Top IT Ticketing & SOAR Tools for Automated Workflows
Summarize with:
Why Automated Workflows Are a Non-Negotiable for Modern IT & Security Teams
For IT and SecOps teams, the challenge is not a lack of alerts. It is the sheer volume of noise coming from monitoring tools, security systems, and support channels. Trying to manage this volume manually is not just slow; it’s a recipe for mistakes, team burnout, and critical system failures.
The goal of automation isn’t to replace skilled IT professionals. It’s to empower them by accelerating response times, eliminating repetitive manual tasks, and making sure that the most critical issues get immediate attention from the right IT tech staff member. However, a common side effect of so much data is “alert fatigue,” where important notifications get lost in a constant stream of emails, phone calls/voicemails and Slack/Teams messages. This directly hurts key performance metrics like Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).
The most effective strategy combines powerful automation platforms, like IT ticketing and SOAR systems, with a dedicated on-call critical alerting layer. This approach bridges the crucial gap between an automated detection and the necessary human action.
The Role of IT Ticketing Systems in Automation
An IT ticketing system is the central nervous system for IT service management (ITSM). It does far more than just log issues; it orchestrates the entire support process. Modern IT ticketing tools for automated workflow are essential for creating efficient, repeatable processes [6].
These systems automate workflows by:
Automatically creating tickets from emails, web forms, and monitoring tool alerts.
Categorizing and prioritizing tickets based on predefined rules.
Routing tickets to the correct team or individual based on the issue type, department, or on-call schedules.
With dozens of options on the market, choosing the right one can be a challenge, but many share these core automation capabilities. You can explore a detailed comparison of the 10 best ticketing tools to see what fits your organization best.
Top IT Ticketing Tools for Building Automated Workflows
Freshservice: As a powerful yet user-friendly ITIL-aligned service desk, Freshservice is a popular choice for businesses of all sizes [7]. Its “Workflow Automator” allows teams to trigger specific actions when tickets match conditions like high priority, a specific category, or time of day.
Jira Service Management: Often the top choice for development and DevOps teams, Jira Service Management excels at managing incidents, changes, and service requests with deep automation rules that integrate tightly with software development workflows [5].
ServiceNow: An enterprise-grade platform known for its power in bridging IT and security operations [4]. ServiceNow enables organizations to build complex, cross-departmental workflows to manage everything from simple IT requests to major security incidents.
ConnectWise Manage: This is a leading Professional Services Automation (PSA) tool for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). It combines ticketing with project management, billing, and other core business operations, making it an all-in-one platform for service delivery.
What is SOAR and Why Does It Matter for Security?
SOAR stands for Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response. These platforms are designed to help overloaded security teams manage and respond to threats more effectively.
Here’s what each part of SOAR means:
Security Orchestration: Connecting all your different security tools (like firewalls, endpoint protection, and threat intelligence feeds) so they can share information and work together seamlessly.
Automation: Running predefined “playbooks” to handle routine security tasks without human intervention. This could include enriching an alert with more data or temporarily quarantining a suspicious device.
Response: Giving security analysts a centralized dashboard to manage incidents, providing all the context they need to make faster, more informed decisions.
By using SOAR software for IT security alerts, teams can dramatically reduce manual effort and slash response times from hours to minutes [1]. For a deeper look at the leading platforms, check out this guide to the top 7 SOAR tools.
Leading SOAR Platforms for Automating Security Alerts
Splunk SOAR: Known for its visual playbook editor and extensive library of pre-built integrations, Splunk SOAR helps teams automate repetitive tasks and orchestrate complex security workflows.
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR: A comprehensive platform that centralizes incident response and automates thousands of security actions to reduce analyst workload and standardize processes.
IBM Security QRadar SOAR: Designed to help security teams respond to threats with speed and precision, this tool uses dynamic playbooks that adapt to incident details and integrates tightly with the QRadar SIEM [2].
ServiceNow Security Operations: By unifying security and IT on a single platform, ServiceNow enables streamlined, workflow-driven responses that break down organizational silos.
FortiSOAR: This platform helps centralize incident management and standardize processes across both IT and operational technology (OT) environments, providing a single pane of glass for security operations [3].
