Unofficial Spiceworks

Tonight Spiceworks will be performing their regular community update to give us new functionality, bug fixes etc.

Tonight’s update will start at 8:00pm CDT where they will be trying a new rollout procedure that will decrease the downtime but if it doesn’t all go well it will be the normal 4 hour downtime. Fingers crossed for a short period

To find out what time the downtime will be where you are, use this link: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/convert_time_in_UTC.aspx?y=2010&mo=10&d=8&h=1&mn=0

This update includes:

• New Community Layout – To match the new 5.0 UI, if you connect from 4.7 it will look like it does at the moment but connect from 5.0 you will see the new shiny version.
• Improvements to the community connector – To allow you to connect more than one application account to a single community account.
• Search PM’s – To find that one you know is there somewhere but can’t remember who sent it or when
• Block .exe uploads – To prevent spam + dodgy downloads
• Report reviews – The same as you can topics so that rude or inappropriate ones can be removed.
• More CDN stuff – More parts of the community will now be run of the CDN released last time round
• Third Choose Your Own IT Adventure story in the 5.0 group
• And of course loads of bug fixes.

Well get up some screenshots + some other exciting news tomorrow morning.

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.

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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.

Tonight Spiceworks will be carrying out a community update, this month’s is full of great new features:

• Classification of Software Reviews – The first new feature is designed to allow SpiceHeads to categorize the software reviews by software type. This is aimed to help people find the right solution for them as well as related software packages they maybe interested in checking out.
• Mobile View – This has been a long awaited feature for some people, with more and more smart phone devices being used to checkout the community Spiceworks have added a mobile view. The community will automatically detect if you are using a mobile device and display a simplified view to allow you to read and reply to topics. This feature will be released as beta while they fine tune it to ensure it works on as many mobile devices as possible so if you have a problem let them know.
• New User Permissions – As the community is growing some people have spotted a increase in junk posts, scripts and how-to’s. After the release tonight Pimientos will be restricted to asking only 2 questions, and restricted from sharing how-tos, scripts, and reviews.
• Advanced Search Options – You will now be able to search the community based on date using the new advanced search options link.
• Unanswered Questions on What’s New in the Community sidebar – As well as the recent, popular and news tabs in the “What’s New in the Community” box in the sidebar of the community we will also have a unanswered questions one to help you quickly help your fellow IT pro’s.
• Improvements to Group Admin Weekly Update email – Some more information as been added to the group admin’s weekly update emails to help you manage your group better.
• Upload SpiceCorps meeting notes as attachments – You will now be able to upload your meeting notes as a document rather than coping and pasting.
• Speed up subscription & verification emails – The priority for subscription and verification emails has been raised so they go out before the digests. Finally this looks like it might get fixed, some people have been having this problem for a good few months now.
• And as always plenty of bug fixes.

The full official notes will be released onto the community news section soon.

The update will happen at 00:00 tonight for people in the UK (GMT) or 7:00pm CDT. Convert it into your time zone.

Update: The notes are out see them here

Nic (Spiceworks) has just released two new community badges

SpiceRex - Host Has hosted SpiceRex for a visit, PM Nic if you’d like to be a host

Million User – One of the first million Spiceworks users

See all the current community badges here

So following a recent post by Nic, Spiceworks have implemented a new feature to help you compare products quickly and independently.

The feature was inspired by Martin9700‘s Virtualization comparison chart.

We created the ability to create and edit similar tables for other products or services:

http://community.spiceworks.com/comparison_table/show/3

In the next version, everyone will be able to edit these just like a Wiki. For now, only Group Admins can edit tables that we setup.

This new feature could be really key to helping IT Pro’s like you picking the right products first time and quickly.

So what does it look like?

You can check it out for yourself here or see below, it basically looks like a table.

Over time these product comparison tables will grow and become unbiased sources of information.

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So as before with the 4.6 features post we managed to get some info on the February Community Update, again these are unofficial and may change:

• Events Planner – In February we will see the start off the event planner which allows SpicePioneers to setup meetings and PM the group. Group members can then RSVP, and then the SpicePioneer can mark attendance to award Spice points.
• News tab on Whats New – shows the Official Spiceworks News so that you don’t have to pop back to the home page every time to see it.
• Show Peppers for Partners – This one I like the idea off, we will be able to see the SpiceLevel off the Spiceworks Partners that way everyone can see how active the they are, to give reputation to their answers. As well as start some friendly competition between them.
• Twitter name on profile – If you link your Twitter profile to your user status, Spiceworks will display your Twitter username on your profile.
• Notify when post is moved – PM all subscribers to a discussion when it is moved, so they know where it is now.
• Notify all spice voters when a Feature request is implemented – Anyone who has voted up a feature request will be notified when that feature request is implemented, this is designed to help show users how many get implemented.
• Bug fixes – As with everything there are bugs and the Feb release will have the normal bug fixes in as well.

