Let’s get to it! Pick your track below
Select one of the two options below to kickoff your ReBootcamp routine, pick back up where you left off, or check out what’s new. Want to try both? No sweat! You can switch back and forth as much as you want.
Week 1 | NinjaOne Training
Core Basics Crash Course
New to Ninja or need a refresh? These videos will give you a head start on getting the most out of the platform by showcasing best practices, real-world use cases, and tips and tricks you may have missed.
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Policies
53 min
NinjaOne policies allow you to dictate how you want to manage individual or groups of devices — from what you want to monitor to the automation rules you want in place, patching preferences, security preferences, and more.
Even if you’ve been using Ninja for a while, this video may cause you to rethink how you’ve been setting up policies, and help you to start utilizing them in a much more impactful, efficient, and scalable way.
If you’re already familiar with how policies work, start at “Examples of policy hierarchies” (13:34).
You can also check out a PDF version of the walkthrough here.
Challenge
Create a policy hierarchy based on your needs and the best practices from the video (may involve revisiting and optimizing your current policy structure).
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Conditions
3 min
Conditions are Ninja’s term for monitoring rules that allow you to monitor for changes in device health, performance, or state, and trigger automations when set thresholds are met.
This video covers the basics of applying a condition, which can include using one of the growing numbers of out-of-the-box templates available, or adding a new custom condition (see a list of options here).
Looking for more monitoring ideas? Here’s a list of 28 examples to consider and get your neurons firing.
Challenge
Before you go adding to the noise, run an “alert audit” by following these recommendations and answering four key questions.
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Permissions
3 min
Ninja allows admins to create and assign roles to technicians that will determine what features and functionality they do and don’t have access to. Not only is that important for security, it’s also key for streamlining onboarding and team management.
Note: Technicians can be assigned to multiple roles (which can be helpful when assigning permissions in co-managed environments).
Additional features like User Restriction by IP Address can provide further restrictions.
Challenge
Take time to establish and/or audit existing your permissions with the principle of least privilege in mind. You should strongly consider removing any access that isn’t necessary. Bake that mindset into your technician onboarding and offboarding, as well.
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End User Self-Service
5 min
One way many Ninja partners cut down on ticket volume is by offering end users a self-service portal they can use not only to submit tickets, but to perform a variety of tasks such as gain secure VPN-less remote access to their devices, restore files, and view the status of any tickets they’ve submitted.
This post in the Dojo will walk you through how to add end users to organizations and give them remote access to their devices without giving them a full Ninja account.
Challenge
Do some analysis to determine how much time you could stand to save by providing end users with these self-service options, and conduct outreach to gauge end user appetite and expectations for rolling those out.
Play Video
Custom Fields
3 min
To wrap up Week 1, let’s dive into another key foundational aspect of Ninja that will help you unlock a host of monitoring and automation possibilities: custom fields.
This video offers a quick overview of custom fields, including a breakdown of types and how to read or write to custom fields in scripts. You’ll be getting your hands dirty with plenty of real-world use cases for custom fields in future ReBootcamp sessions, but in the meantime, you can get more basic info here.
Challenge
If you’re feeling extra motivated, get a head start by checking out the following and trying out one of the examples they walk through: Advanced Uses for Custom Fields in NinjaOne, Pt. 1 NinjaOne Custom Fields: Exploring Endless Possibilities by Mikey O’TooleDon’t have access to NinjaOne yet? Start a no-obligation free trial.
Week 2 | NinjaOne Training
Better Patch Management
Automating patch management is one of the core capabilities of Ninja. Find out how to set effective, scalable policies to handle Windows Feature updates and third-party application updates, plus get tips on troubleshooting and communicating your patching strategy with end users and leadership.
Play Video
Groundwork
10 min
NinjaOne Senior Technical Advisor Stephen Murphy kicks this week off with an overview of key patch management concepts plus important considerations you should take into account to in order to establish a solid, practical foundation that balances security against user experience and organizational needs.
Challenge
Conduct a software inventory audit to understand what’s installed on what. Then start classifying it in terms of priority, user groups, etc.Additional Resources
Play Video
Setting up policies
5 min
Now that you’ve got your bearings, let’s dive into configuring patching policies more deeply. In this video, Stephen shares best practices, examples, and configuration options to look out for.
Challenge
Pick a subset of devices or users and create a policy for them that configures scan and update schedules, whether you’re forcing a reboot, and whether updates are automatically approved or manual.Additional Resources
- PDF – Insights for Better Patch Management in NinjaOne (including stats on the most popular scan and update schedules, along with example patching profiles).
