The Citrix ITSM Adapter service is a cloud-enabled service that, when installed in a ServiceNow instance, provides an easy way to seamlessly integrate ServiceNow capabilities with your Citrix environments. With the Citrix ITSM Adapter for ServiceNow, you can:
With this integration, you’ll be able to save valuable time spent by your IT team on manual and one-off processes by automating mundane work, as well as help empower end users to stay productive. By improving the IT management of Citrix services while enhancing the user experience, everyone gets more time to focus on the strategic priorities that matter most.
Over the past few months, the Citrix ITSM team has delivered many new features and enhancements through the 21.12.1 and 22.3.0 releases. For a complete list of what we’ve introduced in the past several releases, please visit our product documentation.
In this blog post, we will highlight some of the key enhancements we’ve introduced with the Citrix ITSM Adapter for ServiceNow service. Let’s take a look at some of these releases in more detail.
Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Fred Reynolds
Co-host: Becky Whiten
Guests: Geremy Meyers
Guests: Charlie Lopez
Guests: Amir Trujillo
The Citrix ITSM Adapter service is a cloud-enabled service that, when installed in a ServiceNow instance, provides an easy way to seamlessly integrate ServiceNow capabilities with your Citrix environments. With the Citrix ITSM Adapter for ServiceNow, you can:
With this integration, you’ll be able to save valuable time spent by your IT team on manual and one-off processes by automating mundane work, as well as help empower end users to stay productive. By improving the IT management of Citrix services while enhancing the user experience, everyone gets more time to focus on the strategic priorities that matter most.
Over the past few months, the Citrix ITSM team has delivered many new features and enhancements through the 21.12.1 and 22.3.0 releases. For a complete list of what we’ve introduced in the past several releases, please visit our product documentation.
In this blog post, we will highlight some of the key enhancements we’ve introduced with the Citrix ITSM Adapter for ServiceNow service. Let’s take a look at some of these releases in more detail.
Host: Andy Whiteside
Co-host: Fred Reynolds
Co-host: Becky Whiten
Guests: Geremy Meyers
Guests: Charlie Lopez
Guests: Amir Trujillo
WEBVTT
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Andy Whiteside: Hello, everyone! Welcome to Episode 22 of seeking with service. Now I'm your host, Andy White Side. Today. We're gonna take a little bit of a little bit of turn. We're gonna change a little bit from what we normally do. And we're gonna talk about service now. But we're gonna talk about one of service. Now, integration partners in this case, the guys from Cloud Software Group Aka Citrix
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Andy Whiteside: and Zintigra is a, you know, obviously a big a big Citrix shop for those those you guys that didn't know that. But since we're a big Citrix shop we use it for ourselves, we use it for our clients, and we integrate it with service now, and we're in the process of making that integration deeper. So we thought we would use this as an opportunity to kind of tell the world what you can do with service now and Citrix, and we're not gonna tell you everything, cause we don't know everything. It's it's limitless, is what I'm trying to say.
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Andy Whiteside: So I've got my normal guest. Thanks for this thinking with service. Now I got Fred Reynolds on and Becky Whiten, Becky and Fred. How's it going?
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Fred Reynolds: Doing wonderful? How are you, Andy and Tim
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Andy Whiteside: got some feedback from the last one that we talked too much at the beginning of it, chit chatting and cutting up and stuff. So let me straight onto at this time.
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Andy Whiteside: guys, thanks for thanks for joining we do have a big group. So 7 county me, we got Jeremy Myers, Jeremy and I do a lot of podcasts together. So on the straight up Citrix side. He, we and I just did one an hour or 2 ago, Jeremy, welcome. And and what what excites you about talking about service. Now in citrix integration.
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Geremy Meyers: You know, I'd get super fired up around just integrations where we can automate things. And I know on the citrix, podcast we talk a lot about how Citrix has. You know, we've opened up our Api. So partners can integrate with us, but we've also, you know, we're tapping into the integrations of other partners. Right? So you know the service. Now, integration is pretty neat, and Charlie and I have been setting this up in our own lab, and we can kinda see what it does. And it's pretty exciting just being able to have workflows that kick off and and go back and forth. So
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Andy Whiteside: I'm pretty. I'm pretty thrilled about this this integration here, so I'm happy to talk through this. We and the Apis are there. Just take smart people to time together with the ideas and and really, ideas is a big part of it. It's it's somewhat easy to do, Charlie Lopez. How's it going?
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Charlie Lopez: Pretty good, Andy?
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Charlie Lopez: What's your title over at the Cloud Software group
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Andy Whiteside: is a partner technology strategies. Today? It changed previously. It was sales engineer. Okay? And are you somehow somewhat succinct or specific to the service? Now, story, or it's just something you have a passion for.
