1

Hello all,

I come to everyone here since I believe everyone is/has using spiceworks/setup for initial use at some point.

I just started with a new company about a month ago. At my previous company we used to use, to my knowledge, an internal IP address that all users could connect, (as long as they’re connected on our domain?) This is the extent of what I know on how it was setup previously at my old job.

How spiceworks is currently setup (at my present employer) is the user sends an email with a keyword in it like “MS office activation” or “placeholder software name here” and it gets forwarded to our email address. but we end up seeing every ticket that comes in regardless of who its assigned to.

I have said I would go through and setup an internal spiceworks help desk for our users, let them create accounts, show them how to log in, and track their tickets. I feel like this will be beneficial to us as an IT team as well as to help create transparency and ETA for ticket resolution which are all benefits. To me I see it as, do it now or do it later, either way it will have to be done at some point. I’m not sure there are much analytics tied into Spiceworks but I know you are able to export data that can be used i.e: tickets associated by category to help us as IT diagnose what are our most common issues, issues that end up not being resolved, etc.

My question to you guys is this:

Is there anything you feel noteworthy to share from your experience setting up spiceworks for your company?

This community is huge and maybe I missed a document that quickly covers all my concerns, if this exists, please point me in the right direction. Any and all advice/stories/experiences(good and bad) are appreciated. I’m almost half way through my trial / 3 month probation period. I see this as my best and biggest project/opportunity to impress my coworkers on the IT team as well as offer something beneficial to the company as a whole. oh yeah, and ensure they hire me after this period too =]

3 Spice ups
2

You say 100+ employees and this company is huge.

This company is tiny if that is all the users they have.

Set up the SW helpdesk and have a selected group of people trial it, techs, users and higher ups.

Also consider using the cloud version, also free and manageable on-the go without a server.

3

I didn’t say the company was huge, I said the community here on spiceworks is huge. At my previous company we did deployment/how to tutorials by department as a “betaish” way to try it out and get users response to the new ticketing system and how they like/use it. At my current company, they already use spiceworks but send in emails instead of using the portal. I attempt to remedy some minor improvements by setting our system to categorize and assign tickets correctly etc etc.

4

Ah so you did, I speed read the post and words just jumped out at me. Apologies.

5

Both options will work, email or portal as you know, the portal however gives you control on what you want from your users and how much information they must provide, as well as giving the ability to use ticket rules behind the scenes to automatically assign this to a tech based on category, user, location etc.

Perhaps show management this side of things on a demo setup on your own machine or a VM somewhere so they can see it work vs explaining it.

6

Thanks for the advice Rod

7

I’m a little lost here. From what I read above, you’re saying Spiceworks is already deployed at your current job, but only e-mail submission of tickets is enabled. But then it looks like you are saying you feel like re-implementing. Here’s what I suggest:

  • If you really want to do it, setup the portal like Rod has mentioned and allow users to utilize it as another way to submit tickets.
  • You say you see every ticket regardless of who it is assigned to. Unless you have ticket rules setup to assign the tickets as they come in, the tickets will not be assigned to anyone when they come into the help desk. Furthermore, if your user account within the Spiceworks application is configured to receive ticket notifications, you are experiencing the expected behavior. Could you not have a member of the team act as the dispatcher and assign the ticket to the proper resource based on the type of ticket that comes in?

Maybe I am missing some additional information you have not stated, but I cannot see how re-implementing from scratch will solve your current problems. Take what you have, and try to make it work for you. That way you can retain ticket history.