Spiceworks Agent For Mac
Has anyone created a script for Mac to generate a Spiceworks importable inventory file? In our environment, we rely on Workstations being able to scan themselves (using the stand-alone data collector; ). I'm looking for a similar method to pull this inventory information locally on Mac systems. The idea would be to copy the file to a file server for the SW server to import (have had to do this with some Windows systems). Unfortunately, we don't have complete control over all of our subnets and can't blanket scan every IP.
Pros: Oh, where to start! I love that anyone in our company can email a specific address that we have set up to forward from Spiceworks and it will automatically forward it to everyone on the IT team so we don't have to continue checking the actual software every 5 minutes. Also, when someone responds, it goes directly to the ticket assignee's email and we can respond from either the platform or our emails. It's also nice that it sends reminders of open tickets or things that have been untouched for a while. I like the dashboard to see the frequency of opened/closed tickets, as well as see which issues are the most prominent. The actual tickets have areas to specify the category of the issue as well as a 3rd party ticket# so it's easy to find. There is also a knowledge base that we can refer to people who have had similar problems as others in the past.
And everything is in the cloud so we don't have to host anything to ensure that it's saved:) They just added a remote session option too which could come in super handy when troubleshooting an issue. Oh, and I like that it has internal as well as public notes and it saves a history of everything so can go back and revisit a closed ticket that was taken care of months ago. Cons: The attachments are a little finicky.
As in, it doesn't allow 'inline' attachments (for when I want to show a screenshot in the middle of my explanation). And if I want to download a screenshot from a ticket, I have to right-click it and save (not a big deal) rather than just click on the print icon that's usually present in other attachment previews on different sites (like Gmail, per say).
But honestly, I haven't really dealt with many other IT ticket help desk platforms so I don't really have anything to compare it to. The only other things I don't like are things that are user-error based. Like how if we don't update the category or the ticket type in the actual ticket, the proper stats won't show in the dashboard. Overall: It's been great.
Since we've started using this (about a year ago) it has definitely improved our productivity, communication, and efficiency as an entire IT dept. Comments: I would recommend Spiceworks since can give you details that some other apps might be skipping out just like agent-less scanning that provides complete system details, including things like license keys for Microsoft software and toner levels on printers, the ability to manage Active Directory users and policies. For sure the Purchasing tracking system will give you a hand to develop the IT Budget and track down your top ten assets requirements. Pros: The ticketing system works great you can set categories and customize the SLA's at your convenience and with the reporting tool you can build your own Ticket time tracking charts and accomplishment report of tickets assigned and complete that works great for newly IT departments that want to leverage their support standards. It includes a user portal so people can keep track of their tickets but also allows tickets creation/update via email which makes things so simple for the end user you can customize this portal with the company logo and preset the auto response message using HTML code. We have been using the inventory feature which is really robust gives plenty details about the IT assets and their warranties. You can set networks scans and Spiceworks will give you very detailed information about everything on your network.
Cons: Spiceworks software network management needs a lot of the time it is discovering items that you have no interest in managing remotely and yet it keeps finding stuff and bringing it to your attention. The ability to manually add inventory items gets overlapped for the constant network scanning. Spiceworks could open up their code a bit more. Since some specific needs that wouldn't be difficult to integrate/allow but that aren't done with the OpenSource collaboration to add more features and solve the lack of some specific UX desirable features. Pros: Community forum. Personally, I consider forums a waste of time since you normally have to look for ages and still never get the answer you need.
Communities are based that 'someone has experienced this problem before' and is willing to share in all detail what the problem (can be awkward) and share the solution as well. On the Spiceworks community (cheers!), we have always found answers that you usually only find on paid communities (details, scripts etc).
The software (FREE!) gives you a great overview, even if you are spread over multiple locations and/or multiple networks. A complete inventory and a ticketing system that are customisable and ready to integration software and scripts.
What more do you want for free? Cons: This is definitely not the worst but it takes a bit of getting used how Spiceworks operates.
Like other platforms there is a learning curve. Some integration with other 3rd party software might not be straight forward but then there is the awesome community. Overall: The software provides a complete inventory even if stretched over multiple locations and networks; a complete ticketing system, knowledge base system and many other tools that are of good quality to manage day to day incidences and requests. The inventory scan provides great detail of networked devices and peripherals e.g. Serials, make, model, status, warranty and many more. Customisable views allow you to quickly focus on the details necessary to troubleshoot issues.
