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.

Well done Scott on a great achievement, it is well deserved you are a great asset to the community.

Scott managed to get there with a mixture of gaining points in the community:

As well as running 4 SpiceCorps throughout the US.

Congratulations again Scott, enjoy your new black SpiceLevel.

Checkout other peoples comments on the community Congratulations to Scott Alan Miller for reaching Pure Capsaicin!

The “SpiceKing” of everything MSP in Spiceworks Lawrie5252 has just created a nice post on the community about how the new features in 5.0 will be a great help for MSP’s:

I guess by now most of you are aware ‘Spiceworks 5.0 beta I‘ has been released for community testing. Wow isn’t it good?

I wanted to make a little feature for you about the changes in 5.0 beta targeted at MSPs and Service Providers generally.

Firstly and most outstanding of the new features would have to be the Multi-site Helpdesk feature. This is very specifically targeted at MSP although bigger…

Read the whole post on the community “Spiceworks 5.0 MSP accented features.”

Checkout his Lawries other posts on how MSP’s can get more out of Spiceworks here.

Today Rackspace and NASA announced the OpenStack Project, an open-source cloud platform. Along with 25 other tech companies we announced our support for the project. You can get all of the details on the Open Stack website and follow developments at @openstack on twitter.

Read More

This announcement comes shortly after releasing the Spiceworks Reach program which is aimed to bring companies like Rackspace into the SMB (Small Medium Business) market though the community.

The OpenStack announcement is designed to do the same sort of thing, SpiceHeads are not normally going to be running networks with the complexity of NASA or Rackspace but can still largely benefit from cloud technologies and solutions. As many will know the Spiceworks’ mission is to “simplify everything IT for the world’s SMBs” and managing IT in a hybrid cloud/premise world is increasingly part of that.

By participating in the OpenStack project the Spiceworks team are able to look into the future and start to think about new and exciting ways to manage cloud apps from Spiceworks as well as providing the management solution first. Last week co-founder and CTO Francis Sullivan and some developers went to the OpenStack Design Summit to get a sneak peak and start to learn about the product(s). They have already come up with some “interesting ideas” on how they can implement it.

With some great cloud based integration already in Spiceworks including Rackspace Hosted Email and Dell and HP warranty the development team have proven they can already quickly and effectively integrate with cloud solutions, the OpenStack project will only add to this and help bring large enterprise solutions to the small and medium businesses quicker, easier and cheaper.

Read Jay’s write up on the community for more information.

IT Service Providers have needs not dissimilar to those of IT Departments in medium to large organisations where costs and time need to be attributed to the departments or cost centres, for MSP this is Customers.

Being able to track and account, also attribute these costs is critical to MSP business profitability, in order for accounting and invoicing to be adequately attributed and reimburse all costs associated with delivering services to clients. The second part of this attribution of costs is derived from accurate and detailed record keeping. For many MSPs this can be difficult to get and get right.

As described in the previous article, MSPs doing more with Spiceworks – Part 1, there was extensive use of Custom Attributes to make changes to IT Services to enhance record keeping. Likewise, in this article Custom Attributes are a critical part of the methodology to enhance the cost accounting and record keeping through Helpdesk operations. This plays heavily, once again, on one of the great features of Spiceworks for MSPs, the configurability and versatility of Spiceworks. Out of the box Spiceworks has many excellent features and functions, but the ability to make a few customisations to further enhance Spiceworks usability and enhance functionality is a unique and valuable aspect of Spiceworks, not just for MSPs but IT Pros all over, wanting to do more with less and make their IT day easier.

At the heart of this week’s article is another useful How-to: Tracking Costs for Service, Repairs & Maintenance using Spiceworks. This How-to is written from an MSP point of view, but the principal and methodology can be usefully deployed for monitoring and accounting departmental costs in a larger business or individual businesses costs too.