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Charlie Lopez: It's something that we've dug into. We. We have customer conversations on it. So it's important for us to really be a, you know, understanding to how it integrates and how it functions and the benefits. So we just dove into it, and essentially try to make sure. We were fully aware of all the capabilities that it brought
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Andy Whiteside: quick, quick question for you. You say customers, is it customers of all sizes, or just the the biggest enterprises that are thinking like this at the moment
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Andy Whiteside: I've I've seen a mix. It just really depends on on those that are leveraging service now and have that citrix benefit, and if you know, they find out about being able to integrate that, but it's it's a mix of both good thanks, thanks for joining and look forward to hearing for you as well as well as Amir trulio. I promise our practice.
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Amir Trujillo: I'm a a principal product specialist in University Citrix. I've been here for 4 years now and before that
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Amir Trujillo: 15 years as a citrix customer. So little bit of flavor using T. 3. A service now as an end. User. Yes, and
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Amir Trujillo: Citrix administrator, I mean the other side showing customers the value of the service. Now, integration with Citrix ideas. Did you get to do the service? Now, Citrix integration while you were at a customer, or is it newer than that.
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Amir Trujillo: actually, when I was a a customer, I had a chance to start that integration, all the deployment of service now, all the with all the internal processes, all the conversations with the help desk team just to optimize. You know
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Amir Trujillo: the time that it's a consume with the end users to spend on the phone, and, in the other hand, with the Citrix administration, so that mix of flavors, the
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Amir Trujillo: integrating from scratch. And in the other hand, with Citrix, on a daily basis? It's kind of interesting.
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Andy Whiteside: But let me let me do this. Let me start with the this Cloud software group guys. I'm I'm gonna call you Citrix for the rest of this call, because it'll make it make more sense to everybody listening in myself. But surely that there's a lot more in cloud software group integration with I Citro, excuse me service now and itsm than just the citrix piece. But it's a big big piece of what's possible. Let me start with you guys on the Citrix side, Jeremy. You start, and then the other 2 guys chime in. Why, why is it important that partners like us
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Andy Whiteside: start telling the Citrix and service? Now it Sm story? And why is what's what's this blog really telling us? Overall?
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Geremy Meyers: So you know, I think with what's interesting is, we have a lot of customers who own this right, and we've got a lot of customers who own service. Now they're leveraging service. Now, you know, we'd argue that a lot of customers aren't really leveraging the power of both to its full capacity. Right? So the idea is, you know, Zintigra sees across the board right. They can see both halves of the equation. They could see where customers need to to make these integration points. And
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Geremy Meyers: is there turns out, you know, it makes it makes this workflows easier. Right? So the idea that you know you can onboard folks easier. You can provision easier. You can turn off easier. You can. You can make a lot of this that requires help. Dex calls
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Geremy Meyers: heck man, you can make it self service for your, you know, for your your end users, you know. Why would you wanna go turn this on. So the whole point of this article is talk through, hey? You know, what are these integration points like, you know, this is something that's been out for me, or what 3 or 4 years like. It's not new. But I think customers are finally coming around to, you know, a couple of different things, and with the cloud 4 years ago used to be something that we dabbled with. Most folks are deploying from the cloud. They're using cloud services, right? So the idea is, you own this stuff.
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Andy Whiteside: Let's go turn it on. Yeah. So let me comment real quick on that. So I can't say any people? I asked. You have your Citrix environment integrated with your service, now, environment. And they say yes. So when I start pushing forward. All I really get is they have it set up where you can open a help desk ticket about your Citrix environment through service now, and I'm like, wait a minute. That's what you think it is. We got a big problem here. Charlie. Why, why do you think it's important that we get the word out on this.
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Charlie Lopez: Well, a lot of what? What Jeremy said. But there! There's a lot of goodness that there, there they are, putting into it. Even my own experience, and going through it and previously being from support and having a bit of that help desk mindset
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Charlie Lopez: be able to kind of see that there's a lot of self service in there. You could really, you know, ease up time of what it has to deal with where users can go in and request applications, remove resources. It. It's just it's really gonna make things much more streamlined for users to be able to interact with it without having to create tickets.
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Charlie Lopez: But there's also the, you know, the Internet integrations between teams and slack. Now. So those companies that have those investments will be able to even leverage this even further. So yeah, there, there's a lot of stuff going in here, especially even that workflows. That's further down. But
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Amir Trujillo: it's it's definitely a great integration that's gonna provide tons of benefits, unified digital experience that customers are looking to have a for the end user, and especially to make it easier and more productive time.
