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

russdyer3352 · 2021-06-23T16:16:18.000Z

The biggest thing holding me back is the loss of purchasing. Hopefully this is on the top of the list to come back.

rickfoster · 2021-06-23T17:46:21.000Z

The way I read https://community.spiceworks.com/support/security-center/data-collection

Spiceworks collects no ticket data from Desktop Help Desk 7.5 On-Prem.

Help Desk Server has a word salad that means they can collect what they want.

Cloud Help Desk explicitly states Spiceworks collects all your ticket data.

Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk can never be compliant with an alphabet soup of regulations because of this.

Decide for yourself if Help Desk Server complies with your relevant laws.

ralphsmith4 · 2021-06-24T13:41:54.000Z

For anyone not moving to CHD for HIPAA reasons, and considering the HDS option, this statement from the Spiceworks Security Center may be a concern

We may collect information from the Help Desk Server including the details related to tickets and ticket comments. The information collected is used to establish trends and produce insights to help you better understand and report on your own Help Desk team’s activity, and connect you with IT sellers that more closely match your needs.

ZebraMike · 2021-06-24T14:58:56.000Z

I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to evaluate exactly what services in the on-premises help desk will be affected by the change. If it’s just authentication then I suppose a person can fall back to more basic forms of authentication, and if it’s a matter of connectors going to ads on the help desk page then I don’t see that as much of a problem you might get a 404 error where an ad is supposed to be. But what else will stop the on-premises help desk from basic functionality after the termination of support at the end of this year?

corey-carmickle · 2021-06-24T18:46:16.000Z

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.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-24T18:55:50.000Z

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 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 Desk.…

I hope that helps.

scheff1 · 2021-06-24T19:00:40.000Z

ZebraMike:

But what else will stop the on-premises help desk from basic functionality after the termination of support at the end of this year?

I guess that was the intent of Seans invitation to provide feedback on such evaluations or operations to deploy that legacy Windows edition in a context isolated of Internet, and to start with login and logout. So far, I have not seen any feedback being published.

The announcement gets updated from time to time.

And the announcement made also reference to a previous post of expected changes in the implementation of Microsofts and Googles email infrastructure. So some Windows edition deployments may be effected by these changes too. It was one of the reasons for determining that EOL date for the Spiceworks Windows edition. And I don’t know to which extent user management is hosted on-premise or needs approval over the Internet. This is relevant for adding (or also removing ?) users. I would further expect a different time behaviour due to timeouts for inavailability of Internet (or Ziff-Davis/Spiceworks infrastructure). I have no idea to which extent such limitations may be influenced via configuration and how requirements on operational environment may change after reaching EOL for allowing continued operation. Definitely some email infrastructure will no longer be supported which is currently supported.

leobourg · 2021-06-25T11:15:15.000Z

The loss of the purchasing function is a major issue.

jacbrown · 2021-06-25T12:08:09.000Z

Hello everyone -

Like others here our organization will not be able to use the Cloud or OVA version. What are others who have to meet CJIS requirements looking at?

I also support a Healthcare organization - for those under HIPAA any top contenders?

While I understand the need for companies to evolve, having been a user of Spiceworks through both a HIPAA and CJIS compliant organizations - this is a significant loss to us.

leobourg · 2021-06-25T12:13:42.000Z

JacBrown-RCPD:

Hello everyone -

Like others here our organization will not be able to use the Cloud or OVA version. What are others who have to meet CJIS requirements looking at?

I also support a Healthcare organization - for those under HIPAA any top contenders?

While I understand the need for companies to evolve, having been a user of Spiceworks through both a HIPAA and CJIS compliant organizations - this is a significant loss to us.

