Name: Rippling IT 101: How to Build Better IT Infrastructure
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T21:04:04.318Z
Duration: 47 min 4 s
Description: Rippling IT 101: How to Build Better IT Infrastructure

Transcript for "Rippling IT 101: How to Build Better IT Infrastructure": Hey. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We're gonna give it just a quick sixty, hundred and twenty seconds, let just a few more folks join us. But while we do that, feel free to chime in on the chat. It's on the right side of your screen. There's also a Q and A section that we'll be hitting at the very end of everything. I might try and answer some along the way, but anything that we can answer live, we're gonna save kinda till the end. But, join you in one more minute when when some folks have popped on. See you soon. Alrighty, folks. In the sake of time, I think we're gonna get started. Thanks again for joining us. Folks have shown up. Welcome. We have a really exciting session today. It's a deep dive into Rippling IT 101, a really great demo that covers all three major parts of the IT product. And it does more than just surface level stuff. You're gonna be able to see exactly how to set some stuff up and how, you know, the possibilities behind some of the tools here. So, my name's Carter Francis. I've been with Ripley for, gosh, like three, three and a half years now, I think. But I have IT of twenty years and former systems administrator and kind of cut my teeth with, like, OS 10 servers at the University of Texas in Austin. So, happy to be here, happy to talk, deep IT stuff. And our session today will be run by Tyler Koltes, my former solutions consulting buddy who is now a manager. But a quick note here as we get started to, please notice that there is a demo, request to demo button at the top of the screen. So if at any point along the way you feel like you wanna request an interactive personalized one on one demo with, an IT consultant to see what this all looks like and what would look like exactly in your environment, that'll prompt that to get booked. So feel free to hit that button anywhere along the way, and we will help you out there. But I'm gonna go off stage and let Tyler take it away. Thank you, Carter. And, thank you everybody else for joining another very exciting Rippling webinar. Like was already mentioned, my name is Tyler Coltes. I was a lead IT solution consultant at Rippling for many years, now an ITSC manager on the team. I'm really excited to walk you through some of the basics of IT and how to build better infrastructure with Rippling. So quick agenda, some of the things that we want to make sure that you walk away from this webinar with, we're going to talk about the three pillars of Rippling IT. We're going to show you a quick demo of some of the really neat features that come as a part of this, and then some more advanced features as well, along with, different places that you can learn yourself. How to find more information about Rippling, how to become a better administrator. There will also be an opportunity to ask some questions at the end of this with Mr. Carter Francis. So let's jump in to learn a little bit about rippling's IT offerings. So these are the three pillars of the Rippling IT platform, identity access management, device management, which is using Rippling as your MDM, as well as inventory management. And at the end of the day, what you're going to get is an automated engine that that allows you to handle all of these different onboarding and onboarding processes across IT in the context of Rippling. So if we expand upon each of these different features, just a little bit for identity and access management, Rippling is a full identity provider in our own right. We've built all of these different tools in house along with about 800, more than 800 at this point, prebuilt integrations with tools like Google or Microsoft or Slack or Salesforce. And the really cool thing about this is we've automated the user life cycle along with all of your security and authentication needs. So what I mean by that is as a part of your onboarding process, we can create your accounts inside of all of these applications. We can manage your group memberships. Think of that like a Google OU or a public or private Slack channel or a Salesforce role. And we can also automate the deprovisioning of accounts. So upon termination inside of rippling, we are going to let you suspend all of these different connected accounts as a part of that same offboarding process. And then you see some extra security features here around multifactor authentication and, and auditability as well. For the device management side of things, Rippling is both a Mac and a Windows MDM. We'll be able to deploy software. We can manage user accounts. We can set up security policies for all of these different devices, which also includes mobile for iOS and iPads. We go really deep into managing your OS update policies and, encrypting your drives and really everything that you need to pass some of these core compliance standards like SOC or ISO. And in addition to that, Rippling is also a hardware reseller. So we're going to give you the ability to purchase and procure devices via Rippling along with the off boarding tasks, like, locking, shutting down, or erasing a device. As a part of termination or in the case that that device is lost or stolen. The last piece or last pillar of the Rippling IT product to talk about here is inventory management. And you can think of this like the logistics of retrieving and storing your computers. So we have these warehouses all over the world in The US and Canada, The UK, The EU, as well as Australia. And it really is going to assist with the logistics again of, of getting those devices back from employees and then reissuing them to a new hire. What you end up with is the ability to, not always, you know, be in that limbo state, where a new hire is coming in in three days and how am I going to get their device to them on time? You can ship anywhere in country and you can even overnight these devices. And another cool thing is beyond just tracking these, any device you send to the rippling warehouse will be automatically enrolled in rippling MDM to make sure these are ready to go along with all of the kind of asset tracking order tracking that comes as a part of this service. So if we take a step back, those are all of the different IT products that we offer. But the foundation of rippling is your user data, your employee data. We give you this unified platform to build simple logic, to decide who gets access to what in the context of rippling. So that would be all of the things we talked about so far. Right? What web applications do you get? What