Getting started with Substly's Browser Extension

This article explains how to activate the browser extension in Substly and install it across your company.

Introduction

With Substly's browser extension, you gain insights that help you understand and optimize your company's digital work environment. The data also make it easier for you to stay correctly licensed and identify shadow IT across your organization. 

The browser extension lets you gain insights into:

• Usage rates (how often and how much a service is used)
• Adoption rates (how many that have access to a services that actually uses it).
• Unused user accounts (identify user accounts that are not being used)
• Unsanction usage (employees that are using services that they shouldn't have access to)

---

Content in this article

Ways to implement Substly's browser extension

The built-in installation process through Substly

Managed installation through Workspace or Azure

---

Ways to implement Substly's browser extension

You can choose to implement the extension across your organization in two ways.

1. The built-in installation process through Substly. 
2. A managed installation using Group Policies in Google Workspace or Microsoft Azure.

Note! For the extension to start logging data and feed it to your Substly account, the user needs to log in to the web browser extension with the email address you have added to your Substly account.

The built-in installation process through Substly

To make it easy for companies that are not currently managing their employees' computers through Group Policies in Google Workspace or Microsoft Azure to install the browser extension across their organization, there is a built-in installation process in Substly.

By following the steps below, you can send invites and reminders to employees and see the status of who has activated the extension in their browsers, all within Substly.

Activating the browser extension in your Substly account

1. On the main menu, navigate to Substly Extension.
2. Click Activate.
3. Mark the checkboxes to the left to choose which employees to send an invitation to. Tip! Use the filtering and status options above the list and bulk-send invitations.
4. Once you are done with your selection, click Next.
5. Look over your options and click Send Invites to send them out.

 

The invitation email

The below email is sent to all employees you chose to send an invite to. The email informs the employees about the browser extension and prompts them to install the browser extension from its respective web store.

By clicking on the "Install Substly Extension", employees choose the browser they use and get redirected to the respective web store to install the browser extension.

See which employees have installed the extension

1. On the main menu, navigate to Substly Extension.
2. Click Users to access the User's page.
3. In the column Status, you can see which employees have installed the extension and which have not yet.

 

Sending reminders or inviting more employees

Sending reminder emails works the same way as sending invites. Filtering options quicken the process and let you bulk-send invitations and reminders.

1. On the main menu, navigate to Substly Extension.
2. Click Users to access the User's page.
3. In the top right corner, click Send Invites.
4. (Optional) You can use the filtering options to filter out the employees with the status Invite pending.
5. To the left, Mark the checkboxes to choose which employees to send an invitation to. Tip! You can mark all checkboxes with one click by clicking on the box above the list of employees.
6. Once you are done with your selection, click Next.
7. Look over your options and click Send Invites to send them out.

The below reminder email will be sent out. It is similar to, but not the same, as the first invitation email sent to the employee.

Tip! You can send reminders at the same time as you invite new employees. Just mark the checkboxes to the employees you want to inform about the extension. They would get a reminder email if they received an email invite earlier. If not, they get an invitation email instead.

 

Managed installation through Google Workspace

This part of the article describes installing the Substly Extension for administrators who manage Chrome policies from the Google Admin console with Google Workspace.

Before we show you how to install the Substly Extension, there are a couple of things you need to do first.

1. Make sure you enroll your users and turn on Chrome Browser Management.
2. Once your users are enrolled and Chrome Browser Management is turned on, you can perform the forced install of Substly's extension. Instructions on how to do this can be found here.

Verification of the Extension

That should be it for the work that needs to be performed in Google Workspace. Once you have forced the installation on your selected users, they will need to log in and confirm their email addresses for the extension to collect data. How this works is explained below.

1. When the extension has been selected for forced installation, the user will have a new tab pop up with the login page.
2. On this page, all they need to do is enter their company email, and they will receive a verification email with further instructions.
3. When the user clicks the "Verify email"-button, they will be taken to a page that confirms the installation. That's it!

 

A step-by-step guide to a managed installation using Microsoft Azure AD will be added to this article later. Read more about how your employees install the extension in their browser or which data the extension captures.