Play Video
Feature Updates
10 min
In this video, Stephen walks through how to audit Windows/OS release versions, identify legacy systems, and leverage Ninja to bring them up to date. He also offers tips for using Ninja’s automated third-party software patching options.
Challenge
Export your assets and see if you have any devices that are unexpectedly running versions of Windows that are end-of-life and no longer supported. Dig in and see if you can determine why they’ve fallen behind.Additional Resources
Play Video
Troubleshooting
13 min
It’s possible your patching will run perfectly every time. Chances are, though, this is a video that will come in handy for you at one point or another. Hear Stephen talk through how you can troubleshoot failed patches and other issues, including some of the most common mistakes and problems he sees.
Challenge
Acquaint yourself with the sources of various troubleshooting and root-cause data, and create a patching troubleshooting checklist you can add to your documentation/SOPs.Additional Resources
- Script from Kelvin at CyberDrain that checks devices for Windows 11 compatibility
- Disable automatic Windows 11 updates from the Registry
- Location of logs Stephen mentions:
- Applications and Service LogsMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdateClientOperational
- Windows update log file
- %systemroot%LogsCBSCBS.log
- C:WindowsLogsWindowsUpdatewindowsupdate.log
Play Video
Recap + More Tips
8 min
Stephen brings things home with some final words of wisdom to ensure your patching efforts are organized, well-balanced, and well-accepted by users and leadership.
Challenge
Have discussions with your coworkers/users to identify any issues or misaligned expectations regarding patching. Use those talks as opportunities to clear the air, realign, and, if necessary, iterate.Additional Resources
- Talk with other Ninja users on Discord!
- More smart, helpful folks here:
Week 3 | NinjaOne Training
Higher-Efficiency Monitoring & Automation
This is where the magic happens. By leveraging custom and out-of-box monitoring conditions in Ninja, IT teams can free themselves from reactive firefighting by automating a host of proactive remediation and preventative actions.
Play Video
Monitoring best practices
11 min
NinjaOne Senior Technical Advisor Stephen Murphy explains how to leverage policies, monitoring templates, and conditions to automate your alerting, and walks through several real-world examples and use cases.
Additional Resources
Play Video
Auto-remediation
9 min
Monitoring and alerting on potential issues is good, but using Ninja to automatically take action and resolve those issues is even better. In this video, Stephen uses the example of monitoring system uptime and assigning different automated tasks for various result thresholds.
Additional Resources
- Monitoring with PowerShell: Notifying Users of Windows Updates by Kelvin Tegelaar
Play Video
Complex monitors with custom fields
7 min
Now that you’ve tackled the basics of creating conditions (aka monitors) in Ninja, let’s try something that covers a bit more ground by utilizing custom fields. In this video, Stephen provides an example by walking through how to monitor for expired Windows licenses.
Play Video
Troubleshooting
13 min
Creating conditions to monitor for potential issues can be extremely powerful, but just remember — with great monitoring comes great responsibility… to save your team from getting drowned in alerts. In this video, Stephen offers tips for avoiding alert fatigue and other sticking points to watch out for.
Play Video
Additional Tips
9 min
Wrapping up Week 3 with a recap of recommendations to help you start building your monitoring, alerting, and automation efforts on a solid foundation and with the right mindset.
Week 4 | NinjaOne Training
Advanced Tips – Coming Soon!
We’ll update you as soon as these videos are ready.
Play Video
Working with M365 & Warranty Data in Ninja
Play Video
Leveraging the API
Play Video
Automating Device Onboarding
Play Video
Automating App Deployment
Play Video
Automating Endpoint Hardening
Week 1 | MSP Growth Accelerator
2023 Planning & KPIs
Make sure your team is aligned to the right business objectives and make this year a game-changer.
Play Video
Goal-setting
30 min
In this video, K7 Leadership founder Kyle Christensen will encourage you to break out of your daily firefighting mode long enough to build an intentional business plan that will align your objectives and put you back in control.
Challenge
Set aside 3-4 hours during the work week to answer these five questions and define your vision + big-picture goals for your business.Additional Resources
Play Video
Execution Planning
16 min
Now that your big picture for your business is coming into focus, it’s time to start reverse engineering by establishing your annual and quarterly action plans.
Challenge
Use either this template or this one from Kyle to write a rough draft of your annual and quarterly key objectives (rocks). If you have a leadership team, be sure to get them actively involved at this stage to get their input. Your initial goal is to come up with as many ideas and suggestion as possible. Then it’s time to trim down and prioritize. Once you’ve identified your rocks, use Kyle’s F.A.S.T. Rock Planner to get more granular.
