What’s going on with Spiceworks Tools & Apps in 2021?

waynegateman · 2021-06-18T15:27:37.000Z

This is a mistake - the Cloud will always be here, but it is NOT the answer for everything or everybody - with increasing attacks from outside sources and legal requirements to protect data and keep it in house, the companies I work with cannot move to the cloud.

I understand the decision to drop some products, but as noted when you put out an incomplete HDS, i.e. no inventory, etc… of course you don’t get adoption. It really is a shame, because the product you had was great for closed room environments and protected environments, now we have to move elsewhere.

My only real complaint is you state you would provide some choices for those who need to move on, then you punt it to the community, I don’t like being dumped to the curb with no thought for the impact you are creating, i.e. some tested suggestions from Spice work directly to help give us direction would have been a nicer way of helping us.

Now, I guess I need to figure out how to delete my spice works account since the products are DOA / EOL.

randallader · 2021-06-18T15:58:39.000Z

ZebraMike:

Anybody use Lansweeper ? At a buck a year per asset, could be cost effective?

This is the solution I settled on. Great inventory scanning modules. Ppretty good help desk, if a bit obtuse. Lacks any purchasing module though, so all invoices are scanned and attached to the PC, Switch, Router, etc. purchased. Not the best solution, but beats having to search paper folders for the warranty return.

darren-k-smith · 2021-06-18T16:04:04.000Z

I am very disappointed with the response to the On-Premise HDS solution. I spent several weeks learning the new system, configuring Exchange, Active Directory, figuring solutions to creating new reports from PostgreSQL, backup scripts, and other work a rounds for issues that were going to be corrected or developed later. I have even been developing a solution so I could migrate all my tickets not just a few that the Export process chooses.

And now we get this response that you do not know if you are going to support On-Premise HDS. I thought On-Premise HDS was made from the Cloud Help Desk code base.

Suzanne-Spiceworks · 2021-06-18T16:34:10.000Z

Darren K. Smith:

I am very disappointed with the response to the On-Premise HDS solution. I spent several weeks learning the new system, configuring Exchange, Active Directory, figuring solutions to creating new reports from PostgreSQL, backup scripts, and other work a rounds for issues that were going to be corrected or developed later. I have even been developing a solution so I could migrate all my tickets not just a few that the Export process chooses.

And now we get this response that you do not know if you are going to support On-Premise HDS. I thought On-Premise HDS was made from the Cloud Help Desk code base.

Hi Darren,

I can understand your disappointment. It probably doesn’t help, but a lot of people that have invested time into it on our side are also disappointed. We would like to improve it and have it remain a viable option, but unfortunately the answer for now is wait and see.

If we are able to move forward with it, then yes, I believe you are correct in that the code base is the same, so I anticipate that any features we develop for CHD will be able to be moved over to the HDS as well. We just can’t promise anything at this time.

Suzanne

mikeramramsey · 2021-06-19T10:39:41.000Z

Probably that CHD has been around for a relatively Very Long Time in regards to technology solutions, that features still seem to be so lacking, that is a serious disappointment. So to just say “Sorry” is a very underwhelming response to the issue at hand. It’s not hard to know, nor have known for a long while, the feature disparity.

I’m curious what the technical change in email delivery actually is, considering it’s been pinned in the press release to be a Google and MS issue.

I surely do not envy you guys fielding the challenges of delivering this messaging.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-19T13:10:41.000Z

Hi Mike, it’s a combination of things. The legacy Desktop solution has not been developed on since early 2018 (and honestly, I’m fairly sure that development was done in 2017 and released in 2018). In addition to that, the team at that time decided to deprecate the legacy Desktop officially (also in 2018):

State of Desktop app v8.0 Spiceworks

Hi everyone, we've been working hard on our Inventory products, but have not provided a recent update on the status of the Inventory 8.0 beta or the general future of the Desktop app (Help Desk and Inventory). Below are details around where both are headed, and how it ties into what we're working on for Help Desk and Inventory products. Inventory 8.0 beta The 2017 beta releases of Inventory 8.0 made it apparent that application performance would be a challenge for both Inventory and Help De…

Last year, members pointed out about the issues with the basic authentication that legacy Desktop uses:

O365 Basic Auth after October 2020? Spiceworks Support

We are currently using the desktop app of Spiceworks but right now it doesn’t seem to support any modern auth for Office 365 and it sounds like this desktop app is no longer being developed or supported any more in favor of the Cloud and OVA versions of the helpdesk which I really don’t want to migrate to at this time. Is there any way around the upcoming issue on October 13, 2020 where they will stop allowing basic authentications to pass to Office 365?

