SkyKick has always focused on delivering partners the project information they need to ensure their success. This includes uncovering issues with source email servers and identifying timely actions required for a seamless migration, and informing partners about ways to improve customer data protection (e.g. identifying newly discovered Microsoft 365 users and objects for backup). While this system of notifications has helped partners save time and costs on a product-by-product and project-by-project basis, partners reported that the growing inventory of notifications was becoming increasingly overwhelming as they scale their cloud practice with more customers across SkyKick migrations and Cloud Backup.
As a 100% to-partner company, partner input is the primary driver for our development efforts. So, in response to partners’ requests for a more efficient way to manage SkyKick project information, across customers and products, SkyKick conducted in-depth research (which included partner interviews) to inform the development of a new interface that now helps partners streamline multi-project management.
This new platform-wide notification (aka Alerts) interface not only helps streamline multi-project management for partners, it will also drive customer satisfaction while reducing costs and increasing cloud revenue. It provides the ability to identify opportunities and mitigate risks by getting timely and relevant email notifications to the right people and support tools. In addition to accelerating troubleshooting, it allows partners to proactively remediate issues and upsell to non-backed up mailboxes at the click of a button.
Partners want to see everything and act quickly on the right things
Our research identified a variety of challenges partners were encountering and provided insight into how we could improve the current notification system. These can be summarized as follows:
- A single, easy-to-consume view of all notifications across customers and products
- Easier and faster ways for each user to access and act upon the most important and relevant notifications for their role
- Empower partners to extend and customize the notification email system to better meet their organization.
Other primary areas will inform ongoing development included more consistent, consumable notification content and delivery.
This release streamlines the partner experience and helps navigate to the relevant action
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Get a clear, informative view of all notifications |
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Get straight to what each user needs to know or act upon |
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Get actions done quickly |
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Get through, and between, notifications and projects smoothly |
Get a clear view of all notifications, from any page in the SkyKick Partner Portal
Rather than having to navigate to products and projects, you can now simply click the bell in the upper right corner of any page in the SkyKick Partner Portal to access a new notifications interface. The number in the red circle next to the bell indicates the number of projects that have notifications within the past 30 days.
This will open a single, all-up view of notifications designed to help partners ascertain the overall status of notifications across all projects.
Get to what you need to know or act upon
Within the project view, you can either select a row to drill into the notification or click the Go to Order link to go directly to the project
Get actions done quickly
Once a notification has been accessed, the new interface will enable more and more actions to be performed on the notification without having to navigate to the project, and in some cases will provide buttons to initiate a workflow to resolve common issues.
The release includes:
- A Complete action button to indicate that any action required for the notification has been completed
- Links to View Documentation
- A short-cut link Go to Order link to the specific project where more actions can be taken.
Get through and between screens smoothly
The features above are also enhanced with improved navigation through the notification screens and between the notification interface and the projects and notifications they refer to. In addition to the Go to Order shortcut links across several notification screens, breadcrumbs at the top of the notification interface (as shown at the top of the image above) streamline the movement between screens.
Further specifics can be accessed through the SkyKick Partner Portal at: SkyKick platform notifications (aka alerts)
Get emails to the right people and tools at the right time
This new robust notification system also ensures partners are comprehensively informed about the status, issues, or potential issues across migration projects and Cloud Backup subscriptions. This includes the ability to get the right notifications to the right people and support tools to streamline troubleshooting (e.g., mailbox is no longer accessible for backup) as well as inform proactive management (add a newly discovered mailbox to a Cloud Backup subscription). SkyKick also continues to improve the ability to manage this wealth of information, resulting in more efficient support and improved customer satisfaction.
The release includes:
- Ability to manage notifications by type: critical, warning, information, and success
- Timely notifications to the right people: As most of the important notifications include an email, it is critical to get these emails to the right people for timely action. Now an admin on the partner SkyKick Partner Portal account can configure the system to automatically distribute emails to any number or type of email address(es) based on product, severity (e.g., critical), or type (e.g., billing). The email addresses can be configured at the:
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- Customer account level (for account execs)
- Product level (for Tier 2 support or billing admins)
- Order level (for order admins or sales contact)
- Integration with partner PSA tools: Partners using a PSA tool can combine SkyKick notification email configuration and their PSA tool’s email connector to convert notification emails from SkyKick products into tickets in the PSA tool.
Further specifics can be accessed through the SkyKick Partner Portal at: Managing SkyKick platform and product notification emails
Check it out and tell us what you think
Next time you’re in the SkyKick Partner Portal, click the grey bell next to your name in the upper right corner of any page and check out the new interface. And if you have any ideas or input to inform our ongoing development of the notifications system, send an email to SkyKick support.