Pros: This is a free product, which in itself is impressive when you consider what you are being offered. In addition to a customizable ticketing system, you are given an inventory system, and a newly added network monitoring function which so far has been nothing short of impressive (Until now I have been using PRTG Monitor, which in itself is a wonderful tool, but not free.) The initial setup is very easy, and and Spiceworks as a service has very low hardware requirements, meaning you can run it on an older laptop fairly well. The reporting function is a massive lifesaver, as it can help you generate a flexible list of everything from tickets (very flexible in what you want displayed, and how you want it sorted,) to your IT inventory (sorted by office location, purchase date, etc.) The ability to send these reports to our company's upper management to show hours spent on particular projects per month, or what assets need to be replaced due to original purchase date, is a very big plus. The community portal itself is full of helpful people who are always willing to share their knowledge. On multiple occasions where I had to find a solution to a technical problem, I found people who were quickly able to pull more details from each instance, and provide a brief list of solutions in a fairly short amount of time. When you are backed against a wall, this can be a massive lifesaver.
Cons: Plugin compatibility. Some older plugins may no longer work well with newer version of the software, as well as some of the newest plugins requiring the latest update, but these are just minor nitpicks. Recommendations to other buyers: For a relatively small IT operation, this is an ideal no cost solution. It gives you all the tools functionality you need to manage and maintain the infrastructure of a small business. Pros: I used a free version of Spiceworks for several years.
Installation of the application only takes few minutes. In just a few clicks you have a full robust system for ticketing and inventory.
Another great perk is Spiceworks community, merely priceless resource where all the IT folks share their knowledge and can help you with random IT dramas. Great way to keep an eye on the hardware inventory. Getting it configured and working properly can be a challenge, but the results are well worth it.
Not to mention great helpdesk ticketing functionality, that allows to put an order on how your service requests are processed on a daily basis. Cons: I've only used a free version of the application. As I mentioned, one of the key reasons why I got it was for inventory purposes. Getting it work was a challenge. A lot of tweaking had to be done on the network to be able to query all of my PC and Mac workstations and servers.
Reformat Seagate Free Agent For Mac
Nevertheless, the result was well worth it. Additionally, while the inventory is running, the system would be somewhat slow, but still managable. Great product! I highly recommend it to all IT admins out there. Overall: Cost, up-to-date picture of the hardware inventory, logs, that can be used for internal audit purposes.
Pros: I like that it works well for a small to medium sized environment, I like that it has never crashed or given me a single problem in the five years I've used it as our only help desk ticketing solution, and I like that it costs absolutely nothing. It includes some other features like network monitoring, SNMP monitoring, etc., but we've never used any of those features.
If you really need that type of functionality I'd recommend going with a more robust solution built for that purpose. All we needed was something to handle support request tickets and it has been great for that. If you have a very large environment you'll probably want to go with a more robust solution, but for our 100+ users this has been completely fine. Cons: If I had to find something to complain about, I guess I would say that I don't care for the fact that its HTML based and is rendered in a browser window. I'm sure many people don't find this a con, I'm just personally used to working with an application installed locally and find the interface to be a little laggy compared to the snappy performance of something like Autotask. Not much to complain about in a free solution though. Pros: Spiceworks is the software that my company uses for ticketing and a secondary asset tracking system.
Since I've been using it I've found that it's infinitely more helpful than at first it seemed. The ticketing system is very simple to set up and tracks and assigns tickets very well.
Besides the ticketing and asset tracking I love all the plug-ins that are available as well as the Spiceworks community. There are very few resources where you will find a more helpful bunch of users who have real world experience and can answer anything you might need to ask. I always find someone who has broken down extremely technical knowledge that makes it easier for me to learn and expand. Cons: The software can sometimes be a bit slow to respond. There will at times be an odd lag in the software even though there is nothing taxing happening on the server and resources look fine. This is a minor occurrence and can be fixed by restarting the service on the server. Overall: There is really nothing to say but this software is excellent.
I use it daily for ticketing, tracking, research and even I.T. Related news clips. It's an essential one stop HUB for everything I.T.
And best of all it's free. Pros: Does a great job of managing our help desk ticketing system. Nobody likes making tickets, but with 4 techs watching the que, problems get resolved faster.
We have been using the system for years. The inventorying is reasonably robust - will let you quickly spot machines that are not up to spec for a planned upgrade. Cons: The polling and reporting on down devices is weak. You find out a device is down long after it actually went down, and then for DAYS it continues to aleret you the device is down (even though you have brought it back up). If you try and close the ticket, spiceworks gleefully creates another one, even though the problem is long gone. That said, we did not install this to be a network monitor, so any monitoring functionality is just icing on the cake. Overall: Very happy we got it.
It is one of the most stable, reliable things we run here. It has genuinly made things smoother and easier for my IT Department.
And yes, we are running the free version (so you know it's not a 'paid indorsement'). If I ever changed jobs, Spiceworks would be the FIRST thing I installed at a new place.