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Amir Trujillo: Because spending a lot of time with the help this team, on the phone waiting for the first representative to be with you. It can take 30 to 45 min
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Amir Trujillo: to resolve a session reset.
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Amir Trujillo: Now, with all this type of integration, you can do it by yourself in less than a minute.
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Amir Trujillo: So it's a win win situation as an as an end user. I keep being work. I keep being productive, working on my stuff. And the other hand, from another company standpoint is a cost reduction, cause you,
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Amir Trujillo: With all your a help desk team working on different things that not only session resets, for example.
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Andy Whiteside: So let me go over to the Zintigro service. Now, experts Becky and Fred, guys, you guys integrate a lot of stuff into the service. Now, world, are you guys up to speed on what the possibility is with the Citrix integrations, or is it kind of early on for you guys?
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Fred Reynolds: I'll start with it, Becky. You can follow me up so one I'm I am familiar with it. And I also wanna say what I heard, so far as this has been around for several years now, maybe 4 or 5 years of what I've heard, which means there's actually, you know, certified apps on the store which allows you just to absolutely download those and get plug and play moving quickly. So yes, I'm aware of it, and also understand the efficiency that can be gained by doing the integration both from a self service perspective.
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Fred Reynolds: And certainly the automation that can happen from a administration point of view for the customers themselves.
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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, Becky, you're have you had a chance to integrate something like Citrix with itm.
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Becky Whiten: yeah, so this is really good. I mean, I knew it was out there. But again, a lot of times, you know, the customers just focusing on getting the help desk up and doing the normal things that you would think about. And I think we've got to start, you know, looking at some of these things, and asking more of the questions
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Becky Whiten: to our customers, so we can really help guide them. To some of these places, and and some of these things that are available out there on the store that could help help their help desk and get those call volumes down to help them. You know, just as you were mentioning previously about. You know, it's a reset. It could happen, and you know, probably a minute or less, because the workflow is there for it to do it versus want to be on the phone or have to open up a ticket and then wait for someone to clear that session for them
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Becky Whiten: when it could be reset. I'm sure there's a lot more to it, and there's you know, as we talk here I would be really curious to hear some of the good workflows as well that
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Becky Whiten: that y'all are interested in as well. So we can help get the word out. That's just it getting the word out. There's so many different areas.
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and integrations within service now. And I think this is is a great, a good one.
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Andy Whiteside: II would highlight you. Just go out to the service now store and you can find the I, the Citrix. It service management connector. It's out there ready waiting for you. Just you can do it on your own or your work with partner like us, to get additional
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Andy Whiteside: additional capabilities out of it. I'll do what? I'll okay. So in the blog here it called out, 3 thing. It experience intelligent automation of employees self service. Think Amir kind of mentioned that, and maybe why do you want to sit online for 15 min waiting on that first response when you could probably solve it yourself if you had the right tools.
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Andy Whiteside: Simplify the provisioning and deprovisioning. That's the one I hit with people all the time like, can you provision users and meet machines and deep provision users and machines, and like, we'll know well, you can. It's like one of the most basic things you can do. And then the next thing here access is centralized dashboard, where you can monitor alerts and notifications and decide which incidents to follow up on. I'll add to that one. Since this blog was posted, the world of artificial intelligence and specifically generative.
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Andy Whiteside: has has happened. And you know, once you have this stuff somewhere, we can get your hands around. It just makes total sense what we can do next
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Andy Whiteside: with the products integrated. I'll add one other piece of. Jeremy said what I really wanted the group to say, and all you guys said great things, but
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Andy Whiteside: he said, you own the stuff. You might as well use the stuff that was. I'm paraphrasing what he said, but I think I'm almost exactly what he said. You own the stuff. You might as well be using the stuff. Truth is, people own the stuff, and they don't know how to use this stuff. And that's where this you know this blog and this podcast and our subject matter expertise are gonna kick in Amir. I wanna add one comment that they have it. They should use it. I think the part is that people think it's way too complicated to do type of integration, and that they just actually use some kind of connector like you showed as a starting point.
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Fred Reynolds: Then little the light bulbs goes off, goes off, and they start seeing a whole lot more opportunity, a whole lot more use cases to to to continue with it. It's kind of like that core I've had for 3 years. And finally I see a button. I didn't really realize it was there the whole time, and I pushed it and realized what it does. I could've been using that the whole time. Immediately.
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Andy Whiteside: Amir access
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Amir Trujillo: managing your citrix environments. Citrix. Close home premises from a single ping of glass. This is the cloud dashboard, console? So from there you can integrate multiple a instances
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Amir Trujillo: and a from Josex Cloud. You can have a on-prem. You can have the development and a production environment for there and apply those policies from service. Now to all of them at the same time.
