While completing the SpiceQuest you will get to learn more about AppNeta, Nic and Sean and once complete and the quest is closed you will gain a shiny new badge!

So make sure you complete the quiz today!

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http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/192833

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Where in the Spice are Nic and Sean?! Go on a SpiceQuest to find out… – Spiceworks Community
By: Elise S (Spiceworks), Forum: Spiceworks Blog, …complete it and you'll get a brand new SpiceQuest badge AND a shot at winning a $500 gift card from our friends at AppNeta!   You may remember hea…

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#spiceworks

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Have a question about supporting new mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Androids? Wondering what best practice management and security options are available? Or looking into deploying apps or docs to these mobile devices?

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Ask The Expert with Chris (MaaS360) on Mobile Devices – Spiceworks Community
By: Sean (Spiceworks), Forum: Spiceworks Blog, The Ask The Experts series is a feature where we tackle a particular subject where you can ask the questions, and a subject expert provides you answers….

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They are geared up with all the knowledge you need to find out if virtualization is right for you or how you can expand your current vritualized solutions.

Make sure you ask them a question this week!

#spiceworks

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Ask The Experts: Brett & Ivan (Dell) – Spiceworks Community
Get help with understanding and using virtualization.

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5.3.7xxx's biggest new feature is Multiple Notification Types for Users, this means you can not set what notifications you want to go to what users making the email levels a lot more granular.

They have also fixed 6 major bugs as well as a few tiny ones in the backend.

Make sure you update today to get the new features!

Download it from: http://download.spiceworks.com/Spiceworks.exe

#spiceworks

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Spiceworks Update 5.3.75902 Now Available – Spiceworks Community
By: Nic (Spiceworks), Forum: Spiceworks Blog, Spiceworks 5.3.75902 is now available. It includes the following new feature: Multiple Notification Types for Users – you can now specify multiple notifi…

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– Tracking for licenses shared across multiple software apps – You are now able to track volume licensee of products other than Microsoft and also change individual keys into volume license keys
– Improved ticket form, foreign language email support, and cloud service management – The new ticket form us been updated to allow better support for custom attributes and better language support
– Office 365 integration with a dashboard view of your mailboxes
– Windows Intune plugin to send alerts straight to your help desk
– Minuteman UPS Support
Check it out at the link below

Remember this is only a beta so don't use it in production

#blogme #spiceworks #it #software

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5.3 Beta II Build Now Available (5.3.75618)
By: Nic (Spiceworks), Forum: Spiceworks 5.3, The second build of the Spiceworks 5.3 beta is now available for you to try out. Testing and feedback from you is an integral part of every release cycle …

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At the moment there is one style of button but it sounds like there may be more styles if successful, would like to see the amount of spices displayed, well see what happens. I’m also not 100% sure how often the shared links section of the community are viewed but this will probably grow as the new feature grows.

Follow Button

Wanna make sure IT pros to engage with you, where they work, when they’re working?

This is a simple button which works as a link and sends visitors off to a vendor page on the community, when on the page SpiceHeads can then follow the vendor to get updates. Hopefully this will drive some new smaller vendors into the community in which actively participate in the forums and engage IT Pro’s like me where and how we want to be engaged not with cold calls. It will be exciting to see how well this works and if it brings on more vendors.

SpiceButton

Content is King! Especially when it’s easy for IT pros to Spice Up IT content in the Spiceworks community.

This is more interesting upon clicking the Spice button SpiceHeads get a pop up which they can enter comments about the site and publish it onto the community for other users to see and comments on. If this works and becomes a success (and I hope it does) it will be a really useful tool for IT pro’s to keep tracks of websites / links that other IT Pro’s feel are important and worth sharing. Overtime I do expect to see a re-haul of the shared links section but I can’t confirm this, would seem sensible.

We’ll keep tabs on how well this works. For now make sure you goto the new developers site and give it ago. Also make sure you Spice Up this site

Spice IT

ALSO 14 days till SpiceWorld 2011!!!! See you there!

While in the past I have done my best to cover off the past SpiceWorlds remotely it hasn’t gone that well. This year will be different!!!!

This year there will be lots of coverage on Unofficial Spiceworks, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as well as a full write up of my complete trip from the UK to the USA posted on the community and this blog shortly after my return / recovery. I have got countdowns going everywhere and I’m really excited to finally get to meet everyone I talk to online as well as Learn and “play” with my fellow IT Pros.

This is the forth annual user conference and this year having to have a new venue due to the size SpiceWorld has grown to it will be bigger and better than previous events. Mainly because I will be there.

With some great sessions already planned like Demystifying Microsoft Licensing, Taking User Management from Unruly…to User-friendly! and Build a Network on a Budget. The mix of sessions run my the sponsors and SpiceHeads I think has been key to how successful the event has been and will be.

Hands down one of the best IT conferences of the year.

Justin Dorfman, Sys Admin Mahalo.com Inc. See who else is raving »

There have been so many good things said about it, no wonder why people go back every year.

Read more and book your tickets now on the official SpiceWorld 2011 site.