So much bang for low to no cost and a short learning curve. Pros: First off, nobody has ever complained about free. Spiceworks itself does what it is meant to do - it provides a simple helpdesk for you and your users, with basic features you'd expect from a support system. It's full of little things, like a built-in knowledge base, built-in remote support, integrations with other tools, etc. The real value in Spiceworks though is it's community; it's like Experts Exchange on steroids.
Everyone is friendly and helpful, and vendors have direct representation in the forums to help you with both sales and support questions. It rarely feels like anyone is trying to sell you anything in Spiceworks' community, but at the end of the day you end up buying from some vendors.because. of how they treat you there.
It's incredible. Cons: Inventory. Inventory is not good. If you don't get it set up perfectly the first time, you might as well turn it off and forget about it. There's still no really good way to handle historical data and devices you no longer control. Pros: Spiceworks is a totally free piece of software if you choose to self-host. Getting things up and running is pretty easy, and it doesn't involve a huge amount of upkeep to keep the inventory data up to date.
It also comes with access to the Spiceworks online community. This is a gathering place for a large array of computer savvy folks who help each other out with questions, answers, and access to pieces of software that make life easier. I have reached out to the community many times, and gotten some great feedback on issues I have had, and suggestions on hardware and software purchases.
I also like the ability to build my own help desk portal where end users can submit tickets for easier tracking and resolution. Cons: I have had some issues with the self-hosted software crashing from time to time. I have not been able to figure out why it needs a random reboot to keep it happy, but it only happens every couple of months, so it really isn't a huge issue to me. Pros: This is a simple software that will allow you to manage the opening and closing of tickets for your organization. You can keep track of open tickets, assign them and make comments.
All changes in a ticket automatically generate an email to those involved in them. It also detects on the network new computers, software changes, even can send alerts when there is little tonner in some printer or when there is little disk space on some computer in the network. This can be of great help to an organization's IT teams Cons: It can be difficult to install and configure and help is not always immediate. Apart from this it can be a simple tool for the end user.
Overall: Our company provides IT support to several customers. Specifically we have installed Spicework to handle the tickets of one of our customers. The organization of our client has approximately 50 users. Spicework has worked without any problems so far. We went from receiving requests via phone or email to having a system to organize the tickets, status and expiration dates.
Pros: As I said above, it's FREE. For lower volume IT houses it's pretty great.
We have a basic setup where emails sent to a support address automatically open a ticket. I operate almost exclusively from my phone and we've never had an issue creating, working on or closing tickets in the field or in the office. Cons: Nothing more serious than the occasional hiccup when an update is released for the mobile app and features are either shuffled around or changed so much they aren't easily uncovered again. Also, if it did more to auto-populate the fields for the name of the person who submitted it, what it pertains to, which software or hardware they're looking for help with, that would be great. Overall: As I mentioned previously, a majority of our users are primarily mobile and being able to stay in touch with each other and with the client (who we can set up to receive notifications of their own when a ticket they created is edited) is essential. Further, there's no reason not to try it out because there is no financial commitment to worry about.
Pros: Spiceworks has an excellent product that is continuously evolving. The full featured suite give any IT professional the ability to use one module, several modules, or all the modules to meet their needs. New versions come out at least once a year with updates more frequently. Part of the evolution has been to a hosted, cloud based solution as an option for IT professionals who don't want to pay to host the server in their own environment.
The product is and always will be free. The online forum boasts more than 2 million members with the employees actively involved in the social portal. The vendors that are part of the community are very helpful and many have a dedicated employee who actively monitors their portion of the forum, ready to help. Finally, the company hosts a great convention every year in Austin Texas which is always very well attended.
Cons: Spiceworks moves the product forward, but sometimes they don't come back to the basics of what makes the software great. Adding new features can be a plus, but enhancing old features is very important as well. Recommendations to other buyers: Keep an open mind when using the software.
The product is always a work in progress. The online community is fantastic and the employees are constantly engaging the customers online. Spiceworks has quite a number of vendors that support and work with the online community. Feel free to ask questions, post answers, help others and get help yourself. Pros: Very easy to use and the initial setup and normal operation is user friendly enough to where even a novice user could get it working for their needs.
When it comes to Help Desk software, you can't beat the low price of FREE! There is a large pool of add-ons and user created plugins that will fill in the blanks to add additional functionality. If you get stuck on an issue while using Spiceworks Help Desk, the official email support and user forums are very helpful. Helps you keep track of inventory. Overall if you are looking for a cost effective HelpDesk ticketing solution for a small/medium business, you can't go wrong here. Cons: Users have reported that on very large networks the initial network scan can take days to complete.
Official support is limited to email or user forums. You can't hire an expert through Spiceworks to help set up or configure Spiceworks Help Desk to meet your needs.
