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SolarWinds Service Desk

SolarWinds Service Desk
Formerly Samanage

Overview

What is SolarWinds Service Desk?

SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly Samanage) is a cloud-based, multi-tenant IT service desk and asset management software for IT and enterprise service management. Samanage is on a single, always new instance of software. The service desk includes a self-service portal, service…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly known as Samanage) is a versatile software solution that caters to a wide range of use cases across …
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SolarWinds is a homerun!

9 out of 10
May 30, 2022
We use SolarWinds Service Desk for our Incident tracking and it helps to use SolarWinds Service Desk (SSD) for the reporting that we must …
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Solarwinds works for us!

7 out of 10
December 15, 2020
Incentivized
It is used across the whole organization. It addresses Incident mgmt, change mgmt, purchase orders, and device management mainly for our …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 13 features
  • Organize and prioritize service tickets (95)
    9.3
    93%
  • Self-service tools (85)
    8.0
    80%
  • Asset management dashboard (80)
    6.9
    69%
  • ITSM reports and dashboards (86)
    6.4
    64%
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is SolarWinds Service Desk?

SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly Samanage) is a cloud-based, multi-tenant IT service desk and asset management software for IT and enterprise service management. Samanage is on a single, always new instance of software. The service desk includes a self-service portal, service catalog, knowledge…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.solarwinds.com/products/pri…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Vision Helpdesk, which started in 2005 as a simple help desk software has evolved into three customer service and IT support management tools. Help Desk Software - A multi-channel help desk software that allows users to manage customer communication across various channels like email, web portals,…

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Features

Incident and problem management

Streamlining ticketing and service restoration processes

8
Avg 8.1

ITSM asset management

Managing all IT assets and enforcing policy rules

6.9
Avg 8.2

Change management

Ensuring standardized processes for making changes to IT infrastructure

8
Avg 8.4
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Product Details

What is SolarWinds Service Desk?

SolarWinds Service Desk, previously Samanage Service Platform, is a cloud-based service desk for IT or any other department.

A single platform for service management, IT asset management and configuration management, Service Desk is ITIL-ready and complete with Incident, Problem, Change, and Release Management capabilities. Advanced reporting modules empower users to analyze trends, monitor service quality, and continuously improve service management processes.

SolarWinds Service Desk Features

Incident and problem management Features

  • Supported: Organize and prioritize service tickets
  • Supported: Expert directory
  • Supported: Service restoration
  • Supported: Self-service tools
  • Supported: Subscription-based notifications
  • Supported: ITSM collaboration and documentation
  • Supported: ITSM reports and dashboards

ITSM asset management Features

  • Supported: Configuration mangement
  • Supported: Asset management dashboard
  • Supported: Policy and contract enforcement

Change management Features

  • Supported: Change requests repository
  • Supported: Change calendar
  • Supported: Service-level management

Additional Features

  • Supported: Self-Service Portal
  • Supported: Software and Hardware Inventory Tracking
  • Supported: Robust and Flexible Reporting
  • Supported: Knowledge Base
  • Supported: Contract and License Tracking
  • Supported: Integration with Over 200 Applications
  • Supported: Code-Free Customization
  • Supported: SLA Management

SolarWinds Service Desk Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

SolarWinds Service Desk Video

SolarWinds Service Desk Overview

SolarWinds Service Desk Integrations

SolarWinds Service Desk Competitors

SolarWinds Service Desk Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesAll
Supported LanguagesSupport for 40+ Languages

Frequently Asked Questions

SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly Samanage) is a cloud-based, multi-tenant IT service desk and asset management software for IT and enterprise service management. Samanage is on a single, always new instance of software. The service desk includes a self-service portal, service catalog, knowledge base, and SLA management tool. The integrated agent-based asset management solution collects contracts and licensing data from Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix systems.

Zendesk Suite, ServiceNow IT Service Management, and Freshservice are common alternatives for SolarWinds Service Desk.

Reviewers rate Organize and prioritize service tickets highest, with a score of 9.3.

