Worklet's the Word with Kyle Gregg

Episode Summary

In this episode of IT Insiders, Maddie Regis interviews Kyle Gregg, a senior solutions consultant at Automox, about Worklets and their role in helping customers. Kyle shares his IT background and describes Worklets as powerful tools that go beyond simple scripts. Worklets can be used for tasks like installing applications, custom reporting, and patching vulnerabilities. They can also help IT teams solve CVEs and automate remediation processes. Kyle highlights the Windows 10 upgrade and generic MSI installer worklets as his favorites from the catalog. He emphasizes the accessibility and adaptability of Worklets, making them a valuable asset for IT and security departments.

Episode Transcript

Maddie (00:01) Hey everyone, this is Maddie Regis, paid media manager at Automox. And I'm here again to bring you a new episode of IT Insiders, which is Automox's podcast that introduces you to the people behind the product. So this month we're focusing on Worklets, everything about Worklets, Worklets the word. So we are talking with Kyle Gregg, who's one of our Senior Solutions Consultant here at Automox. And if you missed our podcast last month, you might not know what a Worklet is, but we will cover that today. So no worries. And as usual, we'll chat with Kyle about his IT background, time at Automox, all that good stuff. So thanks for being here, Kyle.

Kyle Gregg (00:36) Thank you for having me.

Maddie (00:38) Awesome. All right, well, let's jump right in. Tell me a little bit about your career background, your current role. And I always ask the name you'd give our company if we were not called Automox

Kyle Gregg (00:49) Yeah, so I have been in the technical field for probably about 12 years now. Like a lot of people that I know, and there's a lot of people that are on my team that have done this, but I started working at Geek Squad. It was actually very, very common to do. After that, I did IT for a insurance company. After that, it was a talent recruitment company. And so very, very internal facing. And now I work here at Automox in the customer facing role, which was very different.

I'm a social consultant on the Automox side. Essentially what I do is I help my customers be successful. I work with them on their goals, get them set up with patching for their environment, work with what we'll definitely talk about in scripts, and really just making sure that what they're doing is what they're looking to really do and be successful with the tool. I really like the question of what would I name the company differently is because...

Short story, but years ago I was actually able to go see Stephen Colbert live. And one of the questions I did during Q&A is, "If you could name your show anything else, what would it be?" And his answer was Seinfeld. My answer will not be Seinfeld for this, even though that'd be great, because that would just give us a lot of good brand recognition. So the name that I thought would be really good for our company, if we were to change it from Automox, would be Ottodidact. But the Auto being OTTO being our mascot.

Kyle Gregg (02:14) You know, an Autodidact is a self-taught master. And I think about the Automox University and what we have and the tools that we give our customers really become their own master.

Maddie (02:25) I love that. That's awesome. Yeah. We're all about that enablement and yeah, that's super fun. Definitely a different take than I've heard so far. So love it. Cool. All right. Well, as anyone I'm going to ask you about Worklets next, because obviously that's a big part of your big, your day to day big part of what we're talking about today. But what is a Worklet to you? Like how would you describe it and how do you use it to help our customers every day?

Kyle Gregg (02:34) Yeah, a Worklet is going to be one of the most powerful tools at your disposal with the Automox console. So our bread and butter is patching. What is really nice about Automox with the patching side is if I talk to a customer and they tell me my needs, we're simple. It's, hey, I have this, okay, and four clicks or less you can get done with your patching and be done talking about that. But Worklets expanded on that because what's really cool about Worklets is they help customers do a lot of things and they even help me do a lot of things too.

When I work with them and build them out, some examples would be install applications, custom reporting, patching vulnerabilities, stuff like that. It's really something that when used properly and fleshed out can really expand upon what you're doing as an IT admin. And it can solve a lot of issues and really plug a lot of holes. There's stuff that some tools can't do or just some things that can't be done with the click of the button.

Maddie (03:51) For sure. Yeah. And remind me, this is my, my very limited technical background, but it's all script based, right? So it's, it's scripts that you can write that, essentially, kick off automations for different tasks and things like that.

Kyle Gregg (04:05) Exactly, yeah. So, a Worklet, you know, what's really cool about Worklets is at their core, they are scripts. So, with Windows, we use PowerShell, and then with Linux and Mac, we're going to use bash. So, if you have familiarity with either of those two, you're able to basically take what you currently have even in your environment and then upload it or use it with Automox. And that's really cool because we enable our customers where if you have no patching experience, sorry, patch experience, excuse me.

and no scripting experience or a lot of scripting experience, you are still enabled to use Worklets. So we have the Worklet catalog, which is one of my favorite things and something that, you know, over the past couple of years, we've been constantly expanding and adding and amending, where if you're not a scripting pro, that's fine. Come and look at our catalog and look at the community, and then you can use those and two clicks of a button there in your environment. Or if you're an expert, you can take what you currently have, write scripts for it, and then just put them into the Worklet. And that enables you to...

