How Users Get Smarter for Free at Automox University

Summary

In this episode, Peter Pflaster interviews Amelia Vacante from the Automox customer education team. They discuss the philosophy behind Automox University and the importance of customer education.  

They highlight the simplicity and ease of use of Automox and how Automox University aims to provide concise and relevant content to help users quickly understand and get value from the product. They also mention the certification programs offered by Automox University and the value of certifications in the IT and security industry.

Transcript

Peter Pflaster: Welcome back to another episode of Product Talk on the Autonomous IT Podcast Network. I'm Peter Pflaster, your host. Today we're going to be chatting with Amelia Vacante from our customer education team. Amelia, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you've done at Automox so far, how long you've been here, et cetera.

Amelia Vacante: Yeah, absolutely. I joined Automox about two and a half years ago now. I came from higher education working at a traditional University where I worked in tier one help support and worked all the way up to an instructional design role and learned a lot of lessons from that realm and I'm lucky to carry them over here in the, you know, endpoint management, ITOps space.

Super excited to join Automox because it merges a couple of my skill sets. My education background is in cybersecurity and learning design. So this was just the perfect opportunity to merge those two great interests in my life. And it's been a great ride ever since.

Peter Pflaster: That's great. Yeah, you'll notice if you're listening to all our podcasts on the network this month, we are talking lot about education. It's a really exciting topic. think talking to our customers, pretty much nobody has a tool problem. Most IT and security teams that we speak with have potentially too many tools, arguably. And the really hard thing for them is actually

finding the time to use the tools adequately or just addressing kind of that skills gap to get over the hump and actually use a tool how it's meant to be used. Most of the stuff that's out there on the market is really high quality, powerful, but it can be really difficult to learn. And that's kind of a nice segue into our just overall point of view as a company. Right. We build our product from

the ground up to really be focused on speed to actually learn the product and get a return on your investment very quickly, whether that's the initial implementation or creating a patch policy that can automate thousands of patches getting deployed to your environment in a day or two. But really what we try to do is build for the admins. We don't want to have

a situation where our tool requires 30 years of experience, you know, in the trenches managing that tool to be able to use it adequately. And that flows through to kind of our approach with, with, Automox University, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Amelia is a key contributor to Automox University. but first let's take a step back before we dive like all the way into all the courses and goodness there.

And just, Amelia, why don't you tell us a little bit about what our overall philosophy is on customer education here and why we built Automox University in the first place.

Amelia Vacante: Sure, absolutely. The Automox University is for Automox customers and potential customers. But really, the beauty of Automox is, as we mentioned in several other podcasts and all of our resources, is the simplicity that it offers, the single pane of glass experience. And we really want to keep that philosophy going in Automox University.

Just because it's called Automox University doesn't mean you should need to spend time like you're getting a degree, you know, to understand a product that you're using. And like, as you mentioned, it may be, you know, one of many in your tech stack. That's just one of many workflows that customers need to understand and get used to. And that can be a challenge, especially when you have other environmental factors, the economy and other just things that.

folks, human beings have to contend with and that's no different for IT admins. We want the training in Automox University getting up to speed to be as fluid, something that is easy to tackle, doesn't seem a huge uphill challenge. You don't have to dedicate weeks of your time to understand the product. And Automox University, we don't want to take up a lot of your time. We want to deliver concise and relevant content to you.

as efficiently as possible, help you understand the value of the product as quickly as possible. So that's our philosophy in AXU is how can we keep it relatable, accurate, and completely relevant to a myriad of use cases and roles in this space.

Peter Pflaster: That's great. You know, I think one of my favorite things about Automox University and what we've heard from chatting with even prospects who haven't made the decision to buy any product yet is that it's free and open, right?

