Unofficial Spiceworks

An introduction to SpiceWorks: The free and awesome way to manage your network by Karl L. Gechlik

I use SpiceWorks 3.5 to document and manage a lot of functions on my network. The best part about it is that it is free! I don’t know why so many administrators refuse to document their networks.

Maybe they feel it helps their job security, but in the long run, this can become quite a problem. You need to have documentation on all your systems and equipment – just in case!

Karl has written up a great review of getting started with Spiceworks. Its detailed and includes great screenshots.

The write up takes you step by step though all of the things you need to do to setup Spiceworks ready for documentation.

Following on from the old blog posts from 2007 we have listed we have also found some slightly newer ones to share:

redferret.net

Spiceworks is a freeware network management software package which is designed for geek professionals rather than Posh, Baby, Scary and Ginger. It’s free because the program beams ads at geeks, and judging by the user base of 400,000 it’s pretty successful.

http://www.redferret.net/?p=10837

austinstartup.com

On the opening day of the inaugural SpiceWorld 2008 user conference, Spiceworks announced that the user base for the industry’s first free crowdsourced IT management application for small and medium businesses has doubled to more than 500,000 in just nine months – making the Spiceworks IT Desktop the world’s fastest growing IT management application. In addition, Spiceworks announced it has doubled the number of advertisers running campaigns to its growing community of IT professionals.

http://www.austinstartup.com/2008/10/spiceworks-hits-500000-user-milestone-and-doubles-advertisers/

istockanalyst.com

Spiceworks(TM), Inc. today announced that the Spiceworks IT Desktop, the industry’s first free crowdsourced IT management application for small and medium businesses, is now able to support organizations with 500 devices – double the previous recommended limit. With new capabilities, such as improved performance, granular network scans, and integration with other network management tools such as Nagios, larger organizations can now use the Spiceworks IT Desktop to manage more of their day-to-day network and system management needs.

https://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews/articleid/2965140

stapler

Spiceworks is a free network monitoring utility that I have started using one of my client’s networks. Spiceworks makes the software free by selling adds withing the application. The adds aren’t intrusive and I may find them useful at some point as they seam to be good companies and very relevant. There is a paid version if you don’t wish to see the adds.

http://stapler.scroggles.com/2008/12/29/spiceworks/

Scott Alan Miller has made it to the Ghost Chili (70,000 – 100,000 points) level on Spiceworks… Well done

Want to know more about Spiceworks levels, checkout this post

A recent blog post about Spiceworks Help Desk Customization Plugin shows how everyone can change the way Spiceworks looks and feels. He’s taken a plugin written by a Spiceworks developer and added in

• custom color codes
• enabling/disabling ticket window height
• custom ticket window height
• more refreshes in the ticket status toolbar

As Brent puts it:

If you have Spiceworks, you can install the plugin here. If not, what’s wrong with you?

The IT Services Providers section of the Spiceworks community, was released not long ago and is already growing at a HUGE speed…

Find Service Providers in your area and even add your company.

Find your expert now

A bit of old news but some how I missed them out of a much deserved post.

All the levels are based on the Scoville scale in which measures how Spicy a pepper is. The scale ranges from Pimiento to Capsaicin which is as spicy as it gets!

Start getting your SpiceLevel up today by posting in the community or reviewing IT related products.

I currently have 38,492 points which makes me a (at the time of posting only 6,508 points till Habanero)

You can now follow SpiceworksNews and the travels of me (akp982) on twitter @SpiceworksNews as and when I see something on the community website which you will want to know ill twitter it

Jay (Co-founder & VP Marketing of Spiceworks) is planning on doing a bit of travelling over the next few months. He’s planning on meeting up with press, bloggers and business partners about the Spiceworks 4.0 launch happening very soon.

He’s also going to give up some off his time to meet with us the users to chat about Spiceworks, 4.0, and well anything IT…

Join Jay and other SpiceHeads for a pint or two, the dates so far are:

10 June – New York City

15 June – London (Ill be there)

16 June – Amsterdam

17 June – Munich