The first section of the how-to deals with the Custom Attributes used to good effect to enhance the Helpdesk ticket records to allow for reporting a number of additional metrics for accounting and cost attribution.

The attached image as included in the how-to, shows some samples of the attributes added for both this methodology and also those shown in the how-to discussed in the previous article “Use Spiceworks to record IT Services consumed, on-sold and provided directly to clients”.

This article and the associated methodology described in the how-to links to the previous methodology in a few interesting ways. One of the main ways is the embedded feature of Helpdesk tickets which allows you to ‘Relate to’ a ticket, inventory items and devices, as well as linking a ticket directly to an IT Service.

Yes that’s right, in the same way you can link a ticket to an inventory item or device, when you begin typing in the ‘Related to’ field of a ticket you are presented with a list of devices and IT Services that you can ‘Relate to’ the ticket. What a great feature. So using this technique you can, not just track costs associated with maintenance and service, but any costs associated in time or materials with IT Services too.

Secondly the methodology where IT Services and Helpdesk tickets both have Custom Attributes for recording ‘Customers’, these Customer ‘Enumeration’ attributes have the same list of Customers in their enumeration values, which makes reporting a lot easier. Keep in mind that the ‘Customer’ enumeration attribute could just as easily be used for Departments.

The how-to goes on to describe how these new Custom Attributes are to be used for reporting. Detailing how to find the exact field names and how to use them for reporting, either using the embedded Spiceworks reporting engine or reporting outside Spiceworks if needs require.

In order for this methodology to be accurate and effective you need to develop work practices where all services and service delivered to client and/or departments is recorded in association to a ticket. Whether it is maintenance of a server or workstation, or remedial actions to ensure the operation and performance of an IT Service, everything should generate a ticket. So regardless whether it is a ticket raised by a client or a department in your organisation, or a routine maintenance task, that involves no client input at all, having a ticket associated with the task or service ensures it and all the time and components involved in the service are accounted for.

In our case, since developing an integrated business model using Spiceworks as our core technical business system, all services of any type delivered to any client for any reason, are ticketed in the Spiceworks Helpdesk system. This allows us unprecedented ability to accurately account and report on all client based activities, while more accurately than ever tracking and monitoring our In-house activities at the same time. Spiceworks has made immeasurable difference to the economics and profitability of our business.

Again we have highlighted the versatility and configurability of Spiceworks, making your IT life easier.

For more details about how MSPs can and are using Spiceworks, have a look at the Spiceworks MSP Guide.

See you next time…

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

What state was the network in when you first started?

Ha! A single flat network defined by an unmanaged managed (meaning they were not actually managing it) Layer 2 switch with a Linksys router attached to it. They had tried to get an Asterisk-based PBX system to work, but were having a lot of problems.

What’s the infrastructure like now?

I have a hierarchical network with a core/distribution layer and an access layer. I have a mix of Cisco, Dell, and HP ProCurve switches providing access, and a Cisco core. The edge network is made up of a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall and a Celestix MSA VPN appliance. Wireless is provided by Cisco 1130AG access points. We are running multiple LAN segments, divided by function. Telephony is provided by an NEC IPKII PBX/Voicemail system, which is a hybrid VoIP/TDM system. We use Active Directory for central user and object management and I connect as many of our devices as possible (Windows, Mac, and Linux) into AD.

How do you cope with having to have lots of versions of Microsoft, Linux and Mac products for developers to test the Spiceworks Scanner with?

It can be complex. Many of our users prefer to use Mac, so we have integrated them pretty well. We have MSDN developer licenses, so we have access to MSDN versions of Microsoft products. Most of our test servers and workstations are run in a virtual environment hosted by VMWare ESXi. As far as Linux/UNIX goes, I am a real Linux geek, so I enjoy being able to play with different versions. We have Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, OpenSolaris, and even a FreeBSD (I think) in our environment.

We all have a server go down and ruin your day, what’s been your worst outage?

