Nick Conflitti: JumpCloud User Lifecycle Management Case Study

Background

JumpCloud is a cloud-based directory platform that provides IT departments with a comprehensive solution for managing user identities and device access. Their platform is designed to facilitate secure and seamless access to IT resources, regardless of location or device. The following are feature areas I worked on while a Lead Designer at JumpCloud:

Cloud Directory
Identity Lifecycle Management
API Services
HRIS Integrations
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Integrations

Identity and Access Management

As the Product Design Lead for the Identity and Access Management (IAM) line of services, my primary responsibilities were to:

Coordinate design efforts across the four IAM scrum teams with the group product manager.
Coordinate design efforts across the other product lines: Device Management, MFA/Zero Trust Security, and our Growth team.
Mentor junior product designers.

State of Design at JumpCloud

When I joined JumpCloud, a design system team was just getting off the ground and the company was eager to put it in place. Over the course of time, we were able to iteratively replace page-by-page, section-by section.

One of the challenges during this time was that your situation/limitations as a designer were different from page-to-page

Design with legacy design kit and adhere to old patterns.
Design with new design kit, but ensure engineering utilized old components.
Design with new design kit, develop with new components, and new layouts.
Design with new design kit, develop with new components, but utilize old layouts.

All of these scenarios could be compounded by ongoing cross-team information architecture improvements and new pricing and packaging work that was effecting pay walls, user limitations, and common user workflows.

Below are some key screenshots of features that I worked on while at JumpCloud and are now in the public domain.

Streamlining Access Control

Through JumpCloud's Cloud Directory, I designed user flows and features that enabled customers to managed user identities, define access controls, and manage user devices and assets.
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Automated membership suggestions is a feature that allows admins to build complex rules. These rules would decide which user groups a person belonged in upon being provisioned within JumpCloud. User groups determine which devices, software, and level of access to the applications and devices they're assigned.

Designing User Provisioning Configurations

Depending on the application a client wants to integrate with, each application is unique. User provisioning is a timely and crucial task to get right as it is one of the first thing a new employee experiences at most companies.

At JumpCloud, I worked on several key user flows that allowed admins within JumpCloud to set up a variety of integrations for OAuth, SCIM, and Custom Integrations. Each with their own nuance and dynamic nature depending on the application. Below are a few key screens from the types of provisioning configurations I designed for.

Configuring SSO Integrations

One of JumpCloud's main benefits was the ability to configure Single Sign-On (SSO) services with a number of applications.

Some SSO providers are similar in nature in terms of the information needed to set-up, but many could be different and needed specific workflows designed to intuitively allow admins to complete the integration.

Scheduling User State Changes

There are many factors that effect the state and status of a user throughout the course of their employment. From promotions to employment type, all of these things impact whether they should have access at all and the level of access in which they receive.

One of the features my team worked on was the ability to schedule events to change the status of a user between Active, Archive, Suspended, or Staged. These actions could be done on a single user or in bulk and based on rules that could trigger the event or at a specific time and date.

Outcomes

I learned a lot of things while working in my short time at JumpCloud. Most of all about IT operations. More importantly to me as a growing designer and leader, this was my first official role where I learned how important it is to be a mentor. Designers, PMs, and engineers are often tossed in to situations and told to "figure it out."

To an extent this can be a good way to be productive quickly, but it isn't always the best way for individuals to learn and grow. A little bit of guidance can go a long way. It may mean the difference between hitting a deadline or not, increasing morale or causing thrash, or simply creating an atmosphere where people want to try their hardest. I was surprised to learn how much joy I got from mentoring/guiding junior designers and watching them excel with projects or handling stakeholders

Other key things I learned and accomplished with JumpCloud included:

Gaining a greater understanding for APIs and backend architecture in general.
Learning about the nuance of integrations depending on the service you're trying to establish.
Developing my first career framework for designers to follow.
Creating and implementing JumpCloud's first Pay Wall user flow that generated $600K in revenue in the first three weeks of launch.

JumpCloud: Cloud-Based Directory