You might want to give ManageEngine Service Desk Plus a look. They offer different versions of an On-Prem solution depending on your needs.

corey-carmickle · 2021-06-25T13:13:45.000Z

So if I read that correctly you were having some coding issues that don’t seem to effect the helpdesk part of Spiceworks i.e. network mapping (that with any type of larger network wasn’t very functional), MyWay??, Warranty info for HP and Dell (if you have a Purchasing dept. they most likely handle this), ATT/Alien Vault suspicious IP alerts (IMHO not what Spiceworks is about and if anyone is depending on this feature they are asking for trouble), and the RFQ feature (interesting but not HD related and I didn’t even know it existed). So again, it makes no sense with the information given, you would shut down a highly functional platform millions depend on because some peripherals get merced.

Sounds to me like your telemetry got hindered and instead of serving your loyal customers you decided to go to the cloud with a new EULA stating you can and will use all ticketing data with no guarantees of data integrity. It looks like this is a best of both worlds scenario? You operate with no fear of getting hacked and losing everyones data because there were no gaurantees and you may lose a large portion of your client base but you have total control of all data for those naive enough to move to CHD and continue to trust Spiceworks? Not wanting this to sound accusatory but given the current information I am not sure what else to think. I wish it was altruistic but it sounds like money motivation.

Not sure how you can operate like this in good conscience with the current threat landscape but like so often before we lose a good vendor we thought we could trust not because the platform failed but because management failed.

ncsc.gov.uk

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@sean-spiceworks

kenwagner4 · 2021-06-25T16:15:46.000Z

Hello Spiceworks!

I too would like to add my concern over cloud base and the security of installed agents that use to report to the on-prem software but now are reporting to the outside our network and the world. I just have in my head “SolarWinds”!

The server based, I am assuming this is your ESXi based or Linux based software. What if anything is missing from the server based compared to the desktop on-prem? Is there any chances the server base solution might continue with the 7.5 ending? Maybe more current users might move from one to the other as it gets closer to 7.5 ending?

Thank you anyway on a great product that has worked for many years!

Ken

thegr81337 · 2021-06-25T18:38:09.000Z

Suzanne (Spiceworks):

…

2–We do not.

We are going to decide at the end of the year about HDS… we really do not know yet. I believe the reason that we aren’t doing anything with it now is the low adoption rate. If that changes from people moving over from legacy, then we will continue to develop/support… but that just isn’t something we can predict right now.

I don’t know if this is mentioned or not (cause it’s Friday and I’m not going to go through all 7 pages), but I have to think that the low adoption rate of HDS has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of us were sitting on 7.5 waiting on HDS to get up to snuff…

I can just about guarantee that if v8 were continued and released, we’d all be on that waiting on HDS instead of using a EOD, soon to be EOL version. Maybe it happened and I missed it, but was the community ever given a poll or survey asking for our top needs or whether we’d prefer on-prem vs SaaS SW?

I know the unified code base versions are a work in progress. But why pull the plug on something that is exactly what people are looking for, and tell us our only option to stick with SW is a (currently) inferior product? Or in other words, our only option to stay with SW is to use a currently-in-development (See alpha or beta) solution.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-25T18:48:47.000Z

The_Gr8_1337:

Suzanne (Spiceworks):

…

2–We do not.

We are going to decide at the end of the year about HDS… we really do not know yet. I believe the reason that we aren’t doing anything with it now is the low adoption rate. If that changes from people moving over from legacy, then we will continue to develop/support… but that just isn’t something we can predict right now.

I don’t know if this is mentioned or not (cause it’s Friday and I’m not going to go through all 7 pages), but I have to think that the low adoption rate of HDS has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of us were sitting on 7.5 waiting on HDS to get up to snuff…

I can just about guarantee that if v8 were continued and released, we’d all be on that waiting on HDS instead of using a EOD, soon to be EOL version. Maybe it happened and I missed it, but was the community ever given a poll or survey asking for our top needs or whether we’d prefer on-prem vs SaaS SW?

I know the unified code base versions are a work in progress. But why pull the plug on something that is exactly what people are looking for, and tell us our only option to stick with SW is a (currently) inferior product? Or in other words, our only option to stay with SW is to use a currently-in-development (See alpha or beta) solution.

The reply I link to in the main post has more details, if you’re interested: What’s going on with Spiceworks Tools & Apps in 2021?

