Is migrating from Desktop to HDS advisable?

Darklurker · 2022-08-03T18:39:00.000Z

Hi all,

We’re laggards here at my work - I admit that, as we still use the desktop version of Spiceworks (and like it, but that’s no matter). But I know our time is running short for that since we’re an Office365 shop for email. I had thought our only option was to jump to CHD, but I wasn’t terribly fond of the AD agent requiring an open port from the Internet for authentication. Then a few days ago, I stumbled across the self-hosted Help Desk Server and thought “Oh, this is the solution I was looking for”. But reading through this forum makes me wonder if HDS is going to suffer the same cruel fate as desktop once MS nixes basic auth and EWS in coming months.

I know HDS isn’t being actively developed anymore, but does anyone know, definitively, if it will be able to work with Microsoft’s modern auth once MS flips that switch? Or official plans to make it work? I saw glimmers of hope from Siddharth in his response in the thread “For Self-Hosted Helpdesk Server w/ O365 Basic Authentication is disabled?”, but didn’t want to read too much into it without asking.

I don’t want to get too far into the setup and config of HDS (or push it too strongly with the Boss) if it’s essentially abandonware, or if it will be held together with “spit and baling twine” hack-arounds once basic auth dies.

Any pointers, wisdom, or advice will be greatly appreciated.

Dave

scheff1 · 2022-08-03T19:32:28.000Z

Darklurker:

I know HDS isn’t being actively developed anymore

No, your knowledge is wrong. Spiceworks announced not only EOL of your discontinued legacy Windows edition of Spiceworks help desk but also temporary suspension of active development of HDS for a few specified months. Spiceworks further promised to review their decision and to publish the results of their review by December 2021. Spiceworks released a security update for HDS in December 2021 but then returned to suspension of active development without informing us. We don’t know if such review has started. But we know that such review has not yet finished in case it should already have been started. So no decision has been taken about the unknown future of HDS. HDS is fully supported beside the suspension of active development. So feedback of this review is still pending and overdue, for more than 7 months already.

Darklurker:

Or official plans to make it work?

Spiceworks did promise to publish its plans in its product roadmap . According to date of last change, this product roadmap was last updated on 6 November 2020. It is the miracle of Spiceworks how references about changes in 2021, including the EOL announcement get entered by 6 November 2020. I must have been blind end of 2020 because I could not read such an EOL announcement at that time, and have been healed by July 2021 to discover it in the unchanged product plan!

The EOL announcement for the discontinued legacy Windows desktop edition of Spiceworks help desk was also the announcement of development plans for 2021.

Around March 2022, Spiceworks promised to publish such plans for 2022 in the same form as it did for 2021. But so far, no such plans for the year 2022 have been published. Several topics include notes about current development activities but nothing covering the whole of 2022. So no, there are no official plans published.

We’ve the promise that HDS is fully supported as mentioned above. So we’ve to conclude that when Microsoft disables some authentication, Spiceworks will provide support to fix such an issue. We don’t know if Spiceworks intends to provide such a fix before Microsoft disables some authentication. With your legacy Windows edition, you won’t get support. So that’s a difference. That’s why it is not (yet) abandonware.

Darklurker:

I saw glimmers of hope from Siddharth in his response

So let’s tag @siddharth-spiceworks . You asked for an official statement by Spiceworks. He should be able to give the latest info and when to expect which kind of update. But you know the accuracy of when in Spiceworks context.

siddharth-spiceworks · 2022-08-03T20:22:54.000Z

Please don’t raise your hopes folks, we are currently not actively developing HDS anymore and the situation remains the same. There will be an official word soon to bring proper clarity.

ascott5 · 2022-08-17T17:28:22.000Z

Can you define “soon”? We use the on-prem as we have sensitive data that can’t be read by a third party (which is why we don’t use the cloud version). If Modern Auth doesn’t come to HDS, we need to know so we can look for a new solution.

scheff1 · 2022-08-17T18:41:57.000Z

ascott5:

Can you define “soon”?

Soon in Spiceworks sense is and remains vague. If you have firm deadline, you can’t await reaching such a soon and must prepare for the case that such soon will materialize after your deadline. If you’re lucky, you’ll get such soon before your deadline. But as professionals, we will need to be prepared and may not rely on such vague product development plans and vague schedules.

SpiceWorld is in about a month. Usually, Spiceworks provides some outlook on its plans in the context of Spiceworld. I don’t know if we may get some clarifications before although that was the intention of Spiceworks much earlier this year.

ascott5:

If Modern Auth doesn’t come to HDS, we need to know so we can look for a new solution.

Spiceworks has clarified to not raise hopes. So prepare yourself for a new solution.

Also welcome to our community, a community of IT professionals for IT professionals with a focus on SME. And please don’t forget to read the recommendations of our field guides, especially those on getting started and on posting good questions, including the helpful references found at the bottom of its web page.