Play Video
Delegating
21 min
Ninja allows admins to create and assign roles to technicians that will determine what features and functionality they do and don’t have access to. Not only is that important for security, it’s also key for streamlining onboarding and team management.
Note: Technicians can be assigned to multiple roles (which can be helpful when assigning permissions in co-managed environments).
Additional features like User Restriction by IP Address can provide further restrictions.
Challenge
Take time to establish and/or audit existing your permissions with the principle of least privilege in mind. You should strongly consider removing any access that isn’t necessary. Bake that mindset into your technician onboarding and offboarding, as well.
Play Video
Benchmarks
15 min
Not quite sure what financial targets you should really be aiming at? As Kyle advised in Session 1, it’s generally best to take industry-wide benchmarks with a grain of salt since they may not apply to your specific situation. We’ll be sharing materials to help you calculate your profitability and know your own numbers you need to hit in Week 2.
That said, benchmarks can be informative, especially in terms of pointing you in good general directions. Case in point: In this video featuring discussion with Gradient MSP CEO Colin Knox, you’ll see a list of common evaluation criteria investors and buyers use to determine how much an MSP is worth.
Regardless of whether you’d ever consider going down the M&A path, making progress against that criteria can help you build an extremely well-run business.
Challenge
Download our MSP Growth Planning Checklist and see if any of the criteria might factor well into the strategic business planning you’ve started. Don’t get discouraged if the numbers aren’t in your ballpark. Adjust them down to a reasonable stretch goal that applies to you.
Play Video
Hiring & Retention
In order to delegate and scale you’re going to need to bring on more great people, and in this hiring climate, that’s anything but easy. This discussion with Bowman Williams CEO John Davenjay and Mark Elliott, CRO at The 20, covers proven hiring methods, recent salary stats, and more.
Challenge
Check out our free guide: Beating the Talent Shortage: How to Hire and Retain IT Employees Better than Your Competition. You’ll find tips for expanding your candidate pool, sample job descriptions (that are actually good), and a bunch of recommendations to help you retain the great talent you already have.Week 2 | MSP Growth
Pricing & Packaging
How you price and package your services is one of the most critical factors that will determine whether you can successfully scale. This week, get expert advice on how to optimize both, as well as tips for how to raise prices with customers and deal with competition.
Play Video
Calculating costs
16 min
The fundamental key to pricing your managed services is knowing your costs. In this video, former MSP owner and former NinjaOne Channel Chief Advisor Tom Watson shares the calculator he developed to breakdown costs and profitability for each of his clients.
Challenge
Fill out the MSP Cost/Pricing Calculator for at least one of your clients. Download a copy here.Additional Resources
Play Video
Packaging Best Practices
20 min
Bvoip CEO George Bardissi joins Tom Watson to answer some of the most common questions MSPs have about pricing and packaging, from whether to offer tiered packages and unlimited, all-you-can-eat support to what your minimum should be and when to simply offer pre-paid block hours.
Challenge
Use the calculator to assess your customer agreements and determine which hit your profitability target and which need to be addressed.Additional Resources
Play Video
Raising Prices
15 min
Now that you know your costs and thresholds you may have realized that you need to raise your prices. In this video, you’ll get tips on when and how to have that conversation with your existing clients.
Challenge
Take the leap by approaching one of your clients with a price increase and/or a new agreement with an auto-escalation clause.Additional Resources
Play Video
Charge for Assessments?
7 min
It’s one of the most common questions asked: Should you be charging for your assessments and proposals? Find out the consensus from our experts — including Lifecycle Insights co-founder Alex Farling and Valiant Technology President Georg Dauterman. Then get tips for making this a seamless part of your own sales process.
Challenge
Determine how you might want to utilize your own assessment as a sales tool.Additional Resources
Play Video
Competitive Deals
17 min
One of the quickest ways to set your MSP back is by joining competitors in a race to the bottom on price. Hear examples of how you can successfully navigate competitive situations, and learn how to win more customers without losing your margins.
Challenge
Practice delivering your proposal and responding to pricing objections. Come up with a playbook for handling common competitive situations you’ve been running into.Additional Resources
Week 3 | MSP Growth
Client Management
Play Video
Firing Bad Clients
13 min
Are we really kicking off “Client Management Week” with tips on firing them? Well, yeah. But isn’t the idea to get more clients, not less? Actually, not quite. The idea is to get more of the right clients, and as you may already be painfully aware, having even just a handful of the wrong clients can be seriously counterproductive.
If you’ve read The Pumpkin Plan or know the concept, then you understand how important active pruning is to facilitating scalable and sustainable growth.