I'm fundamentally against having to spend a bunch of money to go and learn how to use a product if you're already buying that product. So I think the fact that we make it free, even if you haven't purchased Automox yet is super useful. And if you're considering the tool, like you can really go in and learn everything there is to learn about the tool by going to Automox University before you decide to purchase. And for me,

I usually go against the old IT adage of RTFM. We do have really great user docs as well, but I get bored so easily I have a short attention span. I struggle to read through that stuff. So the fact that it's in video form and it's interactive is huge as well. think that's really the modern approach to initial customer education. If you're just trying to stand up a knowledge base from the ground up.

and learn about how a product works. Let's talk a little bit about kind of the course content. What's the strategy? How do I know that I've learned everything there is to learn about a particular area of Automox? Do we have programs that certify people in the tool?

Amelia Vacante: Yeah, absolutely. have, we just rolled out the last of our three current certificate programs. The last one is centered around Worklets. Second one is centered around how to leverage policies. And the first one is really all about getting started and the ins and outs of the Automox experience. So those certificate exams are just a great measurement of your knowledge of the product and can be just instrumental in helping to

become well-versed and getting up to speed, especially if you're playing along in the console as you're taking the courses, I think you'll get the maximum value out of the content. But going back to what you're saying about having user documentation, I think having a mix, a variety of resources and a variety of formats is crucial. We are in an age where information is thrown at you at all sides, at all hours of the day.

And so your preferences in how you retain that information will change depending on what you're going through. So we're covering you from all bases, going from courses with interactive videos that contain relevant use cases or relatable use cases and scenarios to our documentation, which is just so technically thorough and just crucial to understanding the back end of the product.

And then our community where we have, you can really take your learning to the next level, socialize it with your peers and see how other folks are leveraging the product. It's just a great trifecta of education and in Automox University, we definitely want to help you see the value in as many formats as possible. So we do have video courses, we do have interactive courses.

playbooks, exams as we've said, and tailored learning paths so that you can sequence your learning in curated ways or you can go free for all and enjoy the 50 plus courses that we have available today.

Peter Pflaster: That's awesome. And I think when I, when I think about how easy the product is to use and also like the ability to go in and we're in it, we have a ton of content out there. think the best example of that is a lot of our executive team has actually gone through AXU and gotten the certification, which like no offense y'all, if any of the executives are listening, but like that's kind of an achievement that speaks to itself. If we can get our non-technical

exec team to go and get certified in the platform.

Amelia Vacante: Yeah, absolutely. mean, we were all crazy about Automox. So I think it just shows our dedication to really delivering the best value to our customers in whatever function we have.

Peter Pflaster: That's awesome. So I'd love to kind of like pull back the curtain a little bit. You know, obviously when you stand up a customer education platform, like there's a lot of stuff that just has to get done right away. Like there's this baseline things in the tool that you have to build courses for, but I'm curious, like now that we have 50 plus courses, how are we deciding what makes sense to build next?

Amelia Vacante: Sure, yeah, it's always a challenge, especially in the SaaS space where the technology is constantly changing, directions change, the market changes, market direction changes. And so it's a challenging balancing act of updating our current content so that what we have out there remains relevant, inaccurate, and also really getting with our customers. We engage in feedback sessions.

with customers to see what they want to hear. With you, the users, we want to hear what you want to learn about. And we take that to heart very deeply. So we engage in feedback sessions, we scour the community, we of course have feedback surveys that we scour for topics. And then we engage very deeply internally with our subject matter experts on the professional services team, our solutions engineering team.

our support engineers, we just have such a depth to our technical expertise. So always taking in what our experts are seeing and what they think customers could benefit from learning about. And of course, we're kind of playing around in it ourselves and coming up with ways to deliver recommendations for workflows, best practices.

starting the conversations internally where, you know, coming up with both those best practices can be fun conversations. As we know with Automox, there are so many ways that you can leverage the product, but recommending the best way, you know, has its own complexities. So it's just a fun ride just to be able to have these conversations, listen to our customers, look at our data and see what's being received well and continuing from there. So like I said, challenging balancing.

but it's a lot of fun too.

