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I am exploring Spice Works to support about 10 companies, with around 150 employees total. I like the free solution by SW to monitor the equipment and related, and I really like the remote office sctructure you can setup with it to use a single console to see everything.

My final hold up is in deciding whether to use the built-in Help Desk or go with another solution like Zen Desk, Smarter Track, Kayako, etc. I am exploring all of them and they have impressive feautures, but is the SW help desk just as good and robust and feauture rich? What do you NOT like about it?

10 Spice ups
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I don’t use the help desk feature because we are too small to use it. We only have about 15 people.

if you have any ideas for improving spiceworks add a feature request .

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Panda (was w bold) wrote:

I don’t use the help desk feature because we are too small to use it. We only have about 15 people.

if you have any ideas for improving spiceworks add a feature request .

Opposite for us, we are too big and need deep integration with AD, SharePoint and MS CRM. We run a very customized desk now. We did use SW in the past and it was great. But with 40+ helpdesk techs supporting hundreds of customers we needed a lot of flexibility, integration, security and speed.

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No single sign-on. Sharepoint integration would be nice.

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We don’t either, we have about 150 people, but we think it’s too impersonal. We have a culture here that we try to keep, and if we have a chance to walk to someone’s desk then we do. That and people here just won’t use it. We have a helpdesk email address/distribution list, and no ever emails it. Just like we have a helpdesk extension, but no one calls that either, they just email me or my boss directly. So, we can’t see implementing it if no one wants to use it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with SW helpdesk, the concept just doesn’t work here.

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Well, I guess the question back to you would be, what other features of spiceworks will you use?

If you are only looking at it for just help desk tickets, there are a number of other more robust tools out there. But if you will be using the inventorying, asset management, purchasing modules, why would you not want to use a fully integrated tool. Especially when you can link users, to devices, to tickets, to purchases in one tool. Yes it has a few short comings, but it is still growing, and look at what you payed for it. IMO it is a great tool at any price. (end of shameless plug for spiceworks).

What I don’t like about spiceworks… When a users calls our helpdesk we ask for their user id first. It would be great if there was a quick way to enter their user id and find out everything about them, user info (call back tx number), workstation, past tickets, open tickets, etc. You can get there in spiceworks, just not quickly.

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We have just recently started using it. We’re a small company supporting 80ish users and I was also of the opinion it was too impersonal. However, I’ve found it is a VERY useful tool for keeping track of issues and projects I have going on. As I get somewhere with a particular issue, I update the ticket and I know then exactly where Im upto. I frequently get called off to fix something when I’m in the middle of some system upgrade, or website change, so I quickly update the ticket and I can pick it up again quite easily. This is probably most useful to me as I have a rubbish memory, but it creates a bit of a journal of what yo udo throughout the day.

Also, as there are 2 of us on helpsdesk, we can see where eachother have got to with a ticket. I’ve had a couple of users ask me about it since we implemented it and they were impressed!

I’m convinced I made the right decision to start using it.

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Spiceworks helpdesk features are best. If you have any query send it to http://community.spiceworks.com/feature_request

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Ours is currently functional, but it rarely gets used. The reason? Users. I have attempted to get everyone on board twice and it’s failed miserably. I can’t get anyone to email the help desk address and any time they’ve actually made it to the help portal they’ve called to ask what their username/password is. I normally manually setup the tickets so I’ll have some documentation to refer back to should the same issues arise at a later date.

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bumping this back up. anyone have any input on spiceworks help desk feature vs. kayako? we’re looking into a helpdesk that integrates with a KB as well. i love the way kayako looks for the end user, but we haven’t used either. we’re using perldesk right now, and it’s ugly and isn’t the best solution for us.