Now that your Syncro account has some managed devices (i.e. Assets), Technical Leaders can create and assign new Policies. 

A Policy in Syncro is a collection of checks and monitors that define your operational rules (Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)) for Assets. You update them to consistently configure RMM features like patch management, antivirus, and scheduled scripts, ensuring proper security and system maintenance across your fleet.

In this guide you'll learn how to create new policies using our Policy Builder, how to assign policies to take advantage of Policy Inheritance, and how to include patches for Windows and Third-Party Application updates inside your policies. You'll also learn about Event Log, Process & Service Monitors, and the alerts thrown by your monitoring policies.

Step 1: Create a Policy

Syncro's Policy Builder contains various policy categories, which you can mix and match to create Policies that best suit your needs. Examples of Policy Categories are:

• Antivirus (e.g., Bitdefender),
• Remote Access (e.g. Splashtop), 
• Monitors (e.g., drive monitoring, resource usage; Event logs, Process and Service monitoring, etc.),
• Third-Party & Windows Updates,
• and more.

Watch this short video about creating a policy:

Learn more about the Syncro Policy Builder, then follow the instructions to create your own Policy. Assume this will be your new Top-Level Policy as described in RMM Set Up Guide (101). For now, stick to basic monitors and alerts (e.g., low hard drive space, high CPU usage, high memory, and HD smart failures) and the Antivirus, Miscellaneous, Remote Access, and Scripting policy categories.

Step 2: Assign a Policy

Once you create a Policy, you must assign it to Assets. You can do this directly from the Assets & Policies subtab of an Organization's Details Page. Alternatively, a Policy can be indirectly assigned to assets through Policy Inheritance.

Watch this short video to learn more:

 

Note: Policies are not assigned to manually created assets.

Assign the Policy you created in Step 1 to one or more Customer Organizations. (Bonus: Specify that this be the new default Top-Level Policy for all future Organizations.)

Step 3: More About Policy Inheritance

Policy inheritance helps you build more complex structures as your business grows.

As you've already seen in RMM 101 and in Step 2 above, Policies are first assigned on a per-Organization level using a Top-Level Policy Folder. However, you can organize that Organization's assets into subfolders however you like, and each of those subfolders and/or assets inside can also have their own (sub)policies:

• Organization
  • Sub-folders (e.g., Site/Location, Workstation vs. Server, etc.)
    • Asset 1 …
    • Asset N

The combination of policies each Asset inherits (up the chain) is referred to as its Effective Policy. (Tip: There's a link to an Asset's Effective Policy directly from the Overview section on its Details Page so you can always check it.)

Watch this short video for an example of how one MSP set up policy inheritance to work for his business:

Read more About Policy Inheritance. Be certain to review the example and rules for Policy Inheritance on that page. Then, consider setting up some sub-folders for one or more of your Customer Organizations.

Step 4: Add Windows & Third-Party Patching Policies

Before you can add Windows Updates and/or Third-Party Updates to a Policy in Syncro's Policy Builder, you must specify how your patches should be managed and installed in a Policy Module. Since these work similarly, we'll focus on Windows Updates as the example.

For supported versions of the Windows operating system, you can also schedule when updates should be run, how individual categories and severities of updates are handled, which updates may need to be explicitly blocked, and when to schedule required reboots.

Watch this short video to learn more:

Read more about Windows Update Management. Then, add Windows Updates and/or Third-Party Updates as a sub-policy for one of your Customer Organizations. (Bonus: Configure the updates to run on a schedule.) 

Step 5: Create Additional Monitoring Policies

Syncro's native Process & Service Monitors make monitoring the processes and services on your devices easy. You can have Syncro:

• Notify you if there is an issue (e.g., if a Process or Service reaches a CPU and/or memory threshold), 
• Automatically attempt to resolve that issue (e.g., by starting/stopping the Process or Service, through automated remediations, etc.),  and
• Reduce false alerts through optional custom settings (such as requiring a logged-in User).

Event Log Policies also help you easily monitor assets for problematic events. 

Before you add Event Log, Process & Services Monitors to a Policy in Syncro's Policy Builder, you must specify exactly what will be monitored in related Policy Modules. Let's focus on Process & Service Monitors as our examples.

Watch this short video to learn more:

Read more about Process & Service Monitors and/or Event Log Policies. Then, add these as a sub-policies for one or more of your Customer Organizations. (Bonus: Check out the Bill for Windows Updates example, which uses Event Log policies.)

Step 6: Enable the System Tray

When you enable the System Tray in a Policy, you can do things like:

• Give End Users the ability to Chat directly with Technicians,
• Provide easy access to the End User Portal, and/or 
• Supply different Agent Contact Forms that collect information from End Users.

For example, you could create an Agent Contact Form for people to use only in “emergency” situations, and another form for help requests during your business hours. You can even use different logos in each form to make things clearer for your clients. When a user submits a form, Syncro can also automatically generate a Ticket. 

You create the actual form fields in the Agent Contact Form policy module, then add the form in the System Tray policy category. Watch this short video to learn more:

Enable Live Chat in the System Tray for one of your Policies. (Bonus: Create a new Agent Contact Form and add that too.)

Step 7: View & Act on Generated Alerts

An Alert is an automatic notification of an event that occurs in a network's infrastructure. Alerts contain several pieces of information, including:

• the Customer Organization Name
• the Asset Name (i.e., the one triggering the alert)
• the Check Type (i.e., a name for the type of alert triggered such as failed_disk, ntbackup_fail, etc.)
• timestamps for when the alert was created/updated.

One of the main sources of RMM Alerts are the monitors set in a Policy: For example, CPU/RAM, event log, etc.. These are named and provided by Syncro. Other sources of alerts include Scripts and APIs.

Review View & Act on Generated Alerts to learn more about alerts and the actions you can take in response to an alert.

Next Steps

If you've completed these steps, you're on your way to becoming an RMM pro in Syncro!

• Check out our RMM Policy Best Practices for Security & Efficiency.
• Learn about how the Patching Dashboard consolidates and helps you visualize data Syncro collects about patch-enabled Assets across your fleet.
• Or, start learning all the ways you can automate tasks, including automated remediations for alerts, in our Automation Training Guide.