devices do you get? Same thing for that offboarding process as well. But what we're really automating here is the user life cycle. It's things that happen to you as an employee. So rippling is also like this intersection of HR and IT and finance. In this example, we have on the screen three different scenarios. When Sarah is hired, we would need to make sure that she has signed her documents, that she's gone through her I-nine verification as a background check. As a part of a manager transition, she's going to get a new title. She's going to get new compensation with Rippling's payroll engine. And in the case of our corporate cards, we could even like increase her spend limit, on those corporate cards. Same thing for leaving the company. You need to sign certain documents. You need to get severance payments and you should no longer be able to purchase stuff, with those corporate cards. But we're also encompassing the IT elements here. So as a part of these different processes, when you're hired inside of rippling, you're getting that laptop, you're getting the right role based access into all of your different web applications, the appropriate permission profiles assigned to you based on your role. So maybe Sarah is hired as a, you know, account executive. She's promoted to a manager. Now you're going to get new, permissions assigned to you as a part of Rippling and access to new groups inside of these third party applications. So there's an example there of, like, the the Slack channel for organizational leaders that you will automatically be granted access to. And as a part of leaving the, the company as a termination or voluntary, whatever the case may be, we're going to be able to automatically wipe any devices that are assigned to her as well as retrieve that device and also even transfer files that might exist inside of drive, Google drive specifically. So security is just embedded all throughout Rippling. And again, it's based on things that happen to you as an employee. We're going to automate all of these processes with rippling native workflows. So that's a lot of exposition about what rippling can do. Let's show you a couple of real world examples in my demo account. I'll be switching back and forth between some of these slides and a real demo account just to highlight what it looks like to actually hire somebody, what it looks like to manage IT. And then from here, we'll get into a couple of more advanced examples just to talk about some other features that we have. So we've talked a lot about onboarding, but let's actually show you what that process is to make sure that in the context of IT, this person has everything they need to do their job on day one. So I'm going to jump to this onboarding flow that I already have created inside of a Rippling demo account. So I'm signed in as a super administrator and I've skipped a lot of steps in this hiring process. HR has already filled out things like the job details, where the person is working from, what their department is, their title, who their manager is. And it's based on all of these role details and their work location. That's going to dictate what IT resources are now allocated to this new hire in this case, Terrence Tillman. So on this screen, we are going to choose the device that will be assigned to this person. I mentioned rippling has a device store. We are a hardware reseller. So I've actually pre built different specs of computers for different roles. Right? A marketing person gets a MacBook Air engineers might get a more powerful MacBook Pro finance. People love their windows devices. There's a whole bundle of brands, pretty much everything under the sun in terms of the actual hardware vendor, including different peripherals that you can choose from as a part of this deployment process. The other option, if you choose to leverage Rippling's inventory management service, is to select devices that are either previously owned or just sent directly to the Rippling warehouse for storage for delivery. So these are some Macs that I've gotten back from previous employees and you can see the condition assessment. That's a part of our intake process at that warehouse. So if there's a scratch on something, if there's a dent on something, you know, that you're not sending out a totally nonfunctional computer, to, to a new hire and a prelude of what you'll see later. We also did just launch, device buyback so we can even purchase damaged computers from you if you would like. But for the sake of this onboarding process, let's go back to the store and let's select a marketing MacBook for this particular hire. Because we are also an HR system because we have this additional context for your employees and where they're working from. We can either send this device to a office location or directly to their home address. And you can also choose to require signature upon delivery. So let's place this order and because we're integrated with your apple business manager account, or in the case of windows, we'll be able to also, be integrated with like an Entra environment for automatic provisioning. This device will be automatically enrolled in rippling MDM. Now there's a lot of other things happening behind the scenes when it comes to security policies, but we'll also give you a list of all of the different desktop applications that are going to be installed on behalf of this user. So 1Password, Chrome, Skype, Slack. These are again, all things that they need specifically to do their job inside of rippling. You'll have different desktop applications installed for different kinds of employees. And this is your list of all the third party applications as well. So we're setting up things like zoom and Atlassian. Believe we've got Google somewhere down here. Yeah. So in addition to actually creating their account, we can expand this and I can show you all of the different, integration groups that this person will be a part of. So again, what a group is will vary depending on the app, but these are Google groups. So because they're working in Chicago, because they're a part of the sales team, they're automatically getting added to these Google groups. The same would happen with a Slack channel, with a Salesforce roller profile or permission, etcetera. And if we hit continue one more time, you're also going to see RPaaS items. These are, this is a, a Ripley native password manager. So if you've got different things that you need to do your job, shared passwords for like a LinkedIn account, shared resources internally or individual passwords, we'll make sure that these are, automatically going to be available for this employee day one. Last thing here from a tech perspective is setting up their work email. We do also have, work