The Automation Gap: When Automated Workflows Aren’t Enough
While ticketing and SOAR tools are fantastic at automating machine-level tasks, they share a critical weakness: reliably getting the attention of the right on-call human when it matters most.
Consider this common scenario: At 2 a.m., your SOAR platform detects a severe ransomware attack and automatically creates a P1 ticket in ServiceNow. The system sends an email and posts a message in a Microsoft Teams channel. But the on-call security analyst is asleep, their phone is on silent, and the critical alert goes unseen for hours.
This “last-mile” communication failure erases all the speed gained from automation. It creates a dangerous gap between automated ticket creation and human acknowledgment, driving up Mean Time to Acknowledge (MTTA) and leaving your organization vulnerable.
How OnPage Closes the Gap in Your Automated Workflow
OnPage is the essential alerting and on-call management platform that bridges this automation gap. It integrates with all your existing tools and tech infrastructure to ensure that automated alerts reach the right person immediately, every time.
Ensure Critical Alerts Are Never Missed
The core of OnPage is its powerful mobile alerting. When a critical event is triggered, OnPage sends a persistent, intrusive alert to the on-call responder’s smartphone that bypasses Do Not Disturb and silent settings. Unlike emails or chat pings, these alerts are impossible to ignore, closing the gap between ticket creation and human acknowledgment [9].
Connect Your Entire Tech Stack
OnPage integrates with over 200 leading systems, including the ITSM, PSA, and security tools your teams already use [14]. With native connectors for platforms like Freshservice, ServiceNow, ConnectWise, Autotask, MS Teams, Slack, and HaloPSA, along with flexible API, webhook, and email integration methods, OnPage can plug into any part of your technology stack [14]. Explore the full OnPage integration ecosystem to see how it connects with your tools.
With OnPage, you can build dynamic on-call schedules and multi-step escalation policies. When a Freshservice ticket triggers an alert, it’s automatically routed to the correct on-call engineer [8]. If that person doesn’t respond within a preset time, the alert is automatically escalated to the next person or team in the chain. This ensures 100% accountability and dramatically improves both MTTA and MTTR [10]. OnPage also supports round-robin assignment, distributing incidents sequentially across members of an on-call group so that the same person isn’t always first in line. This helps reduce alert fatigue, improve team morale, and create a healthier on-call experience for everyone.
Enable Bidirectional Communication and Full Visibility
OnPage integrations are not just one-way alert triggers. They create a closed-loop system for full visibility.
When an engineer acknowledges an alert in the OnPage app, the corresponding Freshservice ticket can be automatically updated with a note and read receipt [11].
Notes, status changes, and assignments made in OnPage are synced back to the ConnectWise Manage ticket, keeping all incident context in one place [13]. For MSPs using HaloPSA, a similar automated workflow ensures no ticket is ever missed.
With the Jira integration, teams can ensure proactive support by turning tickets into immediate action.
For ServiceNow, users can create and manage their own OnPage notification rules directly within the ServiceNow UI, empowering teams to set up alerts without needing an administrator [15].
Example Workflow: From Automated Ticket to Human Action
AWS CloudWatch detects a critical server outage and sends an event to your IT service desk.
An alert is sent to Freshservice, which automatically creates a P1 incident ticket based on your predefined rules.
The Freshservice Workflow Automator identifies the P1 incident and triggers a webhook to OnPage, as configured in the Freshservice settings [29].
OnPage consults its on-call schedule and immediately sends a loud, persistent alert to the primary on-call Site Reliability Engineer’s (SRE) phone.
The SRE hears the alert, opens the OnPage app, and acknowledges the incident, stopping the escalation timer.
This acknowledgment is automatically posted as a note back into the Freshservice ticket, instantly informing the entire team that the incident is being worked on and that the resolution process has begun [9].
Build a Truly Responsive Automated Workflow
IT ticketing and SOAR tools provide a powerful foundation for automation. But without a reliable way to get critical alerts into the hands of your on-call teams, your workflows are incomplete. These systems are excellent at automating machine-to-machine communication, but they fall short when a human needs to get involved.
OnPage adds the essential layer of human accountability, ensuring that your technology empowers people to act faster. It transforms your automated system into a truly responsive operation, safeguarding your revenue and reputation around the clock.
Ready to connect your tools and close the automation gap? Explore the full list of OnPage integrations or request a demo to see it in action.