Which resulted in this announcement:

https://community.spiceworks.com/blogs/products/3272-spiceworks-help-desk-products-timeline-on-email-service-compatibility-changes

And here are the references from the first post:

TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM

Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – April 2020 Update

Last year we announced changes to make Exchange Online more secure, and earlier this year we provided some updates on progress. We have another update.

Google Workspace Updates

Less secure app turn-off suspended until further notice

UPDATE: September 29, 2023: We're ready to move forward with this change — please refer to this announcement for the latest timeline and ...

These updates will end up making the legacy Desktop unusable for many users as they use Microsoft and Google authentication. Knowing these were coming closer and closer (the original dates were pushed back but it could be early next year), we felt it was our responsibility to ensure that users were aware of this. Add to that, there has been no development on legacy Desktop in over 3 years (and, to be clear, the team at that time deprecated it because they felt they had to do a complete rewrite, hence first attempting 8.0 and then abandoning that and moving towards the common codebase approach), we wanted to point this out so that users were not finding out about this the hard way (aka, when either Microsoft or Google fully remove basic authentication).

Does that help some?

nachomartin · 2021-06-21T08:37:35.000Z

Sadly the lack of advances in HDS development seem to have anticipated this announcement. We will continue to use legacy 7.5 for now but it seems that we’ll have to anticipate the switch to a fresh installation of Zammad that we have ready to take over…

mad-spicehead · 2021-06-21T11:09:05.000Z

I’ve read the hundred plus posts in this topic and this shows how happy most of us were with the 7.5 Legacy Spiceworks product. There is no perfect solution out there as even 7.5 wasn’t the most perfect product - sometimes sluggish, sometimes quirky - but it worked. The product was exceptional at handling most crucial things that IT staff would need: Tickets, Inventory and Purchases. - Plus it’s free!

As Shawn has said, beyond December 31, 2021 there is no more support and the product may work but it may not. Us IT Pros need to prepare for this by having a product available to replace Spiceworks or switch to Cloud if feasible. If you’re an IT guy like me that tries to force/manipulate old products to work I will do what I can to make it work until the end. I’ve also tested/planned other web based email systems (other than Google or Microsoft) to take over if the changes they make will cause the email in Spiceworks to fail.

I’ll try to run Spiceworks 7.5xxx to the ground - it was a good product and it still is!

spiceuser-q4r7p · 2021-06-21T12:08:41.000Z

I’m in the same boat as you. It says right under the Desktop app paragraph that HDS as well will be “discontinued support” and re-evaluated at the end of the year.

It’s a shame because I took over as Network/Sys Admin a few months ago and I just got Help Desk Server tweaked amazingly for our environment.

Spiceworks, please consider moving HDS to open source rather than just abandoning it.

8ec3abc6-52fc-4938-a82a-a24adb2d4cf0-spiceworks.png800×366 128 KB

mikeylikesitalot · 2021-06-21T12:34:22.000Z

Hello ALL, why? Management here wants an on-prem solution! And I have integration with ManageEngine working as well. Can we at least vote on this? Or do we wait until a future date when everyone learns that the cloud holding SpiceWorks got hacked and then what? This is a bad idea in my opinion and given the current climate where everyone is looking for indications of compromise (at best) I really think this is a bad idea especially for those that have NISTSP800-171 and or CMMC compliance to deal with. I wish you would change your minds, and what security updates are you implementing in the cloud that do not apply to on-premise.

