hey everyone

uh welcome to our may edition of the it

documentation users group webinar i am

sri and i’m the community manager at the

regal process

the the itu documentation users group is

one of two communities that i work very

closely with

and enjoy nurturing

it comprises people from all over the

world really

msps in the u.s people who work

in different parts of europe and asia

but everyone has something on the other

to do with the art of documentation uh

in it

i’m very excited about today’s webinar

uh

where we have luke whitelock from iq and

it an msp based in the southwest of

london

talking to us about hoodoo we’ve been

seeing a lot of talk on the group about

uh different documentation platforms the

options you have available uh regardless

of whether you’re new to the game or

whether you’ve been doing it for decades

so luke is perfect person to uh talk

about this he’s the cto and co-founder

of iq and it

and he contributes to various

open source msp based projects and he

makes trips to help msps uh in his spare

time uh he has done a lot of work with

hudu um and created and maintains the

who do powershell module so without

further ado uh

luke welcome to the webinar for this

month and let me say again very excited

to have you here thank you for having me

hi

um so we’ve advertised this webinar to

be 30 minutes but that is in no way a

hard stop if you have questions please

keep them coming and we can throw them

up during

the webinar while luke shows you through

hoodoo um or we can address them at the

end um so

we’ll we’ll see how it goes uh but

please feel free to ask questions in the

comment box of wherever you’re watching

from youtube or linkedin or facebook or

reddit um and we can we can pull that up

on the screen here

so um over to you look

cool

um

so yeah so we moved to hoodoo i think it

was february last year um

it was just after they released their

api so it was at that point where i was

finally feeling like it was mature

enough to actually use

um so i think i’ll show you talk you

through some of the basics of it and

then um

can ask some questions and go from there

um so when you log in you’ve got your

core dashboard which is showing you all

your things like um recent articles

things you’ve visited the most um

everything that’s been going on

um

similar to other documentation tools

you’ve got a company view which is where

you then get the breakdown of a

company’s documentation you also then

have a global knowledge base um which i

have one folder and one document in here

at the moment

um

but yeah so if you look at a customer

you get

some basic details um if you put in an

actual address it puts a little map

there

um so you can see where the customer is

and just gives you an overview of that

customer

um

hoodoo works a little bit differently

from some of the other tools in you’ve

got a limited amount of core assets here

so passwords processes knowledge based

articles websites explorations and then

external sharing and then everything

else like your contacts your

configurations that’s custom asset types

so you can split them up a little bit

more than you could in other tools and

it’s a little bit more flexible

so

starting out you’ve got

the basic assets is similar you’ve got

fields that you can set on there

configure to have rich text and various

different things

um those are all

pretty easy to customize um

so you just have to rearrange the fields

and set different types

um

so you can then also group up the

different asset types it’s just a bit

easier to organize

um

then

so

[Music]

