There is a lot of great open source software out there that can help make the life of any IT Administrator easier and I’ve written about several like a, b, c. However, there are a couple of applications that stand out for their features, their ease of use, and their cost.
Spiceworks IT Desktop is a free software application that combines several programs into one including network monitoring, network inventorying, Help Desk software, reporting, and troubleshooting. It’s a powerful tool that is designed for small to medium sized businesses.
Here are some of the major features and services that Spiceworks provides to network admins:
Network Inventory
The greatest thing about Spiceworks is that it can inventory all of your software and hardware in a short amount of time, no matter what you are running on your network.
It can discover Windows, Mac, Linux PCs, printers servers, routers, or any other device that has an IP address. It then captures detailed information about each device including patches, services running, OS versions, service tags #’s, MAC addresses, etc.
You can also use Spiceworks to inventory other assets such as furniture and mobile phones, etc.
You can also create custom reports to search for devices on your network, such as finding all HP printers or getting a list of computer with less than 512 MB RAM, etc.
Network Monitoring
We all know it’s nearly impossible for an IT Administrator to know what is happening with each and every computer on their network. Some people will copy tons of files to their computers and start running out of space! Others will install all kinds of junk apps that slow Windows down. That’s where Spiceworks can help you out.
You can create alerts to notify you when something is going wrong on your network. For example, you will see messages if a computer starts to run out of space or a printer is running out of ink or a server goes offline.
You can also setup Spiceworks so that you can always know when someone has installed an authorized piece of software or if someone’s anti-virus program is out of date. Another great thing about the program is that it can easily see the Event Logs of all computers, so if there are red X errors occurring on those machines, you will be able to see them from Spiceworks.
Help Desk Software
Getting a ton of requests from your users to fix this or repair that? Or maybe add a new feature to a software app and remove another? If you don’t have any kind of Help Desk software yet, then definitely check out Spiceworks. It has a full-featured Help Dek package that comes along with the networking inventory and network monitoring software.
You can create a ticket in one click if you are browsing your network in Spiceworks and find something that needs attention. All your users can create tickets via email or via the web along with attachments. They can view the ticket status online also.
In terms of managing tickets, you can assign tickets to anyone on your IT team or assign them to a particular hardware device. You can also use it to manage IT projects, such as software development or roll-outs, etc.
Finally you can run all kinds of reports on open tickets, tickets by assets, tickets by department, most common problems, etc.
IT Community
Finally, Spiceworks is currently being used by over 400,000 IT professionals and they there in a bit of social networking into the app, which is good considering how everything now these days is about connecting people.
You can go to the Community to get product rating and reviews on IT software from other IT pros in the community. You can join various IT groups by location, interest, expertise, etc. There is also a large forum with tons of questions and answers from around the world.
You can also read and author wiki articles that will serve as a knowledgebase for everyone in the community. Got a Windows Server 2003 error and know how to fix it? Well write up an article and it may help someone in the future searching Spiceworks for that same problem.
Overall, Spiceworks is a fabulous tool for small to medium sized networks that have small budgets. Since it costs nothing and delivers big, it’ll make most admins very happy. I’ve used Spiceworks before at my previous company and I have to say that it really was everything we possibly needed for our 100 computer network.
You may also be interested in a program I wrote about previously called TCPView, a free program to monitor current TCP/UDP connections to your computer. Enjoy!
Spiceworks is the BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!