I VOTE NO!, keep On-Premise

spiceuser-59f8w · 2021-06-21T12:39:55.000Z

Hi,
We are at a major university on going to the cloud is not an option. We have an on prem installation. My question is, how can I be sure that I am using local logins for the Admin? I remember having to create a SW account to be able to login as admin, but want to make sure that won’t break my installation when support is ceased.
The login page is … http://“mydomain”.edu/pro_users/login .
Can you assist with this information.
Thanks
-Sean J
sj@ufl.edu

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-21T12:57:17.000Z

Sean Johnson-UF:

Hi,
We are at a major university on going to the cloud is not an option. We have an on prem installation. My question is, how can I be sure that I am using local logins for the Admin? I remember having to create a SW account to be able to login as admin, but want to make sure that won’t break my installation when support is ceased.
The login page is … http://“mydomain”.edu/pro_users/login .
Can you assist with this information.
Thanks
-Sean J
sj@ufl.edu

Hi Sean (great name, btw!), I tried to cover that here: What’s going on with Spiceworks Tools & Apps in 2021?

Sean (Spiceworks):

At the end of this year, we will be EOL’ing the legacy Desktop. We would not announce this if we were not firm in that decision. Ultimately, you have to take that information and do what is best for your organization. You can take the chance that it will continue to work for years to come, or you can use the time and weigh your options.

As for the questions about what EOL actually means, it means we will not be making it available for download or supporting it. I know members that have (and some currently) used legacy Desktop completely disconnected from the internet (and us). My recommendation would be testing that yourself; temporarily disconnect the application from your network and attempting logging in and out.

For the most part, I’d just make sure the box you’re running it on doesn’t have internet access and attempt a few things such as logging in, adding a new admin or tech, etc.

elinflashman · 2021-06-21T12:57:46.000Z

So you deprecate the Desktop version we use for Inventory that is running on our Windows 2019 servers, ask use to move to the cloud version but when I try to install the local scanners, they fail. When I looked further they only install on Server 2009/2012? Had to go back on the desktop even though I was willing to try the cloud solution.

Any update when the installers will be updated to work on current server operating systems?

spiceuser-59f8w · 2021-06-21T13:09:21.000Z

@sean-spiceworks
I logged into the server and disable the nic. I was then able to login to SW on that \pro_users\Login page using my email address.

So, it appears I am totally running local.

Thanks for the information. Time to verify backups to try and keep this thing running as along as possible.

-Sean J

leobourg · 2021-06-21T14:36:22.000Z

Continuing to echo the sentiments of everyone here. We have been running On-Prem for many years now and are currently over 71,000 tickets, over 750 devices in Inventory & process about 100 purchase items per month using this setup. I also have the User Portal setup, Manage Engine Desktop Central integrated & Office 365 integrated. All of that with very little problems. I have read all the reasons why you CAN’T but it seems to me that no one wants to make any effort as to how you CAN make it work.

“Why not continue to support what isn’t Broken”

It works great as is and I haven’t found a viable solution that can do all what 7.5 does as well as it does. I too wish y’all would reconsider your thinking and support what works well.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-21T14:50:50.000Z

Hi all, I know this thread is getting fairly long and many will not read the entire thing (understandable), so I wanted to compile some of my responses here and I’ll link to them on the original post in case anything here helps.

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote at Jun 17, 2021 at 4:12 PM CT :

Hi all, as you might imagine, this was not an easy decision that we came to. The reality is, though, that the legacy Desktop has not had a real update since Feb 2018, over three (3) years ago. Back then, the decision was made to instead build Spiceworks 8.0 but that failed to perform the way the team wanted. Soon after, that is where the common codebase version came out based on CHD and eventually HDS was created. We haven’t made any real changes to the legacy Desktop since then and it was announced later in 2018 that it would not be further developed. That hasn’t changed and people have been using it for years since then.

What has changed is that there are updates coming that, sooner or later, may make the legacy Desktop no longer work. We felt that it was both our responsibility and the right thing to do to ensure our members are aware of this. I feel like we can all agree that finding out that legacy Desktop no longer works without advance notice would be much worse. We wanted to ensure all of you knew this and had time to evaluate your options.

But, to be clear, we stopped development on legacy Desktop years ago. It could continue to work for you for years… but it could also easily stop working for you next year when updates by others such as Microsoft and Google roll out.

At the end of this year, we will be EOL’ing the legacy Desktop. We would not announce this if we were not firm in that decision. Ultimately, you have to take that information and do what is best for your organization. You can take the chance that it will continue to work for years to come, or you can use the time and weigh your options.

