Why Worklets Stand Out from Other Automation Solutions

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Automate IT Podcast, David Van Heerden discusses the product feature called Worklets by Automox. Worklets are a way to execute bash PowerShell scripts on MacOS and Linux. The conversation explores the unique aspects of Worklets compared to other scripting solutions, emphasizing the overall experience and value they provide. The goal of Automox is to give IT professionals time back by enabling automation and delivering a smooth endpoint experience. Worklets allow for creative applications of automation and can be integrated into workflow automation. The episode concludes with a reminder to consider the non-feature related benefits when evaluating products.

Episode Transcript

Good morning, good day, good evening. My name is David van Heerden and welcome to this episode of the Automate IT Podcast brought to you by Automox. This is where I come on and talk about automating IT from a leadership and a managerial perspective. We have some great podcasts out by my cohorts where they get a lot more into the technical deep dive of automation. So definitely check out those other episodes there.

For today, what I wanted to talk about is centered around our product feature called Worklets here at Automox. If you're a customer of ours, you're probably familiar with what they are. If you just happen to drive by, catch this episode, thank you. I'll do a brief explainer on what a Worklet is, is that it's a way to execute bash PowerShell scripts on macOS and Linux. Now that's not PowerShell scripts on your Linux. I mean, you could, but why would you? But...

With that, I don't want to go too far to explaining what Worklets are, but I do want to talk about really understanding what makes Worklets different from that of other scripting type solutions out there, right? You might be evaluating Automox from comparison to mobile device management tools like Intune or endpoint configuration like SCCM or Jamf Pro on the Mac side of things. WinGet, right, is a fun one out there. And so...

It's a little reductionary in our opinion to say that Worklets are just a way to execute code, right? It's sort of like saying that Helldivers is just like Halo because it's a militaristic themed space alien shooter in third person with a group of friends, right? There's a lot there that sure, you're not wrong in saying that, but you just don't get it. There's something extremely different about these two games.

And yes, there's a lot to argue about it there. It's a passionate community on both sides. But really, I want to make that point of that. The thing that separates the two products is so much the artistic direction and the overall end experience of using that product, right? The experience that you have playing Halo is extremely different than the experience you have playing Helldivers, Just as, yes, Microsoft Intune, SCCM, all these other tools,

can schedule and execute code across many of my endpoints. Great. What is the overall experience that you get by doing that within the Automox world as opposed to the Microsoft world? And that's really what I wanna start to dive into and poke into here. So thinking about it from that IT leadership perspective, you're trying to say, all right, I wanna implement automation. I have to do it affordably.

I have to do it consistently and I just need it to work, right? That's some very simple begging questions there of can your product do that for me, right? And when you look at the implementation of the same general idea, so if we're looking at a feature list on Excel, then you're evaluating these two products, you would look at it and go, okay, I can upload scripts into a web console, I can scope it to devices, and then they'll run at some,

regular interval or check-in event. Cool. You know, checkbox done. But then as you actually make the choice, get a little down the line of implementing it, you start to realize the cracks. And all right, yeah, that was a feature checkbox, but my experience with it is quite terrible. What's going on here? And so when we looked at this from an Automox perspective,

Our goal and the overall experience that we want to deliver to you as IT folks is time. We want the automation of our product to give you time back. That value of your time back is practically immeasurable. We want to enable you to do bigger and better things. We know that the problem that we're solving is a hard problem to solve. We know how much time and effort goes in. You and your team have cut your teeth.

When it comes on endpoint configuration and patching. It's not even to talk about the remote control side of things on troubleshooting endpoints, right? And all the time spent within that help desk or in that sysadmin share dealing with issues across your environment. So all of these three areas are things that we realize the value of time and how we want to give that time back to you. And again, it's not just as simple as...

upload a script, check a box and run on those devices, done, that's automation. No, because how frequently does that code execute? What does the end user experience when that script is ran? Does it require the same amount of disruption where they have to reboot their device multiple times in order to get each update done, each sequence done? Those are all the kinds of things that we have to think about when we're saying, all right, we're gonna enable them to run code at scale.

What's going to happen when they actually do run this code? How do we reduce the time spent on you, the sysadmin, you, the IT team, when executing this? And so that's a part of that holistic thinking that we're applying to that of Worklets. And it goes beyond just that system configuration piece, right? We want it to be silent. We want you to be able to make changes to your environment and have nobody notice because they shouldn't. Technology should just work.

right, is the simplicity of it. And so with our approach, yeah, it should. You want to make a change? It should just work. It should just go out there and change. And the only people that should notice are the ones that were breaking the rules in the first place for why you had to make that configuration change. But aside from that, right, on the automation and the simplicity of delivering a smooth experience on that endpoint is...

the more creative applications of these automation type tools. We see customers using Worklets in ways that absolutely surprise us and blow us away. Because yeah, we built this solution thinking about solving a specific set of problems. But then we started to see and realize, wait, we can really do a lot more with this. Because again, the context and the experience is very different. So what am I talking about?

