Kevin OConnor

In just a few days my out of office message will be set automatically and I will be trading Teams chats, project meetings, and emails for Irish pubs, cliffs, and castles!

I am extremely excited for this trip (and ready!). I have never been to Ireland before, and it’s been over 15 years since I have traveled outside of the US. I am headed to a family member’s wedding, and we’re taking some additional time while we are there to explore and do touristy things.

The average (normal) person would be worried about what necessities they need to pack, planning, etc. I’m over here stressing about what tech and gadgets I absolutely need to bring with me. I’m trying to keep it as light as light as possible, so I’m just bringing the core necessities:

• MacBook Pro (will be my M1 Pro - I have the M5 Pro ordered but sadly won’t arrive until after my trip)
• AirPods
• iPad Mini (one of my favorite devices - great for reading and consuming media)
• Travel Plug Adapters
• Apple Watch
• Lots of USB C to USB C cables
• Apple TV (I know, I know, this sounds crazy but I’ll get into it)
• UniFi Travel Router

The new kid on the block this year is my UniFi travel router. I’m so excited to use this thing. I purchased my first piece of UniFi gear back in 2017 (I think). It started with a USG and an AC Lite. For anyone who is familiar with Ubiquiti, it really is addicting. It’s phenomenal prosumer network gear. It allows for all types of configurations, looks great, and works really well. The travel router lets me connect to a wifi or ethernet connection (such as hotel or cafe wifi) and then will broadcast my home SSID. So, it essentially puts me on my home network wherever I am. I was able to test it briefly on a weekend trip a few months ago, but I’m excited to give it the real test on this trip.

As for the Apple TV. If you haven’t done this, seriously consider bringing it along with you the next time you travel. It’s small, so it won’t take up much space in your bag, and a couple of years ago Apple introduced support for captive portals (that pesky login screen when you connect to hotel wifi).

It’s perfect, you plug it in, connect it to wifi and you’re logged in to all of your apps. I never liked the idea of signing into Netflix, Peacock, etc. on a hotel device, so I would often just watch something on my MacBook. The only issue sometimes can be the placement of the TV in hotels. Sometimes you have to really jam yourself in there to be able to connect the HDMI port.

Tech aside, I’m really excited for this trip. Given how long it’s been since I’ve traveled internationally, I’m really excited to walk around Dublin, hit some pubs, coffee shops, and we even have the Jameson and Guinness tours on the books. The only thing I’m a little hesitant about is driving on the left side of the road, but I’m hoping to adjust quickly. Even though I’ll be lugging my most coveted tech along, I do hope to get some time to disconnect.

I was pretty deep into my IT career before I really understood single sign-on (SSO). Sure, I understood generally what SSO was: “use your corporate credentials to sign into application”.

In all fairness… that’s exactly what it is BUT the importance of SSO goes much deeper than that, and it was something I didn’t quite realize until I was put on a project where I had to configure literally hundreds of SSO applications during an identity provider migration.

If you were to ask me today how I felt about configuring SSO for applications I would say honestly, that I really enjoy it. I’m not sure if that is because it was brutally beat into me or if deep down there was already some connection I wasn’t aware of.

Boiled down to its simplest form SSO configuration is quite easy. For the most part (though some protocols make this easier than others) it’s essentially the classic, “have your people call my people, and I’ll have my people call your people”.

One gets a “metadata” file from a 3rd party application (SalesForce, Zoom, Asana, etc.) and import it into identity provider of choice (Microsoft Entra in my case), send my metadata file over to the application and that’s usually all it takes (some applications are much better than others in this regard).

Once that connection is made though the benefits immediately reveal themselves. The management headache turns down dramatically. Users no longer have to keep track of separate logins for the application. Even better, when someone leaves the company, there’s no longer the worry that they will still have access to the application when someone forgets to deactivate them. When the account is disabled in Entra, they’ll lose access to the application as well. Bring SCIM (automated user provisioning, stay tuned for posts on this specifically) into the mix of all this and it becomes a thing of beauty.

Mid and large sized companies can have hundreds of SaaS applications. Even smaller companies will often have dozens of SaaS applications. The headache of having to create and manage accounts within those applications goes away, the security concerns reduce, and users no longer have to have separate logins for every single 3rd party application (and let’s be real, password reuse is most likely happening here).

Dynamic groups, SSO, automated user provisioning can be a real dream. A new hire in department gets put into a group automatically based on their job title (or anything), which then enables sign in access for the application(s), along with automatic user provisioning which then automatically creates the account(s) for them. Cleanup also becomes nonexistent because when the user leaves, they’re removed from the target application and access is revoked.

Much of my focus these days is in the identity space. I’m looking forward to putting out some guides, useful information, tips I have picked up along the way for configuring single sign-on applications. The identity space is constantly evolving and I’m excited to share what I have learned (and continue to learn). Single sign-on always felt like the boring side of identity (and IT in general) to me, but after years of configuring these applications the immense value quickly revealed itself. It can honestly be a fun exercise working through the setup of these applications, almost like a puzzle, as every application is different.

It can also be really scary, configure SSO wrong, and you have just locked out yourself and everyone else who needs access to the application (more on that in future posts).

Anyone who knows me has heard me screaming from the rooftops about AI. Ever since Claude Code was added to the Pro Plan back in October/November 2025.

Interestingly enough, I came across a script that made me stop and think about how I was using AI just six months ago. Last summer my team was to be part of a presentation that included several other IT teams, including our Service Desk. Our goal was to clarify specifically what our team does, how we do it, and address questions that frequently came up (specifically in this case questions that were brought to us by our Service Desk while troubleshooting). Sometimes this was a knowledge gap, sometimes it was a simple issue that came up that could be solved by the Service Desk themselves. Being able to empower others in IT (as well as take some tasks off our plate) seemed like a win-win.

Another member of our team had set up a Teams group chat with the Service Desk years prior where they could quickly ask questions. That same summer we had also just been given access to a POC AI application, as well as a few CoPilot licenses. To me, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to use AI.

I took 10-15 minutes to write a simple PowerShell script (crazy how 10-15 minutes feels like a lifetime now, this script could have been made in 2 seconds with Claude Code) to scrape the Teams Group Chat and dump it to a text file. Once I had the text file I uploaded it to the AI platform and told it to give me the most frequently asked questions and… it did it! I now had a beautifully formatted PDF of the top asked questions over the last 3+ years in that chat. It was so helpful, we were able to make sure to address these questions in the presentation.

Obviously, this was an incredibly simple way to utilize AI, we weren’t creating a complex pipeline, trying to kill off a SaaS application by making a dupe, or even creating an advanced workflow. I was simply asking it to parse information. I honestly am not sure how I would have accomplished this task pre-AI. I probably would have thought about it, read through the last few months, Control + F’d for a few phrases, and then probably give up.

I have been so enamored with Claude Code, and the state of AI in general, and have been creating some truly incredible things, but I am also going to try to keep it simple going forward as well. Not everything needs an advanced workflow, not everything needs an integration or application. Truthfully, this will be difficult for me to remember. I’m reminded of the times I spent three hours to write a script for something that took me a few minutes, just in case I ever came across it again. Sometimes the best solution is the simplest and fastest solution.

What are some simple, but powerful, ways you have utilized AI?