Autotask Integration

When SaaS Alerts is integrated with Autotask, the following features are available:

  • Map SaaS Alerts organizations to Autotask accounts.
  • Map ticket fields like Source, Queue, Priority, Issue Type and Sub Issue Type.
  • Map specific SaaS Alerts alerts to a specific Issue Type and Sub Issue Type.
  • Map tickets to an account’s contract in Autotask.
  • Update an Autotask contract with the number of billable SaaS Alerts end users being monitored for that organization.

Prerequisites and foundational information

To complete the connection wizard, the following items should be completed:

  • Create an API user in Autotask and document the username and password.
  • Create and determine (create a new customer and contact or use an existing customer/contact as a default) and then document the default catch-all customer and contact to assign tickets to for unmapped organizations. A catch-all account is where tickets are created if they do not have a specific mapping for the customer/contact. Consider it a default account to assign a ticket to.
  • Ensure that any PSA account you will use with SaaS Alerts has at least one contact created within it.
  • Give thought to, and then document, which PSA values you want to use for ticket creation.
  • Determine if you will utilize Issue Type/Sub Issue Type and what you would like the default values to be.
  • Determine how you would like to group alerts (User or User+Alerts).
  • Determine if you will utilize contract mapping, and if so, determine and document the name and pricing for the Default Contract Service.

Creating an API user in Autotask

Follow the instructions in the Autotask Help system on creating a dedicated API integration account.

Create a specific user for SaaS Alerts (rather than sharing an existing API integration user), and include SaaS Alerts in the username to make it easy to find/troubleshoot in the future.

When adding the user, make sure to select New API User (accessible from the down arrow) rather than clicking New, which will create a standard user.

We recommend the following settings:

Setting Value

First Name

SaaS Alerts

Last Name

API

Security Level

API User (system)

Primary Internal Location

Headquarters

Email Address

< Enter your standard email address. >

Username (Key)

< Click Generate Key. >

Password (Secret)

< Click Generate Secret. >

Integration Vendor

SaaS Alerts - Network Security

Creating and documenting catch-all customer and contact

When a ticket (or note) is created in Autotask, it will always be mapped to an account and a contact.

Ideally, each organization within SaaS Alerts is mapped to a specific account within the Customer Mapping section of the Autotask Integration wizard.

In the event that a specific organization is not mapped, SaaS Alerts will utilize the default/catch-all customer and contact to ensure a ticket is created.

Create a specific account and contact to serve as the catch-all account rather than using your MSP account. For instance, create an account called Default Account and create a contact called Default Contact within that account. This keeps your MSP account clean and separated from unmapped organizations’ tickets in the future.

Ensuring that every account has a contact

SaaS Alerts assigns each ticket (or note) to a contact.

SaaS Alerts always attempts to find the actual contact by using the user’s email address from the alert to look up the corresponding contact within Autotask.

In the event that we cannot find a contact using the email address, the ticket will be assigned to the default contact for that account.

Create a specific contact in each customer for the purpose of assigning tickets that are not able to be mapped to specific contact. For instance, for ABC Account, you might create a contact named Alert Contact for ABC Account and use that as the default when mapping the organization to the company/contact.

Ticket defaults for Service Parameters page

Each time a ticket is created, SaaS Alerts sets the following parameters:

  • Ticket Type
  • Ticket Source
  • Ticket Status
  • Ticket Queue
  • Ticket Priority

Consider the values you want to use for each of these mappings to help categorize and find tickets once they have been created. Document these settings to facilitate the configuration in the wizard.

Determining if you will use issue types/sub-issue types

Issue Type and Sub Issue Type fields on tickets can be used to help organize and filter tickets as well as to drive workflows. Refer to The Workflow Rules page in the Autotask Help system.

SaaS Alerts is very configurable in this area and supports the following combinations:

  • No issue type/sub-issue type
  • Default issue type assigned to all tickets
  • Default issue type/sub-issue type assigned to all tickets
  • No issue type (or sub-issue type), with an override per specific alert
  • Default issue (type and sub-issue type), with an override per specific alert

Create a SaaS Alerts-specific issue type and utilize this as the default issue type. This allows you to quickly use this value to find tickets and/or use them for workflows.

Advanced tip: Do the above, and then create a few sub-issue types based on different types of alerts (IAM, Data Leakage, etc, and so forth). Then, map an issue/sub-issue to specific alerts so that workflows can assign certain types of issues/sub-issues to different queues or adjust priority.

Determining how to group alerts

Often, a single user will generate many alerts. To reduce the number of tickets created by SaaS Alerts, we provide two different ways to group those alerts: User and User+Alert.

User

When User is selected, the first alert generated for a specific user will create a ticket. All subsequent alerts of any type for that specific user will be added as notes to that ticket until that ticket is closed.

Example logic

  1. user@domain.com triggers a Too Many Downloads alert.
  2. A ticket is created because this is the first alert that the user has ever triggered.
  3. Then, 15 minutes later, the same user triggers a Too Many Uploads alert.
  4. Since the user still has an open ticket in the system, the Too Many Uploads alert is added as a note to the initial ticket.
  5. A technician at your organization reviews the ticket, determines that it is not an issue, adjusts the file alert limits for this particular user up, and closes the ticket.
  6. Again, 15 minutes later, the same user triggers a Multiple MFA Failures alert.
  7. Because the original ticket was closed, a new ticket is created for the Multiple MFA Failures alert.

