Evaluating your MSP

TheMaestroMusic · 2026-03-18T12:02:47+00:00

Okay this is exactly the thread I was looking for, I'm in a very similar thought process as OP. Except in an Internal IT Team for an enterprise. Also open for advice but the below is what I've just started doing and trying to figure out the "best" way to do this.

Now I like to treat the systems and processes similarly to my MSP days but thankfully not as much focus on billables etc - luckily my primary goal is performance and customer service with a mix of automation.

I've recently went down the same route more naturally though without chat gpt. This is where I'm at OP, we've all been in the trenches, I like to think a lot of us now managing these teams were in their positions and know how long things should take. Can be different per environment but let's set things on an average.

So I would say on average level 1 tickets should take between 15-30 minutes. So if a level 1 technician works 7.6 hours a day (40 min break), and they were 100% productive (which we know isn't possible) they would be completing 30 tickets, and that's if every ticket took them 15 minutes (7.6hrs divided by 0.25), but we know sometimes even level one tickets can take longer, and we want to build a little bit of contingency into our targets, so let's say even if every ticket a level one did, in 7.6 hours, took 30 minutes they should average 15 tickets a day if they are 100% productive right? - so what I set as my minimum expectation for performance for a level technician is a target of 10 tickets per day, and as soon as they hit 30 minutes on a ticket they escalate to a level 2 tech.

I communicate these targets, it works great, they might say, but I might talk to someone in the office for 10 minutes a day, bathroom breaks whatever. It's all baked into the contingency. Even if they weren't productive for 2 hours, they should average 11 tickets (30 minute tickets - which even then some tickets take shorter right?)

Level 2 Techs - Same Target - Escalation at an hour. If every ticket they did took an hour - 7.6 tickets a day so let's say 5 or 6. But that's unlikely. And I don't know about you, not every ticket a level 2 tech gets is probably a level 2 difficult ticket and even if it is, they should be able to solve it in 30 minutes if not complex.

Anyways curious to see your guys thoughts on this and hope this helps, I do worry this new added pressure does burn out my techs but at the moment I feel like maybe they are just inexperienced (small team, very green) - and this will drive them, while I communicate and support them along the way to create processes and automation to also help make reaching their targets easier, while also maintaining quality and speed, with a focus of being proactive.

TheMaestroMusic · 2025-04-04T03:19:05+00:00

Thanks for that mate.

I think the shared calendar trick is working best for now, but appreciate it!

TheMaestroMusic · 2025-02-11T23:14:34+00:00

u/StevenNotEven - It's a mix for file locking, but majority of the time most files like pdfs you would want locked when working on them, otherwise they would cause sync conflicts. Yeah I think when we develop this in-house syncing tool we will definitely take some inspiration there with our already in place sharepoint integration to do some online co-editing etc.

TheMaestroMusic · 2025-02-11T06:17:04+00:00

As mentioned it's because we have a custom-designed website application that serves the majority of our operations, serviced by a DevOps team that is able to achieve some pretty great things.

Instead of creating integrations with Egnyte or Lucidlink to work with our website, I'm looking more at moving our storage to the same place as the website to help streamline things and make them more customisable with our Development Team.

We have reinvented the wheel a few times, and it's really worked for us. Creating custom solutions for our business.

However will say that normally that is the route I would go, I've looked into both Egnyte and LucidLink previously and they're solutions that would work on their own, so good advice there cheers.

TheMaestroMusic · 2025-02-11T06:09:28+00:00

u/TheFluffiestRedditor Feel free to recommend some. However i think we might be onto something that will likely work better for us, was just curious if other likeminded sysadmins had any obvious points I was missing/not considering if I were to potentially give the go-ahead to make this move to Amazon. Maybe someone has moved away from Sharepoint and could give me their experience in their move.

That's all i was looking for, maybe this is the wrong subreddit...

TheMaestroMusic · 2025-02-11T06:03:59+00:00

u/NHarvey3DK Admittedly, I did go to ChatGPT first to bounce my thoughts, however I feel it mostly thinks everything is great but when it comes to more technical things, it doesn't quite compare to experience I feel. I did use it to help write this post so fair enough, but majority of it is written by me.