@thegr81337

matthewjachimstal5762 · 2021-06-28T14:43:37.000Z

I’ll add my voice to the chorus requesting that checklists (and checklist templates) be brought back in Cloud Hosted/Self Hosted going forward. We use checklists for creating/removing users. The Tasks feature just won’t cut it. We would have to individually create 20-plus tasks o a ticket every time we have an employee start or leave.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-28T16:13:25.000Z

EmptyJay:

I’ll add my voice to the chorus requesting that checklists (and checklist templates) be brought back in Cloud Hosted/Self Hosted going forward. We use checklists for creating/removing users. The Tasks feature just won’t cut it. We would have to individually create 20-plus tasks o a ticket every time we have an employee start or leave.

Hi EmptyJay, no promises (because I know better, heh), but this is one of the elements we’re looking at as we start to spec out the Desktop Ticket View rewrite. It’s one of the higher ones in our CHD Feature Requests: https://community.spiceworks.com/feature_request/category/21?filter=spicy and since we’re in there touching it, may make sense to update it then. We’re also looking at making Canned Responses a little better, too.

@matthewjachimstal5762

bazagee · 2021-06-29T18:34:43.000Z

I started using Spiceworks at version 1.1 That’s when the then Spiceworks CEO would regularly answer or chime in on Community posts. Our on-prem server has been n one of my everyday go to applications with an immense store of data over 14 years. Our company data doesn’t have to comply with any regulations. Our City owned ISP has been fickle but has matured into a mostly reliable link to the internet. The revenue model for all software vendors changed when Cloud storage and service increased and the ROI to move to cloud became palatable as bandwidth increased and companies wanted to lower their IT human resource bills. SaaS became a thing as did Big Data and the ability to monetize it. But the Cloud is becoming the new target and ever prone to human (or AI) mistakes… the difference now that those mistake affect 100’s if not 1,000’s of companies per ‘incident’.

“Oops, we run the wrong script” and 10’s if not 100’s of customer servers are now facing the public internet with default admin username and passwords. Its happened and will continue to happen, which is why I can never agree to expose our company data to the cloud. With Covid and downsizing I’m back to an office of one. I was really looking forward to deep diving again into Spiceworks to help my daily workload. It’s been a great run and I can’t thank the Spiceworks employees and all of of my fellow Spiceheads out there helping me every day it seems.

It’s funny I can’t really spare the time to read, now, 7 pages of comments with 98% expressing disbelief at this move. But I had to. I had to find out if I’m just this old IT guy the doesn’t trust the cloud. At least I’ll earn my possible final 10 points for posting.

Thanks for all the great years Spiceworks but I won’t be following you into the Cloud with our data. Winters coming…

bezoid · 2021-06-30T12:02:31.000Z

Major bummer! Does anyone know of any alternative helpdesk ticketing systems that can digest the data from the Spiceworks on-prem DB?

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Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-30T12:12:04.000Z

Bezoid:

Major bummer! Does anyone know of any alternative helpdesk ticketing systems that can digest the data from the Spiceworks on-prem DB?

I have not used it personally but this is a site I came across when doing some research on potential ways for CHD to pull in ticket data from other systems. To be clear, I am not endorsing them since I’ve never used them (and we have no relationship with them that I am aware of).

Help Desk Migration Service

Automated help desk data migration service.

Est. reading time: 1 minute

Has anyone used them and, if so, any feedback?

benoitt · 2021-06-30T12:34:08.000Z

We tested both Freshdesk and Zendesk.

Freshdesk left us wanting, but Zendesk looked awesome, until we saw the price. Thankfully they’re willing to work with us, because we’re a non-profit. The (Cadillac) salesman was very upfront with us, because our needs are very small (10 tickets/day, email only), and explained how/when we’d seriously consider using their product. They do have several tiers of services/features.

Both have a free trial; you should be able to upload a sample of your existing tickets, and setup a first-hand test of the functionality. I recommend planning this ahead of time (i.e. setting up your email system to forward a copy of incoming emails to both systems).