Unofficial Spiceworks

SpiceCorps LA is tonight hosted by Justin Dorfman

If you are in the area why not join in Tuesday July 21st 2009 – 6:00pm to 10pm

Have fun guys

If you are not able to make it why not watch it live at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/scla

Read more at http://tinyurl.com/SPICECORPS-LA-INFO

PC Mag – http://blogs.pcmag.com/ – has done a nice right up about how Spiceworks has enhanced its Support Services

Spiceworks released Spiceworks IT Desktop Version 4.0 today. The new version arrives with enhancements that will play a crucial role in the way technicians management their accounts. New features include a helpdesk tickets feature that will allow users to create tickets. Technicians are able to edit and update existing tickets and track them.

The company says that in the future, Spiceworks plans to expand this feature and add a master console that can track multiple accounts at once. It seems this is the first step towards making the platform into a MSP solution.

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http://it.tmcnet.com has posted about Spiceworks 4.0

Jun 18, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) — Spiceworks, which provides what it called the first free social IT management application for small and medium businesses, announced the release of the Spiceworks IT Desktop version 4.0.

Spiceworks stated that the new version has several enhancements that make it easier for small and midsize businesses to manage “Everything IT.” They include the ability to visually map a company’s IT network and the addition of 3rd party management plug-ins from Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel and Trend Micro. In addition, Spiceworks now integrates with Twitter and allows users to turn Windows events into social media alerts for collaborative problem-solving and to share real-time SMB IT trends with the world’s largest network of IT professionals.

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Fredric Paul on http://www.bmighty.com posted about

The latest version of the popular free IT management tool for SMBs adds the ability to visually map your company’s IT network, Twitter integration, and 3rd-party management plug-ins from Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel, and Trend Micro.

bMighty has long been a fan of Spiceworks. The company sponsored the first bMighty SMB Theater and Pavilion at Interop in New York last year, and I moderated a couple panels at the inaugural SpiceWorld user conference in Austin, Texas last fall.

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Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca has posted up on http://www.it-analysis.com/ about Spiceworks and the social media size.

Can social networking actually be useful? There are plenty of claims made about Twitter’s usefulness for getting concise messages to a broad audience or using LinkedIn to track down old colleagues who may be able make an introduction to a new prospect. But what about direct benefits—such as finding quick solutions to problems or getting better deals on products?

It seems that the lesson from systems management vendor Spiceworks is—yes it can. Spiceworks has a business model that sounds very bubble 2.0. It provides a set of systems management tools for free and makes its cash by other means. But can Spiceworks actually return a profit where Facebook, Twitter and many others have not? Spiceworks is a private company with VC backing and does not disclose its profitability, but having gone through two rounds of capital raising, it says it has no need for a third.

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As mentioned yesterday Spiceworks have already started work on 4.1, Shade is busy putting together some great new email notifications.

I’ve been taking a hard look at the help desk notification emails and here’s what I’m learning…

• The formatting makes it hard for end users to really see what’s going on.
• Admins want to be able to do some level of “branding” easily within the emails.
• There are too many templates and it’s not clear which template will be used.
• Subject lines aren’t very informative.
• In short: They’re not very usable.

Read the rest of his post

There are a few drastic changes from the old notification emails that you should be aware of before starting:

• There are no longer separate templates for different types of events.
• Instead, there are 2 templates: HTML and Plain Text.
• There’s a much more powerful template language for building the emails (http://www.liquidmarkup.org/). This language will allow you to do things that you couldn’t before (if/else, for, date formatting, text formatting, etc.)
• Admin and User notifications will be formatted from the same template. Sections of the template can be turned on or off optionally using the liquid templates.

Its an exciting change and one that will help bring in more people to use Spiceworks, you will be able to put your own images on the HTML emails as well as lay them out on in your corporate way.

David Scammell has just posted:

I’m at Spiceworld Orlando and so far so good.

Last I heard, we have 63 users, which makes us the largest 1-day Spiceworld this year. Woo hoo!

I’ll be posting in here from time to time throughout the day, so you’ll know what you’re missing (and will sign up for the next one).

Talk to you soon!

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Attended the first Google Apps Webinar and want to know more?

Receive additional information on how to deploy Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and other web apps to your employees. It’s all hosted by Google, saving your company the time, money and hassles of managing these IT solutions yourself.

New migration and sync tools make the switch to Google easier than ever.

By the end of this event, you’ll have the answers to these questions:

• What is Google Apps?
• How can Google Apps cut costs and create efficiencies – in other words, save money, time and headaches?
• How can Google Apps help businesses drive innovation?

Register Now for this FREE webinar.
Join over a million businesses saving time and money! Learn how switching from Microsoft Exchange saves cost and reduces IT hassles.

Title: Switching from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps Made Easy
Date: Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Time: 11am PST / 2pm EST

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