As for the questions about what EOL actually means, it means we will not be making it available for download or supporting it. I know members that have (and some currently) used legacy Desktop completely disconnected from the internet (and us). My recommendation would be testing that yourself; temporarily disconnect the application from your network and attempting logging in and out.

For those of you who will be evaluating migrating to another help desk system, I work with our development teams and I believe, for those of you who can use a cloud service, that the Cloud Help Desk is a good alternative now and will only get better. We’re currently working on our update to rewrite the Desktop Ticket View and looking at the major pain points and feature requests that members have.

There is an FAQ and an Importing Existing Tickets guide you may find useful:

https://community.spiceworks.com/support/help-desk-cloud-edition/docs#faq

https://community.spiceworks.com/support/help-desk-cloud-edition/docs/import-tickets

But that may not be an option for everyone or the option you’d choose. The upside is Spiceworks is more than just our Tools & Applications. We have great tech brands in here with quality help desk and ticket systems as well. And we have a huge Community of experts who can give you recommendations on what might work best for you and your situation.

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote Jun 18, 2021 at 8:28 AM CT :

josh_marchant:

Sean (Spiceworks):

Tick550:

We are hanging in and blocking cloud access because of the need for the checklist functionality.

To be clear, you’re talking about being able to reuse a checklist, correct? CHD currently supports checklists, they are just unique per ticket.

Strangely enough, I was going to migrate to the cloud version recently but backtracked due to not being able to re-use checklists. We rely on that functionality pretty heavily so I hope that it is added to the cloud version soon.

It is actually one of the things on the list for the Desktop Ticket View rewrite that we hope to get to (not promising it, to be clear!).

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote Jun 18, 2021 at 8:37 AM CT :

ZebraMike:

And I’d forgotten that’s Ziff Davis had acquired spiceworks, when that happened in 2019 I knew that there would be changes that would not be favorable for SW. Now it’s coming to fruit; thank you f****** Ziff Davis. For messing up another good thing.

To be clear, this was a decision made and announced in 2018, before the acquisition:

State of Desktop app v8.0

I give more context in my earlier response: What’s going on with Spiceworks Tools & Apps in 2021? but the TL;DR is we’re making sure people are aware of this as we’re aware of issues we feel may end up making the legacy Desktop unusable from other software developers. Again, while I can understand people being upset, I firmly believe it was better for us to remind everyone of the fact that legacy Desktop has been EOD’d for 3 years now and that changes are coming that may make it unusable in certain situations before that actually happens.

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote Jun 19, 2021 at 10:10 AM CT :

Hi Mike, it’s a combination of things. The legacy Desktop solution has not been developed on since early 2018 (and honestly, I’m fairly sure that development was done in 2017 and released in 2018). In addition to that, the team at that time decided to deprecate the legacy Desktop officially (also in 2018):

State of Desktop app v8.0

Last year, members pointed out about the issues with the basic authentication that legacy Desktop uses:

O365 Basic Auth after October 2020?

Which resulted in this announcement:

https://community.spiceworks.com/blogs/products/3272-spiceworks-help-desk-products-timeline-on-email-service-compatibility-changes

And here are the references from the first post:

Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – April 2020 Update - Microsoft Community Hub

Google Workspace Updates: Less secure app turn-off suspended until further notice

These updates will end up making the legacy Desktop unusable for many users as they use Microsoft and Google authentication. Knowing these were coming closer and closer (the original dates were pushed back but it could be early next year), we felt it was our responsibility to ensure that users were aware of this. Add to that, there has been no development on legacy Desktop in over 3 years (and, to be clear, the team at that time deprecated it because they felt they had to do a complete rewrite, hence first attempting 8.0 and then abandoning that and moving towards the common codebase approach), we wanted to point this out so that users were not finding out about this the hard way (aka, when either Microsoft or Google fully remove basic authentication).

Does that help some?

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote Jun 21, 2021 at 9:57 AM CT :

Sean Johnson-UF:

Hi,
We are at a major university on going to the cloud is not an option. We have an on prem installation. My question is, how can I be sure that I am using local logins for the Admin? I remember having to create a SW account to be able to login as admin, but want to make sure that won’t break my installation when support is ceased.
The login page is … http://“mydomain”.edu/pro_users/login .
Can you assist with this information.
Thanks
-Sean J
sj@ufl.edu

Hi Sean (great name, btw!), I tried to cover that here: What’s going on with Spiceworks Tools & Apps in 2021?

