Unofficial Spiceworks

The Spiceworks 5.0 beta group has been updated, with information on the new features we are going to get.

5.0 delivers the next frontier of “everything IT” with features to help you manage your network, people & purchasing: Config Management. Newly Tuned Network Map. Microsoft Hyper-V Support. People View. Purchase & Cost Tracking. ….& more, letting you navigate your wild-frontier of a workday like the IT maverick you are!

Spiceworks 5.0 is set to be their biggest release yet with some huge new features for managing your network, the people and purchasing.

The major thing for a lot of people will be the speed, Spiceworks believe the start-up will be around 40% quicker and after that the pages will load 30% quicker. This is a major boost to help allow you to navigate it quicker and more effectively.

Managing Your Network

Backup and restore network device configurations

Spiceworks 5.0 brings some great new network device configuration features that are designed to make it a lot easier for you to ensure all your network devices like switches, routers and hubs (who uses hubs these days?) are configured correctly and that if you make a silly mistake you can quickly restore it to a working version, keeping your network up for longer. With Spiceworks 5.0 you will be able to:

• Quickly and automatically back-up network device configurations
• Receive alerts on device configurations changes
• See how a rule change can and will impact your network
• Compare the current configuration to backed-up versions to find issues
• Push configuration changes to devices or restore configurations to a previous version

More devices and details in the network map

The developers have also been hard at work on the network map in 5.0 aiming to delivery you a more complete picture of your network and its overall health.

• More devices like Network Application Storage (NAS) thanks to the SNMP v3 support helping you get rid of more unknowns!
• Get more bandwidth information with better detection of end-point devices like desktops and laptops.

Discover and manage virtualized machines

Spiceworks already has the ability to discover VMware virtualization servers but 5.0 will add support for Hyper-V hosts.

• See all the virtual machine data on MS (& VMware) virtual servers as well as details like allocated RAM and hard disk space.
• Start and stop your VMs when the need arises – allowing for more sophisticated virtualization management.
• See and report changes over time for a VMs state and configuration
• See all your VMs across all your hosts

Manage Your People

See the people and the devices in a whole new way

5.0 will include a people view in which will allow you to track all all your user information plus perform key tasks like locking accounts.

• See all of a user’s devices (including the manual ones who have a habit of disappearing)
• View which ticket volumes by department (or user!)
• Access all of the info you already have on your users (via Active Directory) as well as do things like unlock accounts and reset passwords.

User Permissions

Spiceworks 5.0 will bring user roles into Spiceworks allowing you to manage who can access what withing Spiceworks better. Some of the new roles will be ‘help desk admins,’ inventory admins’ or ‘portal admins.’

Management dashboard of helpdesk activity

Get a new insight into your team’s workload, progress and clients helping you get the big picture on how productive your team really is.

• See who is working on what client & how long tickets are taking them
• View total number of open tickets
• See ticket trending to identify any abnormal spikes or dips in ticket volume

More MSP features!

You will now be able to run separate, custom portals for each of your clients and still manage them all in one location, allowing you to quickly deploy a single helpdesk system to everyone and manage it all in one place.

• Manage multiple, custom user portals – all of which are integrated to your single, central Spiceworks installation
• Manage all of your clients’ tickets from a single location – and see them all in the same interface!.
• Allow local authentication for your users

Manage Your Purchasing

Streamline and control your purchasing

After researching the right solution (hopefully in Spiceworks!) and placing your order, keeping track of purchases as well as how much you’ve spent on products (or even departments or users) can be a royal pain in the you know what! 5.0 makes purchasing smoother for you by letting you track the process and costs.

• Use a pre-built workflow – “approve-purchase-receive” – to track your purchase process from request thru delivery
• Quickly see which orders have been placed – but not yet delivered
• Access the shipping status of your purchases in one-click
• Track and report on the time and equipment costs associated with your tickets
• See how much you spend by department, device or vendor – including the breakdown of hardware vs. time-and-labor

Manage Your Equipment & Labor Costs (Especially for MSPs!)

Want a quick and easy way to manage your costs – straight from within Spiceworks? 5.0 delivers!

• Track , view and report on equipment and labor costs of your tickets – including things like price/hour, total time spent, cost of equipment and cost/ticket.
• Track, view and report on your clients including things like total cost broken down by time, equipment, departments, or even individual users

Checkout the Spiceworks Feature and News group for more information