These 3 PowerShell Modules Will Supercharge Your Ticketing System

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We all know that Automation for Managed Service Providers can provide huge benefits. In the past, I’ve written about automating many components of IT. However, I believe that one of the most efficient gains an MSP can obtain from automation is through automating their ticketing system. The ticketing system is the core of any MSP’s service delivery. It provides the tracking of incidents as well as documented historical data on client resources. An MSP that can find a way to bring automation to their ticketing system and to integrate it with other internal processes and technologies puts them leaps and bounds ahead of the next competitor and is one step towards the future of how MSPs operate.

Having the ability to perform automated processes based on ticket creation opens up so much potential for automated workflows for clients.

For example, tickets that get automatically created for servers with low disk space – – – An automated “disk cleanup” process can be run against servers specified in these tickets for automated self-healing which can provide faster reaction time and reduce operational strain on staff resources!

Not only do we get the ability to provide automated self-healing on tickets, but also to use PowerShell to perform additional queries on ticket data. This can be extremely useful in cases where the native reports in the ticketing system don’t measure up. If we can use Powershell to quickly sort through ticket data for clients, we can manipulate the data and create useful reports for information that we wouldn’t normally be able to gather.

Before we get started, there is one other thing I wanted to mention. If you want a more holistic overview of MSP monitoring and ticket generation before you go any further on this post, I just recently finished up a new eBook specifically on MSP Monitoring and Reporting. The eBook can be downloaded here.

How To Find PowerShell Cmdlets for My PSA

The automation movement in IT is growing larger and larger each year. Some vendors that are aware of this are publishing their own PowerShell cmdlets for their products. At the very least most have some sort of REST API that can be manipulated with PowerShell’s Invoke-Restmethod cmdlet. The “I want it done now” theme is starting to become extremely common in IT and we are now in an era with PowerShell that vendor and community made cmdlets for 3rd party applications are starting to become a norm.

One of the most promising platforms to find PowerShell modules is the PowerShell Gallery. This is an online repository of PowerShell Modules that anyone can download and start using in an instant. Also, many of these modules start out as projects on GitHub. GitHub is a public software development platform that allows developers to upload their code and collaborate with others around the world on projects. This movement has allowed for many interesting projects to come about and PowerShell modules for certain applications is one of them.

I recommend checking out both the PowerShell Gallery and Github for any PowerShell related projects available for your current Ticketing System. Just like how IT Pro’s use google to find information about a certain issue they are trying to resolve, it is now a necessary skill to be able to search for available PowerShell cmdlets and use them to fix certain scenarios.

One scenario I ran into a year or so ago was when I was working with a file system archiving application, I was tasked with running configurations on hundreds of folders and it would have taken a few hours to perform this task manually. However, I did some digging around on PowerShell gallery and found that someone had published a module for this application and within 10 minutes I had a script that was automatically performing my tasks for me.

3 Popular MSP Ticketing Systems and PowerShell Modules for Automation

Below I have outlined GitHub projects for three of the most commonly used ticketing systems today. For the sake of time, I won’t go into how to use each one, I am just providing the links to the current projects and directions on how to install the modules. If your ticketing system is not one of them I recommend searching for it on PowerShell Gallery first to see if there is a module published for it yet. If nothing turns up, do some digging on Github to find out if someone has created a project for your PSA application.

Service Now

Install the modules by running the following syntax in an administrative PowerShell Console:

install-module ServiceNow

Check out the Github project documentation here.

Connectwise

Install the modules by Downloading the .zip file from the GitHub project. Extract the contents of the .zip, and Import the module by using the following syntax:

Import-Module "PathToModuleFolder\PSConnectWise.psm1" -Force

Check out the GitHub project documentation here.

Auto Task

Install the modules by Downloading the .zip file from the GitHub project. Extract the contents of the .zip, and Import the module by using the following syntax:

Import-Module "PathToModuleFolder\Autotaskcli.psm1" -Force

Check out the GitHub project documentation here.

Wrap Up

For an MSP, having the ability to integrate their ticketing system with other applications and scripts can open up many doors for efficiency and standardization. There are many projects on GitHub where developers can come together and create a tool for many to use. Again, this is starting to become a norm and MSPs need to learn to take advantage of this in order to become more efficient with the services that they are selling. Let me know in the comments below of other ticketing systems you’ve found PowerShell modules for and your experience with using them.

Thanks for reading!