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Currently I’m evaluating both SysAid, and Spiceworks to fill the role as our Ticket Tracking, and Asset Tracking system.

We are a recently formed Managed Service Provider. For those who do not know what a MSP is, we are kinda like “IT Outsourcing”. We provide IT Services to our customers. Anything from hosting servers for them, to bringing their current web and email onto their own hardware, to providing help desk support for every day problems. Our customers are all SMBs, with their own Active Directory Domains. Usually they are running, or choose to run Windows SBS for their needs.

From our point of view, we have the challenge of providing user friendly support to people from miles away, while keeping the experience as simple, and ‘idiot proof’ as possible. My ideal solution would be a help desk / asset tracking / remote administration system that supports multiple AD/LDAP Domains, and Agent based Remote Administration & Asset Auditing. I would want the end user to be able to access a web portal, authenticate using their local domain credentials, and create trouble tickets into a system that from MY point of view, would combine tickets from all companies into a single portal.

My question is, how capable is Spiceworks of providing this? I understand that it’s a tall order, and from what I can tell neither SysAid nor Spiceworks are capable of delivering this entire vision. However, I would like to hear from people who are much more familiar with your software package. Is this manageable? Is there a better way to do this that I’m missing? How can Spiceworks fill these needs, and where is it lacking?

I hope this isn’t asking too much, and I am truly appreciative of your assistance and time.

3 Spice ups
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My company does about the same as yours, and I have been utilizing Spiceworks for the last 3 years or so. This newest version, 4.0, will just about provide everything you need. Here are some keys that you may find most interesting:

  1. You can install Spiceworks on your client networks, and it will send the inventory back to your central installation, albeit unsecure.
  2. You can setup alerts to your Spiceworks techs (admins) based on that inventory for Windows Events, Disc Space, software installs, etc. You can also monitor licensing of software, and version control.
  3. You can customize the web portal, and set it up to be open to the outside world. You can secure through AD, but this is AD in your environment.
  4. Tickets can be created through web portal, email, or directly by your admins on the phone with users. You can CC users in the tickets now (new in this version) so you could have multiple people in on ticket. I even use this with outside vendors.
  5. You can give clients admin access if you like, or just reporting access so that they can get into the admin interface & run reports on their own items. I only have one client using it this way so far, and the way I do it is simplistic, so it’s not secured, but you could talk with Spiceworks support & see about that. I do think there is a way so that the client can only see their info.

For free, you can’t beat Spiceworks. And they keep adding new items all the time. I have used this software since version 1.6, and let me tell you, it is completely different now in 4.0. Wonderful product!

3

I have to agree with Jason, though it is still not there yet. I am a new user who joined couple of weeks ago. Here are few items I would like to see or that I experience problems with:

  1. An agent type solution to implement on remote laptops. This will solve RDP/VNC issues with behind firewall devices

  2. How to easily arrange the dashboard to show “sites” (clients) each with their own set of tabs, features, and items. I have yet to figure out how to do this

  3. Better security between remote sites and main Spiceworks server

If you guys know how to do it, if it all, please let me know.

Cheers.