By
El Copeland
October 13, 2025
•
20 min read
Professional Development
Book Club

Like many MSPs, Rising Tide invests in our people through access to books, trainings, conferences, and certifications. At its core, this is not education for education’s sake: rather, we believe the best technical work starts with curiosity, and we consistently seek ways to foster curiosity as a skill. You see, we think the best solutions come not just from curiosity about technology, but curiosity about each other, about our clients, and about our community. We want to be known as people who ask better questions, understand others' perspectives with clarity, and are always hungry for more. We believe that personal growth will always drive technical and professional success for our team, and as a result, our clients.
So how does a business foster curiosity? Curiosity is not something you learn from an SOP, a certification, or a conference. It’s something you develop by creating the time and space for yourself and your people to feel safe to speak up, to ideate, to build, and to iterate.
We are doing our best to build a culture of curiosity and progress in as many ways as possible, not just through structured education, but in choosing tools, conversations, and activities where we can intentionally seek to learn from and about each other and the world around us. The last part is very important at a core level: we believe every person brings a different background, toolkit, and perspective that strengthens and deepens our own, even — or especially! — when we disagree.
As a fully remote team of 6, this can be pretty difficult to do since we can’t go out for lunch or have regular physical touchpoints other brick-and-mortar businesses may enjoy. So, one of the standard ways we cultivate this is through scheduled daily and weekly team conversations where we review customer issues, books or videos, conferences attended, or other interesting things we’ve seen that we want to share.
Most recently, we chose to essentially start a book club where we would read The Go-Giver by Bob Burg, together, and to invite clients and friends to review it with us on a weekly call. It was important to us that as a team expectation, we should make sure no one felt the demand too great on top of weekly work expectations. Thus, we decided on reading one chapter (7-10 pages) a week, to make sure that it felt accessible to everyone. (Reading ahead is absolutely allowed and encouraged, but we will only discuss one chapter a week!)
The next question for a book club is: how do you facilitate conversation in a way that allows for people to share what was meaningful to them, or to join in the conversation even if they didn’t get a chance to read? In preparing for our book meetings, I sought out online resources with simple chapter-by-chapter discussion questions. However, as a very easy read, it seemed that most questions online covered concepts that spanned multiple chapters, which encouraged reading ahead and missing perhaps some smaller ideas worth savoring in each chapter.
Honestly, we figure we’re not alone in this desire to have simple questions and to walk carefully through conversations, so we've decided to share our own discussion questions, chapter-by-chapter! These questions are written without consideration for future chapters of the book and are meant to help bring in conversation about the topics and themes specifically covered in the given chapter. These questions are open-ended and if you’re facilitating, we encourage you to take the stance of no-wrong-answers, just as an impartial listener. You never know what perspectives or fresh ideas may come out of conversation.
Check out The Go-Getter Chapter One Discussion Questions here.
We’ll continue to add discussion questions and commentary on the book club as we move forward. Next things I’d like to try is to offer facilitation to a team member who has read ahead, to help them stretch their muscles of asking questions and building conversations. What other ideas should we tie in?
Want to hang out in these conversations with the Rising Tide team? We meet Fridays at 9:30 AM ET to talk through important business, technological, and communal developments, and for the next 14ish weeks, The Go-Giver! If you’re an MSP owner, consultant, or service professional who wants to grow your team’s emotional intelligence alongside your technical skill, you’re welcome here.
Reach out to partners@risingtidegroup.net for the Rising Tide Fridays Teams link. Bring your coffee and curiosity: no prep required.

Episode 20 of By the [run]Book dives into HaloPSA v2.214 with a mix of practical improvements and some quirky additions. Connor and Mendy walk through everything from new dollar variables and asset controls to Avalara fixes and portal enhancements—highlighting what actually matters for day-to-day MSP operations. This episode is especially useful for MSPs refining workflows, automation, and reporting accuracy in Halo.
Watch Now: By the [run]Book: Episode 20
For easier tracking, check out haloreleases.remmy.dev to filter and search HaloPSA updates by ID, version, and keyword.
Mendy and Connor noted this was very useful.
Highlighted during the user action demo as a practical workflow improvement.
Called out as a genuinely useful UI improvement.
Allows more flexibility in how incoming emails are matched to tickets.
Enables automation of asset configuration through API usage.
Introduces a new variable to output custom fields in Q&A format.
Improves visibility into asset changes over time.
Returns the email address of the user associated with a purchase order.
Enhances usability and visibility of search results in the portal.
Provides control over configuration synchronization.
Ensures correct popup behavior when multiple rules trigger.
Makes ticket source available for reporting and filtering.
Adds safeguards when configuring email matching tags.
Allows distribution lists to target all email addresses tied to a user.
Improves clarity in Avalara transaction records.
Adds control over visibility of user actions in the portal.
Improves flexibility when using Accounts and Prospects.
Enables dynamic fields based on asset lifecycle status.
Ensures asset tagging consistency during stock processes.
Adds control over Avalara synchronization scope.
Allows a predefined score for surveys.
Improves visibility when prorating billing items.
Automatically generates a ticket alongside sales orders.
Allows column width customization in list views.
Changes ordering of lists in the team view.
Adds asset status as a usable variable in buttons.
Improves flexibility when viewing lists.
Allows visual customization of buttons.
Enables distribution lists based on ticket criteria.
Adds control over forecast data ranges.
Enhances performance of Azure/Entra sync.
Improves visibility of ticket closure information.
Optimizes webhook performance and payload handling.
Refines permissions for asset management.