one useful so the next useful thing is

you’ve got processes so these are

similar to like checklists and stuff in

it glue

you’ve got the concept of global

processes which is like your templates

so if you wanted to use like a user

onboarding template you can create that

into a specific customer

which

you then can customize just to be that

for that one customer so you’d

edit and add any custom tasks you wanted

and

you could then convert that to a

template to reuse multiple times inside

the customer so like

if you wanted to do an onboarding one

you then just apply

that to a customer

to a specific person uh what is very

cool with this is you’ve got a sharing

link

so if you take that link you can then

chuck it in a ticket to the customer and

they can just have a live update of

everything that you’re doing

to see where you are

um

so

it’s got some built-in website

monitoring things so you can check in

customers websites it’ll go pull dns

records and just log those for you

monitor if services are up and things

like that

expirations are useful so this can be

set to any date field on any asset or

also it wants things like websites ssl

certificates

things like that so

what we use it for mainly is warranty

tracking on devices so we add a custom

field to our desktops and laptops and

servers

use um the powershell module which then

goes and populates all of those looking

it up from serial numbers

um

so yeah you can then set up web hooks

and alerts of that

i’m gonna sorry i might

keep interrupting you and hopefully not

regressing a little bit but someone’s

asked a big

question uh here uh

why did you why did you select hudu um

it was it was last year wasn’t it

yeah so we were on it glue for years

like when we joined it fairly early on

it was an amazing product they were

doing something in the industry which no

one else was um i absolutely loved it

then at some point in time probably

about a year before casey announced they

bought them a year ago um all the

develop started halting it slowed right

down like there were just

nothing happening on it anymore they

just abandoned it basically

then you started getting new features

showing up again but it was like half

baked things like my glue and network

glue and it just made me really angry

that they had such a great product and

they just left it’s just like nate and

wasn’t going anywhere

um so i’ve been keeping an eye on hoodoo

for a while and it was i think it was

about

christmas of 2020

they finally released a version which

had things like api and a whole load of

bits which finally got it close enough

to glue to make it viable to jump over

um

so as soon as we could um got an

apprentice to go through all our

documentation and manually copy it over

and then um yeah after that i then wrote

a migration script to help other people

rather than me

um but yeah it’s just i don’t like to

say i was a company i just i typically

was just dying as far as i could see

and um yeah i’ve not

not missed at all since we left

it’s definitely a hot topic i think this

advocates for both who do anything and

other platforms as well on the on the

facebook group and um

they all have their pros and cons to

share but i hope this will i mean i know

this will be extremely useful for anyone

who’s considering a change so

thank you

um

so

[Music]