I'll compare us again to those type of tools that execute and run code during a check-in. So that check-in event happens when the end user logs on to the device for the first time each day. That's if they're forced logged off, right? Versus just locked. Or they have to reboot their device in order to get this check-in event to occur. That user experience is obviously quite terrible and it's inconsistent and doesn't happen often. So we built our solution to run at a...

interval determined by the sysadmin or ran triggered by an event. So you say, okay, I need this to run now. I need this to happen across all of my devices. So I'm gonna click that button and then boom, now everything will execute that code. Well, that creates quite an interesting blend of things that you can now do with those ingredients. So for example,

You're not just launching a configuration change into your environment with a PowerShell script that changes a setting, deletes a file, does something specific on those endpoints. Now what you can deliver are tiny little bits of automation that execute from anywhere within your environment. You can include API tokens, you can include network passwords, because we have secure encrypted secrets that you can pass through in these scripts.

So think of like your Zapier, right? On the cloud where you can sort of logically map out if this, then that between a Google Drive and another type of tool or service like Slack or Teams. In our case there, Automox can be a part of that workflow automation where, okay, user submits an IT ticket,

IT ticket mentions sporadic internet connection, right? My WiFi isn't working, internet's not working. And your typical interaction with them might be to remote access the device, right? Cause you check on your portal, everything looks fine. It's checked in, it's online. Say, alright, let me see what's going on with this WiFi issue.

You get them on the phone, your remote connected on their device, you're clicking around trying to see what's going on. They're sitting there tapping their fingers, looking at their phone, telling their boss that they can't work because IT is busy. And you just, it's intermittent. You can't really figure out what's going on. So you have them reboot the machine and contact you again if that WiFi issue happens. And this cycle repeats. We all know this story. So what if you could automate all of that?

right at that ticket submission phase. So that end user comes in and says, hey, I have a sporadic WiFi issue. Well, cool. Your ticketing system can then trigger Automox to run a Worklet on that endpoint, where that Worklet is going to, right, on those intermittent check-ins that it'll, that'll happen. As soon as it connects to the internet, it checks in and says, hey, we say, all right, the user's reported a WiFi problem on this device, run the WiFi fix it Worklet, the WiFi fix it script.

It'll go in, disable the adapter, re-enable the adapter. It'll uninstall the driver, reinstall the driver. It'll run all of these steps because it's received the command, it's received the code that it needs to run, and it can run it whether it's connected or not. All it needed was that random intermittent moment for Automox to tell it to run. And from that point on, you have now an automatic troubleshooting sequence running on that endpoint. And that end user doesn't even...

notice, right? They're not sitting there twiddling their phone, watching a mouse wiggle around on screen, trying to schedule the time in between their important meetings. Instead, it just happens. They'll notice a blip on their machine as the WiFi thing flickers around and then pops up again and okay, they're connected. They come back and say, hey, something super weird happened. You say proactively, yeah, we ran a repair code. Let us know if it works. You saved at least an hour and I'm being

conservative with that one on the scheduling and the troubleshooting steps that you perform on that endpoint, all because of how we have engineered and delivered this cocktail of features in that of a Worklet. Because you can't accomplish that kind of thing with your traditional endpoint configuration tool that has scripting plugged into it. The fact that we built this product with that thought and the intention of minimal disruption, maximum time value back,

Because again, there's nothing more valuable than your time as an IT and security practitioner. So again, when it comes to evaluating products, when it comes to evaluating A versus B, don't just get stuck on that feature list, challenge your team that's doing the technical review of these to think about the bigger picture, the non -feature related benefits that they will receive. So yes.

A and B, check both of the boxes. We have alien shooters with the military theme where it's a co-op and playful with friends. But look beyond it in terms of what the actual experience is of using and interacting with the product as the main value driver for you and your team. So thanks for listening to me ramble. I hope what I talked about made sense. Feel free to ask questions or call me out on anything wacko or weird that I said on here.

Thanks for sticking around. Catch you next time.

Takeaways

• Worklets by Automox are a way to execute bash PowerShell scripts on Mac OS and Linux.

• Worklets provide a unique and valuable overall experience compared to other scripting solutions.

• Automox aims to give IT professionals time back by enabling automation and delivering a smooth endpoint experience.

• Worklets can be creatively applied in workflow automation and provide non-feature related benefits.