Forget the Workspace, behold the WOWspace!

My workspace feels like it’s needlessly complex, and I often find that frustrating. Imagine a workspace where my behaviour is constantly learned, and where intelligent decisions can be made to improve my productivity and security… Wouldn’t that be great?!

As I sit here writing this blog, I have my LastPass app open, multiple browsers open and numerous web apps running, some SaaS apps on my device, and the rather frequent calendar or email alert popping up every few minutes. Of course, I’ve also got some local data I’m working on offline that I sync to my cloud storage and SharePoint. Lastly, I also access some legacy line of the business apps deployed via a Windows 10 virtual desktop hosted on Azure. It feels like my workspace is cluttered and

Common Applications and Workflows

Like many of you reading this, one of the apps I use frequently is Concur. I use the Concur app on my phone to photograph receipts and I prefer to use the web app on my laptop to complete the expense report itself, before submitting it to my manager for approval.

My team members as well, often use our online HR system to book annual leave or to work from home and of course, for sick leave. My inbox is often cluttered with approvals, reports and alerts that direct me to a web app that I need to login to, navigate and submit some sort of command or information to. And I’m not writing this cause it’s unusual, quite the opposite – I know everyone reading this will be able to relate.

Excessive Clicks

Some of those apps, have their own native alert systems as well, and quite often I find myself navigating through many clicks (a pet hate of mine), to get information I need, wasting time in the process.

Excessive clicks and antiquated application navigation frustrate me from a user experience perspective, but they also cost our business due to the significant amount of time all of us waste repeating the same things; in turn, the loss of productivity is measurable and significant.

Federated authentication and some basic workspace solutions assist with Single Sign-on, including Office 365, of course. We integrate Concur and other tools with our own Office 365 user portal – and it’s a reasonably good user experience.

Workspace Security

I sometimes imagine working in our internal IT department trying to keep everything secure and compliant without hindering business ability to be productive and collaborative. There’s a fine line between providing IT services that create tangible benefits to users and creating solutions where the user experience is so bad, users look to circumnavigate it and use shadow IT to try and be more efficient.

Add to all this the fact that we also provide users with flexibility to use any device, from any location, and the scenario becomes exponentially more difficult to manage. The stuff of nightmares for an advocate of IT security like myself – I’d have some sleepless nights working from our IT department.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have everything on a single plane of glass with everything integrated and standardised across all devices that we use?

Machine Learning, AI and Micro Apps – The Intelligent Workspace

Machine Learning, AI and behavioural analytics now offer the ability to work in a smart workspace, one that learns how we work and increases productivity and efficiency across teams and businesses collaborating together.

This is where Citrix is disrupting the market of today, with their Intelligent Workspace solution. I’ve had the privilege of accessing this amazing service early, and it provides me with access to everything you’d expect, including integrated access to my data that’s audited to keep track of where the data is going (DLP). Now when I access my web apps, my IT team can control whether I can upload data – so keeping my data away from a personal DropBox or Google Drives account is an easy templated policy to implement.

Additionally, user behaviour analytics can learn how I normally work, and if that pattern of behaviours deviates, IT can dictate what actions to take. For example, if I suddenly start downloading large volumes of data, IT can prompt for additional authentication information, including an additional factor, or send a notification to my manager. Or terminate my connection entirely until the situation has been reviewed and approved by someone in our IT security team.

What’s more, Citrix Intelligent Workspace includes micro-apps that allow me to seamlessly single sign-on to services like Concur and approve an expense report without ever leaving my workspace interface. There’s no need to open another tab in my browser, enter my credentials or the countless clicks and navigating around a clunky interface – I get an alert, I click approve and it’s done. WOW!

If you’d like to see this awesome Intelligent Workspace in action, get started with a trial or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me using the details below:

Check out this video highlighting the Citrix Intelligent Workspace: https://youtu.be/xOujWvc350c
A deeper look at the capability: https://youtu.be/l7uD53dAHec
More information can be found here: https://www.citrix.com/digital-workspace/intelligent-workspace-solution.html

Thanks for reading!
Darren
e: darren.bennett@rhipe.com
t: +61 452 387520

This article is brought to you by Darren Bennet from the Partner Enablement Specialist (Mobility) team.