A North American local government authority revolutionized user management and IT support by implementing CoreView and User Rewind.
Facing frequent user access errors and lengthy troubleshooting cycles, the IT team enabled precise, rapid reversal of configuration mistakes within Microsoft 365. This approach reduced issue resolution time by 50%, restored critical access in minutes, and freed up staff for strategic efforts—delivering measurable improvements in service for employees and citizens alike.
Customer profile
| Industry sector | Public sector |
|---|---|
| Company size | 5.000 |
| Region | United States |
Company description
This public sector organization manages essential administrative, citizen-facing, and safety-related services across a workforce of 5.000 employees. Located in the United States, the local government operates a complex Microsoft 365 environment, spanning multiple departments and hundreds of sensitive applications—including permitting systems, document repositories on SharePoint, and secure internal communications. The need for rapid, reliable incident response and accurate user management is critical to organizational success.
Business challenge
The IT department faced mounting challenges managing user identities, group memberships, and license assignments. Frequent personnel changes, overlapping responsibilities, and manual audit log reviews led to costly inefficiencies—often impacting access to high-value applications, such as emergency services databases and regulated financial systems.
Pain points:
- Inability to rapidly pinpoint and undo unwanted changes to user details (e.g., department transfers, phone updates, manager assignments).
- Frequent loss of access for staff mistakenly removed from critical groups or Teams, causing disruption to ongoing projects and service delivery.
- Time-consuming, manual investigation of Microsoft audit logs—especially to fix errors in license and service plan assignments—with no streamlined way to reverse impacts.
- Helpdesk team members spending excessive time on everyday problems, detracting from proactive security and infrastructure improvement.
- Frustration among non-IT staff due to long waits for support, affecting morale and service productivity.
Achieved benefits
- 50% decrease in average troubleshooting time for user configuration issues.
- Marked reduction in end user downtime and lost productivity.
- Consistent, reliable restoration of licenses and group memberships.
- Higher helpdesk satisfaction and morale through streamlined workflows.
- Increased IT team capacity for strategic initiatives and proactive support.
With these advances, the organization realized substantial ROI – reclaiming labor hours, improving resident services, and making IT a more strategic enabler of local government operations.
Solution results
Deploying CoreView and User Rewind cut troubleshooting time for user configuration issues by 50%. Before adoption, helpdesk staff sometimes spent more than an hour reviewing audit logs and correcting license errors. Now, most user-related incidents—including restoration of group access or reversal of erroneous attribute changes—are resolved within 5 to 10 minutes.
With CoreView and User Rewind, we respond to user requests in minutes, not hours. The visibility and control have transformed our support operation”
noted the IT Service Manager.
End users report dramatically improved support experiences and fewer incidents of lost access to key systems, resulting in higher morale and uninterrupted workflows.
Lessons learned & best practices
- Pilot User Rewind with a test group to refine workflows before full-scale rollout.
- Set up delegated roles and cross-department permissions to empower users and spread best practices.
- Use the “notes” field during reversal actions to maintain compliance documentation and facilitate auditing.
CoreView products involved
- CoreView: the platform provided a unified interface for managing the organization’s entire Microsoft 365 environment, consolidating reports, administrative actions, and workflow automation.
- User Rewind: this specialized module tracks all administrative changes to users—including attributes, group memberships, and license assignments—allowing authorized staff to review and instantly revert the latest changes within a 30-day window.
Step-by-step solution guide
This organization’s IT department faced recurring problems that directly impacted employee productivity and citizen services — including staff losing access to critical emergency systems, misassigned Microsoft 365 licenses delaying service delivery, and incorrect user attributes disrupting reporting and communication flows. The steps below describe how the team used the CoreView User Rewind feature to quickly resolve these challenges within the three key change categories:
Step 1: access the CoreView portal
Log in to the CoreView web portal using your organization’s credentials. If your organization is hosted in the CoreView US Government datacenter, the URL will be https://usapp.coreview.com. Otherwise, use https://app.coreview.com.
If you do not have an account, please contact your CoreView administrator to request access.
Step 2: open a user from the Active Users report
From the left-hand navigation menu, select “Reports > Users > Active users”. This report shows you a list of users in your organization.
From here, find the user for whom you need to view or revert changes and click the pop-out icon to open the User Card.
You can also use the search bar at the top of the CoreView portal to efficiently find and open a specific user.
Step 3: access the Changes section
The User Card will open in a new browser tab, showing you information specific to the selected user. Click on the “Changes” tab to access the User Rewind interface.
Category 1: Group Membership/Ownership changes – Restoring emergency service access
Problem faced: staff members, especially in safety-related roles, were often accidentally removed from critical Microsoft 365 groups — including Teams used by emergency response coordinators. This removal prevented real-time coordination during urgent incidents.
Resolution steps using User Rewind:
- In the Changes list, locate the “Removed from group” event.
- Click Configuration history to confirm the prior membership status.
- Select “Revert” to restore the user’s group membership.
- Add a note to document the reason for reversing the change. For example, “Reverting member removal to restore their access to critical Emergency Services communications.”
- Click “Apply” and confirm the success notification in the upper-right corner.
This action restored critical access in minutes instead of requiring lengthy audit log reviews.
The management session must be ON for revert actions to take effect.
Category 2: License and Service Plan changes – Correcting misassigned Microsoft 365 licenses
Problem faced: incorrect license removals or changes often caused staff to lose access to essential tools like SharePoint permitting systems or regulated financial databases. Manually correcting these took over an hour before CoreView was implemented.
Resolution steps using User Rewind:
- In the Changes list, find the “Unassigned license” event for the affected staff member.
- Use Configuration history to confirm the original license configuration before the error.
- Click “Revert” to restore the correct license and service plan.
- For documentation, you can add a note like “Restored M365 E3 for Finance staff to resume access to required apps.”
- Click “Apply” and confirm the success notification.
Now license-related outages are resolved in minutes, preserving service continuity.
Category 3: User attribute modifications – Fixing incorrect reporting lines
Problem faced: Key user attributes, such as the Manager field, were often altered mistakenly during department transfers. This misassigned reporting line disrupted official workflows and automated approvals for leave, budgets, and procurement.
Resolution steps using User Rewind:
- In the Changes list, locate the “User manager changed” event for the impacted employee.
- Click “Configuration history” to view the correct previous manager assignment.
- Select “Revert” to reinstate the previous manager’s details.
- Document the action with a note like “Reverted manager assignment after erroneous departmental transfer".
- Click “Apply” and confirm the success notification.
This immediate fix ensured that workflows tied to manager approval began functioning again without delays.
Step 4: revert results
You can view the results of the revert action from the “Info” tab within the User card.
Click on “See details” from the “User details” or “Groups” widgets or reference the “Licenses” widget to see the updated attributes, group assignments, and license assignments, respectively.