It is up to you to figure it out. Overall: A cost effective IT HelpDesk ticketing system, that allows our business to track issues, increase productivity and keep track of our IT inventory. Pros: Spiceworks IT Help Desk is great to help manage ticket times and IT tasks. I like that it is made specifically for IT tickets or level 2 software support scenarios, it's definitely more for IT than for software development or software feature tracking. The modules are a little easier to look at than Fogbugz.
The admin portal is also easy to use and manage teammates and team workloads - managing inbound tickets and creating brand new tickets (as a manager) to send out tasks is easy. Cons: For me it took a while to ramp up and get trained on Spiceworks IT - it was a little bit less intuitive than Fogbugz and JIRA, but, once you learn how it works, it's much better. If anything goes wrong customer support is pretty good. For software development projects where repositories are being merged/ features are being tracked ect it isn't the best fit. Overall: Spiceworks IT makes it easy for my team and I to manage difficult IT tickets as well as track our own internal projects. The in-app emailing notification system helps keep clients up to date on ticket progress, so that we don't have to update tickets and email clients separately.
Pros: Spiceworks is a free yet versatile help desk portal for users to submit tickets, technicians to track tickets and for administrators to generate reports. With the vast community support behind Spiceworks, its very easy to figure out to to customize the look and feel to meet the needs of your organization. Cons: While Spiceworks is great, I assume because of the free nature of the software and the companies business model, updates aren't very frequent. Security issues within the software can take a long time to get patched, and new features and few and far in-between. Overall: When we moved from our prior software provider to Spiceworks, our technicians and users all immediately began to notice a great improvement in usability and functionality. From being able to interact with the software via emails while our technicians are on the go, to updating users when comments are posted and issues are resolved, this software have greatly improved our help desk's day to day productivity. Pros: Myself and my team have been using Spiceworks for the last 2 years now as our Help Desk Ticketing software solution.
We have now also recently changed over to their cloud version of this software which incredibly is also free and still have zero issues with the software. To date, it has never let us down.
Spiceworks software delivers all the functionality we need out of a Help Desk Solution and is still running strong for us. We manage over a 500 tickets daily through this software and have never found to have had any technical issues with it. Cons: I do however have only one small issue and that is I wish it had better sorting of submitted tickets and improved search capabilities. Otherwise this software is amazing and only look forward to any future updates they may have for us. Overall: It has been a good way to track tickets and gives us the basic information as to how many tickets we are closing per week.
Pros: We love Spiceworks Helpdesk. It is so easy to use, feature rich, and reliable. It allows our user to submit a helpdesk via e-mail or by using our spiceworks helpdesk portal. We have multiple technicians and departments, so once a ticket comes in it can be assigned to a certain technician or department automatically based on rules we assign. Certain technicians can see all tickets while others can only see their own, which is good for security and privacy issues. You can add notes and attachments to tickets and also add KB article or replies you post frequently so you don't have to retype common replies or solutions over and over again. Cons: Sometimes it will run into an issue where the spiceworks page will be down but usually it is easy to resolve or a quick reboot will fix it.
Overall: Easy, Reliable and Free Helpdesk Software. Pros: My favourite thing about this software is that when installed on your local network, it can integrate with your Active Directory environment.
This makes it much more accessible for non-tech savvy users who don't want to go through the hassle of creating extra accounts and remembering more passwords, just to submit a ticket. Instead, they can be automatically signed in with their Active Directory account that they're already signed into. Combined with a Group Policy that can create a shortcut in the start menu or on the desktop for all users, this tool has become one of the easiest implementations we've done yet. Cons: Like all tools, it's only as useful as you let it be. To make this more useful to myself, my team, and my users, I would love to see a proper 'Wiki' feature added in the future, complete with permission based viewing, that I can create setup methods and walkthroughs for team members and users alike to find quick answers to common issues. Overall: Overall, using Spiceworks IT Help Desk software has been a very positive experience here. People on the other side of the building are able to create a ticket to let me know there is a problem, without having to walk all the way to my desk (and in a manufacturing plant, there are better things you can be spending your time on rather than walking from one side to the other).
I also really like that there is a mobile app so that I can get notifications and check on ticket statuses while I'm away from my desk. The notifications are expecially useful, even when I'm at my desk, as it's the quickest way for me to know there is something new. Pros: Can't beat the price.
You have the flexibility to operate your helpdesk 'in-house' or use their hosted platform. Either way you will have a full featured, customizable helpdesk with a user portal. At its minimal setup, you can be up and running in under an hour. If you have more work to do, you can easily build it to suit your needs. If you need additional functionality, you can always install one of many plugins.
