Welcome to the wonderful, crazy world of Spiceworks! For those of you who don't know what exactly Spiceworks is, it is a free application for IT professionals (like you and me). It brings together many of the tasks that we do on an everyday basis and consolidates them into a single interface. Oh, did I mention it was free? Yes, free!. Spiceworks was started in 2006 by four veterans of the IT software business. They wanted to bring IT pros a tool that would make their jobs easier and give it away for nothing. That was a huge challenge, but seven years later Spiceworks has over two million users and is installed in every country on the planet. A lot has changed since 2006 and Spiceworks Beta. Let's go through a high-level overview of some of what Spiceworks actually delivers today:
Network inventory: Spiceworks scans your network, extracting information from workstations, servers, network devices (switches, routers), printers, and virtualization hosts. Installed software, updates, and essential information that an IT pro needs at a glance is collected.
Integrated help desk/user portal: Spiceworks has a full-featured help desk integrated within the app so that you can associate issues, devices, and even purchases on one interface. Not only is it useful to the IT pro for setting tasks within a team, it has a front-facing portal so your users can submit their own tickets (and check on the status of the open tickets).
Robust reporting: We all know that information is only as good as the method; we have to get it into a usable form. Spiceworks brings a strong reporting structure so not only will you be able to get those reports, but you will also be able to schedule automatic reports and create your own either using the interface or direct SQL commands.
Purchasing: Need a quote on a piece of equipment? Need to track exactly when something was bought and when it needs to be replaced? Need to know exactly when a piece of equipment is off warranty and, therefore, needs to be replaced? Spiceworks has all this covered. Even if you need several quotes for a single purchase, Spiceworks can get that for you in a few clicks.
Community: The Spiceworks application is integrated with the Spiceworks online community that has over two million members. Ask questions, get answers, find reviews from fellow IT pros, and see how they address the challenges they face. Find that specific report you are looking for and share the report you just created. You can even find local Spiceworks user groups (called SpiceCorps) and meet IT pros in your neck of the woods.
Plugins: Spiceworks brings so many great things right out of the box. Having said that, there are no two IT infrastructures alike. There are literally hundreds of user-created plugins that can customize Spiceworks to your needs.
So much more: Integrated knowledge base, dynamic network map, monitoring, alerts, warranty, and asset tracking are other features that Spiceworks brings out of the box. In addition, new features are being integrated in every new release with many of those chosen by the Spiceworks users themselves.
Since this is a Getting Started book, we will be going over each of these areas in broad strokes with the result being, you having a working and fully-functional Spiceworks installed. Here is what you can expect from this book:
Getting Spiceworks installed and logging into the Spiceworks Community
Setting up network inventory and scans
Setup and configuration of your help desk
Other Spiceworks features: reporting, monitoring, alerts, purchasing, knowledge base, and others
Taking Spiceworks to the next level with the Spiceworks Community
So are you ready to install Spiceworks and get this great Spicy stuff on your network? Let's jump right in!