  So I started this post off last year in December and seems fitting to actually get it done after my post yesterday Spiceworks Raises $16M.

I started off by asking around 20 people

Spiceworks is a gret product and really helps lots of people carry out there day to day tasks but there are all these "Little things that would make Spiceworks that much better".

I got a whole 6 replies thanks to benhar, Kimberlin, DigitalBlacksmith, Craig M and Texkonc for replying

In no real order here are some of the things mentioned…

Community

• Mobile version of the community – So you get emails from the community but when your stuck in traffic or on the train or maybe just at a family thing and you want to check out the community it either works but is very slow or you get a error. A mobile version of the community would allow more people get answer questions throughout the day.
• Top Contributor lists -  These don’t really seem to be updated at a regular frequency.  It would be nice if that list was updated every hour or so.  Maybe a counter added that counted down to when it would be refreshed/updated next.
• Download/Bookmark helpful posts, How-To’s, etc in the Community -  Not really a small one but one a lot of people have talked about, a way of book marking posts you want to check out later or need to remember about. At the moment you have to use a third party software and it gets messy.
• New post emails – Emails notifying you of new posts should contain the text of the post (like they do with PMs) to help people on the move keep track of what’s being said.
• Loss points if you don’t post – So if you leave the community and don’t post for a month you lose points, this will keep people coming back to the community even if they only login.
• Email notification when the BA is chosen – When a problem is marked with a best answer it would be nice if it emailed you to say it was resolved, this would stop people having to check back on every post.
• Email nudge to review whitepapers – So you get a email with the whitepaper link but it would be nice if you either got a link in that email to go back to review it or a email 5 days later to remind you to review it. This would help the number of reviews of products.

Spiceworks

• Grouping by client – This is a MSP feature, it would be nice to be able to group everything by client, hardware, software and tickets.
• Change the owner on devices – So you can so you can set who has the device but then it also has the function to look back on the previous owners. So you can keep track of who has had the device though out its life.
• Archive old devices – Be able to archive or delete old devices to help keep the scan clean
• Change the helpdesk view – Add and remove columns from the helpdesk overview section

Hmm so we can see people either love Spiceworks software or they use the community more…

And some of them aren’t really that small but ye… I was trying to get more people to reply to find those niggles that just get pushed down in the feature request section

Got any more?

Post them in the comments, I may update the list later on

The ups and downs of working with social media my experiences with Spiceworks

First off… This isn’t really all Spiceworks related but just had the idea for a post along these lines and Spiceworks-News is about the only place I could put it. It is however all based on my experience with Spiceworks.

So everyone knows what social media is now days? And that big buzz word of “web 2.0” and companies like Spiceworks are starting to exploit it to market there products and IT conferences like Spiceworld. Places like Skype, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Digg and Ustream are regularly used.

So what do I think are the advantages and disadvantages of Social media and networking…

The ups (Advantages)

There are many pro’s to social media and well they do outweigh the downs.

A great example of this was at Spiceworld 2009 Austin, I (akp982) was about to receive a Spicies award when Justin Dorfman (from Frugal IT) had the idea of using Skype to allow me to give my acceptance speech. I ran around and got a microphone ready and he ran off to the Spiceworks Staff to hand him his laptop which got pushed onto stage. This was great, I was watching the live stream though Ustream and also talking live to the presenters. It was a very weird feeling I was in the UK and talking and watching people in the US. Without the Ustream chat to get me on skype with Justin and without skype for allowing us to make a “call” it would not have been possible. It was organised so quick the presenters were shocked to hear that I was ready to talk to them.

Social media mainly things like twitter can really help promote your products very quickly by telling lots of people instantly. When Spiceworks 4.1 was released it was mentioned by over 100 people on twitter and Spiceworks are expecting more people to spread 4.5 when it comes out. From this people will quickly write reviews to jump on the back off this and give their blog or website a boost in traffic and hope for some regular readers. Frugal IT is and example of a site that did well at this with there Spiceworld 2009 coverage (http://fr.ugal.it/spiceworld-2009) they were able to get multiple people to tweet, blog and just share their link. With this link spread all over the world, people would then visit the site pickup on the ads and information around the Spiceworld page and may then come back in the future. I know we (Spiceworks-News) jump on even the oddest of things. We often pickup on blog posts about or mentioning Spiceworks and re post the first paragraph in hope for a ping back. Posts like (Getting IT spicey at your church) got a ping backs out there and we may have got another 1/2 visitors (they all add up over time to now around 300 people looking at Spiceworks-News on a daily basis according to Google analytics… if only some of them posted comments).

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