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Andy Whiteside: So, and I first started thinking, like manage service providers that might have more than one cloud instances, or manage which we do, and we we will, but then, when you started when you said production and development manage it from one pane of glass systematically, I'm like, oh, that's a no brainer. A lot of customers don't do. Have those to they should. And if so, how do you make it easier to manage them to systematically. Well, here's your answer.
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Amir Trujillo: Multiple service now is sites, especially with acquisitions and integration between multiple companies. So he's like, okay, just give me a solution to make my life easier.
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Amir Trujillo: And that's where we just started adding those features on. From this he to safety. Same standpoint. It's like help the administrators do
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Amir Trujillo: automate on service now from from from same place.
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Andy Whiteside: Charlie getting real world customer examples of this.
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Charlie Lopez: not not as of today. No, th. This is still something that
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Andy Whiteside: I don't want to say fairly new, but something that we haven't seen any customers really deploy out just yet. Multiple sites, data, sites within their service now. But but you do have customers that have service now, and multiple dash sites. They just don't know they could do it this way.
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Charlie Lopez: I'm I'm a hundred percent. Sure, they're not aware of this. Which is the the best part about this this, podcast
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Andy Whiteside: yeah.
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Geremy Meyers: well, you know the other thing. II think the other thing, too, Andy is, even though we're talking about dash tenants. I think I'm here pointed out something pretty important is we could leverage this on Prem as well. So even if you've got the service again, the service is a cloud based and hosted service that interacts with a cloud based and hosted service and service now, but
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Geremy Meyers: you can do this with your on prim sights as well, so you don't have to wait to have migrated. you know, up to dads to to be able to take advantage of this, which is pretty
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Geremy Meyers: and and and that's an important thing.
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Amir Trujillo: You don't have to be 100% dashboard cloud to use your service now on. Prem.
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Amir Trujillo: just like, do a site abrogation to your Citrix Cloud dashboard, and you will be all set. So it's
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Amir Trujillo: some configuration background that requires expertise and Smes and Citrix together to deploy that solution. But it works, Becky, Fred. Any any thoughts on the value of this.
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Fred Reynolds: I think it's just speaking more to the fact that you could scale right multiple environments with a single instance which is the power of it. And then, when you have a single instance on the back side, it's a single tracking, unified platform
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Fred Reynolds: across different things. Maybe you're tracking financial stuff from this. Right? It's just a single place to pull that together. So I think to me it speaks more about how you scale because service not to connect to multiple. You know, Citrix cloud environments.
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Andy Whiteside: Yeah, I'll add, you know, we did the security podcast this morning around citrix. And I mentioned this. This, then I'll mention again. Now you you gotta get all this stuff in one place where you can see it. Manage it, or you can't secure it. That's a no brainer physical virtual on Prem and the clouds plural. You gotta have somewhere to bring it together.
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Andy Whiteside: Alright Amir. I'm gonna get back to you for this one, the new dashboard for monitoring events from Citrix ATM
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Amir Trujillo: Stands for application delivery. Yeah, that's correct. And that's not only that part. It's we're talking about. Another
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Amir Trujillo: pull, a another a block.
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Amir Trujillo: and this year we have a bit more features to the solution. We have monitoring and alerts for Adm for Citrix Cloud, and on Prem. Environments all in the same dashboard. So the way it works, it's you can create policies that will alert you either, if you want to be notified by warnings, errors.
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Amir Trujillo: or any just maintenance windows, and from there create a events or actions on service. Now you can create an event ticket or an incident ticket. So that's part of the flexibility that you have as an administrator to have
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Amir Trujillo: your eyes on a single place, and not in all the different consoles, monitoring here and there all my desk service. How is it going? Okay, no, worries II got you from the service. Now console what happens with my own premises, environment as well, so a
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Andy Whiteside: from different a places, we put all together and generate all the automation from service. Now, if you're managing a citrix environment, you have, if you're reading a Citrix environment which could include lots of things, including adm virtual apps and desktops on Prem. Citers, cloud share file other things. Part of cloud software group. Wouldn't it be awesome to have one place to to go look and see what's going on that that's a no brainer, Charlie. Yet again, something that everybody should be doing. Do you see people realizing they could do it?
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Charlie Lopez: Well, the thing here is you know, finally aggregating all this data within service. Now, so yeah, most likely not a lot of individuals were even aware of of the amount of data we could put in, but throwing in the ATM gives full visibility now, not only on the on-prem Citrix Cloud side, but also networking back within service. Now, so this is, yeah, this is a great added benefit to the service. Now, integration.
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Yeah.
