August 2021 Product Release Update

The Electric Product Team is always working to improve our existing offering for our customers. Check out what the product team has been working on this past month and a preview of what’s coming up in September & October of 2021.

Our initial SaaS app integrations with Google and Okta are in full swing. Haven’t had the chance to check them out yet? Be sure to look out for them via your next onboarding or offboarding request. As promised, this is just the beginning. Our goal is to integrate with as many of your SaaS applications as possible to speed up your request creation process, automate IT tasks we manage on your behalf, and provide you with more self-service functionality in Turbine.

Looking ahead to the fall, we are turning our attention to devices. In September we are looking forward to expanding the visibility our customers in implementation have into their device inventory & the MDM enrollment status of their devices (“Wait, how many devices do we have left to go? And, who still hasn’t completed their enrollment? Oh, right. I can see this in Turbine!”). As well, we are improving our internal processes for managing provisioning and procurement, improving your overall experience with our hardware lab team.

Want to see these releases in action. Login to your Turbine account here. Not yet an Electric customer? Contact us today.

Released This Month

Phase 1 of Google Automation in Onboarding is Now Live

Electric is now integrating with Google Workspace to simplify your onboarding request process. When making an onboarding request in Turbine your email group & calendar options will be populated in a dropdown. No need to track down the options yourself. Once submitted, the tasks related to your Google workspace will be completed automatically. No need to wait on an agent.

Onboard employees with greater ease. Complete onboardings requests more quickly. Log into Turbine to try it now or watch this quick video to see how it works.

So, what’s coming next in Google Automation?

• Automation for Google-related tasks in your offboarding requests

• Immediate account locking at the time designated in your offboarding requests

• Full offboarding of employees at requested time including – email rerouting, transfer of account data, and configured auto-response messages

Okta Integration is Now Live

We’re now integrating with your Okta account to automatically surface your user groups in Turbine.

For onboardings & offboardings, you’ll no longer need to type out the groups you want new users added to. Simply select them from a dropdown menu, making it easier to specify how user accounts should be configured in Okta without switching between applications.

Note: Our agents will continue to complete Okta-related tasks for on/offboarding manually. This release just simplifies the selection process in your on/offboarding requests. As well, some customers will need to enable this feature. Please log into your Turbine account for specified messaging on how to do this.

Upcoming Releases

Provisioning & Procurement Request Process Improvements

In an effort to improve your experience with our Procurement & Provisioning services, we took a look at where we could improve the backend management of these requests. We identified several key areas where we could improve how these tickets are documented and routed to our agents, reducing the need for back and forth communication, technician error, and ultimately enhance your experience – especially through request notifications.

While this will not change how you make these requests, you will experience improved engagement with our hardware lab team and near real-time task notification related to your requests.

Visibility Into Your Device Inventory, Even Before “Go Live”

For those of our customers going through Implementation, you will now have visibility into your Device Inventory to see what percentages of devices are enrolled in MDM vs. not, even before you “go live” with Electric. While your implementation specialist is always on hand to answer questions and guide you through the process, you will no longer need to rely on them as a middleman for this information. Simply login to Turbine and check the data in real-time via the Device Management Page.

Automated Approvals Will Be Available for Microsoft Teams

For our customers using Microsoft Teams, you’ll now have access to our Automated Approvals functionality. No more back and forth communication with an agent over chat. Simply receive the automated request notification and approve or deny your user’s IT requests in one click. It’s that simple!

Onboarding Redesign

When it comes to onboarding and offboarding requests, we’ve heard your call for enhanced status visibility. As well, we understand that no two onboardings or offboardings are the same and that each may require a custom task or two associated. So in October, we are making some vast improvements to our on/offboarding experience within Turbine – both through a redesign of the request form and the addition of additional task-level visibility. Here’s what you can expect:

On/offboarding Page Will Now Be Your People Page – For now, it will be a simple name change that comes with this release. However, we have big plans for this page including allowing you to take actions in Turbine by user (ex. device assignment), on top of checking the status of their on/offboarding. Transitioning the focus of this page from just on/offboarding to more universal IT management by user is the first step.

More granular progress insights – We want to make onboarding and offboarding request status less of a black box. So we will be adding a new status page for each request that includes subtasks for each step of the process.

More flexibility in the request form – When submitting a request you will have increased flexibility to add and remove tasks from each request. As well, we will have additional customized questions unique to each SaaS application that ensure that account creation is unique to each user. Finally, we will be adding a section to the request form for additional hardware instructions, allowing you to customize the provisioning and procurement components of your requests.

If the product release information above sounds like it could provide leverage to your organization and you’re not already an Electric Customer, then contact us to discover how we can start making IT simpler for your team.