel it needs to be on that machine – that also saves time as we now only need to physically check every 6 months “

Custom Fields

Seth makes extensive use of Pulseway’s Custom Fields to trigger various actions in their workflows across all aspects of their operations. Just a few examples include:

• Recording if specific applications are installed
• Checking the computer type to ensure specific software is only installed on laptops
• Maintaining a list of the top biggest 10 files and folders, to be used if disk space needs to be cleared
• Storing computer warranty information and date of installation

Saving Time

Seth is the main architect of automation at Absolute and uses it to standardize operations and save valuable technician time. “After 10 years I know how the company operates and I try to automate as much as I can to help the technicians get exactly what they need. Our aim is for technicians to build relationships with their clients to help then grow– not using that valuable time working through tons of tickets. ” 

Patch Management

Absolute rely on Pulseway to ensure Windows and third party applications are patched. “I don't think I've ever had to go back and look and see if a computer is missing an update. I haven't had a tech tell me, "Hey, this computer hasn't ran updates in a while." It just works, and we don't really have to worry about it too much. – the same thing applies to third party application updates. That helps us keep them up to date” 

Always innovating

Pulseway has been the easiest to use RMM of all the tools that Absolute have used and unlike other tools, it continues to innovate and introduce new features. “I always enjoy seeing the What’s New icon pop up. I look at it most days to see if there is something new I can try out to see whether it will be useful to us. ”