But this wasn't just busy work—it was previously invisible work finally becoming visible and accountable.

Automation That Saves Days, Not Minutes

Problem 1: Onboarding Delays That Cascaded

Before Foqal, the onboarding process was a manual nightmare:

• HR would submit a ticket for a new hire
• IT would manually create email accounts, calendars, and Google Groups
• They'd forward details to other teams via email distribution lists
• Those teams would...maybe do their part? Nobody really knew.

The timing made it worse. "We're off on Fridays and Saturdays. [HR] would put the ticket in on Friday morning...and that employee may start on Sunday," Mark explained. "They would have to wait for us to create the email. The email address is the first thing that has to happen for everything else."

New employees would show up for their first day without email access, unable to complete onboarding steps that depended on it.

Foqal's automation changed everything:

• HR submits one ticket
• Email accounts and Google Groups are created automatically—even on weekends
• A Slack workflow posts to an #onboarding channel with checkboxes for each team
• Parking, IT, facilities, and other teams check off their tasks in one visible place
• HR gets a complete view of onboarding progress

"Now they don't have to really wait on us anymore to get the person started," Mark said. The process went from taking days to being instant.

Problem 2: Inconsistent Process Across Team Members

Even with checklists, different IT team members would onboard people slightly differently. Some would forget to add people to certain groups. Others would skip steps.

"Some of my team, even though they have a checklist, they don't give everybody what they needed," Mark explained. "Having the automations made sure everybody got what they needed."

The automation created consistency—every new hire got exactly what they needed, every time.

Problem 3: Mass Offboarding That Felt Impersonal

Every year, Passion City has 12-15 interns in their residency program. When their time ends, offboarding all of them manually would take hours—and risk feeling cold and transactional.

Foqal's automation solved both problems:

• Automatic emails sent to each intern with detailed offboarding instructions
• Personalized to appear from Mark or his team member individually
• Included links to walkthrough documents
• Scheduled account closures automatically
• "The person in charge of the internship was like, 'This is crazy,'" Mark recalled. "It's less stuff for them."

The automation felt personal because it was customized and came from a real person—but it saved hours of manual work while ensuring nothing was forgotten.

Data-Driven Decisions: From Vibes to Visibility

Beyond saving time, Foqal gave Mark something he'd never had before: data to justify decisions.

"We could say, 'Hey, this is how much work we're doing,'" he explained. "It allowed me to get approval to add more team members."

The reporting also revealed patterns. When 10 tickets came in about the same printer, Mark could immediately identify equipment problems instead of treating each issue in isolation.

"We didn't really have that before," he said. "That was problematic. We really didn't know it was a good solution until we actually saw it happening."

The Results: Triple the Visibility, Instant Onboarding

Since implementing Foqal:

• Ticket volume: 3x increase - Finally capturing all the work that was happening in DMs and texts
• Onboarding delays: Eliminated - From days of waiting to instant email creation
• Offboarding time: Automated - From 1-2 hours of manual work per person to fully automated
• Team growth: Approved - Data justified additional headcount
• Consistency: 100% - Every new hire gets the same complete onboarding

Why It Matters: The Hidden Cost of Invisible Work

When work is invisible, you can't prove its value. You can't identify patterns. You can't justify resources. And when people find it easier to struggle alone than create a ticket, you're not really providing support—you're just waiting for emergencies.

Foqal transformed Passion City's IT support from scattered and invisible to centralized, measurable, and defendable.

"I would say just having the whole Jira integration, like everything was syncing...was like a huge win," Mark said. "It allowed the developers to stay in Jira and allowed my team to use the Foqal view."