Cons: Though the community is awesome, many of the useful plugins over the years have been abandoned by their creators. Since these are built and maintained by the users of the community, these are often made to address a specific issue, and not many are kept up with 'fixes'. It would be great if Spiceworks worked a bit more on incorporating the most used ones into their software natively. Comments: I used the cloud-based version of Spiceworks for our tech support team as our ticketing system. It was a way to keep track of all the inquiries, a way to divide tasks, keep track of how quickly these tasks were getting done and what topics are being worked on the most. Spiceworks is very easy to get off the ground, very easy to use.
I liked the categories, having its own portal, & email address. I used it with my google group so anyone who emailed our specific email would then get forwarded to Spiceworks and from there it would automatically generate a ticket. I found it great to take a quick look to see productivity and efficiency of the team.
It's a centralized location and prevents topics/emails from being forgotten. Pros: Easy to use. Reporting feature is cool to see what response time is, can export a report to CSV. Nice for supervisors to see what is being worked on. It splits up the responsibility of the tasks and we know who is responsible. Cons: Any yahoo.com emails would not get the creator labeled properly so if we were to respond to that ticket, it wouldn't go to the actual creator.
Staff found it cumbersome and difficult to read the small font and to follow the thread. Recommendations to other buyers: The downloaded version has more functionality. I used a google group and perhaps that caused some problems with yahoo accounts, I'm not sure. People who emailed us using a yahoo account would not get their ticket labeled properly by them as the creator so keep an eye out for that. Our staff was reluctant to use this so 50% of the team did not want to continue using it. It's great for upper management oversight but the staff didn't like using it as much.
Train them on the nuances, explain why it's useful to use to get them on board. Maybe do a trail run with a dummy account.
Pros: It is a Swiss Army knife for network administrators allowing inventory, equipment monitoring and failure tracking and activities within the same package. It is great to be able to have everything you need within reach of an IP address, in addition to being able to receive as many notifications as you want and of what you want within the operation of the network. Cons: The hardware requirements are many, leaving out all those equipment with few features. Although software as such does not merit investment, it concentrates on the necessary hardware. Overall: I get control of the company's computer park and with software's functionalities I was able to get all the information about their life time.
It also allowed me to carry the statistics of activities and faults in LAN allowing me to study their numbers and attack the problems with greater precision. Pros: It's free. The help desk functionality does exactly what it's supposed to do. Users can submit tickets via email or through a portal, and support staff are notified and can acknowledge the tickets right away.
When ticket updates are entered promptly, it provides excellent visibility into the life of a trouble ticket. The Spiceworks community is amazing.
It's our first stop when searching for answers to tough problems. Cons: We occasionally have issues with the system not checking email for new support tickets. A restart of the software solves the problem. Overall: It's amazing that the software is free.
We were able to implement a proper help desk system with all the features we needed at no cost. The Spiceworks online community is amazing. The knowledge available there is as good as any other source on the Internet.
Pros: It enables my user base to submit requests easily and allows me to communicate effectively with those users as far as the progress of the request and helps me to track requests. No more losing my 'To Do' list. In addition, I can add a ticket for something I want to get taken care of, assign it a priority and follow updates all from one place. I also have the ios app so I can see it anywhere. In addition to all that, it is free!
Cons: It's hard to say what I don't like because I am not terribly familiar with other Help Desk Software for comparison. The initial setup was a little confusing for me.
There was support but it was email and so there was a bit of time delay. Getting users to understand that they don't need to send a new email everytime because it creates a new ticket has been a challenge. Overall: I am able to track and prioritize work that needs to be done and communicate with the user about the progress of their request. Pros: I love SpiceWorks. There are so many features when using SpiceWorks. There is a Forum that you can use to get help or chat with other users. There are giveaways and discounts for products.
The ticket system is fantastic. When submitting tickets you can run reports and schedule them to pull a specific type of ticket and run a report at a specific time. It is super user friendly. There is too much content to name here. Cons: The inventory Scan feature is not always accurate.
The periodic upgrades are annoying, and some upgrades makes a drastic change. The mobile app is quirky. Does not support MAC OS Overall: It is free, there is a ton of content in the forums and nice little giveaways. (I have gotten many pairs of socks and Gift Cards though this.).
Pros: Honestly, Everything! This is great software and it's hard to believe that its free to use. As with anything there are going to be things here and there that some do not like, but the overall Idea behind this software and what it does and what it allows you to do is absolutely great!
Cons: I honestly have nothing bad to say about this software. I just really really like it. I suppose if I am forced to come up with some kind of con I would have to say it would be nice to have a fourth Priority level. One above High such as Urgent.
But other than that. This is really a well thought out and well designed 'IMO' piece of kit! Overall: Great software, it has helped us to streamline out ticketing and get things done faster.