User+Alert

Selecting User+Alert will open a new ticket for each specific alert for a user. Subsequent alerts of the same type will be added as notes to the original ticket until that ticket is closed.

Example logic

  1. user@domain.com triggers a Too Many Downloads alert.
  2. A ticket is created because this is the first alert that the user has ever triggered.
  3. Then, 15 minutes later, the same user triggers a Too Many Uploads alert.
  4. Even though the user still has an open ticket in the system from the first alert, a new ticket is created for the Too Many Uploads alert because it is a different type of alert.
  5. A technician at your organization reviews the ticket, determines that it is not an issue, adjusts the file alert limits for this particular user up, and closes the ticket.
  6. Again, 15 minutes later, the same user uploads a larger set of files and triggers another Too Many Uploads alert.
  7. Because the Too Many Uploads ticket is still open, and the alert is identical, the Too Many Uploads alert is added as a note to the Too Many Uploads ticket.

Contract mapping

SaaS Alerts support two levels of contract mapping:

  • Contract Mapping enables the contract to be added to each ticket that is created for a particular organization.
  • Adding a Contract Service line item to each mapped contract and updating the user quantity for billing purposes.

To use the User Count feature, a Default Contract Service will need to be created within Autotask. You can do so through the Autotask GUI by adding a new service.

Autotask PSA Integration wizard

Starting the wizard to add a new connection

  1. From the left navigation menu in SaaS Alerts, navigate to Settings.
  2. Scroll down to PSA & Email, and click the add icon .
  3. Select Autotask.

Step 1: Set Credentials

  1. Enter the Autotask API username and password.
  2. Click Next.
  3. If the information entered is correct, the Account Mapping step will be displayed next. If not, a red toaster will alert you of incorrect credentials. In this instance, it can be helpful to click the eye icon to display the password and ensure you copied and pasted the proper data.

Step 2: Account Mapping

  1. From the Account Types drop-down menu, select a value. Customer is a frequently used option. The other fields will populate with options.
     
  2. In the Catch All PSA Account drop-down menu, select the account you want to assign unmapped organizations to.
  3. Select the Catch All PSA Ticket Contact from the drop-down menu that appears after selecting the PSA account.                                                                                 
    To reduce the size of the list of PSA accounts, you may choose an account type and set the parent/c-hild drop-down menu to the appropriate setting.
  4. For each PSA customer, you need to map to a SaaS Alerts organization, find the PSA customer on the left, and then match the SaaS Alerts organization in the drop-down menu. You can use the search field to quickly drill down.
  5. Once a SaaS Alerts organization is selected in the drop-down, select the appropriate PSA Ticket Contact in the drop-down list that is displayed next to it.
  6. In the event that you have a PSA account that you would like to add/import to SaaS Alerts, and have it automatically mapped for you, select Create Organization from the Actions menu.
  7. If you would like to set a particular PSA account to not be displayed in the mapping list any longer, you can select Ignore and that account will no longer be listed in the Unmapped section.
  8. Once all mappings are complete, click Next.

NOTE  You can edit the Autotask connection any time in the future to adjust mappings or to add new ones.

Step 3: Service Parameters

  1. Use the ticket parameters you documented in the prerequisite/foundational steps to set each of the ticket defaults.
  2. From the Group alerts by drop-down menu, select User+Alert or User based on your earlier decision.
  3. Optionally, use the Issue Type/Sub Issue Type default mappings, as well, as adding specific alert mappings in the optional section.
  4. Once complete, click Next.

NOTE  It's recommended to select to group alerts by the User+Alert setting. Doing so will display the alert details in the subject/summary of the Autotask ticket and also organize your tickets by username and alert.  

Step 4: Contract Mapping

As mentioned in the prerequisites section, contract mapping supports two levels of functionality: ticket mapping and the ability to add the number of billable users for that organization to the account’s contract as a line item.

NOTE  Contract Mapping functionality (for tickets) must be enabled to access the User Count functionality.

Contract mapping for tickets

  1. To enable Contract Mapping, turn on the toggle.
  2. For each account you would like to have the contract functionality for, choose to map that particular account to the proper contract.

You do not need to map all accounts. You can choose which accounts as well as which specific contract for that account.

Contract mapping for user counts

  1. To enable the User Count functionality, turn on the toggle.
  2. Next, choose the Default Contract Service you created during the prerequisite section of this document.

    3. NOTE  This contract service cannot be used on any of the mapped contracts in the SaaS Alerts system. If you select a contract service that is already present, it will prevent you from moving forward. You will need to remove the contract service from the contract in Autotask or select a different contract service that is not currently in use.

  3. For each Autotask account, select the Add Service to Contract check box to enable user counts for that particular account.
  4. Then, make sure to place the proper cost and price (which will default from the PSA contract service) if you need to override the amounts for that particular account.
  5. Click Finish to complete the wizard.