Connect your Autotask to OuterMark.

Set up the API user in Autotask

An Autotask administrator does this, in about ten minutes. The menus and labels below are the ones Autotask's own screens show.

Step 1: create the API user

1. Go to Admin, then Resources (Users) under Commonly Used.
2. Open the arrow beside New and choose New API User.
3. Give it a name your engineers will recognise on a ticket. Every ticket and note we make shows it as the author.
4. Choose the security level API User (system) for now. Step 4 narrows it.

It needs to read your companies, read tickets, create tickets and ticket notes, and read the field definitions of tickets and of ticket notes. Reading tickets is not optional. Before opening a ticket, we look for one we have already opened for the same event. After opening one, we read back the number your screens show. Before adding a note, we check the ticket is still open. A security level that can create tickets but not read them gets you duplicate tickets.

Step 2: choose the integration vendor

In the API user's API Tracking Identifier section, choose Integration Vendor, then choose Rosebud Cloud Solutions from the Integration Vendor list. Rosebud Cloud Solutions is the company that builds and runs OuterMark.

Do not choose Custom (Internal Integration). That kind of identifier works only in the database it was made in, and is not meant for an integration like ours.

Step 3: copy the key and the secret

Under Credentials, press Generate Key and Generate Secret, and copy the Username (Key) and the secret before you press Save & Close. Once it is saved, Autotask does not show the secret again, only a button that makes a new one.

Leave Line of Business as it comes, with nothing associated and Resource can view items with no assigned Line of Business ticked, unless you use lines of business. Autotask uses them to grant or prevent access to tickets and contracts, so if you use them, associate the API user with every line of business set on the tickets and contracts it will touch.

Step 4: narrow what it can do

We recommend this step. The API-only security level that comes with Autotask reaches more of your Autotask than we use, so give the API user a copy that reaches only what we need.

1. Go to Admin, then Account Settings & Users. Open Resources/Users (HR) and choose Security Levels under Security.
2. Autotask makes a new level by copying one: open the menu at the start of the API User (system) (API-only) row and choose Copy, then name the copy.
3. Under Feature/Section Access, choose No Permission for Inventory, Workforce Management, Documents & Knowledge Base, Timesheets, Reports and Admin.
4. Leave CRM, Contracts, Service Desk, Other and Web Services API as they were copied.
5. If you will keep a contract service in step, tick Products, Services, & Inventory again under Feature Access in Admin, and only that box. It lets us read your service names. Without it, each service is offered by its number.
6. Save the level.
7. Back on Resources (Users), open the API user's row menu and choose Edit. Set its Security Level to the new level and press Save & Close.

Change nothing else there. Generate Key or Generate Secret replaces the credentials you gave us, and the connection stops until you paste the new ones.

This level allows everything we do, keeping a contract service in step included. If you narrow it further, press Send test on the Autotask card afterwards, and Load contract services on Match companies if you keep a contract service in step.

Connect it in the partner console

In your partner console, open Integrations and its PSA tab, and paste the user name and the secret into the Autotask card. There is nothing else to paste: we find which Autotask region your database is in ourselves, and every call carries our own tracking identifier.

We store the secret encrypted, use it only to talk to your Autotask, and never show it again. If you lose it, generate a new one in Autotask and connect again.

Connecting does not call Autotask straight away. We check the connection in the background, which takes up to a minute: refresh the page to see the result.

Choose what a new ticket says

Nothing opens until you do. Every ticket needs a queue, where your service desk picks up new work, so we always ask for one. Which other fields a ticket must carry is your configuration: a priority and a status at least, and whatever else your Autotask requires.

We read that list from your Autotask when we check the connection, and again every day, and the card asks you for exactly those fields, once. We fill in the company, the subject and the description ourselves.

Until they are answered the card says so, and everything waits. Answering them sends what has been waiting. A note is its own record in Autotask, with its own required fields: until those are answered too, a later change opens a ticket of its own rather than a note on the first.

Match your companies

Nothing is matched for you. On Match companies, each of your customers gets a list of your Autotask companies and a suggestion:

• One exact name match: suggested, and you confirm it.
• Two or more: nothing suggested, because choosing between them is your call.
• None: the closest names are listed first.

Harbourview Ltd and Harbourview Limited are treated as different companies, because two companies can have names that close. Apply every single suggestion accepts all the unambiguous ones at once, and skips every row where two companies match.

Events for a customer with no match wait, rather than going somewhere wrong. The card shows how many are waiting, and the button that saves a match tells you how many it will send.

Keep a contract service in step

If you bill a client for managed DMARC as a service on their recurring-service contract, we can keep that service's units at the number of their domains we manage. Your next invoice to them is then right without anybody counting. It is your bill to your client: our own invoice to you is separate, and never goes into your Autotask.

