What BetterCloud Can Automate in 2020, Explained in 9 GIFs

Humans have been automating manual processes since the beginning of time. As early as the year 600, a Mayan city figured out how to distribute water via pressurized aqueducts.

We probably don’t need to tell you that the inclination to automate things hasn’t changed since then—especially amongst IT administrators.

This isn’t just conjecture, either. According to research by Statista, 38% of IT environments are mostly automated with some manual processes. And here at BetterCloud, we’ve run a whopping one million automated workflows for our customers this year.

That’s something we’re really proud of, but it also leads many customers to ask us one very logical question: What can I automate using BetterCloud?

Even just thinking through all the possibilities can overwhelm an experienced IT administrator. After all, there are more than 800 actions across over 60 apps in BetterCloud today. The good news is that our new Workflow Templates give you a carte blanche menu to start with. And based on our conversations with IT experts across the organization, here are just a few critical business processes that BetterCloud can automate in 2020.

You might already know that we can automate onboarding, offboarding, and license management. Want a more detailed guide on tapping into the power of automation? Download this guide.

Re-hiring furloughed employees

It’s no secret that the beginning of this year was rife with layoffs and furloughs across all industries—but the tides appear to be turning.

While many furloughed employees are still unsure of when they’ll return to work, CNBC recently reported that the number of furloughed employees dropped from 18 million in April to 9 million in July.

It’s clear that IT needs to be prepared for furloughed employees to return to work. And as your IT team faces the daunting task of unsuspending access to all of your SaaS applications, the workflow you see below can make the process much smoother for everyone involved.

Processing employee promotions

A single employee promotion can derail an IT admin’s afternoon.

Sure, it’s simple enough to update job titles in an employee directory. But then you need to think about which groups that person needs to be added to and removed from. And before you’ve done any of that work, several people across the organization need to be notified.

The hours required to process a single promotion might make your head spin—but as you’ll see in the example below, you don’t have to do all that work manually in BetterCloud.

Are you a current BetterCloud customer looking for additional help building automated workflows? Schedule some office hours with our SaaSOps implementation experts.

Revoking super admin access

Be honest: How many times have you uttered the following words to someone at your company?

“I shouldn’t do this, but we don’t have time to wait for someone to approve this. I’ll give you temporary super admin access.”

Multiply that out by even just five to ten employees and you might have a huge mess on your hands. That’s why we’ve made it easy for IT admins to build workflows that let you know when someone who has super admin access, well, shouldn’t.

Monitoring large internal files

Cloud storage is infinite, right? Well, not exactly.

Sure, most enterprise cloud providers offer “unlimited” storage for your organization. But when you look a little closer at Google’s documentation on Google Cloud, for example, you’ll find a long list of bullet points that outline its limits. Although some employees work with large files on a regular basis, this BetterCloud workflow enables IT administrators to closely monitor and take action on unusually large uploads.

Managing guest access in Microsoft 365

Last year, Forbes reported that Google hired more contractors than full-time employees. There are obvious financial benefits for companies that leverage contract workers, but it also introduces some serious security risks. Each contractor needs access to internal instances of Microsoft 365. But how long should they have access for—and more importantly, how can you ensure that their access doesn’t extend beyond that period? Check out how easily you can build a workflow to manage guest access in Microsoft 365 with an automated workflow in BetterCloud.

Managing guest access in Slack

Guest access is tricky in any SaaS application—and to the surprise of many IT administrators, Slack is no exception.

There are some levers that you can pull within Slack, but those controls largely need to be configured manually. While you can automatically revoke access after a certain period of time, those dates tend to be moving targets. You might extend the contract of one part-time employee, or terminate another earlier than anticipated. Here, you’ll see that we’ve built a workflow in BetterCloud that notifies the security team that a user’s access to Slack should be reviewed after 30 days.

Archiving inactive Slack channels

Slack is unbelievably user-friendly. Just about anybody can create a brand new channel with a few clicks. Slack’s biggest issue? Just about anybody can create a brand new channel with a few clicks.

Slack offered up some practical spring cleaning tips in a recent blog post, including archiving inactive channels and muting channels you rarely use. These are great tips—and they’re the backbone of an automated workflow that you can build in BetterCloud using one of our new templates.

Offboarding C-level executives

Offboarding any employee is a long process. Many of our customers already use BetterCloud to automate their offboarding processes, but we’ve discovered that others have leveraged the platform to think more critically about the nuances of each role across their companies.

What we’ve heard from several security teams is twofold: Transitioning C-level executives out of an organization is incredibly complicated—and BetterCloud enables them to cover every layer of it whenever someone at that level departs.

Managing group access in G Suite

Groups in G Suite are often configured in ways that allow internal and external members to join without any additional guardrails. But unless someone in IT is going into those group settings on a daily basis, anyone who owns a group has free rein to do just about anything. BetterCloud gives IT admins increased visibility into group settings through the workflow you see below. In this example, we’ve automated settings such as granting access to people with specific email domains and limiting access to certain groups such as HR or finance.

Looking for a more robust guide on building powerful workflows in BetterCloud? We built you this handy resource on tapping into the power of automated workflows.

Want to dive deeper into your current and potential automated workflows? Schedule some office hours with our team of SaaSOps implementation experts.