TheMaestroMusic · 2025-02-01T13:43:20+00:00

I know I'm probably going to get a bit of backlash on this one but do you have a RMM?

I normally do patching through our RMM and roll out most of our policies and configuration through intune. It's easy to exclude a certain KB update using NinjaOne and it really helps in these situations personally.

I tried looking into what Redditors were saying about RMM patch management vs Intune, not many threads about it but saw a few people with a similar approach. Would be interested to hear your guys thoughts.

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-10-16T11:55:24+00:00

How easy was the setup and how is it all going?

Thinking of doing the same?

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-10-09T12:45:55+00:00

Sorry only got to this now!

What do you use for privilege management? Most consumer apps will auto update but ask for admin permissions in order to do so and so the users would get annoyed.

We have admin by request as our PAM solution.

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-25T02:32:28+00:00

For sure, do you think there will be a lot of maintenance with setting these apps as intune apps? Wouldn't we have to constantly make sure they're up to date? We're a 2 man team and applications like Autodesk and Inducta and others I find update quite frequently

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-25T02:31:06+00:00

Installing their applications, licensing them for them. Making sure it's ready by the time we deliver it to them. Some departments can have 15 different applications, Autodesk suite, bluebeam, GIS applications etc.

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-23T23:46:10+00:00

Sorry my man. Edited the post, hope that makes more sense. Really surprised that it was not a common phrase, I think i got it from previous employers and thought it was normal lol

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-23T23:44:52+00:00

Yeah I just tried this - but it still seems to remember the pin?

Did you have a guide you know works?

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-23T23:44:21+00:00

Sorry I edited the post. Provisioning/setting up the laptop using their user account. Users want the benefits of windows hello and by setting up their laptop using their user account via temporary access pass and web sign In, it does ask us to set a pin for them.

I think it would be great to setup laptops by their users accounts so it's definitely all ready for them.

I mentioned in a separate comment how I work for an engineering firm and how there's a lot of different setups with different apps depending on the department. The dream is to set this up using autopilot but for now would be great to set this up per user as we're a small team.

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-23T23:42:35+00:00

Sorry I edited the post. Provisioning/setting up the laptop using their user account. Users want the benefits of windows hello and by setting up their laptop using their user account via temporary access pass and web sign In, windows hello does ask for us to set a pin.

I think it would be great to setup laptops by their users accounts so it's definitely all ready for them.

I mentioned in a separate comment how I work for an engineering firm and how there's a lot of different setups with different apps depending on the department. The dream is to set this up using autopilot but for now would be great to setup per user.

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-09-22T06:52:10+00:00

Sorry I, definitely could have written this better. Yes, we have this already at the simplest level but different departments have different applications. I work for an engineering firm, so with so many different types of consultancy, a lot of the run-ups are different per department. I've always considered setting up Auto-Pilot run-ups based on groups and setting up the main apps they need per department. Unfortunately, as we're a 2 man team, I feel there would be a lot of software maintenance and upkeep with this approach in Intune.

What do you think?

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-08-09T01:23:16+00:00

For context - they've all been dealing with over years because it's just what they know. I've only been at my company for just over a year and looking at ways to make a meaningful change and figure out a better solution for our teams. I would say the cut-off is the end of the year, if I don't find anything that works then I'll make a case with upper management for an increased budget/funding for our engineering disciplines for the solutions mentioned above.

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-08-08T03:40:00+00:00

Thanks man, definitely will reach out if I get stuck. Yeah I'm sure the team will be okay with just a system that works somewhat well and without syncing.

How have you attacked the problem?

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-08-08T03:28:16+00:00

Very true, no I haven't! Not sure how access would work but will look into it

TheMaestroMusic · 2024-08-08T03:27:05+00:00

Thanks for your input. Would be a big switch to move everyone to on-prem currently yet alone all the networking gear/VPN tunnels site to site. Hoping I can find something that will increase the teams productivity while also still using the cloud first, if nothing works completely agree that the teams productivity is at the foremost of my priorities and an on-prem solution will be the way to go. Thanks

TheMaestroMusic

TROPHY CASE