IT's day to day nightmare!

Ok... what is every IT Infrastructure team’s day to day nightmare?

No... not that.... nope.. not close.....think McFly....

YES! Users! (If any users read this... please don't feel bad, it's just the way it is).

Every day no matter if it’s just a one man show (Alex?) or a multi-tier, multi-office IT shop..... the problem is the same.

How do you deal with user's request.

Well I have the answer (ok not "The" answer but "an" answer). It's called Helpdesk. Yes... a helpdesk. There are several ones out there but there is one that caught my attention in Jun of 2007. SpiceWorks. It’s a few words it’s a Network management software, helpdesk, PC Inventory tool and IT Reporting solution.

I use it manly as a helpdesk and since Jun ’07 and some 7,700 tickets later I can’t be any happier.

This tool gives my team an easy way to manage users requests. All users have to do is just send an email to helpdesk@mycompany.com and all the IT team gets an email with the request. Then you can view a nice web dashboard with all new tickets, my assigned tickets and all open tickets. From there is all downhill.

As a Manager I can run reports to see how many tickets each tech has, how long it takes them to close the tickets, what are the most comment categories of tickets (Printer, Phones, Mouse, etc)

But Spiceworks is more than a helpdesk. It can scan your network and make a complete inventory of PC, Servers, switches, Printers, almost anything with an IP. It has a bunch of tools that for each PC (running Windows) it will show CPU, RAM, I/O usage. If it’s a DELL you get service tag and therefore warranty. This is neat when you want to know out of your 200 PCs witch are close to renewal.

This is just a small snapshot of Spiceworks. Check it out. Oh… did I say it’s FREE?

If you decide to install, let me know… I can help with its install (NNNF) and configuration.

Here are a few screenshots

Have fun!

George.