It needs more of the API user's security level, and only if you use it. We read contracts, the services on them and their units, and your services, and we create contract service adjustments, because Autotask changes a contract's units only by adding an adjustment. The level in step 4 allows all of that, as long as Contracts is left as it was copied and Products, Services, & Inventory is ticked under Admin. Without that box we still keep a service in step, but each service is offered by its number rather than its name, and the column says so. If your security level does not allow the reads, the column says so when you load.

A matched customer on Match companies then has a Contract service column:

1. Press Load contract services. Within a minute we read that company's active recurring-service contracts and the services on them: the first 20 contracts and 50 services, if they have more. Refresh to see them.
2. Choose the service you bill managed DMARC on and press Keep this service in step. That is the whole opt-in: a customer with no service chosen is never touched in Autotask.
3. Within a few minutes we read the service's units for today. If they differ from the number of managed domains, we add one adjustment for the difference, effective today, then read the units again.

After that we check every six hours, and within minutes of the number of managed domains changing. A domain removed from a customer is counted at the next six-hourly check.

An adjustment is billed however that contract is set to bill one, proration included. It shows on the contract's services in Autotask as a prorated Unit Change line, effective the day we made it.

An adjustment cannot be changed or removed once it is made, so we are careful with them. If the units for today are not the figure we aimed at when we read them back, we stop and the column says so. Nothing more is changed until you press Try it again, after looking at the contract in Autotask. If we could not read the units back at all, we change nothing more until we have. Stop keeping it in step stops us without changing anything in Autotask.

If you match a customer to a different company, or remove their match, while we keep a service in step for them, we stop and change nothing in Autotask. The old company's service keeps its units, so that client goes on being billed for them. Match companies and the Autotask card say what Autotask still holds, on which service and for which company, and you change it in Autotask. We do not set it to zero for you, because that would be an adjustment to a company you have moved away from.

What opens a ticket

You choose, kind by kind, what opens a ticket. By default:

Two scans are comparable when both read the same checks and the same version of our scanner scored both. A check a scan could not read, because a lookup timed out or a source refused us, is scored as unknown, so a score can move just because one scan saw more than the other. That is not a fall. To see every scan, choose Open a ticket every time: when two scores do not compare, the ticket says so.

A second change to the same domain is added as a note on the ticket we opened for it, so each domain's changes stay in one thread. Once that ticket is completed, the next change opens a new one. You can turn threading off and get a ticket for each change.

Each ticket number opens its ticket

Under Recent tickets on the PSA tab, each ticket shows the number Autotask's own screens show, such as T20261005.0001, so you can search for it in Autotask. It also links to the ticket. Your Autotask opens in a new tab, where you sign in as usual, and Autotask opens the ticket in a window of its own. If you see only your Autotask dashboard, your browser has blocked that window: allow pop-ups for Autotask.

Where we could not read the number, the card shows the ticket's internal id instead, such as #7858, which opens the ticket the same way. A number from before you last connected has no link, because it may belong to a different Autotask.

What a ticket never contains

Your engineers read a ticket, and often forward it, so it follows the same rule as our API and webhooks:

• No text from a DMARC report. No alert title or detail, no impersonation origin name, no reporter names, no published record text. DMARC reports are unauthenticated mail, so whoever sent one chose its contents. A ticket carries our own fixed wording and counts, and the detail is in your partner console.
• Nothing read back from your Autotask. We never copy a company name from your Autotask into a ticket in your Autotask.
• No markup. Plain text only.
• The names a ticket does carry (yours, your customers' and their domains) have invisible and bidirectional characters removed, and are cut to a set length.

Every ticket carries a reference such as rosebud:event:1234 in its External ID field and in the last line of its description. That is how we know whether we have already opened a ticket for an event, so please do not remove it.

Cutting us off

Either end works:

• Disconnect on the PSA tab of Integrations. We stop at once and delete the stored credential. Your company matches are kept, so connecting the same Autotask again resumes where you left off. Connecting a different Autotask starts afresh: its companies and pick lists are numbered differently, so we clear your matches and your ticket defaults, and hold anything waiting until you have chosen them again.
• Deactivate the API user in Autotask. Our next call fails and the connection stops. There is no token to expire, so it takes effect immediately.

Limits

• One Autotask connection per partner, and five connection attempts an hour.
• Every integration connected to your Autotask shares one hourly allowance of API requests: your remote monitoring, your backup, everything. We send at most 720 requests an hour for your tickets, notes and contract services. Re-reading your companies, once a day or when you ask, comes on top. We back off whenever Autotask asks us to.
• If Autotask stops answering, we pause, try again over about eight and a half hours and show you what happened. Six attempts with no clear answer leave the event marked not confirmed, with its reference, so you can search Autotask for it yourself.