There’s a 15% non-profit discount, and the licensing cost is not prohibitive. It also does threaded email tracking very well, and includes a knowledge base and forum that are simple and make sense from the user and administration experiences. And it includes RSS feeds of several useful areas, along with very good reporting that has flexible filtering and drill-down features.

My main problem is…no asset tracking or inventory management are included. I agree that Ian Landsman, the HelpSpot creator, has some good points when I asked about this on his forums. And the response time (to my question along with the others listed, as well as to my trial setup request) shows me that support is excellent, which makes high quality, fast support a two-for-two find recently if you include MozyPro.

I will try Ian’s suggestion of using an asset tag with a custom field to at least track which systems are being referred to in a ticket, which could work. This could work well in conjunction with Spiceworks (also see posts here and here), which has a good (not perfect) inventory interface but a newly created helpdesk that’s not as poweful as HelpSpot.

I haven’t tried all the helpdesk options out by far. ManageEngine ServiceDesk is the one Jason and team is using at Granger Community Church now. I’ve installed the free version, and I’m impressed with the very large number of features. However, it’s a bit more complex than I’d like, especially given that I may have some non-IT department help with entering tickets soon. Like Ian said, in fact, it tries to do everything. And it’s more expensive than HelpSpot for the configuration we need (initially and recurring). Does anyone want to write (or find) an inventory/asset application that has an interface that’s simple like HelpSpot and integrates with the same? I can’t put my finger on what is keeping me from liking Spiceworks as much as I want to. The speed, perhaps? The unresolved errors in some cases? Probably a combination, plus there are some interface items that just feel “clunky” to me, as nice as it is.

So I’m narrowing down the helpdesk search, and still on the lookout for the inventory side. I’m not convinced in any particular direction yet, but I’m finding more and more acceptable choices. At least it’s progress.

Well, it’s probably a good time to get to bed. And get around to enjoying the start of a long weekend. And conclude what has now turned into a rant, or a ramble. Thanks for your indulgence. Comments welcome.

One thing I’d like to see is the physical tracking to go along with the network tracking. What network port (assuming managed switches that the software knows about and can talk to) is connected to what wall outlet (obviously this match has to be input manually)? What are the MAC addresses (and from that, the rest of the inventory information) of the attached device(s), or is the port even active? What physical office is a machine associated with, at least primarily? (Laptops may roam, but most laptop users have an office they’re usually in.) What user?

Tony also brings up searching and historical information. Searching is the key here I think; if I want to know (to use Tony’s example) how much memory Bob Jones has on his machine, I want to locate this information without having to first find Bob’s machine, look it up, and then find the specs. I want to search for “‘Bob Jones’ RAM” and have the system know that obviously I’m talking about his machine, not the person. That’s an easy context, but add enough “easy” things and maybe some harder ones, and the software becomes a lot more user-friendly.

Same goes for the historical information, being able to track a machine from one office to another, from one user to another, or even tracking when RAM was added to a particular system would be helpful! Or when Windows was reinstalled. or other software added or removed. Or how about a history of what network ports a machine has been plugged into?

When we get new equipment, how about a New Equipment Wizard that lets us add basic info (office assignment, user assignment, MAC address, serial number, date of purchase, name of person who initially configured it, maybe more) and then, once it’s on the network (assuming it’s a network device, I’d like this for printers and other equipment that IT uses but may not be on the network) the software would see its MAC address, notice we’d already added it, and tie in scan results with the manually entered data. Having this pre-deployment wizard would help make sure a routine was followed of recording all of this information rather than having it tracked down later, if ever.

I see a lot of good things in Spiceworks, and that’s just because that’s what I’m playing with now. I’ve seen some other good information out there as well. There are plenty of features above that I haven’t seen in any of the limited number of software choices I’ve seen. And the ones that have more than others, don’t seem to integrate everything or make it as easy to use as I’d like. Because ease of use and cost are the two biggest factors. Spiceworks is free, supported by Google ads. That’s okay with me, the ads are unobtrusive and with my current budget (or any budget, really), free is as good as it gets :-) Regardless of the cost, I just want the kitchen sink (as described above) to come with it.