Probably the one on Saturday. That was the first time we actually had anything in production fall down hard and not automatically come back up. At my prior gig, I had a really bad Sunday where the building suffered a major water leak which drained into the central telecom room, destroying all of the edge routers and telecom equipment.

If there was one thing that would make your day easier what would it be?

Honestly? To have me-clones. Although I think (and others may agree) that one of me is enough for the world.

If you weren’t in IT, what would you be doing and why?

Well, I originally started out wanting to be a helicopter pilot in the Army. However, I found out that I get terribly airsick in those vibrating death machines, so I ditched that pretty quick. Ever since, I have really only worked with computers (and really, since I was 8 and my parents got a TI 994/A, computers is all I have been about). So, I am not sure. However, if Iron Maiden needs another guitarist, I am available.

When you’re not keeping the peppers alive, what do you do with your free time?

I have two kids and am in IT. I have no free time. However, I do find time to play my various guitars.

And of course the all important question, how do you like your bacon?

And now for the most unpopular reply in the history of the Spiceworks Community….. I don’t really like bacon. Too salty and crispy.

Hopefully over the next few months we will be able to corner some more Spiceworks staff and ask them similar questions.

IT Service Providers are in an interesting position, many of them/us use Spiceworks ‘In-house’ like everyone else, but also use Spiceworks to make managing their/our Clients IT systems and infrastructure easier and more effective too.

A number of aspects of Spiceworks seem very well targeted at the ‘In-house’ use of Spiceworks and not always as well applied to management of outside, ‘Client IT’. One thing we noticed shortly after starting to use Spiceworks is how flexible and configurable Spiceworks is. Use of features like Custom Attributes, Language Packs, Remote Collectors and Ticket Rules, along with a number of other features can make Spiceworks even more useful for MSPs, as they do for ‘In-house’ users.

This is the first in a series of articles for Unofficial Spiceworks discussing how one small MSPs in Australia, uses Spiceworks with a few minor additions and changes to make their MSP business more efficient while providing their clients better service.

‘Use Spiceworks to record IT Services consumed, on-sold and provided directly to clients’

This how-to: http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/1357 , the associated Language Pack: http://community.spiceworks.com/language_pack/370-msp-pack and 5 accompanying reports deal directly with the methodology used to make this happen.

‘Language Pack’ you say?.. Yes, Language Pack. One of the main things that changes to make this methodology more intuitive and rational is changing the terms and labels in the IT Services section of Spiceworks to better reflect the business of consuming, on-selling and supplying IT Services. Some fields have been added to further emphasise the difference in the three classes of IT Service, one to record the Customer, one for what class of IT Service and one more for service or agreement status.

All the existing Spiceworks IT Services functions can then easily be used for all three classes of Service. You can use ‘Related to’ to link services to tickets in the Helpdesk, you can set monitors to alert when any of your services are coming up for renewal, regardless if they are services you consume in-house, services you on-sell to clients provided by a third party Service Providers or services you provide directly to your clients.

This image shows the Edit details of an IT Service, with the additional Custom Attribute fields in play, in this case it is a service provided directly to a client by the MSP and the custom fields are adjusted accordingly.

Some more of the standard features of the IT Services section of Spiceworks include adding Notes and Documents to IT Services, we even attach a copy of the Services Agreement for the services we sell/supply to clients directly and also copies of the Agreements where we are on-selling service provided by a 3^rd party Service Provider. We also attach copies of the SLAs and contracts for services provided and consumed by us In-house.

This method of using Spiceworks not only provides very useful additional functionality for MSPs, but very well demonstrates the flexibility and versatility of Spiceworks itself.

For more details see the how-to: Use Spiceworks to record IT Services consumed, on-sold and provided directly to clients and follow the links from there to the MSP Pack Language Pack and the five sample reports. For more details about how MSPs can and are using Spiceworks, have a look at the Spiceworks MSP Guide.

Also watch out for the next article in the series!

