We created these pointers to help you get started:

1. Set up your account before you introduce IT Glue to your team
2. Invite your team to give IT Glue a try
3. Find your way around by familiarizing yourself with the navigation and key concepts
4. Connect one or more data sources such as a Professional Services Automation (PSA) tool or Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool, or both
5. Create flexible assets from pre-built templates and from your current workflow
6. Start documenting one model client to learn as much as you can about IT Glue

These 6 steps can only be completed by an IT Glue user account that has the role of Manager or Administrator. Some steps can be shared with your team as you progress, for example, watching videos and designing flexible assets.

What is IT Glue?

IT Glue is the leading documentation platform for managed service providers, allowing you to standardize your processes and procedures in pursuit of the elements of a successful business: people, process, and technology.

With IT Glue, you can develop client-facing knowledge base articles, standard operating procedures, and structured asset documentation (configurations, passwords, and more) from information that's typically scattered throughout your business, such as in various and multiple spreadsheets, documents, databases, wikis, and even someone's brain! IT Glue allows you to bring all these platforms into one centralized platform to assist your technicians in delivering services and support.

IT Glue is a web-based application that works in all web browsers, which means you don't need to download or install any software on your computer.

No experience necessary
You'll have a number of resources available to you as you learn more about IT Glue, including ongoing live support, video resources, and a knowledge base.

Before you start

Here are some important things to know when setting up your account.

• Upon activation, a default organization with your company name is created. Make sure you check the spelling of your company name in your account settings. It should be entered exactly as it appears in your PSA, so that your company data will sync in to your IT Glue organization.

• When you sign up, we need your credit card information and your billing contact's email address. Make sure your credit card allows foreign transactions (we’re based in Canada).

• When you create an account with us, you agree to IT Glue's Terms of Service.

• You'll need to select the name of the subdomain you want to use. For example, if you choose mycompany, your IT Glue URL will be: mycompany.itglue.com. Note that branding is available on some plans. Also note that if you later decide to change your subdomain, simply submit a request that includes a suitable window of time for us to make the change for you.

• To better protect your data, you can add multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever you’re ready. An Administrative user of the account can also decide whether to make MFA a requirement for all users of the account.

• Make sure that all users (yourself included) set their time zone when they first sign in, so that the activity logs will display the correct timestamps.
• It is also a good idea to turn off the built-in password manager in your browser.

Invite your team

When you’re ready to invite other people, add them as users and we'll send them an invite.

Part of setting up new user accounts is choosing a user role for each person. IT Glue is a role-based application. Each user will be able to complete various tasks based on their user role.

For reference, the table below summarizes the different permission levels. For more information, see the About roles and permissions article.

Permissions overview table:

Before you finish setting up user accounts, you should add one more component: groups. You can control access to information (e.g. passwords, documents) using groups.

Examples of groups that have worked for other partners:

• Techs
• Clients
• Senior Tech

Find your way around

Watch the first video Navigating IT Glue [duration 3 minutes] to learn the interface. Make sure each of your team also watches it. Read Structure and Navigation for a deeper dive in to the app.

Next, watch the video [5 minutes] we created that briefly touches on all of the important parts of IT Glue.

Connect one or more data sources

Make sure you've read the above "Sync Methods" article carefully to understand your options and the right order of steps to follow. You want to get the best possible experience from your initial setup.

The actions you take depend on the data sources (RMM and PSA) you use and whether your chosen plan allows multiple data sources.

PSA integration
Before bringing your PSA data in to IT Glue, you may want to make sure that your data is accurate and well categorized. Keep in mind that there will probably be some data that you decide to leave in your PSA.

Your clean up effort should include the following checks:

• Leads/prospects and clients are categorized to keep them separate from each other.

• Past clients are listed as inactive.

• IP devices/assets are categorized correctly and separated from other types of assets. For example, servers and workstations should be the only devices categorized as Managed Servers and Managed Workstations.

After that's done, remember how you categorized everything when setting up the integration from IT Glue. You'll want to pick and choose what to sync. You should pick only the organizations and configurations that you actively manage.

Starting the sync is a three step process:

1. Check the prerequisites for your PSA by visiting the articles below and follow the instructions to configure your PSA, if any. For example, you might need to create a dedicated integrator account.
2. Visit the Account > Integrations screen in IT Glue and choose the PSA you’re syncing with.
   
