Autotask has improved the way its professional services automation (PSA) product interacts with two popular managed services platforms.
Autotask's hosted, software-as-a-service PSA product now delivers more advanced alerts from the products of rival MSP platform vendors LPI Level Platforms and N-able Technologies. Alerts sent via Autotask from the LPI or N-able products now come with links that take partners right to an LPI or N-able management console, where details of the alert can be found and remediation of a problem can begin, said Bob Vogel, chief marketing officer at Autotask, East Greenbush, N.Y.
"This is really huge in terms of workflow automation," Vogel said.
Autotask also now delivers more detailed information about devices being monitored by the two MSP platforms. That enables partners, for example, to detect if an alert is being generated by a network device that has been added by a customer -- one that's not covered under an MSP's SLA, according to Vogel.
"The monitoring packages [such as LPI and N-able] are already doing the work on gathering the information on the assets in a network, so we are now able to seamlessly grab that information and pull it into Autotask," he said.
PSA products like Autotask's can help solution providers better use staff resources, organize scheduling of technicians, sharpen the accuracy of billing and improve interdepartmental communication. To those ends, MSPs are increasingly looking to PSA products as a key component of their businesses.
Amy Luby, CEO of Mobitech, an MSP in Omaha, Neb., that specializes in serving small and midsize businesses, has been running Autotask alongside LPI's platform. Being able to get more information about what's being reported by LPI directly through Autotask is a big time saver, she said.
Much of Mobitech's operation stays coordinated using Autotask's PSA tools, so being able to manage LPI through Autotask is a definite improvement, according to Luby.
"It's relieving me of another step," she said. "And the less steps we have to take outside of [Autotask], the better."
