Unofficial Spiceworks

So the first official beta of Spiceworks 5.2 was released on the 23rd August 2011 (Beta 1) and there are lots of new features and many updated features within this version as always with a Spiceworks update. The team always puts in a lot of effort to ensure the features we want as SpiceHeads are built in as quick and as well as possible. This  version is no different with what looks to be the start of some more real-time monitoring a load of great new features.

The “Spiceworks Studios” have also put together a cool video about 5.2, its new features and how you can influence the final version.

The main new features in 5.2 are:

• Cloud Services and Vendors
• Software Licensing
• Tighter LogMeIn Rescue Integration
• New Purchase List Features
• Micron Memory RFQ Support
• Liebert UPS Support

So I’m going to try and go though as many of these as I can but without a Liebert UPS some of it may not be possible.

Cloud Services and Vendor integration

So with the new cloud services section you can monitor / get information about any ISP or Domain provider. When you first start-up 5.2 it will automatically work out who your ISP is and start monitoring it. You can then track the uptime of the line and if you have a domain with the provider you can also see how long until the domain is set to expire. This new feature monitors ISP latency and domain status. I was wrong before its not the uptime

Spiceworks now lets you keep track of your Cloud Services in one easy location. Users who are installing Spiceworks for the first time will have all their compatible Cloud Services automatically scanned in by the new Auto-detect feature the first time they visit the Cloud Services section. Users who are upgrading from a previous installation will have any compatible IT Services converted automatically into Cloud Services, all non-compatible services will still be available in the new Vendors section. From the 5.2 test plan

The services are then monitored around every 15 seconds minutes and over time will populate the graphs to show the uptime latency.

Read More…

So its been a manic time again at work so I haven’t managed to keep the blog as up-to-date as possible but things have got a little better and with the long weekend just gone I’ve managed to get roughly back on top of things. So ill stop wittering on now and get on with the real thing.

Spiceworks 5.1 was released earlier this week and is packed full of new features, speed improvements and changes. Like previous versions of Spiceworks this one is packed full of new features and shows even more how the team are aiming to help you manage your whole environment from one place.

Its out and its big

There are loads of new features and changes two many to write about in one blog post, you can get the full release notes on the community here. The application and the community goes from strength to strength with every update. With the recent $25million in funding we can expect to see bigger, better features built even quicker now.

The new Spiceworks HQ has a huge amount of room for a much larger staff base to ensure all the stuff we as SpiceHeads want gets built and gets built right.

RackSpace Cloud

One of the key things you will see the Spiceworks Application do more of is allow you to manage cloud services. We have seen this with the RackSpace email and more recently the Google Apps integration and now you are also able to manage your RackSpace Cloud services. Once you have setup Cloud services as a new IT service you are able to create and see basic information about your servers. This is neat but one of the even nicer features of this is the ability to backup your install to the cloud via RackSpace to ensure your inventory, ticket and people information is backed up ready for you to restore if you should ever have the need.

The ability to route email alerts though the community

When the team where looking at what people had problems setting up, using and getting to grips with they noticed that some people wanted/needed the email alerts to work without having there own SMTP server. For this reason the developers built in the functionality to be able to route the emails up to the “community cloud” and back down to your email account. Of course in doing this all your data is still kept safe it is only the email with very basic information that is sent.

Automatic updates

One of the problems at the moment is if there is a security whole or a major problem getting people to perform updates can be a pain, Spiceworks’ awnser is to build in auto update functionality. This allows the team to quickly deploy updates to patch problems before they become a major issue *cough* PlayStation network *cough*. This isn’t as bad as you may think don’t worry! If your on version 5.1 and version 6 is out you wont be forced to update to 6, they will just patch 5.1 and deploy an update for 5.1 user’s… So I believe anyway. Only time will tell how this feature is used but if you have any problems with it the support team will be more than happy to help you get it fixed don’t worry!

Ticket Merging

With 639 people wanting the ticket merging feature request it was something people desperately wanted to get down the amount of helpdesk tickets they have open…

Its a very simple sounding function but has a huge complexity added on how people expect and want it to work. There were so many options but as always the guys went out, talked to people, got feedback and implemented what is a great solution.

Merging tickets is really easy, go to the duplicate ticket in the helpdesk, click “close as duplicate”, select the master ticket and then merge and close.

When they are merged all the info from the duplicate is put into the master and any replies are sent direct to the master. It works really well and I have already found its really useful.

Multi-threading Support

Another one of the feature I’m excited about is the new multi-threading support which is designed to help speed up the application when you have one or more user’s and when the network scan is running. Rather than having to wait for the other user’s command to finish being processed Spiceworks can now work on two things at once (it may end up being more if it works well and it looks like you can hack the config file already ). This means you can now use Spiceworks more in bigger more demanding environments.

People Information in User Portal

When user’s first login to the user portal (or they can click edit profile) they are shown a form to fill in there user profile information. They are able to complete basic forms like name, phone #s, job title etc. They are also able to upload a photo which you can then use to try and remember who is who. You are already able to upload photo’s in the front end of Spiceworks and using the new iPhone app. If you have AD sync on once the user has changed their information it is sync’d back to your Active Directory meaning users now have the ability to update there own name if spelt wrong, or change the job title with promotion.

One use I have found for this and will probably start to try and play with is making a dynamic distribution group for each team and allowing the user to go in and change which department they work for. In a company where people change job roles almost on a weekly bases from working on one account to another this will be a great time saver for many IT teams and the feature I’m probably second most excited about (after the multi-threading).

