Rocket DevOps vs. Spiceworks Cloud Help Desk

Rocket Aldon is perfect for simple changes to traditional IBM i development using RPGLE, CL, and DDS. It is great for finding related objects that are referenced in many locations and helping recompile all of these objects. However, Aldon has a particularly hard time with SQL views. For some reason, it is determined to lock every table related to a view even though this is not required by the operating system. Whenever one view references another view, you are always in danger of losing a view permanently if you didn't check it out and promote it. To clarify, imagine you created a view CUSTOMER_INFO. Then you make another view called CUSTOMER_SHIPMENTS that joins the CUSTOMER_INFO to a shipping table. If you ever change CUSTOMER_INFO and then promote it, there is a good chance that Aldon will delete the CUSTOMER_SHIPMENTS view and you will not get a single warning. It doesn't happen every time but when it does you are going to have a real mess on your hands.

Incentivized

It's a great helpdesk solution - we currently have five years of data within it, roughly 25,000 tickets. The older edition is a great inventory and software license tracking tool. It is easy for users to use the interface and submit tickets and requests on the web, and its email integration is solid. The new version is a below-average system monitoring tool, only giving up/down status and a few other metrics.

Incentivized

• Allows flexibility for user groups
• Scripting for releasing of code
• Ease of comparing code versions within the tool

Incentivized

• It helps to multitask, even on the go with the mobile App.
• We can customize to meet your needs with automated responses, notifications, and templates.
• Detailed reports allow managers to keep track [of] and analyze data.
• Allows for a database to store notes helpful for future tickets.

Incentivized

• SQL object promotions
• User interface
• Incomplete error checking
• Fragmented promotion logs

Incentivized

• I have always wanted a way to redirect a support request into another IS bin, such as a development task.
• It's possible to extract the data from the Spiceworks database, but it would be helpful if the process to do so were easier.
• Improved ability to customize the system generated emails to improve the formatting and company branding.

Incentivized

Based on current integration with our release process, we will need to keep this for the future.

Incentivized

Spiceworks is a free tool, so there would be no hesitation if we are required to upgrade it. We have installed Spiceworks on a dedicated server with more than enough resources to get the most from this tool, so we will have this running in our department for years to come.

Incentivized

Spiceworks is user friendly and easy to set up. It can be customized to suit your needs. If there are any problems, you can go to the community forums for support and be in contact with many IT Pros, as well as the Spiceworks support staff and development teams who are always happy to help users out

Incentivized

We use it both locally on our own server so up time is decided by us and we also use the hosted help desk. We have never had an outage of that.

Incentivized

Support is hit and miss. Sometimes they give some great assistance and sometimes they are no help at all. It always seems like they can't replicate the problem but then they never try to get on our system to do deeper research. It's kind of frustrating dealing with them. Also, the website isn't that helpful.

Incentivized

Spiceworks has been working out of the box, and some of the basic customizations have been successful with just our internal staff handling. We don't have any other issues with the tool. It provides us with the inventory information we want in a quick and concise report in a variety of formats for our team.

Incentivized

If you can spin up a VM to run it on, you'll thank yourself later. If you have remote sites, set up a local server (or dedicated computer) at each site and set them up as remote collectors for the main site. You'll save time and bandwidth

Incentivized

Aldon provides needed functions for our current implementations and legacy systems. As we move toward modernization, we are going to look at alternatives from reviewing cost, integration capabilities and functionality

Incentivized

EGroupware UI is clunky and hard to use, Jira is great but the pricing is expensive in comparison with spice works that has a free version and you can test it out properly before buying and make a correct decision based on your business plan and company objectives with the right software.

Incentivized

• Software promotion is much easier and doesn't require custom coding.
• Developers can work collaboratively with less overlap.
• Developers can find objects faster and research code more thoroughly.

Incentivized

• Positive - Allow organizations to implement structured Help Desk procedures.
• Positive - IT can begin to quantify their tickets and uncover needs within the organization.
• Positive - IT can develop a solid roadmap with [the] management of future needs, equipment refresh schedules, etc.
• Positive - IT can pinpoint employees who may need extra training or updated equipment based on historical ticketing data.

Incentivized