GlobiFlow for Podio For Quality Assurance Cycles

Posted: 2013-11-05

Simplified Innovations manages the IT infrastructure for their CPA clients. This involves managing multiple virtual disk images containing pre-specified software applications.

Interview

I interviewed Daniel Houle, co-founder of Simplified Innovations about their challenges and solutions.

[AH]: Would you please give us a brief overview of what you do for your clients?

[DJH]: At Simplified Innovations, we provide a secure and remote desktop designed for CPA's. We manage access, security, backups and application updates. To improve the delivery of the hosted desktop, and reduce management costs and server image drifting, we leverage Citrix Provisioning Server or PVS.

[AH]: What has been your biggest challenge in managing these server images?

[DJH]: Each client has a specific set of applications, specific to their firm specialty. Because we are CAP focused, application updates can affect more than one client. So when application X needed an update, we needed a way to identify which server images (vDisks) to update.

[AH]: How has GlobiFlow for Podio helped you overcome these challenges?

[DJH]: Delivering timely application updates in the CPA industry is critical. Often updates impact tax calculation, payroll deductions and more. Using GlobiFlow for Podio allows us to automatically identify the vDisks that require updates and complete them in the next maintenance window or sooner. Integrating GlobiFlow for Podio with our existing Podio workspaces has revolutionized what can be accomplished. I personally see it as an essential add on to any Podio deployment.

Workflow Automation

Although this was done manually before, the company now uses GlobiFlow for Podio to automate most of the QA cycle steps. In this video, we show this real-world automation on a set of demo data:

As you can see from this video, the tedious tasks of managing QA cycles has been reduced to a simple click of a button, and the chance of important upgrades being missed has been significantly reduced.

Here are the Flow steps as defined in GlobiFlow for Podio to achieve this automation in their Podio Workspace:

• 1 Initiate vDisk QA
• 2a QA Cycle Created
• 2b Populate QA Steps
• 3a QA Updated
• 3b Trigger progress update
• 3c Calc QA Progress
• 4a is QA Cycle Complete?
• 4b QA Cycle Complete

This is a pretty complex worflow setup, but the level of automation achieved is quite amazing.

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by Andreas Huttenrauch
Owner of Globi Web Solutions, and Podio Fanatic.

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