The most common users of SolarWinds Service Desk are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(161)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

SolarWinds Service Desk (formerly known as Samanage) is a versatile software solution that caters to a wide range of use cases across different industries and departments. Users have found the platform to be extremely valuable and user-friendly, enabling them to streamline processes and improve overall efficiency.

One of the primary uses of SolarWinds Service Desk is in IT incident management, where it provides service level agreements (SLAs) and measures customer satisfaction. It helps IT teams effectively manage and resolve tickets by centralizing ticket submission, documenting tasks, and providing real-time support. Additionally, it offers comprehensive automation capabilities for accurate tracking and management of requests.

The software is also commonly used for asset management, allowing organizations to track and manage their computer inventory and device assignment. This feature proves beneficial for various departments such as Customer Support, HR, Sales, and Facilities Management to efficiently handle inquiries, track warranties, contracts, licenses, and assets. Moreover, SolarWinds Service Desk enables users to create self-service forms and checklists for streamlined onboarding processes and makes job ticketing more efficient for media management teams.

Another notable use case of SolarWinds Service Desk is its utilization as a help desk platform company-wide. It allows employees to log tickets easily, browse knowledge base articles for IT assistance, and monitor their resolution. By cataloging and prioritizing IT requests, it assists in maintaining standardized processes while also providing transparency and records for incidents, changes, and inventories.

Overall, SolarWinds Service Desk has proven its versatility by being utilized for incident management, asset tracking, knowledge base portal access, vendor management, contract management, helpdesk operations, change management, service cataloging, and more across various industries and departments. It aids in improving efficiency and effectiveness in tackling everyday problems while minimizing interruptions and optimizing workloads.

Users commonly recommend Solar Winds for several reasons. Firstly, they suggest giving Solar Winds a try as it integrates into other applications and offers a good product at a lower cost. It is particularly recommended for small teams or teams without much IT expertise.

Secondly, users find Solar Winds to be an effective ticketing system that provides an organized and efficient way to communicate and address issues with clients. This makes it a great choice for companies in need of a reliable customer support solution.

Lastly, users suggest Solar Winds for its ability to fully manage a support shop, help IT teams streamline their tasks, and create custom catalogues and workflows. They also appreciate that it provides the necessary features to implement a small CMMS system without high implementation costs.

