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I am a Technology Director at Mineral Wells ISD in Mineral Wells TX. I am looking to implement Spiceworks in our schools. I am needing input from schools who are already using this as a proof of effectiveness. I am asking technology staff at school districts to help me out and contact me with their opinion of how effective spiceworks has been in your schools. I will gladly hear from any school but specifically in Texas.

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There are several people in Education on here.

The question is:

What are you looking at it FOR?

Helpdesk? Inventory? Time-tracking? Let us know what you need…

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I am looking at using inventory, help desk and purchasing.

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I work and have implemented Spiceworks in our school district at Kemp ISD. It works great for us. It is improvement over what we were using before. Are there any specific question you have regarding inventory, helpdesk or purchasing.

Currently we only utilize the inventory and helpdesk features. We do not use the purchasing part simply because of the silly bid lists that school tend to have to go through. Our tech director still prefers to go through prior contacts.

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Thanks Robj1984,

I was wondering what likes and dislikes are. Are there any issues you have with spiceworks that you don’t like? Are there any features that you use that might not work the way you would like for it to? Are there any staff member who complain about it’s use for issuing ticket requests?

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I deployed and used SpiceWorks for a private college. I used it Since version 1.7; now using 7. We used it for staff, faculty, and student issues and to managed every single electronic device you can think of. We used it for everything it that does and nothing compares, even if you find individual solutions for each function. With it we detected issues before they become issues.

Like the video in the link says 1 in 3 IT pros use SpiceWorks. About Spiceworks: The IT Marketplace

You get thousands of dollars worth of software for free.

We can tell you how awesome it is, but to know for yourself all you need is a PC to install it and tested. It takes like 20 minutes.

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I use it at my school site for inventory. I have set up groups by classroom numbers. I have set up groups for our printers. One group is for all our network printers and another for all printers connected thru usb. In the notes section, I input the toner used for a printer and then create a report listing all the printers in my site and the toner it uses. Also, I can go into a classroom and see all that has changed in that particular classroom and any alerts or what software has been installed. I can see which computers are online and offline and see the status of the antivirus or any other information I might be interested in. I also have all the non-ip inventory like projectors, vcrs, tvs, audio equipment include in my inventory. I include the location of all these items in spiceworks and then I can do a search, say I input Room 357, it will list all the itmes I have under that classroom.All the computers, projectors, printers, etc etc.

I love the reports that I can create for my own use or when administration needs some information. For example, if administration asks for a report of all obsolete computer at the site. I can create the criteria for models that we consider obsolete and create the report from that. Or if we want to upgrade memory, we create a report of all computers with less than a certain amount of memory.

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Amen, Oscar3097.

First thing in the morning I check the alerts and a few reports and I start to create and assign tickets for things that would become issues if not resolved quickly.

I love being able to track toner levels from a simple report. It makes order a lot easier and I can send someone to replace the cartridges before they reach 1%.

Same thing for projector light bulbs. I can track the hours left on the bulbs and have someone replace them before they blow in the middle of a class.

Also, When employees depart off to another job, we give HR a list of all the equipment issued to them. HR then withholds their last check until the equipment is returned.

Before the college had SpiceWorks, their IT model was reacting to issues. After SpiceWorks the IT model change to Proactive actions to avoid issues.

Spiceworks increased our productivity and lower the stress factor of the job dramatically to the point that I no longer need caffeine to get through the day.

I know everything that happens in my environment and every item and user is accounted for.

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That’s really good to hear andres. Thanks.

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How are you able to track usage on projector bulbs? Do you have them connected to your network?

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Yes. We have them connected to the network,

We do not get the hours directly from spiceworks. When I go to our spiceworks projector group and click on a projector to access the link to the projectors web gui. We have 23 projectors so it takes about 15 minutes to check all the projectors. If I see one that is a few hours or is already past I can create the ticket from the device view in spiceworks.

For all the other equipment (printers, storage devices, PCs, laptops, etc…) you can just run a report or set up automatic alerts.

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What the largest number of devices people have Spiceworks managing? What type of hardware/software is Spiceworks installed on?

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I’d ask why not use it in education? It’s much easier to answer question, there isn’t a reason not to use it.

It’s free, it’s fairly simple to implement and use (unlike some other solutions like nagios etc), and has great training recourses and support.

The help desk is rock solid, the inventory system is very powerful and is essentially what you make of it and on what equipment you have, and there’s a host of other features that you may or may not find useful.

As with a lot of these things it will be as successful as you make and will depend greatly on your users and techs actually using it.

For me personally it did almost everything I wanted, the only thing I would of loved would of been disposed of option, due to the high turn around equipment, being able to click on an item and have it moved to an archived state for reference and then removed from the the scanning range would of been ideal for education.

But then what else does everything and is free.

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The SpiceWorks Download page has the system requirements. Spiceworks Inventory Software: Help & Support - Spiceworks

System Requirements

OS = Windows XP Pro SP2+, Vista, 7, 2003 Server SP1+, and 2008 Server

CPU = 1.5 GHz Pentium 4 class processor

RAM = 1.0 GB RAM

Browsers Supported: Firefox most recent version, Chrome most recent version, Internet Explorer 9.0+ (Chrome works best).

In regards to how many Devices it can track, the answer is "How many devices do you have? You can have a single spiceworks server or several depending on how many sites your institution has or how your network is designed.

At my last place of employment I was running Spiceworks on a Pentium 4 workstation managing over 500 devices and more than 1700 users, and it was fast. This is a small Spiceworks deployment.

Here is more info http://community.spiceworks.com/university/tutorials

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We have about 9000 devices and 13000 users. Right now we are running on a Core i5 - Windows 7-64bit machine with 4Gb RAM. It’s just slow. I was wondering if we were hitting some limit with the number of machines and users. I know it’s not a full SQL database (SQLite), so that might be an issue.

We may just have to move it off to a server class machine, but I was hoping to not have to do it.

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There are somethings you can do to speed up your Spiceword, but 9000 devices is huge,especially considering you are using a a run of the mill PC.

This how to should help speed things a little. http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/282-speeding-up-spiceworks

Also, your browser can make a big difference.

If you have your devices scatter across several VLANs and a few unused PCs, you can place spiceworks collectors on each Vlan feeding your central Spiceworks machine. This would reduce scan times and such.

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I use it in my district for all 3 … I use the helpdesk extensively. I use the inventory sporadically (still having some issues with unknowns) and tried the purchasing feature. There have been a few feature requests I’ve put in to enhance the app … like toner inventory… just waiting for it to gain traction.

It has made my life easier 100% as it’s just me and I have about 25 different job responsibilities… on top of being the network admin.

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You made a good point. Lots of pay for software do not take user suggestions, but spiceworks has the feature request process which is a major factor in Spiceworks improvement process.

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Greg,

It’s nice to see another fellow tech director from Texas. I use Spiceworks here at Hemphill ISD in Hemphill, TX and it has been a lifesaver. When I took over this position in July of 2012 their ticket reporting system was HORRIBLE. A teacher would have to fill out an excel file and then email it to technology and then technology would print it out and save all of them. I wasn’t about to start doing that. Now all teachers have to do is email their problem to our helpdesk email and it creates a ticket for them. I would suggest Spiceworks to anyone in education.

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Here’s the feature request that I believe everyone would benefit by… spice it up ppl!!! It’s for Toner management.

http://community.spiceworks.com/feature_request/show/Inventory/3155