Pros: How about a super product, that has everything you need to manage as many companies as you need the right way. And for it to be absolutely free. That is what spiceworks brings to the table, a top product at an unbeateable price. You have unlimited everything, and you can manage your suport with a ticketing system that is well thought out. Not only that you have access to all the it pros that are also part of spiceworks. This is a must tool for an IT manager Cons: There is nothing not to like. You can't beat the price, you can't beat the software.
This is a solid solution for IT professionals of ANY size. Overall: Manage the IT support department with ease.
Pros: Easy to use, free and Great UI. Love the ticketing system. It's greatest feature is the inventory management system, it scans and inventories practically everything on your network. Cons: The only thing I dislike is that spiceworks only supports Windows Servers.
I hope in the future they start supporting Mac OSX. Overall: Our team solves tickets everyday using Spiceworks. Love the fact that users can log in and check on the status of their ticket. The email notifications for incoming tickets is also very good. It greatly increases our company's performance without costing anything.
This is easily the best ticketing system available on the market. Recommendations to other buyers: If you don't want to spend money on a ticketing system, Spiceworks is the way to go. I would go as far as saying it beats lots of paid solutions.
Pros: this software its amaizing,it can let you control almost any part of your IT management, it let you now a really detailed info about your pc and laptops connected in your network,the report let you know even the internals serials of each part of your hardware, is really professional. Cons: i dont have to express any cons against this sofware, its really good piece of software.
Overall: the total control on my IT management using this very nice piece of software let me know in real time, the quantity of pc, laptops and portable devices are connected in my network, it let me know how many of them i got so i can have a real inventory idea of what i got installed, it for monitoring almost all the topics in the IT management. Pros: Spiceworks is great for managing help desk tickets. Using HTML we've been able to customize our end-user portal.
Create multiple ticket templates to capture the details we truly need from end-users. We have found that the mobile application for iOS and Android to be the best on the market. It has a great GUI, very user friendly, informative, and easy to set up. Cons: The inventory system is lacking when it comes to producing accurate information. At one point this year we were upgrading our end users to dual monitors.
We attempted to use Spiceworks to produce the make and model of the current monitor the end users were using. It came back telling us a generic description. I ended up writing a batch file that would obtain them remotely and that was accurate.
We've also had issues where it would scan a computer that had 2 monitors but would only show one. We also went through a license key audit and thought we could rely on Spiceworks to produce accurate results. It ended up showing us that several computers had 3 iterations of office installed. I understand that these keys are in the registry but other similar scanners would only produce keys for whats actually installed on the workstation by cross-referencing installed applications and registry keys. We recently have been experiencing issues where Spiceworks would attempt to scan 180 assets and it would fail to complete the scan without errors. We found this out by using WSUS to determine how many computers we had and Spiceworks was off by 30 assets of the 180.
At least twice a week it also locks up and our end users can't access the help desk portal to submit tickets. We've chosen to use LanSweeper to track assets. LanSweeper produced accurate results in a fraction of the time Spiceworks produced incomplete results. Spiceworks took 8+ hours, LanSweeper. Pros: This Software is easy to use, customization to whatever you need, and you can't beat the price!
Even though this software could do even more than it is for us now, it is exactly what we need and keeps our support requests, hardware/software inventory, and vendor information all in one great place! My absolute favorite feature is email setup for support requests, all the details that go along with that feature!
Cons: I can't think of anything negative about the software, I only wish I had more time to customize and look into the many endless additional features we could probably use in addition to what we use now. Pros: My favorite part of Spiceworks is how user-friendly it is. As an individual with an average knowledge of technology, I have found that Spiceworks makes it easy for me find answers to questions that I have about different software or hardware. Another part of the website that I like is how much of a community it is. After a while, you notice familiar users posting on the various threads.
I see the community focus as being a huge asset to Spiceworks since you get to know the people who are repeatedly writing on the site. Cons: I have been frustrated at my job as an administrative assistant for a technology company when using the helpdesk portion of the software. At times it was slow and would easily freeze up. This could be maddening at times because of how much I needed to work through our tickets to see what work had been completed.
Recommendations to other buyers: I would recommend that a reviewer evaluate how well the software suits their specific needs, but also to be open minded about the software since it may work better for people in other positions than the person reviewing the software. Pros: Spiceworks was simple to setup and very simple to use. Simple enough for the least technologically adept individuals to use while also powerful enough for the IT department to maintain, diagnose and fix any device within the company. Cons: On rare occasions we have had to deal with software crashes requiring a reboot of the services or server. Overall: IT requests had a tendency to fall through the cracks before Spiceworks. E-mail sent to the IT department could be overlooked and lost due to other requests.