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Geremy Meyers: yeah. Yeah. So knowing that this blog post is, would you say? A year old? There's actually been a couple of things that have been added, and I think the biggest one is now. It integrates with status cloudcom. So now you know, most folks, if they think there's some sort of issue with Citrus Cloud to go out to Status Cloudcom. Now we can pull that right into service now as well, and create policies and alerts.
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Geremy Meyers: Send it on that as well, which is again more to your point, bringing it all into one location. So you're not looking at 3 or 4 different locations, for you know the health of your services. So that's pretty slick.
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Yeah
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Andy Whiteside: Fred Becky. Any additional comments here?
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Fred Reynolds: I cut back off last time. In fact, he doesn't have something. Beck. I'll give you a chance to go first
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Fred Reynolds: monitoring solutions, monitor what they own into service. Now that starts to event management process, how they really work from their responsiveness in in this case I think
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Fred Reynolds: it kind of how you notify some of the users right it could be where, if your citrics is down or something's going on, this could be another way to notify, because service now has multiple ways that they notified could be text mobile devices.
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Fred Reynolds: you know, broad broad, broadcasting information. So I think to me. It's that it also could be in service. Now, the way they touch services together and business, maybe this impacts a business or service that's being provided that's another level and gets more more advanced for some of the customers, but if they have that they can keep stacking the complexity
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Fred Reynolds: of of the services provided to their customers, to their their employees. To build this up, to really be a lot more responsive. So all this is very valuable, could be useful business continuity, to be more responsive, to understand exactly what you have an issue and and help resolve them quicker starting point. But a starting point where it starts to event monitoring in there should be the baseline. Get started there. You'll start seeing value immediately.
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Andy Whiteside: Becky. Anything else.
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Becky Whiten: and this one
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Andy Whiteside: II better add this, I mean you. You. Every company is responsible for you know, saying how long this application was up this past year. You know what what of uptime. You gotta have something like this to bring it all together. We have one place to measure that systematic answer to. Yes, the Citrix environment was up, you know, 99.9 9% of the time last year. If you're doing it all disparly, how do you ever answer that question other than to take the vendors word for it.
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Amir Trujillo: Alright, sorry next one next with here. I know the team on my side is gonna have some thoughts on this with the virtual agent, and they love talking about virtual agent with the service. Now, virtual Agent Amir, tell us what this one's all about. That's an awesome feature that makes more, A friendly interface with the end user. That's just a virtual agent, that it's a
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Amir Trujillo: like an artificial intelligence that it's talking to you and asking you what you want to do. It's a
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Amir Trujillo: say, Hi, do you? What do you wanna do today? I want to deploy or request a virtual desk or pro virtual application.
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and in in, in the background what it does is to start looking at what resources are first available from a service now, standpoint, and, second, which ones are assigned to your user account.
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Amir Trujillo: So you can, you have that level of granularity from an administration standpoint that say, from a X norm percentage of my whole privilege resources. I just want this is specific to be available on by service. Now. So that's pretty impressive cause. We can manage what
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Amir Trujillo: we bring access to to even contractors, temporary users, or just a a business unit or a in the, In. In other use cases, just to have a better control of what resources have is a access to so pretty simple to use very friendly to the end user, and will have access directly to the, to the service. Now out of the box, and workflows and personalized workflows, for the for the customer.
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Andy Whiteside: So, Charlie, this one seems like a no brainer. Everybody should have this implemented already.
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Andy Whiteside: Same question, broken record. I'm sorry. Do enough people know this is happening, and that they could be using it.
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Charlie Lopez: Well, you know III take the the chat box and box and kind of 2 ways, because the the fact is, the portal. The the portal provides one option for self service. The chat box provides a secondary option. I think this is a great feature, because it just provides an additional option for that self service. Should everybody be using it. It really depends on how quick you want to go in there. And,
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Charlie Lopez: you know, make your request. The chat box is pretty quick. But again some people want to click, click, click, click, really quick, finish their their request with service now, and your desktop is reset. So II think it's it's excellent. From an additional option perspective. It's definitely something that provides additional value, especially with
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Charlie Lopez: the addition of putting it into teams and slack and the additional additional integrations on those components. But yeah, I just think it's it's a great added benefit for for building on the self serve for service. Now in Citrix, probably more for Fred and Becky. But you know what is the
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Geremy Meyers: you know? What's the typical modality for the virtual agent? So you know, you know we use search not, Citrix. I use the web page quite a bit. But you know. I imagine this is super helpful on like, say, a mobile device, something where the I'm not pulling up a web page. It'd be much easier just to type in what I'm doing and an agent running on my phone as opposed to.