what’s that showing uh so other cool

little things so for example you can

favorite pretty much anything inside

hulu so like a favorite company

i could favor a specific asset i could

favorite a knowledge-based article

um

i had one

um they’ve recently done a rewrite of

the editor so now it’s just a really

nice editor you can do pretty much

anything you want in there it’s got

proper syntax highlighting for code you

can just edit the source code directly

um

so yeah a lot they their editor

originally was a little bit iffy but

it’s a lot nicer now they’ve done their

rewrite um

you’ve got all of the built-in things

like being able to create a public

shareable link just to chuck that to

your customers just for your document

um you can relate to different items and

different assets throughout hoodoo

tag files leave comments on it um

there’s also a cool flagging system

where you can i think i’ve not got any

crates at the moment but you can set a

flag for like if it’s out of day or if

it’s a legacy thing which needs

archiving

uh inside hulu rather than deleting

things you’ve got um this concept called

the museum where

most of the time unless you choose to do

a hard delete like if you’ve had a gdpr

request for someone to be forgotten and

most of the time you just archive things

and then they disappear in the museum so

you can easily go back and see the

history of anything that you’ve deleted

and removed

uh external sharing is a cool thing

where you can just send like if you’re

generating a password for a customer you

can just chuck in that generate the link

and it was sent to them and shirt to

them

um

so where

hoodoo starts to

um

where i start to really love some things

that you can do in hoodoo is with the

integrations rather than it creating

a whole asset and populating fields in

the asset it will add a card if there’s

a matching asset to it

so

um

what you can start to do is build up

you’d have a single person asset but

then you’d have like your crm integrated

into it you could have anything else

integrated wise and that all tagged to

that one asset but then what you can do

is add on your own custom fields and

start to extend it

if we have a look in here

so

for example if we look at

this one

uh this is the card that you get from

data rmm

so it pulls in some info puts it in this

card but then what i’ve got is a custom

field here which i’m then using a script

to populate the open alerts from datto

for that device

um

in my production instance we also have

things like intune linking into it any

open and related tickets from halo

linkedin

um

and various other bits and pieces so

it’s just you’re able to build up a lot

nicer single pane of glass view of

what’s going on with a specific thing

um so

if you have a look for example here

um so this is then using another script

that i’ve written which will document

details from microsoft 365 into hoodoo

so this will do

people and devices so any

engine enrolled devices uh do relations

between them so if it had a related

device you could

see any phones or anything that sort of

computers that the users logged into

here

um do some quick links to jump into the

actual

endpoint things

uh and then for example here’s the card

which is being populated by the

microsoft 365 integration that’s built

in

um so that only you had to set it up per

customer so mine’s using csp so you only

need one app instead of a million apps

in each customer to do it

um i know you have a ton of scripts on

your website luke but um are all the

scripts that you mentioned just now you

know um as you go are they all available

on your website yep so i think

everything on here is on my website um

the merchant 365 one is one i’ve done

fairly recently and i’ve just written it

as an is a function app where you can

click a button and

it will do most of the work for you and

setting it up right um anyone’s watching

um you can head over to mspp.io that’s

luke’s personal website if you’re

interested in any of these quips and

there’s a lot more um today but who do

and otherwise

um so my favorite thing about hoodoo is

um though this concept of magic dashes

where you can create these via the api

so it’s something you have to do

yourself it’s not something you can

create manually but this is that you

have a single pane of glass view of

bringing together all the different

things that you have just to quickly see

if there’s any alerts um

view all your microsoft users be able to

jump around them quickly

uh

for example here i’ve got um aruba

instant on

so you can just link around jump into

different assets here

and

you’ve got a whole concept of like asset

tagging so you can see all these

different assets linked to this one

which is an overview of the whole site

um

so i think uh

some questions

so what features lacking in hoodoo

that’s found in itg so

at the moment i think the only thing

that’s really missing is there’s not a

browser extension so you can’t also feel

passwords

um

we don’t use hoodoo for passwords we

keep it separate um there’s a brilliant

comment i saw on reddit the other day of

someone there’s people discussing

whether you should store your passwords

in a documentation thing and someone

said you don’t want to keep the map next

to the keys it’s like

you’ve effectively left all your

documentation with the passwords if that

gets compromised they’ve got everything

they could possibly need to breach

so um

yeah i don’t particularly like that one

another thing that’s missing is there’s

not

anything like network glue so you can’t

just install an agent and document uh

um

a network at the moment um you can

integrate through various different rmm

so you can start to build things up

um i’m planning to do something in the

script at some point but i’ve got around

to it

it’s also a comment here about um

a manual process i think referring to

but um

is actually coming in the next version i

believe

okay they’re gonna let you have template

um knowledge-based articles

so that’s a good solution for that it’s

a quick answer i’m just gonna throw one

more question up here

is there any technical difference

between creating a related item link

from a person to a device versus a

device to a person or is it the same

thing

um no it’s the same thing you just say

they’re both assets inside who do so you

say link this as id to this one if

you’re doing by the api you just click

on the relation thing and you can juice

