Today, we’re putting a new Community Hero in the spotlight:
Sanne was nominated by our current Community Hero,
Sanne has been working as a Functional Application Manager at Excellence AG IT B.V. since October 2023 and is currently working at Partou. But her journey with TOPdesk started earlier. After several years in youth care and childcare, she made the switch to IT, where she worked on the service desk and in workplace management. During a project in 2020, she really got acquainted with TOPdesk as an administrator and that’s when things clicked.
Since then, TOPdesk has become her core focus, with a particular interest in the technical side and automation. Making processes smarter and reducing manual work is what drives her.
In her current assignment, Sanne works in an environment that has been evolving for years and has been shaped by multiple administrators. This naturally brings some complexity. But rather than seeing it as a limitation, she sees it as an opportunity. Her focus is on bringing structure, standardization, and control back into the setup. As she puts it: without a solid foundation, automation simply won’t get you far.
That mindset is reflected in how she uses TOPdesk: not as a goal in itself, but as a means to support and safeguard work. Processes should be logical, repeatable, and consistent for everyone. Only then can you really move forward.
During her assignments, Sanne noticed something was missing: other TOPdesk administrators to spar with. In previous roles she had that network around her, but in her current position she often works more independently. She found that connection again within the TOPdesk Community and during events.
What she values most there is the diversity of perspectives. Seeing how other organisations approach their setups, which choices they make, and what challenges they face provides a huge learning opportunity. By reading along, asking questions, and learning from others’ answers, you quickly expand your knowledge. And maybe just as importantly: it gives you the feeling that you’re not in it alone.
That Sanne actively contributes herself is clear from the responses to her posts. For example, she shared a solution to monitor action sequences something that might seem simple at first glance, but turned out to meet a very real need for many administrators. Her contribution to a topic about archiving operators also sparked valuable interaction, with others building further on her idea. That sense of collaboration and co-creation is exactly what makes the Community so valuable to her.
In her day-to-day work, Sanne is constantly building smart solutions. Two examples she’s particularly proud of show how she approaches challenges.
One example is a combination of an action sequence and a webhook to copy a request field across a large number of activities. At a customer where changes often involve 100 to 200 activities, the standard approach led to errors and time-outs. Her solution processes the data in batches and allows the webhook to repeatedly trigger itself until everything is completed. A fairly technical solution, but one with an immediate and noticeable impact.
She’s also working on an extensive set of automations around personnel changes. Think of synchronising data between cards, automatically adjusting approvers, and cleaning up and archiving data including checks for open tickets. And it doesn’t stop there: this set of automations continues to evolve.
What stands out is that her solutions are not only technically strong, but also focused on maintainability and continuity areas many organisations struggle with.
Her advice to other Community members is simple: keep reading, learn from others, and don’t hesitate to ask your questions. Every contribution helps make the Community stronger.
Sanne is a true Community Hero because she shows how a sharp eye for processes and a passion for automation can create real impact and how sharing that knowledge helps others move forward too.