   
3. Enter your PSA credentials and then click Connect.

For step-by-step instructions, take a look at the following articles:

• Integrating with Autotask
• Integrating with ConnectWise
• Integrating with Kaseya BMS
• Integrate Meraki with IT Glue
• Integrating with Pulseway PSA
• Integrate Syncro with IT Glue
• Integrating with Tigerpaw
  

Keep in mind that we will never delete something from your PSA during a sync, and that any data that's in IT Glue before the first sync will not be pushed to your PSA. This is by design to protect the integrity of your PSA data.

For more information about syncing with your PSA, see Syncing between IT Glue and PSAs overview.

RMM integration
If you are already using a PSA with IT Glue, you can connect an RMM if your current plan supports it. To see which plan you need, refer to the Plans & Pricing page. You can switch plans at any stage.

With a monitoring tool integration, it's possible to match device data to your previously created PSA configuration items and create a combined view of configurations with some data coming from the RMM (mostly technical fields) and some data coming from the PSA. To learn more, see About RMM configuration integrations.

To get started with RMM syncing, if you haven't yet, review our Sync methods article for an overview of the different methods of importing and syncing from external sources and to understand the right order of steps to follow. Next, take a look at the articles below for step-by-step instructions:

• Integrating with Addigy
• Integrating with Atera
• Integrating with Autotask Endpoint Management
• Integrating with AVG Managed Workplace
• Integrating with ConnectWise Automate (LabTech)
• Integrating with Continuum
• Integrating with Jamf Pro
• Integrating with Kaseya
• Integrating with SolarWinds MSP RMM
• Integrating with NinjaRMM
• Integrating with Panorama9
• Integrating with Pulseway RMM
• Integrating with SolarWinds N-central
• Integrating with Watchman Monitoring

Data imports
If you don't have the option to connect a PSA or RMM, you can create and import CSV files containing organizations, locations, contacts, and configurations.

For detailed instructions, take a look at our Importing CSV data into your account article. This procedure can also be used to import passwords or populate flexible assets after they're created (see next section).

Create flexible assets

Flexible assets are used to structure information about the applications and services you manage for your clients. You can structure data inside flexible assets in templates you create from scratch or you can use the pre-built templates.

To help your team gain a full understanding of IT Glue, we recommend importing all of the pre-built templates. You can always remove any unused flexible assets later. See our Quick guide for flexible assets article for more details.

To import the pre-built flexible asset templates:

1. Navigate to Account > Flexible Asset Types.
2. Click Import from Template (top right).
3. Select all of the flexible asset templates, or choose the ones you want to import.
4. Click Import.

After you import the templates for the first time, each flexible asset will display in the Organizations sidebar in an Apps & Services group. You have full control over the order of items shown on the sidebar and how they are grouped if the default layout isn’t working for you.

At this point it is recommended that you attend our Keys to Success webinar.

Start documenting one model client

The best way to understand the comprehensive structure of IT Glue is to document one client completely. Choose a client that your team is more familiar with for this task. This process will help answer many questions about how to design and standardize information. Once your team sees how IT Glue works, they will be ready to tackle other clients.

To add some context to this exercise, our client onboarding article will help you understand the order of steps.

Use real data
You may be tempted to use fake or test data at this stage. We highly recommend that you don't do this, and instead use real data for a real client. This ensures that you get a true representation of how well IT Glue fits your current data. For example, you may come across an existing document that doesn't fit neatly in an existing asset. You can then gather your team and design the perfect flexible asset template to incorporate the information, knowing that you have similar documents for all of your clients.

In addition, once this model client is complete and being used by your team live, you can move on to the next client instead of having to clean up fake data.

Next steps

Learn the Keys to Success 

• Make sure you do the Six Steps first, because this webinar will make much more sense if you have. The Keys to Success webinar will then introduce you to the key concepts and features of the app, including different asset types, procedural docs, and related items.
  

Review the concept guide

• The information in our Introduction to the key concepts guide is great reading for anyone who is just getting started with flexible assets and wants to design their own or modify the pre-built templates.

Review the Documentation Guide

• Our Documentation Guide shows you step by step how to enter information in IT Glue, starting with configurations and other core assets and then moving on to flexible assets and procedural documentation. The order of capture is deliberate. Follow the sections in order to get the full benefit of all the features.

Start writing procedures

• Consider any standard operating procedures (SOPs) that you would like to create, for example, new hire onboarding.
• Create SOPs for anything else that is a repeatable procedure.
• Consider importing documents or copying and pasting information from existing documentation.