it link whatever you want

um

so you just search for

whatever other asset you’d like to link

link it there and that will then link it

on both sides

uh you can do then as it tags inside the

field which then just lists it on the

far side

um

i’ll let some of my questions flow for a

while uh

we’ll be good back to them

so this search

um you’ve got

it’s okay i’m not gonna say it’s great i

don’t think any documentation platform

particularly does search that well

um

who just searched so you’ll spit it out

between different things you can choose

to do whether you want to search just

inside the specific custom company or

you can do an all field search which is

then looking at

every single field and inside the assets

and stuff

so it’s doing a full text search already

across everything

um i mean i think most the issue with

the search comes from it’s not like

google you’ve got hundreds of people

clicking on documents from specific

searches to be able to build up that

machine database learning of well this

someone searches this this is the kind

of thing they want

so it’s a hard problem to solve i think

for anyone but huge search works well

enough

we find it useful to do

make sure that the folders and the

knowledge bases are properly structured

so we’ll have a template folder

structure we use for everyone

it’s um we also i’ve done script

recently to generate a table of contents

which will then just do off your folder

structure just give you a linkable table

of contents in each root of knowledge

each knowledge base root just to make it

nice and easy

i think that addresses one of the

questions that came up on facebook as

well um basically

whether it reflects it glass and you

type a word in search and it searches

that it will find us find it across all

documents and devices and i think what

you said is exactly that

yeah

so it’s not ideal but it definitely it

works oh well i don’t know what it is

searches at the moment what state it’s

in but it’s a lot i found it a lot more

useful than i took search was when we

were on it

on on this note um and i know we have a

little bit to go as well

as you talk about hoodoo but

and at the risk of stirring the part

what’s on your wish list like what do

you wish

had and like you wish badly that really

had it’s a significant gap right now

um

what i really want at the moment is apis

to create processes

so that process being able to create a

process then grab the like shareable

link that’s not in the api at the moment

because then you can start to do some

really clever stuff i mean that would

really open things up your

constraints are almost minimal then

um

yeah so

uh yes i forgot to say um

other useful things uh you’ve got full

revision history so you can easily jump

back to see what a document was at a

specific point in time

that was apparently an empty version of

the document um yeah it’s very useful

uh another useful thing they’ve added

recently is this few who has access so

if you’ve done something sensitive that

you think you’ve locked it down enough

um

you can actually just check exactly

which users have access to be able to

see a specific document or asset

um

generating two car codes

generates a pdf for every qr code i

don’t have to use that whenever

um

so i saw someone just asking about

permissions um so they’ve just done a

full rework of the permission system so

it’s a lot nicer than it used to be

uh it basically all works off groups

so if you do a test group

uh

so it works in two different ways so

this is my favorite part of it is you

can have

a company basically a group which will

include companies or a group which will

deny access to companies so you can

either have if you’ve got like an intern

a couple of internal document things

which you don’t want everyone to have

but other than that you want everyone to

have all your other customers you just

do a deny of saying deny my internal

company

whereas if you’ve got a user who you

only want to be able to access like two

or three customers you can then change

it to an allow mode and just put those

in

and then set

login schedules

you can then do a whole load of other

restrictions so you can restrict them to

specific

asset layouts that they can use

you can remove access specific things

and yeah it’s just a lot more powerful

than it used to be uh you can then also

specifically restrict or allow on

individual assets

so yeah there’s a lot of options you

have to you know

powerful

yeah so i meant to go down from having

an absolute nightmare of the groups

where we were trying to we had a couple

of customers which only certain people

could access so every single time that

we added someone we had to go and add it

to the allow list and it was yeah a

nightmare

but now i just have a one group which i

say don’t let please don’t let people

see these ones and then can just get on

with things please you’re saying though

any more questions

there are a ton of questions

is it possible to create password

folders at a global level

for an

organization level like this uh

capacity

so yeah you have a my vault which is

your own password and then i believe

they’re only at the customer level at

the moment

um again we don’t store passes in hoodoo

so it’s not something i played around

with in depth unfortunately i think it’s

probably only custom level i they might

be changing it with the addition of

the browser extension

um i haven’t seen anything about that at

the moment

i think it’s like you probably just have

to do an internal company if you wanted

to have internal password shared across

everyone

um

so yeah so hoodoo is you’ve got the

option to self-host so if you need iso

27001 cyber essentials etcetera um you

can just have host self it

self host it and then um

it’s up to you to secure it as much as

you want they also they don’t advertise

it but they do do a cloud version as

well which you can get if you just email

them i think it’s a little bit more

expensive um but they just spin up an

instance i think it’s on digitalocean

they do um

what would what would some words of

advice be for

anyone who’s looking to transition you

know they’ve used another platform for

years and years

um they’ve got their best practices you

know everyone’s

in a comfort zone or not

but you know you want to make the move i

i know you have a script and all but you

know

so

i would say take it as an opportunity to

go over

your documentation review everything