The bug fix count doesn’t just show the dedication of the team… But also the dedication of the community to find and report the bugs. Once the users reports the bugs on the forum (which has approx. 677 posts) the SpiceLords (Spiceworks employees) jump on it and work as hard as they can to get it fixed. The team behind the developments and the QA are dedicated to making sure you get the product you want and that it works really well. One of the really cool things they do is that they will try and fix those little niggles that annoy you as well as making the new features.

The updated features in this release include:

• Software Overview – The overview of the software on your network had more UI enchantments to provide you the information you need quick and make it look prettier (Cole likes pretty).
• License Tracking – There have been some small improvements in the way that you add and edit license keys, all decided to make it less painful to keep a track of your software.
• License Manager Plugin – Just a simple plugin update to make sure it works with the new version.
• Ink & Toner Purchasing – You can now purchase ink and toner from HP store’s. When you hover over ink cartridges for supported HP printers you’ll see a link to purchase the cartridge from HP’s store.
• Bandwidth Monitor Plugin – They have updated the Bandwidth Monitor plugin to make it compatible with 5.2. Its now quicker and easier to get a bandwidth overview of your network.

I can’t wait for 5.2 to come out of beta so I can start to use the new features on my real install.

If your going to try Spiceworks 5.2 make sure you read the 5.2 Test Plan and 5.2 Testing Guidelines.

I have also had to update my last review as I was wrong about the “real-time” monitoring coming apparently its not… Maybe in the future.

Cloud Services/Vendors

One of the main problems people where having was that port 43 needed to be open in the firewall for the domain scanner to work. This section has now been changed so that it will use the standard port 80, this should allow more domains to be supported / tested. This change has also been put in place for the ISP scanner.

There have also been some bug fixes to this section which can be found on the community.

Software

The only real change the software section is the ability to edit the existing keys, this makes it a lot easier to manage / control your keys and update them if for any reason they need to change.

Bug Fixes

The “public” bug fix list stands at around 22 fixes although I’m sure there are MANY more in which Spiceworks are hiding from us the fixes include things like bugs related in creating / editing Plugins, the ability to edit web domains and the license Manager shows duplicate titles. There is a full list of all the public bug fixes on the community here.

Going to try the Beta? REMEMBER THIS:

Its not currently supported and something’s wont work right. You should also read the below two posts before installing.

• 5.2 Testing Guidelines
• 5.2 Test Plan

Also you can now +1 our pages with the Google +1 button at the top! Not on Google+ why not join? Here’s an invite.

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.

As with most things in Spiceworks you can then setup alerts, at the moment it appears you can only do it for services which are about to expire but over time this will more than likely be expanded to monitor for outages on domains / ISP connections.

As well as monitoring websites and ISP’s you can also monitor and manage, Rackspace Cloud, Rackspace Hosted Email and Google Apps Hosted Email. This makes it a lot easier to control everything from one place, which is ultimately Spiceworks’ goal. Allowing IT pro’s to manage / monitor all services (cloud or in house) from one control panel is a big plus that they have over many alternative applications. With big names like Google and Rackspace getting involved its getting harder and harder to compete.

Software Licensing

One of the things a lot of SpiceHeads have wanted is improved license tracking so that you can manage your volume license keys as well as OEM keys.

There have been quite a few improvements to license tracking. Starting in 5.2, Spiceworks includes a list of typically licensed software collected from the community feedback of IT pros like yourself. We use this list to help you find the software on your network that you probably ought to be tracking licenses. Of course, you can manage this list in your own installation, we just wanted to get your started with some sensible defaults.

Included with License Tracking is an improved workflow for maintaining License Compliance. Now you can add volume licenses in addition to individual seat licenses, and we will help you keep track of which installed copies you have verified to be compliant. Soon, you will also be able to upload documents for your software licenses. Finally, depending on your alert settings, you will be alerted when a noncompliance issue occurs. From the 5.2 test plan

For me one of the major new things with the update is the ability to track Volume License keys and assign them to a PC. This will make life so much easier for every IT pro to keep track of there licensing status. One of the other cool new things is the ability to track unwanted software better, using the reviews and comments on the community there is a basic list of things like “AOL toolbar” to start you off but you can add and remove from this list as much as you want.

You are also able to add and remove licenses on a Individual seat or a volume license, setting the amount of volume license keys you have you are then able to assign them to different machines.

As this feature evolves and grows we will and are already seeing a very powerful license tracker.

Tighter LogMeIn Rescue Integration

One of the key things you have already seen is the ability to use Spiceworks to control multiple external services, with cloud ones like Rackspace and even getting status information from UPS’s with plugins. You can now use log me in rescue a lot easier from within the dashboard.

Spiceworks now supports individual LogMeIn Rescue single sign on accounts and provides the ability for a Spiceworks HelpDesk admin with a LogMeIn account to start a remote desktop troubleshooting session directly from the Spiceworks help desk.

There are a few more features

Which I don’t feel are worth going too in-depth about at the moment.

You can however checkout all the information about the beta on the community here.

Or checkout the current build, test plan and guidelines:

• 5.2 Beta I Build Now Available (5.2.73044)
• 5.2 Test Plan
• 5.2 Testing Guidelines

Make sure if you are going to beta test 5.2 that you follow the plan and are aware that no support is given.