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

justinspeer · 2021-06-18T11:18:50.000Z

The implementation of this move to cloud is awful. I understand not having a desktop app but removing the mobile app is horrible. I use my mobile browser for tons of things throughout the day. Now I’m paging between tabs looking for the helpdesk instead of tapping the icon that was on the first page of apps on my last phone. Often, I just ignore the helpdesk completely until I’m at my laptop again.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-18T11:28:33.000Z

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!).

leobourg · 2021-06-18T11:29:13.000Z

Forgot to add the loss of the Mobile App as another huge negative for my group. We all use this a lot.

joesyuh · 2021-06-18T11:33:22.000Z

Just wanted to add my agreement that no HIPAA compliance means we can not use your Cloud Help Desk. I am not making a choice, you made the choice for me. It really is unfortunate as we have been using it for quite some time and it is the bedrock of our Help Desk. I understand budget constraints, but why focus on Cloud when you have a large customer base with on premise? I am sure on premise users would be happy to pay a nominal fee to continue using it. It sure seems like you are signing your own death warrant.

ZebraMike · 2021-06-18T11:33:24.000Z

Yes, use the mobile app a lot, great for talking my notes on my Android.
This just keeps getting worse.

Sean-Spiceworks · 2021-06-18T11:37:55.000Z

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 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 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.

www-olf · 2021-06-18T11:40:20.000Z

It seems like almost all of the focus from Spiceworks here has been on the Help Desk aspect of the Desktop application but it does so much more than that. For us, the Inventory component it the most important. From what I have seen, the cloud solution is greatly lacking in this regard and even if it wasn’t, our policy would not allow us to move this information to the cloud. Unfortunately, HDS would not help us with our inventory requirements either and the threat of it also being depreciated soon after is a non-starter for us.

I do hope that none of the great team members here at Spiceworks take any of our frustrations personally. We are just sad to see Spiceworks on the verge of loosing “a significant user base” with those of us unable to migrate to the cloud for various reasons.

I fully understand that some things, such as other vendors making changes to their products that affect yours, are completely out of your hands but this is the nature of technology. When a vendor makes a change that affects your process, you have two choices; find a way to make the changes work with your system or move on. Sadly, the decision to not patch the Desktop app, despite the obviously large % of your users who rely on it, means many of us will be forced to move on.

I am not mad and I don’t blame anyone for this. I am just really sad at the loss of such a great product. I do wish everyone here the best of luck and I hope to see you around in this great community we have built here.

ZebraMike · 2021-06-18T11:40:45.000Z

Well, with that kind of business management it could be assured that spice works will just die. Why don’t you listen to the people in this thread why don’t you move your direction towards developing the desktop spiceworks system and making it secure and make it work. Why don’t you make it so that it makes you money so that your bosses will keep it in play.

ZebraMike · 2021-06-18T11:43:35.000Z

Another plus 1 for OSTicket: http://osticketapp.com/. A mobile app.

zspeakman · 2021-06-18T11:47:15.000Z

Unfortunately, things we have no control over are changing

Such as?

kfberns · 2021-06-18T11:49:24.000Z

I can’t help but feeling betrayed here - very disappointed. Gues I’ll find something else.

ZebraMike · 2021-06-18T11:55:42.000Z

And as I turn off notifications for this post, I turn my back with sadness on SW. I feel betrayed. See ya!

spiceuser-c6yoy · 2021-06-18T12:01:17.000Z

Such bad news for such a great software! We are using SW Inventory and it´s been a great solution for us, time to start looking for alternatives. ;(

ZebraMike · 2021-06-18T12:04:32.000Z

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

tazking · 2021-06-18T12:32:01.000Z

ivanidea:

Sadly, the lack of HIPAA compliance in the cloud version is a great disappointment, just as we are setting up the on premise server helpdesk. Back to the drawing board.

I agree with this as well. Not like I don’t have anything else to do…lol

optimaximal · 2021-06-18T12:41:17.000Z

When looking around, I came across CMDBuild - https://www.cmdbuild.org - it’s a full ITIL Asset Management platform that leverages OCS Inventory to find devices & has a Service Desk to raise issues.

I’ve investigated OSTicket as a platform to use for our customer services - I guess moving from Spiceworks Helpdesk to that would be the solution.

davidhoover3 · 2021-06-18T12:50:41.000Z

Perhaps Lansweeper? The asset management is great, but I haven’t used the help desk functionality enough to help you there–and everyone uses it differently.

https://www.lansweeper.com/resources/webinars/lansweeper-helpdesk-webinar/

spiceuser-rzu1d · 2021-06-18T12:58:14.000Z

I’m looking at Manage Engine. It is a paid for service but looks like it ticks a lot of boxes. We have separate tabs on our Portal to enable us to split tickets into different service departments, but it looks like Manage Engine do similar plus have inventory, projects and much more.

For the few things I wished SW did better, the support and community that came with it was worth it and think that will reduce as everyone goes elsewhere.

nettechmike · 2021-06-18T13:13:14.000Z

I know that I’m late to this tread and that a lot of this has already been said, but I think the dev team does not fully comprehend how burdensome regulatory bodies are on cloud providers and their respective users. Big guys like ZenDesk have entire departments dedicated to compliance. Because the company will likely not expend the resources to become HIPPA, FedRAMP, and COPPA compliant, it is likely that the three largest contributors to this community and user base will evaporate. And with them goes the ad revenue. I don’t see regulations getting any lighter in the future so this will only become more of a problem. My state is passed a law that will require all schools to get signed privacy agreements with all their cloud providers. Banking faces the same hurdles.

That only leaves small private businesses and some small city governments. I will miss this community, but I doubt spiceworks as a company has the ability to absorb such a huge loss in revenue.

vesaroto · 2021-06-18T13:18:22.000Z

You are talking only about the cloud help desk. What about the cloud inventory? When will it be in usable state?