make sure your structure still makes

sense for you

um

update everything to make sure you’ve

not got screenshots from control panels

which are 10 years old now and don’t

actually line up with what the current

experience is

um

it’s

yeah it’s not too bad to move over it’s

a fair bit of work it’ll take a lot of

time

um

my script will just do a lift and shift

essentially of your flexible assets and

your knowledge base

um i still say it’s something you want

to review

um for me a core part of documentation

is it’s only ever as useful as the last

time it was updated

so

i like to automate as much as i possibly

can so everything is just updating

itself the humanoid um

yeah

especially around your um

asset layouts

like that’s automating as much of that

as possible is an absolute essential

thing nowadays i think yeah

so does who do have all the compliance

regulations such as ice with 27.00

so again i don’t think they have them

themselves but then you sell you help

self-host it and so um

it’s then you can make it compliant so

we’ve got eyesight 27001 um and cyber

essentials and we have no issues because

we keep it all locked down and secured

ourselves

um i also have this question asking

about a migration pass from mighty moore

um so yeah so you can use my script

which will

take a whole load of um the work out of

it for you i hope you at least

get a start does that bring over all the

information that they hold in it glue so

it brings over as much as i could get

via the api from it glue or their export

and then around the limitations of

hoodoo so another thing that um i wish

you could do is let you do file uploads

so you can’t upload attach files um but

i just generate a list at the end saying

all the things that you can do which you

can then go you go do manually um yeah

i’d take that as a base to get your core

bits of stuff over and then i’d take it

as a chance to review everything and

just go through it again and reorganize

okay

so i mean it it is a fair bit of work

and i mean

yeah it’s to to assume it wasn’t moving

we moved psa last year as well which was

a lot more painful documentation

a year of change

some big moves

yeah

but i wouldn’t imagine if anyone is in

the mindset of making a big change like

changing a documentation platform that

that surely has a business need behind

it and that might translate to other

things um

so it probably is multiple things

happening at the same time like it did

for you

um

yeah so um to make it easier i used to

use all of um kelvin from cyber drains

i2 documentation scripts so one of the

first blogs i did was i rewrote all of

those scripts to work in hoodoo so

there’s a good lot of a base

to get you up and running with automated

documentation if you’re already using

that

okay

so you have a question about the

portability of um information here

question about whether you can export

documents in assets and input them

elsewhere um for example to other hudu

instances or just save it for importing

later

uh yeah so because you’re self-hosting

you can do

uh database backups and then all your

images are either stored on the local

file system or they’re stored on s3

compatible storage

so

for moving to another hudu system it’s

fairly straightforward you’ve just got

everything there um

for importing exporting you can just

choose how you want to export things you

can do automate x ports to an s3

storage

uh and do various other bits and pieces

to get it out um

trying to remember if there’s

anything else around that

i think it’s mainly around the export

data um the api is a lot more open you

can

then with it glue so it’s very easy if

you wanted to move between like merge

two instances you could just write a

couple of scripts and just

grab one and chuck it into another

um we as a team at eureka process we use

it blue so um

this is um this will be exciting for us

because we definitely have um a lot of

clients

ask us about who do and

what the experience would be like

um this is a question from our team so

so there’s some pre-built templates to

get you up and running in the first time

um so if you want to do like computer

assets you can create one here and it

will uh

create your base asset with

some fields

um

i’d say

for you probably want to start out with

just some empty assets for things like

people and devices synchronize over from

your psa over from your rmm uh because

then you get the cards and you don’t

actually need any other fields then you

can just start to add in other fields as

you want like you could add in a notes

field you can add in any custom bits and

pieces around it

um see i’d definitely say start with the

integrations get your data into it that

way and then start expanding from it

from there

thank you

are there any other resources um you

know other than people signing up for

hudu and being in touch with themselves

um or using your website

any resources that people should know

about um or even experts you know

there’s a who do subreddit which is

fairly quiet but there’s a lot of

resources from there

um

they’ve added some new bits and pieces

around training into it i think nowadays

uh so i think there’s like a yeah

there’s like a learn which will talk you

through different bits and pieces

um

there’s a fairly active

um

channel on msp geek for hoodoo

where um some of the guys who

work on hoodoo are so it’s a good place

to give feedback and things

and there’s also a

feature request

um

somewhere i think the roadmap page um

where they actually update and do things

which is a miracle compared to like

please which is just a graveyard of

things that everyone’s wanted for you

i think the most complaints i’ve heard

from people about id was definitely

about the fee because it always comes

down to someone saying oh they put a

feature request box went so

um it always ends up in that but i like

that i mean i’ve seen things getting

resolved but

yeah it seems like they’ve had a bit of

kickoff kick up the butt recently and

seem to be trying to make an improvement

but

i guess so there is fine competition you

know yeah let’s find a decent

competition out there say

so is this a per user model or um

how does it work uh yep so

i believe not something checked um

in a while

so

self-hosted is 31

a month for three users and then 15 a

month for additional users

but you can there’s a concept for your

customers

um called the

portal which i might not have turned on

on here

[Music]