It's all software or on Sol or make modifications not only just on one system, but across all of them. So Worklets at their core, you know, they are just script based, but the way we design Worklets makes them more powerful than just a script.

Maddie (05:15) Awesome, I love it. Yeah, I love that it's very accessible. I talked with Jeremy last month about, yeah, the whole accessibility of Worklets. So that's definitely a big plus. You mentioned the catalog. What are your top two favorite Worklets from the catalog?

Kyle Gregg (05:31) This is a tough one. I actually had to really think about this one. Yeah, there's, I think there's 364 to pick from. So I definitely go through a couple of these. So the ones that I was thinking, my absolute favorite one is going to be the Windows 10 upgrade one. So I work with a lot of customers that are Windows based. I mean, the majority of our customers are going to be Windows. It's the most popular, you know, when you think of Apple, you only buy one device and that has, you know, macOS on it.

Maddie (05:32) There's a lot to pick from.

Kyle Gregg (06:00) where Windows you're gonna buy anywhere. So of course, there'll be a lot of people that use Windows. But with Microsoft sunsetting Windows 10, they say next year around this time, they're gonna be sunsetting it. A lot of times I will go into a customer call or I'll do a review and probably nine out of ten times, one of the things I'm gonna mention is, hey, you have out -of -date Windows versions, you need to upgrade these before next year. Or even now, because some of the older ones are out of date. And what's really cool about that is sometimes they get the...

the answer of the look of being like, well, that's a lot of work. Like that's, yes, we need to do that, but that's a lot of work. I'm like, well, we have a work on our catalog that's plug and play. You can put it in there, you just run it and then it'll do it for you. You don't gotta do anything else. And that's definitely my absolute favorite one. It's one that even if somebody doesn't even ask about that or even identify it, it's one that I bring up, be like, yeah, like how cool this is. Like this is what you can do with a Worklet. You don't have to...

You don't have to be this scripting guru to do something like this. It's all done. If we can do that, there's a lot of stuff we can do as well. My second favorite one is probably not as cool as that one, but my second favorite one is going to be we have a generic MSI installer. MSIs are going to be packages for Windows devices to install software. The Worklet we have, which is the 64-bit MSI installer, is really cool because not only is it pre-made where you just upload that package and we'll install it for you,

Kyle Gregg (07:27) We cycle through a bunch of ways to actually do that because packages can be finicky and very hard to manage. So we just make it very easy for you to do that just with drop that package, run it. We'll cycle through a bunch of ways to do it. If we're successful, awesome. If not, we're going to tell you, hey, no. And then here's the reason why, basically.

Maddie (07:28) That's awesome. Yeah, I had no idea. I mean, I knew they work with can do a lot of different things, but I didn't know they're that adaptable. So that second one, that's pretty cool.

Kyle Gregg (07:56) Yeah, there are some really crazy stuff I've seen with Worklets. The craziest one I've ever seen was not in the catalog, but I got in with a customer and this is I think pretty early. into my tenure at Automox, this is almost three years ago. So they did a entire domain migration, like a Microsoft domain migration with Worklets. And that was a lot of code. It's going to be a lot of code regardless, but they were able to do it. And I was very impressed to see something like that. And that's the moment where...

Maddie (08:15) Wow.

Kyle Gregg (08:26) It kind of elevates to like, yeah, these are scripts, but these can be more than scripts, right? They can solve issues that a lot of technicians might not be able to solve without a tool like this.

Maddie (08:37) Absolutely, for sure. That actually kind of brings me to my next topic, which is vulnerabilities. So we've got a lot of vulnerabilities this month. Let me start that over. Vulnerabilities is such a tough word. Okay. So that actually brings me to my next question, which is around vulnerabilities. And this month we had over 5,000 CVEs that were published, which is the first time ever that that many have been published in a month.

Kyle Gregg (08:50) Hahaha!

Maddie (09:06) And the average of 164 is up from 84. So obviously that's a huge part of just the entire IT and security departments day to day. So how can Worklets help IT teams solve these CVEs?

Kyle Gregg (09:20) Yeah, that's a scary number. 164 up from 84, you know, month by month. I hope that means more people are paying attention versus more software is just being exploitable. Either one, that's definitely scary. So, you know, I talk about Worklets and I talk about what they can do. And at their core, they can do simple stuff just like in cell software, right? Like we do that all the live long day, but it can also solve vulnerabilities. So to give you, you know, a really good example, this is a recent one.