Spiceworks allowed us to setup a help desk to track all of these while also maintaining inventories and alerting us of device failures or issues. Pros: I have used this software several times and it's amazing on how easily it can save you a lot of money. Spiceworks community is amazing in helping you out resolve your everyday problems. I highly recommend before you waste your money on other server monitoring software. Cons: You need to keep on top of the errors and do backups so that everything works smoothly but besides that, if all goes bad.
Just do a system restore and your backup in no time. Overall: I would recommend this software to all Network Administrator looking to keep expenses down and to keep an eye on your network. Great for small network monitoring. Pros: The biggest Pro for me is the price - FREE - and the fact that this tool will do what other software companies charge thousands of dollars to do. It detects when a new computer has been added to the network, or if a change has been made (software added or uninstalled). As a side bonus, it is possible to use along side PDQdeploy.
Cons: The only issue that I have with Spiceworks is that it takes a very long time to do a scan, and I mean SEVERAL hours. Overall: I am able to keep track of all my assets, with the only cost being my time to set up and configure the software.who can put a price on that? Pros: What do I like Most??
Easy to integrate, easy to use, easy for our not so 'Tech-Savvy' employees! If you're not sure about it, try it! They're so sure of their software they offer it for free! If you know of anything better, please let me know, because it has to be amazing:) Cons: There isn't too much to say in the way of 'Cons' that I've come across. All of the people I've worked with currently and in the past Love it and use it often! Honestly can't think of anything negative.! Overall: IT support ticket system.
Streamlined our networking of large amount of PC's. Pros: This helped us quite a bit in keeping track of tickets for one large client we had for a few years. The interface was easy for helpdesk technicians, as well as the end users. I liked the automatic inventory feature.
Cons: There wasn't anything I really disliked about Spiceworks Helpdesk. I would like to use it in our current situation, but find it hard to fit. We don't have that many contract clients anymore, and email works just fine at the moment. Overall: The IT helpdesk was already licensed by the client, so we used it while contracted by them, but I haven't used it since. Pros: Helps centralize ticketing and other requests, instead of emails, which can be lost or read and forgotten easily.
Easy to use and helps keep everyone updated about their ticket status. Cons: Lacks a few features, namely the complete customization of some of the portal ticket fields that would be nice to have. We have adapted it to work, but slightly less than ideal. Overall: we can handle user requests much more quickly and effectively, and gives them the peace of mind that their issue/request is being handled and will not be forgotten. This helps with inter-team communication and trust between departments. Pros: You can't beat the price.
It is free, easy to configure, and easy to use. It is cloud based so no internal setup. It does allow attachments so pictures and document guides can be sent back and forth with users asking for help as well. Cons: You are limited in setup options and design. You can change some colors, text, and add some fields, but it is a basic free help-desk tool. Overall: We get to communicate with our end users closer on issues and determine if we can guide them through the troubleshooting or walk to their location. It saves time and money while increasing communication.
Pros: I would say it is the most fantastic way of monitoring numerous devices quickly and easily. It is the most user-friendly software. I love its interesting features and dashboard through which we can easily see the frequency of open as well as closed tickets.
Moreover, another plus point is that of using this software is that we do not have to worry about using our important data as it has the option of saving history also that can be reviews anytime. Cons: Spiceworks Network Monitor is one of the best IT tools.
When I started using this tool it was a little difficult to learn, but it did not take long for becoming me an expert of having a great command. Now I feel this is the best network monitoring tool I have ever used that does not keep cons. Overall: I would say it is the most outclass software that can be used in a best way for keeping picture of hardware inventory update. Furthermore, it can be utilized for serving the purposes of internal auditing.
Pros: I love that it's not just free but a fantastic help to most IT infrastructures. Being able to run reports for managing offices is invaluable! Cons: I've had issues getting it to work with non windows systems, but that can be expected. I would like to be able to customize wmi queries to get data more reliably and faster, but overall it's fantastic as is. Overall: For nearly a decade of using Spiceworks, I cannot say enough good about it.
Bugs get worked out pretty quickly overall and with community development, features just keep getting added on that are actually appropriate for networks. Pros: Free; Easy to set up and use due to minimal features; Very easy customer dashboard set up; Good communication abilities Cons: Minimal out of the box features means it's quick to set up and use, but it takes more effort to customize. Overall: Spiceworks has been a huge help for our company being an SMB with 3 IT support workers. We didn't need anything big with lots of bells and whistles. If you just need something simple to track tickets, this does a great job.
There are ways to get it to do more and include more add ons, but it's not as simple as a larger tool that has many of those features out of the box. Pros: I like that Spiceworks is free, the product is easy to use and the apps are great. I have used other products in the past, like Track-it and Helpdesk Authority. While I really liked those products, they were more expensive than Spiceworks, since it is FREE! We also use the product in our maintenance department as their work order system, so that was an added bonus. Cons: That they force you to update the software. I can see why they do that, it makes sense, but it does put the fire under you to do the updates.
