How to Sync User Groups Across Platforms with Blink

Companies are always changing: who works there, who works on what, who needs access to what tools. For most organizations, maintaining synchronized user groups across tools is a serious challenge. It relies on someone signing in and out of different tools and making manual updates, which is time-intensive and prone to human error.

Even if you have an Identity Provider like Okta, JumpCloud, or Google Workspace; it will not make synchronizing user groups simple. So how do you solve this?

Mapping Users Across Platforms with One-To-One Integrations

One option to solve this problem is by setting up syncs between each tool. If you go about it this way, you’ll find tutorials on many one-to-one integrations.

For example, if you are using an HR platform like HiBob alongside Google Workspace. You could search online and find a guide like this that shows you how to map your organizational hierarchy between the two tools. By spending the time to set this up, you could be able to create a user in Google Workspace when you add them to a certain organizational unit in HiBob. 

That’s a little helpful, but it’s also limited if you’re trying to synchronize multiple platforms.

What if you make an organizational change in Google Workspace?

You’ll need to manually update the organizational mapping again in HiBob for the integration to work properly. 

What about the other tools you want to sync up with?

You can set up more integrations manually, but each will have different configurations and permissions.

What if you want to include conditional rules for certain types of users?

Some departments need access to different tools. Most integrations do not make it easy to make customizations with branching logic. You could try to set up scripts to supplement, but that can get messy and hard to maintain.

We heard about this struggle recently from Tom Murphy, a developer at Non-Fungible Labs, a New Zealand-based technology company building applications for NFTs. They were looking for a way to manage users as groups across platforms, including HiBob, Google Workspace, AWS, and Slack. 

With Blink, they now have a solution.

Synchronizing User Groups Across Platforms with Blink

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Blink is an automation platform for cloud operations that makes it easy to connect tools and build smart workflows. You can gain visibility across your cloud stack and take actions quickly with no-code steps and conditional logic.

When we started working with Tom, he was using another automation platform, but shared that “...before Blink, I wasn’t even 100% certain our automations were working as intended. I didn’t have as much information about the automation execution from our previous platform.”

“Blink gives us a lot of control over the flow of the automation, and it’s intuitive to use! I’ve been able to create some complex automations a heck of a lot quicker than with other automation tools.”

So far, they are already saving time by using Blink. Here’s how they are synchronizing user groups already between Google Workspace and Slack.

“When someone joins our Slack team using their work email, the automation checks for their details in Google and syncs records, then it adds the employee to all channels relevant for that user in Slack. Blink saves our HR team a lot of manual work and makes sure nothing gets missed!”

When automating is easier, ideas can become reality much quicker. So what’s next?

“We plan to use the power of Blink to help us automate as much as possible so that it frees up our team, especially our Devs, to work on things that matter and need their attention.”

Working with Blink to Build Powerful Automations 

We’re excited to see what Non-fungible Labs automates next, and here to help any customer achieve their automation goals.

‍“Blink’s customer success team has been amazing in helping us transition away from our previous platform and helping us to fully understand the power of Blink. Something that we value is good customer service, and they have delivered the best support right from the very first day.”

If you’re looking to solve the challenge of synchronizing user groups across tools, we’re here to help you get it done with Blink. And while you’re at it, we can show you how we can help lower your cloud costs, bolster your security, and streamline your Day 2 operations.

Get started with Blink today and see how easy automation can be.