email templates. So like naming conventions for this so that you can enforce a first initial dot last name, first name dot last name. And we do also support multiple, domains inside of your accounts as well. So there's some other steps in the onboarding process here, but this is where it ends from an IT perspective, setting them up with their computers, setting them up with their web applications. And lastly, provisioning that work email. The next thing that we want to show you just to make sure that everybody is on the same page, going back to this, this deck really quick is what happens, or, or the means by which we are going to assign some of these different integrations, like you saw, in that onboarding flow for Google, for Microsoft, for Slack, etcetera. So I'll go back into this demo account and we'll get out of the, onboarding flow here. And instead, I'm going to go straight to an integration. So you can either go to our app shop or I can just search in the top bar here for an integration that is already turned on. So I'm using Google as the primary example here, but this is really the same look and feel the same format that you can expect for management for all of our other integrations as well. So we'll talk about two things. There's obviously more to show here, but for the sake of time, we'll show how we assign access to an application and a brief, view of how we also assign group memberships. So under the covers inside of Rippling, group assignments and access assignments, pretty much access to everything is driven by what we call super groups. This is just simple Boolean logic to combine attributes in any way that you see fit for all the different things we know about your employees. So I've got two super groups already created here. I've got a marketing super group and I've got a Google workspace super group. If I open this up, this is where you can see the interface to build that simple Boolean logic. Anyone who joins the marketing department is going to inherit a bundle of resources, But I could very easily say you have to be in the marketing department and you have to work in The United States, or you have to be, working in a certain like office location in the Chicago office. So these super groups span pretty much every attribute of the employee, common things like their teams or their level, but you can combine other cool things in rippling, like course completion in the rippling LMS, or really any other attribute of the employee. Want to nerd out on this, but for the sake of time, we will go back into this access assignment. So who is going to get an account provisioned for them as a part of this onboarding procedure? And you can see, we can also dictate when relative to their start date, we're actually going to reach out and provision this account. So right when they sign their offer letter on their start date, a couple of days before you can actually control when we are going to create these different identities. So access time, right when you sign your offer letter, two days before your start date, set this up for all of your different web applications. Now, if we go back to access here, that's how we create that account. But you're going to use that same super group's logic to now drive group membership into these different structures, into Google groups in this case. We can see all of your existing third party groups as a part of this integration. And now you can very easily do things like say anyone who joins the Chicago office is going to get access to this Chicago Google group. That's what you saw in onboarding before. But this can be much more advanced logic, right? Maybe for backend engineers, you need to be a backend engineer. Who's worked here for two months. Who's also completed their cybersecurity training. So combining these multiple elements inside of Rippling. And I've talked about this before, but again, the benefit, not just onboarding, but change management. You move, you get promoted, whatever happens to you in your user life cycle will update what you're authorized to access in these downstream applications. There's always more to cover here. That's how we're going to set up access assignments and third party groups. In a future demo, if you wanna look into it, we can always dig into things like offboarding access, excuse me, offboarding actions or attribute mapping. But let's keep moving on for today. The next thing that we want to talk about is how to issue a lock or wipe command for a laptop. So there's different places that you can do this. It can be a part of your actual offboarding procedure, or in this example, with like a lost laptop, we can go directly into the device tab inside of rippling and take additional actions. So go back to the homepage and the IT section navigate over here to devices. And now I can look at a list of all of my assigned computers. Again, we are that intersection of HR and IT. So we know to whom a device is assigned. So you get an alert from able or all be, you know, it's a, it's a alpha, alphabetical list here that we have. But if I open up a particular employee's device, I can immediately take some of these security actions. So I could just lock their computer entirely or as is the case, sometimes you leave your device in a, in an airport on an, in an Uber or whatever it happens to be. Sometimes you just need to wipe that data entirely. So issue a soft wipe, which removes all the user accounts or a full wipe, just like a factory reset of the device to make sure that none of your sensitive company data is going to be compromised. Always additional actions that you can take to, you know, suspend user accounts to elevate their privileges. But a very simple interface on the device side of things to perform some of these common tasks. I think we have one other example to show here. Let's go back to the slideshow. Start this one more time. The last thing that we want to show is just how to generally track things as an IT person. This could be an onboarding task. It could be any issues that exist inside of the rippling platform, like, access assignments aren't, displaying correctly or any problems that may exist with a device. So we'll go back into that admin account here. And we're basically just leveling up. Right? So we're looking at the device tab here, but we also have these different overview sections. From the IT overview tab. I can see basically where human beings are inside of these different onboarding and offboarding processes. And I can see all of my different connected applications, all of my devices, all of my existing orders. So I can view a status of maybe applications that are pending install. I can view different issues that may have been detected on a device. And this is a demo account. You