They do post a notification on the screen to tell you how many days the update will take place in. Recommendations to other buyers: Download the product and install it on a test machine, it's really easy. If you can't find something you want, just do a search for it, there will be an app to download that will probably fix the issue and make the software work the way you want it to. So my suggestion would be to not give up on the product if it doesn't exactly fit your needs, contact the Spiceworks community and see if they have a solution.
Pros: Easy, configurable and free. Has an App for Admins which makes remote administration easy. Has good updates, version control and notifications. Cons: Can't interrogate 100% of network devices but it is close to it. Overall: There is a local (completely free) or web based version (monthly cost $10), exceptionally easy to use and install. Updates have been seamless and it is a unified communications platform Recommendations to other buyers: The SpiceWorks community is the killer app here, you have you Help Desk but also thousands/millions of IT Pro's and a forum to help you out.
Even if you don't use the software join the Community https://community.spiceworks.com/feed. Comments: Spiceworks coimmunity is a great resource for any issues as well. Pros: Easy to use and navigate software from the get go. The ability to monitor your entire network from one program makes my job so much easier.
The ability to track inventory, issues as well as print out reports helps me stay on top of any issues that come up last minute. Cons: I cannot think of any as it does what it is created to do. I could see them added some premium features that would be prices based but then that might turn people away. Pros: One thing that sets Spiceworks apart from their competitors is the responsiveness of the support staff - which is free!
If you have a problem, they'll email you back usually within the hour with a response, and will help you until the issue is fixed. This is more than I have experienced with various paid solutions over the years. For some reason, this just works. The Help Desk is exceptional - again, considering this is a free product, it is quite extensible and has many options out of the box. Now, it's not an ITIL certified application, but for most SMB's, this will do the trick out of the box. You can literally be up and running within 10 minutes of install.
Cons: Sometimes, the direction of the development for the various modules (purchasing, inventory, etc.) aren't quite in sync, so you'll see some development progress quickly in some areas, while others still look as though they've been untouched for the past 3 or 4 major revisions. I think since the company has increased in size so quickly, there is some code creep which has occurred over time. I do believe that the devs are trying to reel the codebase in, but right now, it's kind of all over the place. Recommendations to other buyers: Keep in mind this is FREE software, so while yes, 'you get what you pay for' might come into play, it far exceeds many paid solutions by FAR. This company is a for-profit company, so the way they make their money is through marketing to IT pros who use the software (not the users submitting tickets!). There are a ton of features, creative plugins & reports that augment the application, and a stellar community comprised of IT Pros that come along with the application. Hard to beat that.
Pros: - Free - Easy to use for both the IT staff and end users - Great customizable reports - Supports plugins and extensions - 12000 tickets and counting! Cons: Not much honestly. The software is free because it's ad supported, however this is one of the few platforms where the ads are not intrusive and can be quite useful.
Spiceworks vettes their sponsors, so you know you're supporting the product. Overall: A more organized approach to helping our users. Every IT person can keep track of open issues and document resolutions.
Pros: Spiceworks is a HIGHLY competitive inventory management and helpdesk software (vendor). The community is invaluable as a point-of-contact for anything and everything IT-related. Many Google searches for support topics even bring back Spiceworks community discussions as the top 1, 2, or even 3 results.
Spiceworks has built a product that is ad-supported and community-driven. I absolutely love Spiceworks! Cons: My only real complaint is the ads, which can be removed by purchasing the premium product. Of course, the product is ad-driven so there's really no cause for complaint. Recommendations to other buyers: Price point is always important - a price point of zero is difficult to beat. If evaluating HelpDesk software, AD integration is important in most environments, as well as inventory integration. Spiceworks' inventory integration with its HelpDesk app is important in assigning tickets and purchasing items, as this allows you to track where your time and money are being allocated.
Pros: Inexpensive and simple SNMP monitoring easy to download and setup within minutes Monitor multiple devices from a variety of manufactures notifications Cons: Installable only on Windows a little top heavy hasn't evolved much since conception notifications are aggressive and needs a lot of time to tune properly Overall: Network Monitor is one of my favorite tools from Spiceworks. It allows me to see how my switches and servers are doing from a convenient dashboard. When there is an issue, notifications to email alert you of the problem for quick and easy response. Network Monitor can be resource intensive if you are not tuning the software properly, and running on Windows is not necessarily helping. Compared to other similar tools, Spiceworks Network Monitor is by far the simplest and easiest to get up and running. If you are managing a small or mediem business, Spiceworks Network Monitor is a great tool that will result in time and cost savings.