Sean (Spiceworks):

At the end of this year, we will be EOL’ing the legacy Desktop. We would not announce this if we were not firm in that decision. Ultimately, you have to take that information and do what is best for your organization. You can take the chance that it will continue to work for years to come, or you can use the time and weigh your options.

As for the questions about what EOL actually means, it means we will not be making it available for download or supporting it. I know members that have (and some currently) used legacy Desktop completely disconnected from the internet (and us). My recommendation would be testing that yourself; temporarily disconnect the application from your network and attempting logging in and out.

For the most part, I’d just make sure the box you’re running it on doesn’t have internet access and attempt a few things such as logging in, adding a new admin or tech, etc.

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote at Jun 21, 2021 at 1:06 PM CT :

Hi all, as you might imagine, we’re still getting a variety of questions as to what is meant by End of Life. To be clear, basic functionality will continue working as-is through the end of the year 2021. We remain committed to addressing any issues that arise before then, as we have been doing to date. After that time, the legacy Desktop application is no longer supported, which means things like new app install registration, admin user registration and authentication, help desk email inbound/outbound, Community-connected functionality like the knowledge base and plugin installation/sharing, Inventory warranty scanning, etc. will either stop working or degrade. You cannot safely rely on the app to continue functioning normally after December.

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote at Jun 23, 2021 at 9:14 AM CT :

kfberns:

You just have to wonder about all the data available to SpiceWorks Helpdesk while in the cloud. I’ll bet, hidden in the small print of the ULA, is something like - we get to use your helpdesk tickets to build a database of problems and their solutions. Then we are going to profit from that info by selling it back to “yall”

Always a concern, especially for a community of IT pros. For those of you wanting more info on this, we do have these in our Security Center:

https://community.spiceworks.com/support/security-center/security-details

https://community.spiceworks.com/support/security-center/data-collection

Sean (Spiceworks) wrote at Jun 24, 2021 at 3:55 PM CT :

Corey7373:

Given the current threat landscape, and with the information currently given, it makes no sense a platform would depricate a robust proven system, literally loved by millions, in favor of a cloud-based system in its infancy that, by their own admission, or lack of compliance assurance, state as insecure. Unlike many others on this post, we are not subject to any of the compliance measures, but we are subject to critical thinking and not-so-common sense, which dictates staying as far away from cloud based platforms who will not guarantee their security as possible. They have stated the decision was made in 2018 possibly 2017 but unless I am missing some details here they have not stated Why the decision was made. THAT is the key piece of information I would like to understand and I feel if a company creates a platform millions depend on, and then decides to kill it, an explanation would be in order.

Hi Corey, I apologize. I actually thought I had this in the original post but I do not. I’m going to link to here: https://community.spiceworks.com/product-plans#eod

In the EOD area, you’ll find a link to this discussion by Francois that goes into why:

State of Desktop app v8.0

I hope that helps.

mikeylikesitalot · 2021-06-21T14:53:26.000Z

Disappointment can only occur when expectations are not met, your missing the opportunities for ALL of THEM (like me) to HELP you.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-21T16:06:55.000Z

Hi all, as you might imagine, we’re still getting a variety of questions as to what is meant by End of Life. To be clear, basic functionality will continue working as-is through the end of the year 2021. We remain committed to addressing any issues that arise before then, as we have been doing to date. After that time, the legacy Desktop application is no longer supported, which means things like new app install registration, admin user registration and authentication, help desk email inbound/outbound, Community-connected functionality like the knowledge base and plugin installation/sharing, Inventory warranty scanning, etc. will either stop working or degrade. You cannot safely rely on the app to continue functioning normally after December.

kencarter · 2021-06-21T19:06:08.000Z

My shop is going to miss Spiceworks.

citroeniste · 2021-06-22T09:01:04.000Z

we just started using HDS to evaluate it as Cloud only is not an option - (we get contracts from military, us gov, DOD, etc.)
our old 7.5 version almost at 50K tickets…

Without inventory, helpdesk homed with spiceworks community there really is no need to visit Sspiceworks forums ever again - time to say goodbye I guess.