A new colleague set up in 7 minutes, not 4.5 hours

Setting up each new colleague took 4.5 hours of IT time in a complex environment: accounts, groups, mailboxes, project folders, business apps, laptop and printers, all by hand from a checklist. We cleaned up the environment, the permissions and the role model first, then scripted the set-up end to end. Now it takes 7 minutes from the ticket, the same way every time.

Client

120-person firm

The situation

A new client of ours: a firm of 120 people that takes on new staff regularly, in a complex environment. Setting up each new colleague took 4.5 hours of IT time. Accounts, groups, mailboxes, project folders, business apps, the laptop and the printers were all set up by hand, from a checklist.

What we did

Cleaned up first. Before scripting anything, we put the environment in order: the permissions and the role model, everything a new colleague’s access is built from.

Then scripted the set-up, end to end. A new colleague gets the same access as a colleague in the same role, and the script shows what it would change before it changes anything.

Caught its first mistake. Its first live run showed that it would have reported a failed change as done. We fixed that before going any further.

What happened next

From the ticket to a finished onboarding now takes 7 minutes, the same way every time.

Talk it through.

30 minutes with a senior engineer. Deadlines and risk, not buzzwords. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll say so.