Unofficial Spiceworks

Spiceworks have just added two new features and update the community interface to look like and work with Spiceworks 4.0 better.

• Helpful Posts: ChristopherO made a suggestion in the feature request section for helpful posts, it was hard to work out what post to pick as the best answer in some cases so now you can mark up to two helpful posts. All helpful posts get 25 points added to their SpiceLevel.
• IT Service Provider Directory: In Spiceworks you can add your IT Service providers now with Spiceworks you can “Find the expert help needed for your IT projects”. You can now add your companies profile into the Spiceworks community and let 1000’s of SpiceHeads find your company, the great team at Spiceworks HQ have also built in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to help get you listed on Google as well!!!
• Subscription Center: You can now quickly opt-in and out of community emails with the new subscription center  or pick to receive no emails (great if your going on holiday)
• The biggest one: If you log into the community the first thing that will hit you is the new UI look. With the 4.0 release coming soon the community has been updated to the new look, its clean, its smart, its still FREE!

Spiceworks have done it again, great new features, for free.

Want to join in with the best IT community? Then download Spiceworks

ms23blog.com had just used the standard Spiceworks post and on the 13th have now revisited Spiceworks, they now talk about how they feel. 

As you noticed, a wrote a post the other day about Spiceworks.  Funny thing was, that post was not mine.  That was a premade post I got from Spiceworks themselves.  I used it as a filler, something to get my first post up and see how this blogging software worked.  I wanted to follow up with another post directly from me telling you exactly what I thought I Spiceworks. Read more

The post speaks a lot of truth about how some people feel about Spiceworks.

I have been using Spiceworks for some time now.  There have been some good, and some bad, just like any software.  Overall they are headed in the right direction.  I originally started using the software for inventory.  When I got started using it, I found the helpdesk feature very useful, so I implemented that for my users.  I started using the inventory less and less because of the duplicates and speed issues. Before long the only thing I was really using it for was helpdesk.  After about a year of pushing the helpdesk on my users, I finally gave up.  I finally came to the belief that pushing the users to do something they don’t want to only makes things worse.  I could not get them to see the benefits of using a helpdesk, and since we are “small” and I am the only IT person, I decided to go back to phone calls and email.  No harm done, the users are much happier and I am doing my job just the same.  Read more

Give Spiceworks a try yourself, you may feel the same as Matthew or find it helps you. What harm could come.

If you are already using Spiceworks what do you think about his comments? Personally I agree with the fact I started using it for a inventory then used the helpdesk and now most of my time on Spiceworks is spent on the Helpdesk and the inventory just ticks away in the background. Sometimes making duplicates or throwing errors in which I read when I can.

Spiceworks 4.0 will really help with a lot of these issue and the problem off Speed.

On the 10th May 2009 www.Info-Nex.com “a small home based company in Columbus, GA now provides an online support system”

www.Info-Nex.com is also one of the few companies to provide free software alternatives for users who don’t have a large budget needed to spend on name brand operating systems and office software. Free software such as openoffice and Linux operating systems give the computer user the choice to save money, especially software costing upwards of a hundred dollars and more.

Now uses Spiceworks to help manage their growing IT system. It helps them with monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting and of course provides them with a great helpdesk.

Read more

 So are you trying scan MAC’s from Spiceworks and having some trouble, this post will help you.

To scan MAC’s their are some things you need to change on both Spiceworks and the MAC’s them self’s.

Configuring Spiceworks:

Configuring Spiceworks is nice and easy, then again the MAC bit isn’t really that hard.

• Open Spiceworks
• Go to Settings
• Network Scan
• Manage Network Accounts.
• Add a SSH account, if you have a account the same on every MAC then its easier if not you will need to add each MAC’s login details.
• Remember this as you will need it for all your MAC’s
• Edit the scan range so that it will include the MAC’s
• When editing the Scan pick SSH in the account.

Configuring the MAC:

Now when you need to go to the MAC and setup SSH.

• Click the Apple icon in the top right
• Go to System preferences
• Internet and network sharing
• Remote login
• Make sure that your computer name is alpha-numeric and does not have any special characters or spaces.
• Go back to Sys preferences then Network
• Be sure that both your AirPort (if applicable) and Ethernet have the WINS (under Advanced) NetBios name show the same as the computer name.
• Apply you settings
• Make sure you can login with the account you have setup in Spiceworks
• Done

Now you have setup both Spiceworks and the MAC you should be able to Scan the network.

With help from http://ciscoospina.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/scanning-macs-with-spiceworks/

The second build of the Spiceworks 4.0 beta is now available for you to try out. Testing and feedback from you is an integral part of every release cycle and we appreciate the time and effort you put into giving us the feedback. In addition, you’ll be sure that the final release is a seamless upgrade for you.

This version brings many bug fixes over 850 at the last count (ok why they had 850 buts well never know…) but it also brings…

• Network map the default view is the hotspot view which shows you just the network infrastructure.
• User Portal
  • Added the ability to create knowledge articles
  • Changes to how you can edit the portal layout and themes
• The helpdesk has support for Exchange 2007 for email
• SSH discovery issues for Mac OS X have been fixed
• OS and Software name normalization. We’ve adjusted the collation of os and software names so it’s easier to group them together. For example when you had international OSs involved Spiceworks assumed there were different from Windows XP. The normalization will help group software and OS’s together. However if you have any reports that explicitly relied on the name of the software you may have to edit the reports to account for the new name.

We strongly caution you against using the beta in production. If you hit a serious bug you may have to start from scratch!

Click Here To Download 4.0 Beta II

On the 12th may, Asa Murphy from eXaminer.com wrote up about she writes up about about how Spiceworks Spices IT pro’s day.

“Throughout my career I have often wondered why IT staffs are often isolated and even marginalized in many companies. In fact, my observation has been that the larger the company, the more prominent the isolation. People who love to get their hands dirty with technology can be introverted, perfectionists and difficult to work with; but they can also be creative, innovative, and often brilliant.”

Another great blog post about Spiceworks, everyone can help spread Spiceworks and help make the community and software grow.

“The Spiceworks community currently boasts reviews on over 12,000 products, and 37,000 distinct topics.” 

Even I hadn’t realised we had got up to that many topics.

Read more

Spiceworks provides a free systems management, inventory, and helpdesk software application, Spiceworks IT Desktop, designed for network administrators working in small- to medium-sized businesses.

Spiceworks IT Desktop is used to inventory, monitor, manage and report on software and hardware assets. It also includes an integrated help desk system. Spiceworks runs on Microsoft Windows and discovers Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac OS X machines along with other IP-addressable devices such as routers, VOIP phones, printers, etc. Spiceworks is an advertisement-supported application and is written in Ruby on Rails.

http://www.forever-autumn.org/weblog/archives/50

No not the clothes shop… but a American computer company purchased by apple in 1996 (more info on NeXT)

Scott Abel – CEO & Co-Founder of Spiceworks – Started working at NeXT as with the Sales team, Five years in Scott started the NeXT consulting group from scratch, it grew from zero to $15M in revenue in 3 years. Before leaving to pursue a new venture called “Motive Software” Scott held the title off VP of Professional Services.

Justin Dorfman managed to find some video of Scott when he was slightly younger…

See if you can Spot him and check out the rest of the video.

You can also checkout Justin Dorfman other work at http://fr.ugal.it/ – Information Technology on the Cheap!