In this video (8:00 – 21:40), we’ll cover client “dealbreakers” and signs you need to go your separate ways. Then you’ll learn the best ways to actually go through with a client break-up in a way that keeps things cordial and professional.
Challenge
Identify your very worst customer and take meaningful steps toward letting them go. Once you get over that first hump the only regret you’ll have is you didn’t do it sooner.Additional Resources
Evaluating Clients
8 min read
It’s likely easy to think of your very worst clients off the top of your head, but you shouldn’t stop there. Proper client management requires systematic evaluation and regular health checks. To get started, read this story of how one MSP transformed his business by taking a simple but powerful approach to grading and leveling up his clients. Then grab our Client Evaluation Scorecard and take a stab at it, yourself.
Challenge
Use our Client Evaluation Scorecard to segment your clients into grades and determine your action plan for each grade (ex: Keep A’s happy, invest in moving B’s and C’s up a grade, and transition D’s out). Feel free to adapt the scorecard criteria to fit your own needs and take into account service-based metrics like reopened tickets, management escalations, etc.Additional Resources
Play Video
Getting Proactive & Intentional with Client Management
30 min
Now that you’ve pruned and segmented your client list, let’s focus on how to level-up the way you’re tending to your blue-ribbon clients so they can flourish and multiply. In this video, Lifecycle Insights CEO Marnie Stockman breaks down how top-performing MSPs differentiate by layering proactive customer success initiatives on top of the standard reactive customer support.
You’ll learn how to improve service adoption, satisfaction, retention, and referrals, while avoiding blindsides by identifying at-risk accounts earlier on.
Challenge
- Reevaluate your QBR format and cadence to more closely match your top clients’ business priorities and schedules.
- Create two SOPs
- Recovery plan (for at-risk customers)
- Referral path (for happy customers)
Additional Resources
Play Video
Measuring Customer Health & Leveraging Feedback
1hr 12min
Getting more granular, let’s dive into collecting customer feedback data, and — even more importantly — how to leverage it. In this video, Simplesat co-founder Cory Brown shares ways you can start collecting client feedback more proactively and efficiently with automation, as well as tactics for transforming feedback data into actionable business intelligence for you and your clients.
Challenge
- Start leveraging your PSA and/or an external tool like Simplesat to build out basic feedback automations and workflows (see some ideas in the video starting here).
Play Video
Revisit Your MSA
1hr 4 min
This week has been all about improving your abilities to deliver exceptional service, but of course that all starts with the expectations you establish and commit to at the very beginning of your client relationships. Are you confident your managed services agreement (MSA) is setting the right expectations, and has it kept up with the times?
If the answer is “no,” you’re definitely not alone. In this video, MSP risk management expert Eric Tilds offers a crash course on what makes a strong, defensible, and profitable MSA.
Challenge
- Review your current MSA against Eric’s list of key do’s and don’ts.
Additional resources
Week 4 | MSP Growth
Strategic Advisor / vCIO Services
Maintaining a healthy existing client-base and increasing the profitability of those clients over time is critical to achieving sustainable growth. This week, let’s look at ways you can further operationalize and mature the client management side of your business, including improving your QBRs and providing a more up-market strategic vCIO offering.
Play Video
What vCIO Is and Isn’t 10 min
Lifecycle Insights co-founder Alex Farling breaks down the key differences between standard account management and vCIO services, the distinct types of conversations he expects to see in each, and the big reasons why more and more clients are seeking out true strategic IT advisory.
Challenge
Additional Resources
Play Video
How to Structure vCIO 7 min
What types of clients need or warrant vCIO services? For those that do, how often should you be engaging with them? Monthly? Quarterly? Alex shares his take, along with a handy general rule-of-thumb formula you can put to use.
Challenge
Additional Resources
Play Video
Great vCIO Qualities & Metrics
10 min
Who should be taking on the role as vCIO, what kind of salary are they making, and what exactly should they be measured against? Alex is back to provide the answers.
Challenge
Additional Resources
Play Video
The vCIO Sales Process 14 min
You’ve scoped out your offering. Now it’s time to go to market with it. Alex shares an incremental approach that focuses on three steps — 1) Establishing risk; 2) Establishing budget; 3) Remediation — and recommends which types of clients and prospects are the best ones to start with.
Challenge
Additional Resources
Play Video
Recap + More Tips
1hr 9 min
Wrap up the week with a webinar that brings it all together. K7 Leadership founder Kyle Christensen joins Alex and Lifecycle Insights CEO Marnie Stockman to answer the biggest remaining questions around offering vCIO services, along with their takes on the best ways to actually get started.