Overall, users believe that Solar Winds is an all-in-one customizable, hosted solution that offers integration capabilities, an efficient ticketing system, and the tools needed to manage IT tasks effectively.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 49)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SSD is used to keep track of my time spent on client services. Our clients submit tickets to the service desk through email, the SSD website, or by clicking the desktop icon. This system helps us keep track of time and support issues. It can track the status of the support ticket as well as client responses. It is great for keeping the support ticket correspondence all in one place.
  • It keeps track of client correspondence.
  • It keeps track of time spent completing a tasks.
  • It allows the creation of a list of tasks needed for a project.
  • It is good for assigning tickets to employees.
  • The reporting functionality can be better for creating invoices. It would be great to make a monthly invoice at the click of a button. Creating invoices in this system can be time-consuming.
  • When customers create tickets, sometimes the tickets are missing information which can cause inaccurate reporting.
  • When you create a filtered view and then read or edit a ticket from the filtered results, there is no way to get back to the filtered list of results. You have to build the search/filtered list all over again.
When corresponding with customers about a service, SSD is well suited for keeping track of all correspondences. When sending team reminders to complete tasks, I don't think SSD is well suited. If that feature is offered, it is not easy to set up. Notifications are only sent when a ticket is created, the status of the ticket is updated, or a response is added to the ticket.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
IT helpdesk management, inventory, procurement, knowledgebase, project management. We essentially manage our entire IT department through this application. It was the first helpdesk solution that really seemed to click for us and the integration with Dameware has really become a total helpdesk solution for us.
  • Helpdesk management
  • Agentless inventory
  • It could be more customizable. Need to be able to custom name fields and sections.
  • Could be better integrated with hardware with embedded serial numbers.
  • Email receipt is occasionally laggy.
Any small to midsize IT department that is looking for a complete solution.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used to manage the support requests from staff and organization assets. The product did a good job of providing a queue to know what issues were present in our system and the asset agent provided a comprehensive inventory of what was deployed on our systems. We also utilized the system to create approval workflows for software and hardware purchases and changes.
  • Organizing workloads
  • Supervisor approvals
  • Asset inventories
  • Integrations with other vendors
  • Integration with other SolarWinds products
  • Automations require licensed account
It would be good for teams that are looking to stand up a service desk system and establish a working inventory. Things like queues and asset tracking are good. You can even create tags to tie your assets in the field to your inventory record in addition to their agent. I think they could do much better at integrating other common tools like rmm products into the platform as some of the inventory gets duplicated with that process and leaves you checking multiple areas and going to other platforms for a complete picture/task. Even their own branded platforms for this were not even on their roadmap. Also, I would say the inventory agent provided a lot of extra info for installed software that is not very helpful and also lead to views of multiple versions installed in the fleet even though it is 1 software that is just reporting differently. It is tough to keep accurate.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Good entry-level ticketing system. SaaS-based. Good for basic stuff like ticket creation, tracking, etc. Some 3rd-party integrations. Currently, we use it for several different teams and locations.
  • Good for multiple teams.
  • Integrates with our SSO (Okta), and that is something we always look for in a SaaS provider.
  • Tracking Incidents, Changes, and Problems
  • Seems like it's good for smaller companies. We haven't really stress-tested it with several thousands of tickets and requests. I'd like to see it in a large enterprise. Where it's SaaS-based, it might support that scale.
  • Not as intuitive as I'd like, but a little bit of training can get most people up to speed. Forms would help this with less-frequent users.
Simple tickets, incident reporting, change requests. Integrates with Slack for notification to the assigned teams and queues, which is really nice for us.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the service desk to support our company and our partners. We use it to help facilitate issues and repairs. We have it set up to allow incoming emails to create tickets from inside our domain and outside domains that our partners are on. It works pretty well. We are able to respond and escalate tickets to higher groups.
  • Inputs screen shots very well.
  • Allows us to add out external partners with out giving domain access.
  • You are able to customize the web info with your logon and any info you want. Looks nice.
  • You can setup to have users and assets correlated together.
  • Improvement in the Help Desk Dashboard for the end-user. Looking for old tickets is kind of a pain for our end users.
  • Pop out widgets would be nice.
If you are looking for a way to support a company and bill based on the outcome this software works really well. If it's a quick password change there was no charge, but if it's troubleshooting things you click the box to charge. It works really well for this. Also bringing all your assets into this and associating them to a client works well. I can't think of anything that this software would not be less appropriate for. It works well for what we use it for.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Service desk is being used as our HelpDesk and Knowledge base portal. When staff need IT assistance they create a ticket or browse through the knowledge base articles to find a possible solution. We have made it mandatory for all staff to utilize these services if they need support as we no longer accept phone calls, text messages, or emails requesting support. Having the entire agency use Solarwinds Service Desk allows us to centrally manage and see what tickets are needing to be addressed, whereas the old way of emailing an issue to a tech does not allow the rest of the team to know that there is a problem or what has been done to correct the issue.
  • Love that it is cloud-based, so even when I am not in the office I am still able to log in and assist and or see what is happening.
  • It allows the techs and staff to communicate within the portal and provides the techs the options to do "private" messages that the other techs can see but not the end-user.
  • Makes configuring the layout simple and allows us to "brand" it the way we want and not just another cookie-cutter version.
  • I would love to see the ability to change and move sections around on the forms to help prevent wasted space and lengthy scrolls.
  • I would also like to see an addition to the inventory section to include depreciation values and have itself calculate based on purchase criteria.
  • For the checkbox option, it would be nice to be able to control how many checkboxes are per section and have other things triggered if the checkbox is checked.
This package offers more features than I am currently using. With Solarwinds Service Desk, you have the capability of managing your inventory, invoices, vendors, contracts, and asset management. This is ideal for anyone looking to consolidate multiple packages into one. This is great for IT departments ranging from small to large businesses. There is also a spot in which you can create invoices and have them billed out based on the amount of time spent by the techs to resolve the issue.

