As Connectwise's official NOC and Helpdesk solution partner,  my team hears a lot of feedback  from MSPs on Automate setup, implementation and usage.   We hear this because we work within your instance of Automate and Manage to  support your clients .  This can not be done until you are setup properly and your Automate is running efficiently. 

The following tips are part of our NOC and Helpdesk onboarding process, and have been put together using  the combined knowledge of 10 years working with the ConnectWise suite of products and the issues we commonly see in the MSP community 

STEP ONE

Define ticket categories

Ticket category definitions can be found in Dashboard under Config > Configurations > Information Base Categories.  We recommend you do not delete any of your existing categories.  Instead, select each one you don't want displayed and click the checkbox labeled "Hide From Category List," then save. 

STEP TWO

Configure Service Boards, Ticket Mapping, & Ticket Status settings in ConnectWise plugin.

Automate must be aware of your Service Boards to direct tickets properly.  Ticket mapping allows you to define what type of tickets go to each of your ConnectWise Service Boards

Automate must also know what your Automate ticket statuses are mapped to in ConnectWise. You will see two tabs in this section; one labelled “LT to CW” and one labeled “CW to LT”.  Both must be configured.   This allows Automate to close ConnectWise tickets.

STEP THREE

Review Remote Monitors on Each Auto Join Group &  Set Ticket Category for Each One

Open each significant group and select the “Remote Monitors” tab.  Review the settings for each and modify as needed.  Set the ticket category and alert template for each monitor  We recommend that you do not  delete any unwanted monitors as they are difficult to recreate. Rather, set the alert template to “Do Nothing”.

STEP FOUR

Patch Management

Configure templates with proper patch time window and reboot window.  Set the proper patch schedule under the Ignite Tab in the properties for each location.  Set approval on desired patches using the Patch Manager.

  STEP FIVE

Mandatory alerts to be configured:

• Low patch alert
• Automate agent out of date alert
• Offline servers alert 
• CPU 100% utilization alerts 
• Disk space below 1 GB alerts 

Alerts you can ignore:

• New computers detected in network
• Service stopped alerts 
• New SW installed alerts

If you don't have the time or the manpower to do this yourself, we can help! 

My  team and I will do a free health check of your Automate instance to let you know where you stand and what needs to be done for improved efficiencies.   Click the link below for more info.