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Geremy Meyers: you know, maybe doing this from the website. Although when I do log in. I do get the virtual agent inside my instance from a web page which is fantastic. But I imagine that you know doing this on the go makes it a lot easier.
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Fred Reynolds: I think it's twofold, I think, from a from a employee side or a customer side. I think it's to be able to couple of quick questions, a couple of quick clicks. Get the information you're looking for. Let it do the work to find it. Give you that link to click on. Or some people just don't like to talk to someone they don't want to call. They don't want to send email, this one. Say, hey? I have this issue like reset the password should be this easy. I didn't reset my password couple of prompts. You're done with it on the flip side of that from an it. This is an it director
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Fred Reynolds: or help desk ring, because sometimes they don't get enough information with someone just calls in or puts in a request to ticket. They don't get the information they need this chat box and help prompt to get a little bit more information exactly what they're looking for and pull that out of that. So when they do get the ticket, have to work a ticket, they don't have to have that conversation that someone may not want to have because they pulled it out. I'm using the chat. That's where I've seen the chat being most efficient is when it actually does the work
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Fred Reynolds: that that a human would do, trying to ask the questions and present it, either present it or gather information both sides.
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Becky Whiten: and to add to that, and the virtual chat already knows who they are, so it knows who they are and what resources that might be already associated with them. So it already helps to do quite a quite a few things as well, and then it'll also work within teams so you could be into there and then it could open up a teams, do a team's call if need to be so there's lots of different integration pieces to it as well.
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Andy Whiteside: So II literally just did this. An hour ago I had to buy. I didn't have to. I may. I bought my lift ticket for this winter. II purchased some earlier because I'm cheap. I want to get it done also gives me excuse. Say I have to go but nonetheless, I got one earlier, and I had a question, and II asked the question. The chat bot in the chat. Bot gave me kind of an answer, and it said, Was that good enough? And I said no, and 10 s later I was chatting with a real person who had my previous question and answered the question, and I was done in 30 s. It was awesome.
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Andy Whiteside: II need that. I need that with my it, help desk, and we do somewhat have it. But we're we're evolving it. And that's just the future. This thing, plus analytics is gonna make that even
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Fred Reynolds: 2 or 3 steps further, more likely gonna be resolved before human has to touch it. The one more point of what Jeremy said, he said. He opens up this web page, or something that bought appears, I mean, that's another thing. People are lazy and major, in my opinion. So they have an issue. They forget how they're supposed to go and ask a report, or or try to get help right? Something that pops up. It says, Hey, how can I help you? That's just a quick starting point within a couple of questions like I said you should drill down on what you're looking for, so I'll get to solve to Good point and be.
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Andy Whiteside: how can I help you, Jeremy Myers? They know who you are. They know the last 3 times you ask a question. It's extremely powerful. I think this is what he was really asking if I go to a website. Yes, I'm willing to take my keyboard, my mouse, and look around a little bit and eventually give up and talk to the chat. Bot! But if I'm on my mobile phone and I'm going straight to the chat box quick as I can
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Geremy Meyers: oops.
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Amir Trujillo: Yup, and one of the things that are not mentioned here on on this a block is the ability, the ability to have
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Amir Trujillo: pull a follow up of your request on your mobile device
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Amir Trujillo: with service, not mobile. So let's say you request on your mobile device. I need that an application. I need a desktop or just reset my session. I can go grab a coffee, do any other task that I'm doing. And then I'm gonna get that notification on my on my cell phone. Hey?
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Amir Trujillo: Your environment is ready.
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Amir Trujillo: So that part of automation. It's it's user experience that that's what I'm looking for as a a as a user cause at the end all of us are users. So that's what I want. Automation. Just optimize my time. I don't wanna waste a lot of time doing
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Amir Trujillo: another stuff that could be handled. But kind of automation
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Amir Trujillo: a your, whatever. It's in the background.
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Fred Reynolds: anyway. That's the real benefit of having those actions, those requests from your citrus environment tied back to service. Now, because that's what is doing is documented. It's keeping that record and track of what happened all the way through in that in that in that case or incident
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Andy Whiteside: I know that much.
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Andy Whiteside: Alright next one I'm here is Citrix. It Sm, so it service management tables, information in the developer document. Yeah, I have no idea what this talking about help me out
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Amir Trujillo: how a service now, administrators or developers can automate and create the personalized workflows. So A, we have
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Amir Trujillo: you a out of the box features that it's just kind of plug and play from an citrix integration standpoint. But that's not necessarily a stopper for the service now, developers to create
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Amir Trujillo: what are required for the customer dates. So we have
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Amir Trujillo: pool access to the Apis to workflow, that we have that integration with a service. Now, workflow to build whatever you want. So that's part of the flexibility that we are. if adding
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Amir Trujillo: the on this new feature in these new versions of serm for 6 weeks.