trying to run where you turn this on so

there’s a it’s a customer portal where

you can then invite specific users from

the company okay so just a friend and

where you decide what this is so that’s

where you can do the equivalent of a my

glue so you can share assets you can

share passwords

um you can split that kind of stuff out

i just i don’t actually use it myself so

i’m trying to remember where it is

no you know you can all be

yeah so to answer the question yes um

you can give clients access to a portal

and

that that is a free user correct

yeah that’s free okay so

you customize what exactly you want to

see in there

um

i can do it i can’t remember

yeah i can’t sorry i just can’t remember

where it is that you turn it on

i think the main the main draw for us

for today’s webinar is just

i mean it’s one thing having a company

rep come in and talk about their product

but the value we have from someone like

you who you know uses it like you made

the shift and you’ve made it work for

you you’ve done these scripts and you’re

actually using it day to day i mean the

value we get from an opinion based on

that is much more than you know someone

from company could come and

talk volumes about their product it’s

just not the same

and i think that’s that is reason for

all these questions

um

yep

so you’ve got

um

so you’ve got standard mfa

um you can do duo integration uh and

then you can do full summer sso so for

our production instance we have it

integrated into 080

and then leverage all conditional access

any uh scripts on their way considering

that this is your hobby

um so at the moment i’m actually working

on a script for better alerts from data

rmm because they just introduced web

hooks so i’m doing some clever stuff

with their api to make their alerts a

lot better than the standard email ones

um

for hoodoo i

am currently waiting on

a new feature in the api to get inline

images

um so i can synchronize all of our

knowledge space between hoodoo and halo

because halo’s got some cool features

where it will suggest knowledge based

articles based off um

ticket contents so you want to start

leveraging that but then keep the

documentation mainly in hulu but then

just have the indexable stuff linked

into halo to bring that up

um

and then i did um a cloud for

integration a week or so ago for it

um which is quite useful

and then i have a list of about a

hundred different things which i’ve half

finished and got planned which hopefully

i’ll find time for

just going to say it’s only a matter of

time before

um your personal website has a feature

request or like a request

yeah i want to try and do a replacement

for um networkly because i think that’ll

be quite fun doing some clever things of

network scanning and bringing on assets

that way

be a fun challenge i think

um so i i know you joined the i.t

documentation users group at some point

but i do know that you’re not there all

the time um

yeah uh you’re not the first person to

say that and

you won’t be the last person i hear

saying that either

um

there’s a shift in more more areas than

msp documentation platforms so let’s

just leave it at that

um but the best place to get hold of you

is through your personal website

just for the viewers

yeah check me an email or um leave a

comment on there or yeah i’m pretty

active on msb geek on there

it’s an easy way to get hold of me

i’m gonna throw up your website here for

anyone who’s watching um these are

the websites iq and it is

the company the msb in london that um

co-founded once

and uh the one on the qr code at the

bottom is for luke’s personal website

where you can find all this work and the

scripts etc

i’ll give you a few seconds here if any

of you are

pulling that off the screen or

getting the url down

and this this video will is being

recorded so it will reside on

our youtube channel it will be

accessible through

our facebook group the it documentation

users group

and

this is another thing that i’m excited

to announce um we

announced this

last month at our itdub webinar and

um alvin edwards our founder um is

releasing this book soon it’s called

process and the other b keyword so

please use the key

qr code sorry or um go to

eurekaprocess.com

pre-order to make sure you’re on the

list to be notified of when the book is

out

um we are very excited about this and we

also have a lot of stuff happening on

our calendar we have uh in-person events

on june 2nd in dallas

um that will be hosted by us it’s just

going to be a networking event if you

want to meet

our team

please um meet us in dallas you can use

the qr code on the top left there to

visit our events page and rsvp to any of

these events june 6th and 7th we’re

going to be at the channel pro smb forum

in dallas

and the 20th of june we’ll be in

minneapolis um an industry event uh

we’ll be there network um

talk to anyone who wants to meet up with

us there

the next month we’ll be having uh one of

our very own matthew golini who is with

divergent i.t

uh matthew uh in his own words likes to

stir the part so he’s graciously

accepted to talk about lion guard which

he uses um with his clients

um so june 29th that’s the last

wednesday of june uh we have matthew

gillumi talking about lion guard uh the

next month july 27th again the last

wednesday of the month

we will be talking about documenting

kpis with dry gauge and that will be by

our very own adam edwards of eureka

process

luke

thank you again this was amazing um

this was really really good value for um

everyone who attended today um eureka

process and all our guests

i know this is a significant amount of

time from your day even though it’s the

end of the day given the time difference

but i appreciate it

no problem thank you for having me

thank you and uh everyone see you the

last wednesday of next month thanks