Throughout this book we will be referencing things that are available on the Spiceworks Community. The Community is an integral part of Spiceworks. A place to ask questions, get answers, and also connect with other IT pros and vendors. We go quite in-depth as to what you can find on it in Chapter 5, Taking Spiceworks to the Next Level but for right now, let's just get you an account and logged on.
Now, one of the great things about this Community is its tight integration into the app itself. If you look at the top of any of the dashboard pages, the first link on the right is the Community link. If you mouse over it, like any of the other main links in this section of your Spiceworks install, a menu opens up and looks just like the following screenshot:
You can see different categories, resources, and a section devoted to Spiceworks. So let's just click on the Community link. A window will pop up that looks like the following screenshot, asking for a username for the Spiceworks community:
Pick a username you want and click on the Next button. Your local Spiceworks install will then communicate with the online community to check and see if the username you picked is taken. If it has, Spiceworks will come back to this window with a name suggestion. You can change it if you want to personalize your username, just keep trying different ones or take the suggestion that Spiceworks gives. Don't worry, you can change it later if you wish. Spiceworks then connects to the online community and sets up your profile. The next window that you will see is the following screenshot:
Here is where you can put in as much or as little information as you wish. You can even skip this page if that is what you want to do. Totally up to you. As you get more comfortable in the community and see what it is all about, you will probably put some more information in there so that the other folks know a little about you. Honestly, I was pretty skeptical when I first installed Spiceworks, but now I have my real name, company name, and other non-sensitive information on my Spiceworks profile.
So whether you put in your information or not, the next step is the same. The following window pops up and you are given a series of choices about your IT interests:
The area highlighted as 1 shows the IT topic forums that you can be subscribed to. These are vendor specific, technology specific, or general IT topics.
If you mouse over each IT discussion group in the area highlighted as 2, you can see what forums each general topic consists of.
Spiceworks suggests specific vendor pages in the area highlighted as 3. Now, since there are over 1600+ vendor pages, there will be three or four on here but you can search for more later once you finish this step.
The area highlighted as 4 is where you can opt for the Spiceworks newsletter. Daily, Weekly, and No, thanks options are here. Choose the one you want and then click on the Done button.
That's it! You are now a member of the most vibrant, answer-packed IT pro Community on the internet machine. Now we are going to come back to the Community a lot in this book. Since the Community is such a sprawling, awesome place, I suggest we get your network inventory and a few other things set up and then come back to it when you have some time to really explore.