When we imagine an enterprise, we think of it as an engine. A sum of parts that work together towards an awesome whole. 

Yet, behind the scenes is an entire IT team that ensures the company runs bereft of any technological issues. While the limelight may be elsewhere, it is the IT department that works silently to provide the infrastructure for scaling, automation, and uninterrupted flow of information.

They fix what’s broken; they oversee servers, networks, systems; they provide maintenance and backups. All the while ensuring that applications are up to date and everyone’s worst nightmare doesn’t come true: data loss. 

With such a crucial role to play, it’s important for the IT teams to equip themselves with the right resources and tools to keep the company running. Quite literally. 

Doing that, fortunately, is quite easy with OSlash. Here’s how. 

Create a collection (a folder of URLs) on OSlash with the shortcut o/it. Next step is to keep the following shortcuts nested within it. Doing this will help you:

1. Educate the team against cyber attacks with o/security-policy  

Keeping data secure, especially as new online threats become increasingly commonplace, is no small feat. 

It’s important to educate employees about the risks. So they can stay up to date with their roles in keeping the organization's systems and data safe from intrusion, hacking efforts, phishing attacks, etc. 

Enter: Enterprise Information Security Policy. It details what a company's philosophy is on security and helps to set the direction, scope, and tone for all of an organization's security efforts. 

With this policy, every new employee would be easily made aware of the security guidelines. And of the steps they should take to safeguard their accounts. It can elaborate on two-factor authentication, how frequently employees should update their passwords, password policies, and point of contact in case of security breaches or suspicious activity. ‍

Quick tip: To streamline reporting of security incidents, create one shortcut to a common database where everyone can report suspicious emails/activity.

2. Administer virus and malware protection easily with o/antivirus ‍

Staying on top of security threats starts with ensuring you are tracking the antivirus used in your enterprise. The antivirus software should give you adaptive protection against advanced threats targeting the enterprise. 

With o/antivirus, it’ll be easier to keep track of licences, expiry and renewal dates, and software and virus database updates. It also provides for a very simplified way of tracking deals and discounts on antivirus softwares to manage costs effectively. 

3. Accelerate resource requests with o/it-requests 
   

Subscribing to various SaaS applications or devices is one way for any team to adapt to changing market requirements easily. It also helps in bringing in  expertise and capabilities at a very reasonable price. 

Therefore, the process of raising access requests should be as seamless as possible. To enhance the team’s productivity, create a shortcut o/it-requests for anyone to quickly raise a request. It eliminates bottlenecks, streamlines the process, and makes sure no one has to wait endlessly for the right hardware or software to get work done. 

4. Reduce everyday support requests with o/troubleshoot-guide
   

As the team gets bigger, the IT team ends up spending a lot of time on repeat requests. Especially as the non engineering teams start to expand, they are often bothered by everyday issues and malfunctions that don’t need intervention. 

By creating an accessible document, o/troubleshoot-guide, the IT team can save time on repeat tasks by listing guidelines on tackling everyday problems in a self-service manner. These can include questions related to VPN connection, resetting login credentials, installing regular system updates etc. 

5. Configure and customize enterprise devices with o/manage-devices
   

In a remote setup, it is all the more important to ensure that the IT team can configure, customize, access, and control an employee’s device if required. 

At OSlash, we use Jamf for Apple device management that allows zero-touch device deployment, app management, and enterprise mobility management. 

Our IT team finds it useful to access Jamf using a Shortcut called o/manage-devices.

6. Track all softwares/tools with o/licenses
   

The decisions around renewing software licences should not just be centered around ensuring they lead to cost savings. They also involve making sure that the organization gets the best possible value out of technology investments. 

Effective management of license renewals allows the IT team to streamline the process, reduce internal overheads, and eliminate waste. 

A simple shortcut to all license-related information, o/licenses helps teams make certain that the subscriptions, maintenance, and support the enterprise is paying for meet all the needs.

7. Cut down on useless spending with o/saas-usage
   

Enterprises, and mostly startups, spend a huge chunk of money from their annual budget on underutilized applications. 

For monitoring what’s frequently used and what’s not, the IT department can use o/saas-usage to identify the worst-performing or the most underutilized applications to cut needless spending in a data-driven manner. 

Monitoring data to remove licenses of applications that are no longer required should be a monthly task. And with a shortcut to the dashboard that monitors usage, it’ll be easier for the IT team to justify spends, cuts, and only keep tools that bring equal value. 

8. Minimize downtime with o/network-status

By capturing the downtime and other network events in Datadog, at OSlash we monitor our performance with o/status. 

It helps the IT and the DevOps teams to minimize downtime and prevent critical issues by swiftly identifying the right alerts to provide a reliable product to all users. 

The shortcut allows the designated on-call engineer to quickly take a look at network issues as and when they are reported and brought to attention. 

9. Streamline UX and increase software adoption with o/sso
   

Single sign-on (SSO) combines several different application login screens into one. With SSO, a user only has to enter their login credentials (username, password) one time on a single page to access all of their SaaS applications. 

It’s more secure, easy to use, and with passwords stored internally, o/sso would allow the IT team to have more control.