Unofficial Spiceworks

On Wednesday Nic announced the 5th beta release.

The fifth build of the Spiceworks 5.0 beta is now available for you to try. 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.

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So what’s really new in this beta?

As with anything that Spiceworks do they have exceeded the expectations for this beta with some great new features/bug fixes and updates.

People View

The people view is one of the major things being added in Spiceworks 5.0 and we are getting close to seeing a fully working version.

• New Data Ribbon to allow you to see the more important information about a person at a glance. This is a great addition and allows you to quickly navigate though your user’s and find the information you want fast. As you build up your people view this cool overview will quickly allow you to work out where the user is, who the supervisor is for when they annoy you and what machine they use.
• This build now allows you to write / sync your changes back to active directory. Allowing you to quickly and effectively manage all your user’s from one place. You can change simple bits of information like number, location and department at the moment but soon you will be able to reset passwords and enable and disable accounts.

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Yesterday I reviewed the latest Spiceworks 5.0 beta drop, but at the time could not get the active directory integration for the people view working.

It wasn’t the beta’s fault it didn’t work I needed to use user@domain.local rather than domain\user simple fix and once changed it was up and running within 2 minutes with all my active directory users imported. Read my community discussion on this if you get stuck.

First off in some of I have omitted names and some details. The information was there just to be safe and to protect the ID of people I have covered it up.

Once you have the active directory settings correct and it syncs you will instantly start to see how the people view will help you.

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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.

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Nitish Kumar has recently written another great article on Spiceworks following on from introducing it and showing a preview of upcoming Spiceworks 5.0.

Going into great detail on the install, configuration and troubleshooting.

The Spiceworks software as a less than 25 Mb download file (as of now) could be downloaded from the www.spiceworks.com. The same executable is inclusive of all basic requirements for Spiceworks that includes the SQLite database for storing settings-n-stats and Apache web server (need to check if installations already there to avoid conflicts).

Read the rest of his write up on his blog “A Step by Step Guide about Spiceworks”

Spread-Spiceworks.org.uk (a Unofficial Spiceworks site) has just released some Service Provider (MSP) badges for use on your company website.

Spread-Spiceworks was originally a very rubbish website until about 4 months ago when I picked up an idea i started ages ago. It now provides community members with dynamic badges they can use on there websites, email, forums and more to promote Spiceworks and gain points.

This morning it grew some more with the addition of MSP badges, a growing percentage of community users are from MSP companies and using these badges could help draw in some business, or points in the community or both. With 6 designs to choose from and more coming soon you should find something you like.

Checkout the other designs on Spread-Spiceworks.org.uk today!

Thanks to Lawrie5252 for helping with the designs and coming up with the idea.

Following on from the “Spiceworks SpiceRex advert contest” Spiceworks have “teamed up” in a VERY spontaneous way with Unitrends to make another advert, you may have noticed a day ago Nic (Spiceworks) posted up “Spontaneous contest to design a Unitrends Ad” in the Spiceworks News area of the community:

What started off as a conversation about a funny looking ad has evolved into a contest to see who can do better. Take your best shot at making an ad for Unitrends – the winner gets a $50 Visa gift card, a Unitrends swag bag, and their ad will get run on Spiceworks.

Enter here! Entries have to be in by the end of August.

There have already been some GREAT entries into the competition. Make sure you enter as well.

So make sure you enter now for your chance to win $50 on a visa gift card!

Checkout the other entries and enter here

The SpiceRex “Contest to create An Advert!” has been running for two weeks now and with only 6 days left its getting hot with some great designs coming though.

If you enter into the competition and win you could get:

Top 5 Finalists (in each category):

• A cool, limited edition SpiceRex t-shirt (commemorating 1 million users)

Grand Prize Winners (in each category):

• 1-foot custom created cut-out of SpiceRex (he’ll stand on your desk!)
• SpiceWorks Ultimate Swag Bag (which will include a SpiceRex t-shirt!)
• Bragging rights as creator of Spiceworks first ever crowd-sourced ad– to be run on a variety of IT websites

The contest is already hot with some great entries like:

But just look at how awesome this one is from Striker090871 who took special care to change out some of the banners in a New York scene with Spiceworks ones as well as giving SpiceRex special powers.

Checkout his entry fully on the Spiceworks Community Here.

So what are you waiting for?

Checkout the rules and enter now!

‘more than you might first think!’ by Lawrie Dalman (Lawrie5252)

One of the Spiceworks features often undervalued or overlooked is the ‘Community’. For many MSPs, IT Service Providers generally and particularly small or one man (person) shops there can be a feeling of relative technical and social isolation. This feeling is also common for many IT Pros, even if they are in quite large businesses. There is commonly an attitude from the user base that the ‘IT folk are a breed of their own’ (rightly so too, in most cases).

The Spiceworks Community is a great group of like-minded IT Pros, all very friendly and encouraging each other’s efforts both in IT and elsewhere. There are often spirited debates and conversation in the community, both technical and social, but always good natured and in the best spirit. If the conversations ever get out of control or strays outside the community guidelines, Nicholas Tolstoshev (Nic (Spiceworks)), Spiceworks super-efficient community manager is there to get things back under control.

Sharing is another great benefit of the community. Answers, Reports, How-tos, Ratings and Reviews, Articles from other sources, methodologies, tips and techniques are shared freely by most community members for the benefit of all. If you have an issue or problem you are having trouble resolving or just getting your head around, the community is sufficiently broad and in many cases experienced enough that someone somewhere in the global community will have either the answer you are looking for or suggestions to get you on the trail of a solution very quickly.

For those of us who experience those feelings of isolation, having thousands of friends all round the world prepared and very willing to help is a wonderful thing and should not be undervalued.

Most Spiceheads have their own ways of navigating and using the community but one of the best places to get started is the Community page. From here you can catch up on the Featured Conversations, What’s New in the Community, Spiceworks News, Upcoming events, Top Contributors, Recent Reviews and more. Most of these sections link to their own pages revealing even more useful or interesting information.

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