Network Utilization Graphs, Alerts and Reports

Another step in helping you manage troubleshoot and build a better network is knowing how much bandwidth is used and where. So Spiceworks have built in new utilization graphs, alerts and reports to help you locate bottlenecks, the top user’s and the problem areas on a wider range of devices. Windows and Mac devices which have been scanned with valid credentials should now have a new bandwidth utilization graph which shows you when they were busy. You can then setup alerts on this to notify you if a device uses a lot of bandwidth and so you can get a broader view of the traffic flow you can then report on it.

UPS Support

You can now scan UPS devices to keep an eye on your battery backup status, Spiceworks have already found out how valuable this is, after someone unplugged the UPS to test it and forgot to plug it back in before they went home. You can then monitor the health of the devices to ensure they are working correctly and will there when and if your power really goes.

S.M.A.R.T status

You can now check the S.M.A.R.T status of windows hard drives to help you protect against a failure before it happens. You can setup alerts so as soon as the S.M.A.R.T says there is a problem you get a notification email and an alert shows up on the Spiceworks dashboard. Helping your protect your data and sleep easier.

Thats it for now

But watch out for some information about the android app soon

Spiceworks launched their “new” vendor pages back in January with the community update on the 25th at this time it was released as more of a beta feature (the community is riddled with beta features a quick count shows there are still 4 but that’s another post). Between then and a few days ago with the March community update the team of developers and designers have been working hard to improve the layout and look of these pages to increase uptake on this new feature. All of the hard work paid off and the official press release was published today.

With vendors like Intel, Rackspace and Windows7 (although I don’t technically agree Windows7 is a vendor…) Spiceworks is slowly becoming what a lot of people are calling “the future of media”. With over 1,300,000 SMB SpiceHeads using the community or application it is a great way for vendors to reach out to sometimes what are the forgotten market. Although no official stats have been released by the amount of time and effort some companies like RackSpace put into the community they must be seeing good enough returns for there investments that its made worth while.

“Just like Facebook Pages did for consumer brands, we’re giving every technology company from big to small a way to have a presence within the world’s largest social business network for IT professionals,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “We’re also making it easier for our users to do their jobs by connecting them with the tech brands they depend on – all while using Spiceworks.”

“As Spiceworks continues to transform IT in a social way, it’s expanding our reach in terms of how we build and maintain relationships with our customers,” said Lauren McCadney of CDW. “With Spiceworks Vendor Pages, we have a highly relevant social channel to serve both new and existing clients, while showcasing our value to over a million small business IT professionals who are current and potential buyers of our products and services.”

If your a IT pro make sure you checkout and follow your favourite vendors on the community and IT vendors don’t forget you can setup your own page for free here.

Ted (Spiceworks) recently announced Spiceworks’ new and exciting in application advertising.

This is no normal advertisement. Heck, it is barely an advertisement; it’s like a mini application. InFlow is edutainment, better yet appucation (yes I just invented that word). InFlow is completely interactive. InFlow has information, community content, calculators and more – all built, well “in flow”. Yep, all this exists on the same page you have been working in within Spiceworks. You never have to leave or click through to anywhere. When done simply click the ‘X’ button and, wah-la, you are right back in your workflow.

Read more: Beta Launch: Spiceworks InFlow – Advertising and Information… well “in flow”

This new feature is very exciting as it will start to bring vendors new ways of promoting their products without distracting IT Pro’s. As the feature grows more interactive adverts as well as more detailed adverts will start to show. At the moment this new feature is only being used for Rackspace on the “Microsoft Exchange Health Widget” built into Spiceworks.

You will start to see the little showing up in other places over time. If you have a chance do checkout the information on this first interactive InFlow advert.

Make sure you read Ted’s news article on this exciting new feature and leave your feedback: Beta Launch: Spiceworks InFlow – Advertising and Information… well “in flow”.

The community has just seen a new feature lunched called “Ask the Expert”, this new feature is in basic a forum for you to ask questions direct to experts in that field. The first of this new and exciting new feature in the form of getting help with all your Microsoft Licensing queries from Chris Le Texier. Chris is a Technical Consultant/SI at Microsoft Inc. he has a wide knowledge of all Microsoft Licensing and will be on hand for a whole week to help you get the right licensing for your business.

Chris Le Texier has been a member of the Spiceworks Community since 2008, and this week (9/8/10-9/16/10) he’ll answer all of your Microsoft Licensing questions right here. If you’ve ever had a licensing question that you’ve never gotten a chance to ask, this is your week!

Chris (Microsoft) has been working for Microsoft close to 5 years. As a Senior Project Manager, he supports the LAR (large account reseller) and DISTI (distributors) community for the Windows Client OS in presales and licensing. He also supports Windows Client OS, SA, MDOP & Windows VDA. Chris has his own Partnercast series on the Microsoft Partner Network, and is an MSCE, MSCA and MCP.

Read More

In the future Spiceworks will be getting other vendors like Rackspace, CA and HP involved so that you can get questions answered by experts in those area as well.

Checkout the community group “Ask The Expert: Chris (Microsoft)” now and get your questions ready for tomorrow.

Last night Nic announced  5.0 Beta IV Build Now Available (5.0.55210)

The fourth build of the Spiceworks 5.0 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 build has some major and exciting changes and throughout this article I will walk you though as many of them as possible (some of them need Rackspace services in which I do not currently have).

Interface

The first thing that will hit you when you open up this build of Spiceworks is the new interface, it has been near completely redesigned (it’s still being worked on and could change again). This new layout is designed to make Spiceworks easier to navigate as well as making it easier to view your data.

Rather than the navigation being down the side it’s now at the top in drop down style menus. These seem to work really fast and with the performance fixes in this new GUI clicking from page to page is a lot quicker even compared to the earlier beta.

Read More…

As some of you may have already seen Spiceworks recently announced that they support the OpenStack Project:

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.

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.