won't see 65 errors. In practice as a customer, this is just to show you that it's like a one click resolution. As well as different device orders, you know, when we're handling that user life cycle management. But if I scroll down here, these are the kind of common things that are happening. Different people are being onboarded and luckily in my business, no one is being offboarded today. So if I look at this Jessica Gomez user, it looks like the device has not been assigned to this person just yet. So let's expand this. I can view all of Jessica's details and yeah, I can see that she actually does not have a device that has been assigned to her just yet. So knowing that Jessica needs a little bit of assistance here, come down to IT management. And now I can track new hires that are coming into the business along with their start dates. So let's find that Jessica Gomez user. This would again expand her user profile like you just saw, but this tab allows me to, very easily resolve this particular issue. So in the case of Jessica, I want to assign and order a device. So same options that you saw during onboarding. I can either choose something from the warehouse or I can choose something brand new and have this automatically shipped out to her. So what's normally multiple departments, multiple messages, all that visibility lives inside of rippling, all, the resolution paths that you have to make sure people get the things they need to do their job are going to exist in the context of one platform. I get really excited about this stuff. I think this is super cool. So I believe those are all of the different examples that we have for the short demo today. But I also want to give a little bit of lip service to some of our more advanced features or things that might excite other advanced users of the rippling platform. So a couple of new things. Rippling has always been able to deliver policies to your devices. I mentioned things like OS update policies or encryption standards, but we've made this even easier and more granular. So we have a new policies tab, which you should absolutely check out. But one of the things that comes as a part of this is templates. We know that if you're going through SOC, SOC audits or NIST, want to apply NIST standards to your business, that that's a lot of things to know. So we built that template for you when it comes to OS updates or, or password policies for that matter. This is going to cover your entire fleet of managed devices, Mac, Windows, iOS, and iPads. And then with that super groups functionality that you saw, you can even set different kinds of policies for different employees. Salespeople have different requirements than an engineer or different policies that exist for a Mac versus a Windows device. So same sort of granular deployment methodology, but now you have the control of templates or building your own custom policies. We've also got the ability to detect thrift inside of third party integrations. So with that access assignment that, I showed configuring earlier, You will be able to automate who is going to get a Google account, a Slack account, but there might be issues that exist. Right? Somebody goes directly into Google as an administrator and adds somebody to a group or manually suspends a person at Google. We're not going to block you from taking those actions in the third party, but now we need to flag inside of rippling that something has gone wrong. And what we're showing here is the ability to give you that one click resolution with some of these different issues. So, Hey, this person, doesn't have the appropriate attributes in this, in, in this example that we have up on the screen, or they might be a part of a group that they shouldn't be. What do you want to modify inside of rippling to make sure that you are compliant with the rules that you've built inside of our platform? So tons of visibility, one click fixes. This is super important when it comes to security without being overly prescriptive about where you perform different tasks. A couple of other things to highlight here. I think I mentioned this at the outset of, our little demo section, but we just launched some really cool things. Number one, device buyback. If you have a fleet of computers that nobody wants anymore, for whatever reason, you can send them to the rippling warehouse and we will purchase them back from you. We're going to give you credits on your rippling account. So you might not actually be paying for that inventory management service if you're selling back, a number of devices to us. But we'll also give you a data destruction certificate. So, you know, and can report to your auditors that none of your company data, is where it shouldn't be. And we've also streamlined zero touch enrollment for apple devices. So there is a pre staged, status for apple devices when they are purchased via rippling that allows you to start assigning different policies, to these devices and like getting them configured before they're actually in your employees' hands. So more advanced options here for that, that zero touch deployment methodology. But if you do wanna see some of this in action, you can always schedule time to get a more dedicated demo. One last thing that's coming soon. We get asked about this all the time is the ability to deliver remote access into these devices. So like taking over one of your employees' screens to help with whatever the task may be. This should be out in the next month, two months, something like that. It is coming out imminently here. So additional control, really allowing you to manage a remote fleet very effectively in the context of replay. Hope that was helpful. Let's talk a bit about how you can learn more about rippling, some of these different resources that we have available to you so that you can do your own due diligence. I've completed a ton of these Rippling University courses. They are super helpful. So go to learn.rippling.com, sign up for some of the identity courses, MDM courses. It'll really just give you that deep knowledge for how you as an admin can perform some of these tasks that we've been showing off today. We have a deep help center where you can find how to configure any of these different tools and what are my permissions and everything in between that's help.rippling.com. And then we also have live support. Whatever question that you have, there is a dedicated, person on our side, specializing in IT or payroll or benefits or whatever your question happens to be that can help you answer these different things. But that's not all. We can answer all of your questions today as well. So I'll turn this back over for a little bit of Q and A, but again, hope this was helpful. Thank you all again.