Actionstep in Richmond offers their flagship legal practice management software as an end-to-end solution, containing both matter management tools and business administration automation, with an internal billing and accounting system.
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Microsoft Entra ID
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Microsoft Azure Active Directory or Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution supporting restricted access to applications with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) built-in, single sign-on (SSO), B2B collaboration controls, self-service password, and integration with Microsoft productivity and cloud storage (Office 365, OneDrive, etc) as well as 3rd party services.
ActionStep is a powerful CRM and matter management tool. It provides many other good benefits too. For example powerful accounting and billing, time tracking and document management. Only in highly specific areas, like multiple many to many contact relations has it fallen short. But even in this highly specialized area, so many other benefits are provided that it hardly matters.
It is well suited for creating and updating and deleting employee attributes through Azure AD provisioning. But there can be some scenarios such as installation of provisioning agent documentation can be improved with proper screenshots. This will help consultants better in further implementations in future. The integration perspective is good but still the documentation available has scope of improvement.
Microsoft Entra ID's biometric authentication improves security and streamlines user access through facial recognition and fingerprint scanning, which are reliable and practical.
Users can easily confirm their identities using biometrics, smart cards, or PINs, increasing security without disrupting business operations.
Microsoft Entra ID provides us with a thorough security comprehension by allowing us to effectively manage user identities, regulate access entitlements, and track authentication events.
ActionStep is difficult to setup. I suggest working with a consultant which increases cost.
Needs mobile app.
One of our practice areas, Property Law, request we have a many to many contact relation. ActionStep cannot accommodate this. However, no other software I have reviewed can do this either. ActionStep is the most robust that I have seen and comes closest to making this work.
It has been an essential tool and we have had very few problems using it. Nothing comes close that I have seen, though given how well it has worked out for us I really don't look very hard. The value is extremely high when you consider you get Microsoft Entra ID and the rest of the Microsoft 365 platform for one price.
Easy rollout across organizations, accessible from any device securely, and easy integration with Microsoft products and its services. Microsoft technical consulting services and team helps an organization to connect all dots which make Organization IT professionals' life easier. Easy to use hence adaption is faster and no major training needs to conduct for users.
Microsoft has offered Azure Active Directory as a solution for a couple of decades now, so they have seen and anticipated almost any issue that an organization may face and can therefore help. The cloud offering of Azure Active Directory offers some additional "self healing" or monitoring services that can minimize the need for a service call. However, as with most large companies supporting a fast growing market, there may be some gaps in service knowledge (and particularly processing) from the front line / tier one staff as they follow a corporate script at first contact.
Make sure you use a good partner. Our implementation was a bit longer and more problematic than we expected. Our partner got it done, but, in my opinion, some of their inexperience and staffing issues were evident.
I have worked with a lot of software. Each one has a different focus. ActionStep is better at workflow and task automation that the items above, in my opinion. However, having gone through many different deployments, what really matters is identifying your key requirements and needs. Then evaluation software against those. Once you have your requirements and software, focus on using that software to fix issues in existing workflow. This, when compared with ongoing training, is what it means to invest in software. Simply purchasing ActionStep or any software without identifying needs, problems in workflow or an investment in training is not a good plan. Neither is comparing the vendors to one another without knowing all of your specific needs.
Microsoft seems to be the better service for cloud identity syncing and is still a leader in this realm. Their service is reliable, and we use it with all of our clients. Compared to Okta, the cost is more affordable and they include a lot of services in the Microsoft licensing plans. This makes it the better option for most cases.
Microsoft Professional Services' technical knowledge is appreciable as consultants design the solution as per customer requirements. Mapping of features per user specifications and assisting Customer IT engineers to implement so they can manage and administer the services.
I love the workflows that can be deployed for practice areas to ensure consistency. This has reduced new employee onboarding time and increased the speed at which we can complete matters.
Since ActionStep lives in the cloud, and we have O365 our firm is very mobile without spending lots of money in TS or other such infrastructure.
Creating the workflows is a bit complex, so this increases the overall cost and makes an ROI take longer. I suggest spending a bit more initially to get everything setup and working with a consultant to learn how to do this on your own during that initial setup.
I believe that the reduction in requests for lost access passwords has been considerably reduced by 20%.
There has been an increase in the productivity of each user who has used Entra ID; what these types of programs do is act as a motivator for users so that they can work more comfortably and avoid procrastinating.