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Becky Whiten: and that's great. So it utilizes a lot. What orchestration! But you have kind of these pre-built functions that you can utilize for Citrix to be able to kinda drag into the workflow and be able to connect to the citrix or to something else and be able to do it. Based upon
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Fred Reynolds: whatever type actions that are needed. So this is really good to see, and I think it really speaks to the whole concept. The service now, no code and platform and the flow design. It was meant for someone take a centrix me, give them a service. Now see as a developer, and let them be a workflows and see what they can do not have to get into code to do it. They don't have to be a service now, how to build this workflow to be efficient for what they want to do with Citrix
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Andy Whiteside: pretty powerful and quick. In short, you own the stuff like, Jeremy said. They've made it somewhat easy to do the basic stuff. It just happens, and then you have the ability to develop on your own X amount of integrations. Then, when you need partner, help, you give us a call.
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Amir Trujillo: Yep, and, as far as I know, in it's in a roadmap to have a
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Amir Trujillo: graphic interface from the Citrix, a dashboard to create a workflow service. Enough workflows. So it's in the oven.
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Amir Trujillo: and it's coming soon. But yeah, definitely, the whole potential from the service, a workflow creator and
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Amir Trujillo: move to the Citrix side of the house as well. So, Charlie, you're talking to a lot of customers, are you? Finding that they
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Andy Whiteside: realize that this is possible, and that it doesn't take a developer writing code to do it
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Charlie Lopez: well.
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Charlie Lopez: for for sure they're they're not aware. But the whole point is that it? It does seem daunting going in there and having to figure out how to create these workflows, or how to code it, depending on what kind of language is being leveraged. So being able to make it a little bit simpler in regards to dragging and dropping similar to even some sequel programs, you know, creating that logic by using
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Charlie Lopez: some kind of blocks makes it easier and less daunting, for you know, newer, it admins to be able to deploy this kind of technology without, you know, feed feeling a little bit
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Charlie Lopez: lack of confidence if you will. Right, if something's gonna go wrong, if they're gonna go in and code that. So I think this is an a great first step in regards to adding a graphical interface, or somewhat of a simplistic way of of setting up these workflows.
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Geremy Meyers: So so one of the things that Amir pointed out is, there is a there is a workflow center that is coming to the cloud tenant as well. Now he did mention that maybe the cookies are still in the oven. They're still baking. It's a little gui on the inside. But yeah, there is a I think there's a tech preview at the private tech preview, you know. If we've got a customer, if you've got a customer that would like to have access, you know we can. We can work with Pm, to get that turned on.
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Geremy Meyers: You can start playing around with it. But you know, the other thing. Important thing is, there are, I want to say, 8 workflows out of the box templates for it, you know, without any insight into how any of this stuff works you can get going from day one. You want to go next level. I think that's where the workflow
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Geremy Meyers: you know, center and service. Now that's where it makes sense, and you can do some pretty crazy stuff.
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Geremy Meyers: So in, you know, in this next session here. Section here we talk about resetting sessions, or you know, I think one of the cool ones is deep provisioning, you know, static desktops. You know. Just think about desktops that might be sitting in the cloud that haven't been used in 30 days. What if you could automatically go reclaim them, you know, and that's just the provision on assigned these machines. Because.
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Geremy Meyers: heck! I'm trying to save a buck or 2 in the cloud, you know. Let's not. Let's not pay for for desktops that aren't being used. So there's some pretty neat things that you can do. In addition to what's you know, out of the box.
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Right?
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Andy Whiteside: Well, okay. So, Amir, the the 3 that are caught out here that are built into the workflow reset sessions. It help desk from service, now deep provision, static, so persistent desktops assign users to active directory groups when processing tickets associated with requested desktops. So just those are pretty common sense ones that walk us through them. Real quick
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Amir Trujillo: kill decision. Yes, reboot my my station, probably my mouse, my key, or my pointer is not working as usual. So the first thing is residual session, and then we'll think about
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Amir Trujillo: profile. Reset that. That's another another new feature that we have through this is Citrix, Ipsm Connector,
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Amir Trujillo: and a
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Amir Trujillo: going to the other day. Provision static desktop. It's kind of a
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Amir Trujillo: Citrix admin a green control because you can deprovision unuse virtual desktops based on the policy. You can say, if this desktop is not in use for X number of days.
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Amir Trujillo: just remove it and make it available for the for other users that really want to do it. And it's cost. It's cost management as well. So you're gonna be able to say, I want to deprivation this desktop from this user that has
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Amir Trujillo: not been using for the last 30 days.