Service Desk Plus is actually excellent! The free version only allows one administrator and 25 network devices to be tracked for inventory and ticket purchases. However, running with my desktop as the server, it was a bit on the slow side as far as responsiveness. I would need to test that it ran faster on a server, and also have that server available. I also think that while we may grow into it, it might be a bit too complex and high-end for our needs right now.

Most of the features really need multiple administrative users to take advantage of the full power, even if those users are just volunteers for us right now. I like the help desk with the user-created ticket submission interfaces via web or email. The ability to link logins to Active Directory, have a dedicated, fully-tracked helpdesk email conversation is awesome, along with the option to link requests with the hardware assigned to the submitting user (their workstation or laptop, for example) makes this a top-notch operation in my book. I also really like the software license and support agreement tracker, and the purchase order creation and generation tools for working with vendors! But the limited inventory items makes this hardware tie-in useless for our network in the free version. And free is all the money I have to spend at the moment. Plus the time required to enter details for our existing agreements and hardware we buy to create quotes is more than I have time for right now. Maybe down the road.

OpManager, also from ManageEngine, I haven’t tried yet, but it appears to either connect to or overlap some Service Desk functionality, and is limited to 20 nodes in the free version, also too few to be useful.

I have not tried OCSInventory yet, but I intend to when I find the time. I’ll report back then. I realize that an integrated helpdesk is a real key here, and I need to find out if OCSInventory does this–from my last visit to their site they may integrate with another package, but I’ll have to do some more research.

Currently, I’m trying out Spiceworks. Again. I’ve been using Spiceworks since it was early Beta months ago, and I was impressed with a lot of what it did at the time but it has been improving, and in its most recent incarnation has also added a helpdesk, more limited than Service Desk Plus to be sure, but a helpdesk nonetheless. Or at least a ticket system. Mark Bailey even mentioned Spiceworks with OpManager in his comment on my original post. I’ve had mixd results with Spiceworks; at Lakeview I haven’t really had any WMI issues with scanning the network, including Windows machines. On the other network I work on one day a week, I can’t get any of the Windows machines on the domain to work with WMI scanning, after extensive troubleshooting and some posts in the Spiceworks forums trying to resolve the issue. I ran out of time and haven’t revisited it at that office

But the new helpdesk features are simple, user-friendly, and do support email tickets. I don’t know if it tracks full email conversations, but my guess is not yet. It ties tickets to specific hardware, which is great, but I don’t see a huge focus on helpdesk statistics over time (unless I’m missing it) and it looks like most tickets are meant to be opened by the technician directly, after a problem is reported or discovered. No web-based submission interface for users For a one-man shop, this might work fine. I’m trying it out now, and we’ll see how fruitful it becomes. It does now support multiple technicians, and each tech can claim tickets that they are working on, and save public and/or private responses (does public mean it’s emailed to the owner of the affected equipment? I don’t know, I haven’t had time to play in enough detail yet). The newest version of Spiceworks also allows manual entry of assets that aren’t on the network or aren’t found via scanning, one of my prior complaints!

The search continues. But my original post on this topic is my top result people find on search engines, so it appears to be a popular topic others are working to solve. Anything I’ve missed? Are you successfully using these or better tools? Should I stay away from anything other than Track-It, which Jason has already warned me away from? Do Excel spreadsheets work fine for you and you wonder why this is so important, anyway? :-) Just wait ’til I start talking about network mapping and documentation!! It’s coming…

I’ve considered a Wiki, which is still an option, but other than the lack of being web-based and multi-user accessible, I like OneNote’s UI better and it seems similar. Did I mention easy-to-use and flexible is my number one requirement?

I’m still without a good, long-term solution.