We just put into our Worklet catalog the Lansweeper integration. So basically if we have a Lansweeper customer, Lansweeper Cloud, we actually have a pre -made Worklet now that they can take any vulnerabilities that are identified in their environment in Lansweeper and we can take that ingest it into a Worklet. That work will collect the data, put it over into Automox and then if there's any patches that can be remedied with Automox, Windows Update, third party, whatever the case may be.

We'll do that automatically for you. So we solved a very easy way for Lansweeper customers to resolve their vulnerabilities if they have them and not just one of them. You know, I also think about Log4j which is I think two years old at this point. And that was that one was bad. That was a very scary vulnerability. And, you know, one of the things that Automox did and the team did was...

get something out within the first 24 or 48 hours to help our customers remediate that. Because a lot of people were freaking out about that. That was something that, at that time, you didn't really, when that first happened, you really didn't know what was being touched yet. And you had to kind of go through everything to figure that out. And for us to have a Worklet available within that short timeframe, we're saying, hey, here's your Linux devices, take this Worklet. You can just schedule it and group it and run it and we'll remediate it for you.

I'm not saying you're done, don't got to worry about it, but that takes a lot of pressure off of people. And it takes a lot of ease of mind to pretty much say, okay, well, we solved this, and now that we solved this, we're able to focus on other things on top of that. So that goes back to what I talked about worklists. They're incredibly powerful. They're more than just scripts. They can be for evaluation, and they can check certain things. And if you have a 6,000 line script that does do remediation,

You don't have to run that on every single device every day. We can split that up and say, just check this one thing, and this one thing is vulnerable, then we'll run the rest of it. So you're saving time, you're saving bandwidth, and then all that. So yeah, Worklets are going to be one of our most powerful tools. And I mentioned patching before. We can patch devices, right? But what about the stuff that can't be patched with any patch from Microsoft? And that's where Worklets come into play.

Maddie (12:05) And it sounds like, I mean, really the sky's the limit, right? It expands a whole new area of opportunity essentially. So.

Kyle Gregg (12:12) Yeah, yeah, for sure. When I first started here at Automox, I didn't know a ton about bash scripting and PowerShell scripting and a little bit more about bash that came from like a Mac admin, you know, backgrounds and then seeing what they can do and being like, this is actually super cool. Like I'm able to write what I'm doing on my home computer, right? And then, but then I can run it on these devices that I have. And it just really opened up my eyes being like, wait, this is more than just a script. This is like, I can add stickers to it and stuff like that. It's a very cool tool.

Maddie (12:45) Yeah, that's awesome. I love it. Okay, well, we're wrapping up here, but I don't know if you've had a chance to listen to the podcast or for those listeners that do tune it off. And we always end with a little game. And I've got, I think one that will be an interesting challenge for you this time, which is I'm going to see how many Worklets you can name in 15 seconds. So let me get my timer off here. And then we'll...

Kyle Gregg (13:07) Okay.

Maddie (13:14) get a little thing to make some make some tally marks and yeah. All right.

Maddie (13:26) Are you ready? Okay, three, two, one, go.

Kyle Gregg (13:28) I am ready.

Okay, Windows 11 upgrade, Windows 11 readiness check, Windows 10 upgrade, Windows update rollback, macOS caching Worklet, macOS upgrade Worklet, secure token enablement, MSI installer, EXE installer, LAN sweeper, reboot history, restart computer work, How many was that?

Maddie (13:52) Alright, oops. That was about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11.

Kyle Gregg (14:02) Okay, is that the record? Or did someone do more before?

Maddie (14:05) I don't know. I haven't, I have not, this is my first time doing this. So we might have to see, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, for sure. Right. Yeah. You, you, you've established the record. So there we go. All right. Great. Okay. Well, Kyle, thank you so much for jumping on. I'm going to just leave our listeners with a discussion topic to get started over in the Automox community. That's also a, a great, aspect of Automox. If you haven't checked it out, definitely recommend, but.

Kyle Gregg (14:08) If it's your first time, okay. So that's the record then. The record is 11. Yes! Alright. Gold star.

Maddie (14:35) Yeah. How have Worklets made it easier for you listeners to control your endpoints and double down on the security of your environment? So take that over to the Automox community and Kyle, thank you so much for jumping on and sharing your knowledge and talking with us about Worklets. It was great.

Kyle Gregg (14:51) Thank you for having me, it was a lot of fun.