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

We see the move from SpiceHead to SpiceLord, Cole1436 (Cole Lakes) or as the IRC and a fair few people know him the monkey man. He will be taking up the post of Software Support Engineer which will hopefully provide quicker support, not sure it will end up being better support? Only time will tell I suppose.

To be able to take the job Cole is moving from Montana to Spiceworks HQ in Austin, which means the beloved SpiceRex is going to be back at HQ for some more beer before he takes his next trip off to San Antonio with Slava.

Congratulations monkey man, I’m sure you’ll have a great time at Spiceworks HQ. Wonder how long it will be before they have to ban you from the IRC though…

So recently you may have seen a stream of tweets along the lines off “Spiceworks Launches Cloud Partner Program” and wondering what its all about and when its all going to be ready?

This new partner program is designed to bring cloud service management into one place making it easier for the 1 million SpiceHeads to manage cloud services like Rackspace email. As more services have moved into the cloud more IT pro’s have found it harder to manage there wide range of networks:

“As my company adds more and more cloud services, switching between 10 different web-based portals to monitor and provision cloud resources is not an efficient approach to cloud management,” said Justin Davison, Systems Engineer, RJ Lee Group. “With Spiceworks, I can learn about new cloud services and then manage the ones I use in the same place I manage all my in-house IT assets.”

This new program was released at the GigaOm Structure conference by Scott Abel:

“Our new Reach partner program offers cloud vendors a simple and effective way to make their offerings instantly available to over 20 percent of SMB IT professionals worldwide,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “It’s a win for them and for small and medium businesses, which represent one of the fastest growing markets for cloud computing services.”

The program is designed to help Spiceworks accomplish their mission to simplify everything IT, to try and engage as many vendors as possible they have designed 3 levels of participation:

• Cloud Services Inventory and Monitoring – This is the basic level and gives account and service information to users ready to be monitored.
• Cloud Management Plug-ins – Stepping it up a level this allows vendors to have a plug-in which provides granular management and monitoring capabilities. Over 140 Spiceworks management plug-ins are currently available for both cloud services and on-premise technology, including the Storage Advisor sponsored by EMC and the Maintenance Manager sponsored by Intel.
• Cloud Service Distribution – The most involved level, this allows people to add, manage and monitor cloud services within the Spiceworks application. Giving SpiceHeads near complete control of there cloud services. Some companies have already taken this up like Rackspace’s Cloud Email Services and LogMeIn Rescue.

There are a few more vendors planned to get involved in version 5.0 and we can’t wait to see who these are. As always as soon as we get some information we will share it.

Checkout the Spiceworks Press Release for more information.

• Helpdesk Aliases causing CC emails – We have previously mentioned that this was going to be fix and should help a lot of people with helpdesk email problems. (Note: anyone using this workaround should upgrade and turn off the Regex workaround)
• Exclude specific email addresses from the Help Desk auto reply and update notifications – This is aimed to help prevent emails looping between each other maybe between two helpdesk systems or postmaster bounce addresses.
• User Portal plugins – We can now start to make plugins for the User Portal, first off in this release you can now add widgets using iFrames but more things are being planned.
• IP Phones not filtered from backbone list in network map – fixed, not fully sure what thing one is about but its there
• Warranty: NULL ship_date prevents Inventory summary from rendering – Some devices did not have a ship_date provided by either Dell or HP and would cause the inventory view for that device to lock up.

The biggest new feature though is the new Security Center Widget in which can be added to a dashboard and give you a quick overview of your antivirus software status.

Using the widget you can very quickly see:

• Machines that have up to date antivirus
• Machines that have out of date antivirus
• Machines that have no antivirus
• Machines that have an unknown status
• And what antivirus is installed.

This is a great addition to Spiceworks allowing you to very quickly checkout what machines you need to update or check.

With version Spiceworks 5.0 being worked on at the moment its great to see that they still care about the current version and want to ensure as many people are happy with the product as possible.