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Amir Trujillo: Then what I wanna do with this desktop just power it off and destroy it or leave it available for the next request.
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Amir Trujillo: It's gonna be tar a power off, but at least I gonna have the resource ready to use. So it's a the 2 flavors that are most common on that feature that's obviously
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Amir Trujillo: a an administration helper.
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Amir Trujillo: and the other one that it's assigned users to an active directory. That's the integration that we have with active data from service now. So you can add a when you add a user to a deck. So when do you publish it through service? Now, do you have the option to say, what do you wanna do add these user?
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Amir Trujillo: Do an specific active directory group, or just publish the username on the delivery group itself.
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Amir Trujillo: that first it says, reset sessions by it, help desk users. Do you see a day where the workflows just naturally integrate with self service ones through the chat bot. Or is that always going to be? Something has to be designed. Hey? It's out of the box. You can do it by the through, the a virtual agent or through the portal.
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Amir Trujillo: So yeah, for this pretty simple. It's easy to. adopt by the end user.
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Andy Whiteside: Jeremy, Charlie, any additional comments on these additional workflows. And I know there's more. This this is very old, right. But we're gonna walk through the blogs as they came out, and, you know, create the content here. But any additional thoughts on just these workflows, or maybe some of the other ones that have happened.
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Charlie Lopez: I'll I'll just mention one as I was tinkering with the new workflows. You know they do have some great templates in there. Not a ton just yet, but there's at least like 6 templates. The one that caught my attention was the terminated employee template where it actually walks through all the different steps that are required
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Charlie Lopez: to remove this user out of the system. Once he's terminated you could really get granular in regards to how you can build this workflow. You can get a little lost in there if you don't know what you're doing. But there, there's so much in there that you can really customize. But yeah, I look forward to additional sessions. Because
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Charlie Lopez: this new workflow is gonna be something that's gonna empower customers to be able to automate quite a bit in regards to being able to identify certain actions that are going on and letting that workflow kick off all by itself.
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Fred Reynolds: Yeah. So I'm glad you brought that up because we're seeing a lot of people really looking at more automated on board and off boarding, and this is a great thing. So it's funny they had a template for that on board. It should be the same thing. But so many companies, you know, when the termination is so important a lot of place to make sure people cut off access, it could be that quick. It's it's a system like service that can go across
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Fred Reynolds: the landscape and and the technology stack to see for that employee what are they provisions for, and start to one by one disable those types of things. So I think that's great, Charlie just instantly have off boarding termination versus on boarding, because it could be one of the same workflow. Just been on which direction you're going.
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Amir Trujillo: Yeah, that that's a good one. I've done some few Demos with that specific feature. And it's just with a single click. You remove every access to Citrix, resources? And then you see, like, okay. And you know how it that is, separation works just like
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Amir Trujillo: now you are. Now you are gone with a simple click. Pom, if you have a session open, hit log off, destroys the virtual machine or just keep it alive. But
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Amir Trujillo: the user it it just loses access to all the resources from service. Now in a single click. So that's an amazing feature.
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Andy Whiteside: So, guys, II think we've meet reached the end of this. We're gonna do what 4 or 5 more of these and do a couple of webinars. II am super appreciative of the cloud team, the Citrix team jumping on with us. There is years of stuff we can accomplish together and looking forward to it.
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Amir Trujillo: Absolutely.
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Andy Whiteside: So, Amir Charlie, Jeremy. Thanks for doing that. Look forward to working you more, Fred, Becky. Any questions before we let these guys go. You're the you're the voice of the listener at this moment. Anything else you want to ask? No, I just think this is a very informative I'm looking forward to to doing some more these integrations and getting more success with it and taking the use cases and sharing them with other customers. I think everybody should integrate as much as possible, and especially comes to the itsm
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Fred Reynolds: cause. There's lots of benefits from that. So especially on this side. The tagline is Jeremy's comment. You got it. You should be using it.
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Becky Whiten: Yep, and we need to as well in house. So we're gonna be working on that as well. So, looking forward to that, and then looking forward to some of the new features that are coming out.
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Geremy Meyers: Well, now I will shed some light onto that. We. We are in the middle of doing these integrations ourselves. So now we know Amir and Charlie are resources. We could reach out to as needed. But we, we're a partner that doesn't just talk about the stuff we're doing these integrations ourselves. And and we're gonna be able to demonstrate this, live for our customers as we continue to evolve what we're doing. Again, limitless and massive opportunity together podcast
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Geremy Meyers: alright guys. Thank you for your time, and we'll do it again. So thank you.