Peter Pflaster: Yeah, think as someone from my perspective who's involved in the prioritization and then bringing to market of a new feature, new capability or new set of capabilities, I've been really excited with how we prioritize early engagement with the education team to make sure that when we do release something new, there's already tools or when we do release it, there's

the ability for the person to go and learn about that in an interactive fashion versus just, you know, trying to figure it out on their own, which I mean, can be fun. And that's sometimes my approach, but, I, I do break things when I try to, when I try to just figure it out myself. So it's always good to go and watch like a video, for example. And, I think of this, like, you YouTube for, for Automox basically, as far as education goes. Yeah.

Amelia Vacante: There can be a lot of comfort in just watching someone do it first. you know, even though the works, using Worklets and different configurations within Automox can be very straightforward sometimes, it's just seeing it done can make all the difference. you know, we painstakingly create those tutorials for your comfort and to help you take the leap and...

get deploying Worklets and policies and whatever else you need in your environment to secure it.

Peter Pflaster: Awesome. So let's take a step back to certificates quickly here. I have done most of them at this point. I have one more that I need to do. But I'm curious, what, you know, there's 50 plus courses, is there, what does the certification process look like? Do I get a credential at the end that I can go and show off and?

Does it kind of guide me through like the recommended sequence to get to that final stage where I become like an expert in Automox.

Amelia Vacante: Yeah, absolutely. So our first certificate is aligns with the Getting Started series, so which is our onboarding series. So after you've taken that, collection of, I believe about 11 mini courses, so under five minutes each, there is the level one certificate exam, which goes over all of that content. And then level two, as I mentioned before, goes into policy management. And we do have pages that

curate that or that sequence that content so that you can enjoy it and then or consume it and then go on and take the level two exam and the same for work with. So we have that sequence content and then take the exam and open up the console and play around as you're taking it as well. So those are three right now in the works. After you've completed the exam, you do get a certificate that you can share on LinkedIn.

and add to your profile as proof of the knowledge that you've just accumulated and your status as an Automox Pro.

Peter Pflaster: That's huge. Yeah, I mean, in our space, right, IT and security certificates are so important to kind of demonstrate that hunger to learn. think that's a huge indicator of success for folks in the industry. you know, understanding how to run an endpoint management tool and stand up a program is really important as well. I had talked to

a customer a couple of weeks ago, and they actually mentioned to me the last three jobs that they've gotten. Their whole pitch was they came into the interview and basically said, I can fix your patching process in a few weeks. And that wasn't specific to Automox or anything. That was just a general, like, can come in and fix this process. And they got the job every time because of that. So I think that goes to show how important it is to not only learn tools, but

understand the best practices and how to stand those tools up to align the best practices. Because in the end, the results are really all that matters for IT and security teams.

Amelia Vacante: Yeah, I just wanted to share a recent success story that we had from a customer that we engaged in a feedback session with. And he was mentioning that he was uncomfortable with Worklets. He had been leveraging one part of the product and took the course where he was able to get up to speed deploying Worklets, scheduling them, and was able to overcome those challenges just by getting a little guidance and having the confidence to push the button. And I think that's really powerful.

Peter Pflaster: Yeah, that's huge. And especially, you know, our, our tool is really focused on, you know, thoughtful controlled automation and like taking the course to learning how to harness that and also getting the confidence to feel like, yes, I can go and automate this thing can save you, you know, hours to potentially dozens of hours a week that, you know, you may be missing out on, you know, dinners or

sporting events, parent teacher conferences, all that stuff, like whatever, whatever in your personal life that you want to do that maybe you're just stuck doing things kind of in your old way. this may be the push that, you need to kind of taking control of some of that work that that's really a time suck for you. so I'd encourage everybody to go and check out Automox University again. It's free. You don't have to be an Automox customer.

You know, go in, look at the courses. You don't have to do the full certification right away. Just test out a couple courses that look interesting and you'll probably be hooked and go and do the full certificates. But it's a great resource. Really excited, Amelia, to have you on this week. Appreciate it and looking forward to everything good that's coming with Automox University in the next few months.

Amelia Vacante: Yeah, me too, Peter. Thanks for having me and stay tuned to Automox University. We've got a lot of fun things coming out really soon.

Peter Pflaster: Awesome. Thanks so much for listening this month y'all and we'll see you next month.

Amelia Vacante: Take care.