Unofficial Spiceworks

‘more than you might first think!’ by Lawrie Dalman (Lawrie5252)

One of the Spiceworks features often undervalued or overlooked is the ‘Community’. For many MSPs, IT Service Providers generally and particularly small or one man (person) shops there can be a feeling of relative technical and social isolation. This feeling is also common for many IT Pros, even if they are in quite large businesses. There is commonly an attitude from the user base that the ‘IT folk are a breed of their own’ (rightly so too, in most cases).

The Spiceworks Community is a great group of like-minded IT Pros, all very friendly and encouraging each other’s efforts both in IT and elsewhere. There are often spirited debates and conversation in the community, both technical and social, but always good natured and in the best spirit. If the conversations ever get out of control or strays outside the community guidelines, Nicholas Tolstoshev (Nic (Spiceworks)), Spiceworks super-efficient community manager is there to get things back under control.

Sharing is another great benefit of the community. Answers, Reports, How-tos, Ratings and Reviews, Articles from other sources, methodologies, tips and techniques are shared freely by most community members for the benefit of all. If you have an issue or problem you are having trouble resolving or just getting your head around, the community is sufficiently broad and in many cases experienced enough that someone somewhere in the global community will have either the answer you are looking for or suggestions to get you on the trail of a solution very quickly.

For those of us who experience those feelings of isolation, having thousands of friends all round the world prepared and very willing to help is a wonderful thing and should not be undervalued.

Most Spiceheads have their own ways of navigating and using the community but one of the best places to get started is the Community page. From here you can catch up on the Featured Conversations, What’s New in the Community, Spiceworks News, Upcoming events, Top Contributors, Recent Reviews and more. Most of these sections link to their own pages revealing even more useful or interesting information.

At the top of the Community page there is the Sharing or Shared content section, four panels (Research, Get Answers, Connect and Share) with useful links to all the various types or shared information in the community, from product reviews and white papers to shared scripts and plug-ins for Spiceworks and all sorts of cool stuff in between.

If you click on the ‘See More’ link at the bottom of the list of ‘Top Contributors Today’, this links to the Top Contributors page. you can view a very detailed listing of the top 11 contributors by ‘Most Best Answers’, ‘Most Posts’ and ‘Most Reviews’ for the week, month or all time. There is also a list of the top 11 ‘Most Active Groups’ in the Community, a great way to track your level of contribution and who’s contributing most.

Not surprisingly many IT Pros have an active sense of humour and that too can be seen regularly in the community, if you ever feel like a laugh or have something off topic and entertaining to share with the community or just need to get something off your chest, visit the Water Cooler group. This group is analogous to the water cooler in a large office, where co-workers stand about discussing not business related gos, jokes and the like. Always good fun, if you want a good example of the type of random stuff you might see in the Water Cooler group on the community take a look at Totally random thread – anything goes! This usually titters right around the fringe of what is allowed in the community and is quite often good for a serious belly laugh.

A special highlight this last week in the community has been the arrival of the second community member to the ‘Pure Capsaicin’ level of achievement and contribution, as announced here on Unofficial Spiceworks “akp982 is no longer the only Pure Capsaicin”. We offer our congratulations and admiration to Scot Allan Miller for his huge contribution and ongoing support to the community. Scott, for those of you who don’t know, is a key technical lead, adviser and consultant (among other things) for Niagara Technology Group, a significant MSP in the United States.

Of course Andy (akp982) was the first community member to make the landmark ‘Pure Capsaicin’ level and both Andy and Scott make good examples of the quality and quantity of contributions and also the commitment and dedication of many community members to provide other IT Pros the help they need. The Community is definitely a valuable part of what you get with the Spiceworks ‘Free’ product and clearly contributes to making your IT day easier.

Also for those of you who didn’t catch it Andy posted an article here on Unofficial Spiceworks 23^rd of July “Spiceworks 5.0 and MSP’s”, pointing to a post I wrote in the community last week highlighting some of the tremendous new features in Spiceworks 5.0 beta 1 from an MSP point of view. “Spiceworks 5.0 MSP accented features.”

Next time we’ll be back to discussing program features of Spiceworks for MSPs and we’ll look forward to seeing you active in the community till then, enjoy.

This is a Guest Post by Lawrie Dalman (Lawrie5252) of Lawrie Dalman Consulting from Australia.