Episode 19 walks through HaloPSA v2.212 and v2.214, covering a wide range of quality-of-life improvements, admin controls, and workflow enhancements. Connor and Robbie highlight updates around ticket forms, invoicing, templates, and automation, making this especially useful for MSPs looking to tighten processes and improve day-to-day efficiency.
Watch Now: By the [run]Book: Episode 19
For easier tracking, check out haloreleases.remmy.dev to filter and search HaloPSA updates by ID, version, and keyword.
Allows assets to be linked directly to a client instead of only via a site.
Improves tracking of report usage across dashboards.
Adds control over end-user assignment in templates.
Prevents actions on tickets for stopped clients or sites.
Allows updating custom fields directly via actions.
Prevents approval of expired quotes.
Adds variables for original customer addresses.
Ensures hidden fields do not retain values.
Adds advanced relative date filtering.
Adds preview functionality for templates.
Allows editing of existing meter readings.
Improves grouping of invoice items.
Enables merging duplicate assets.
Displays number of related tickets.
Enhances monitoring integration mapping.
Adds more control to purchase order lifecycle.
Enables workflows triggered by agent emails.
Adds mapping and geolocation features.
Introduces guided project setup.
Allows updating ticket fields post-creation in chat.
Prevents deletion of populated top-level structures.
Improves timesheet usability.
Fixes inconsistent quote PDF behavior.
Aligns quote email behavior with configuration.
Adds access to billing profiles from invoice screen.
Allows use of quote data in actions.
Adds new automation trigger.
Adds rich text support for asset fields.
Prevents closure when tasks remain open.
Adds approvals to activity feed.
Removes agent login option from portal.
Adds ordering control to lookup codes.
Adds planning field to releases.
Enables guided onboarding tools.
Adds note field to consignment lines.
Expands team visibility.
Extends accessibility tools to main app.
Displays previous invoice values.
Exposes billing data to API.
Adds search to selection fields.
Aligns call screen logic with ticket settings.
Links credit lines to original sales orders.
Improves invoice ID handling.
Introduces role-based API identity.

In this episode of By the Runbook, the team continues through the HaloPSA 2.212 release notes and spends time unpacking what several of these changes actually mean in practice. The conversation covers workflow design, mail campaigns, ticket views, reporting, and automation behavior, with especially useful commentary for MSPs trying to decide what to enable, what to ignore, and what to be careful with.
Watch Now: By the [run]Book: Episode 18
For easier tracking, check out haloreleases.remmy.dev to filter and search HaloPSA updates by ID, version, and keyword.
Check out MSP Blueprint for info on runbooks: MSPBlueprint
This allows the ticket screen to automatically refresh when a background automation completes.
Expands qualification matching to include custom field criteria.
Adds delayed and retry-based webhook processing options.
This change limits the available “From” addresses on a ticket action to mailboxes the assigned team can actually access.
Adds Email Address as another attribute option for follower behavior on the portal.
Allows changes to Mail Campaigns after they have started.
Restricts pipeline stages based on opportunity type.
Adds webhook processing options including delayed and retry handling.
Adds the ability to hide tickets from the change calendar.
Adds Service Users as a selectable option in distribution and user lists.
Allows campaigns to be sent from sales mailboxes.
Adds a warning when an action email will fail.
Adds asset relationship mapping during SQL imports.
Adds an isRunning field to asset discovery.
Expands qualification matching with custom field rules.
Allows ticket view to auto-refresh after automation runs.
Adds ability to update currency values on quotes.
Requires comments for negative KB feedback.
Adds control for showing nested tickets.
Enhances AI reporting capabilities.
Restricts KB edits to owners only.
Adds translation support in the portal.
Adds secondary MAC address support.
Adds character limits to text fields.
Adds more fields for OLA and rule reporting.
Prevents approvals from email replies.
Extends field copying to deeper ticket levels.
Adds primary asset as a runbook condition.
Adds AgentID variable for lookups.
Adds reporting changes to config tracking.
Adds filter profiles to child ticket views.
Adds more configuration options to other open tickets view.