If you are needing to do depreciation on your inventory, then the inventory portion will not work for you.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization is replacing an aging and incorrectly implemented ticketing system with Solarwinds Service Desk in a phased fashion. We currently have the Service Desk, administrators, and Security Team using the product with plans to roll it out for more groups very soon. We have been using the Incident, Problem, Solutions, Assets, Service Catalog, Contracts, Purchase Orders, and Vendors sections. This service has helped roll out service level agreements, Asset Tracking, and much more that we were unable to utilize or provide before implementing this product in our organization.
  • Incident Management
  • Solution Catalog Offerings
  • Vendors
  • Contracts
  • Asset Management
  • Portal Usage
  • Email-to-Tickets processing
  • Notifications
  • Solarwinds Orion Integration
  • Dameware Remote Everywhere Integrations
  • Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager integration
  • Problem Management
  • SLA Management/Notifications
  • Custom Report Building
  • Slack Integration
This service is well-suited for organizations that are unable or unwilling to support the entire infrastructure for a ticketing system, such as databases and servers. It's also great for companies that need a large set of offerings and integrations with other hosted and on-premises systems. Remote support is easy with other purchases/integrations and can assist the support staff in their daily jobs. The licensing levels are easy to understand, though a bit of the pricing difference seems slightly steep to my company for a few of the features.
Ali Kazempour | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
IT support is very important and most parts of our organization [go] through SolarWinds Service Desk. Customer Support department, HR Department, sales questions, questions about new products are followed through this platform. We use knowledge base and FAQ but need realtime support to follow tickets. Email support is always good, but for user security and accurate tracking of requests, you need to have a comprehensive automation system to be able to manage all sections.
  • Great Automate IT asset management.
  • Secure Cloud Based Platform.
  • Automate risk detection.
  • Rich help desk knowledge base help desk.
  • Service Desk Live Chat.
  • When another technician or IT service desk agent is viewing the same ticket, that ticket must be locked or inform other agents.
  • They can work more on UI for better experience.
  • Search function must be developed.
In addition to Knowledge Base, customers can chat live and get in touch with IT support, and all this support is much more cloud base[d] and completely secure. In many cases user information should not be sent via email and requires a secure server, [for] which SolarWinds Service Desk is great platform. Dashboard is real time and platform has auto refresh and great notification system. Nice employee service portal and great Service Automation System.
December 15, 2020

Solarwinds works for us!

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used across the whole organization. It addresses Incident mgmt, change mgmt, purchase orders, and device management mainly for our organization. Allows for everything to be on 1 platform.
  • Notifications and integrations: communicates notices well.
  • Automations: several ways of setting up automations.
  • New ticket notification: refreshes up-to-date tickets which is a newer feature.
  • I'd like to see more notification options in change management.
  • Solarwinds could improve on reporting features and ease of use.
Solarwinds ticketing system has nice features for being able to filter and save filters to easily be able to see which tickets you are looking for. The support team and account reps are very good at responding in a timely manner to issues or questions. It really depends on what expectations a company has as to whether or not Solarwinds would be a good fit for them.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We initially purchased Solarwinds Service Desk solely for our Information Technology department. The popularity quickly grew and it is now used in various departments across our University to create a universal/seamless service desk. These other areas include facilities, housing, business office, HR, legal, etc. Incidents can easily be routed between departments and we find that very helpful!
  • Transparency--giving our customers the power to communicate and receive updates is essential and this tool does an excellent job of that.
  • Self Service--a full-functioning service catalog and knowledge base is the key to any successful service desk!
  • Intuitive yet simplistic design--this tool is very easy to navigate while also being packed full of features.
  • Chat support--this is actually just beginning to roll out, but development is still needed. This has the potential to be a major means of communication once fully functional.
  • Certification--these are huge in our industry. It would be nice for SolarWinds to create a web-based training that took new technicians through the platform and focused on using the tool and best practices. A nice little certification at the end means a lot to entry-level technicians.
Solarwinds Service Desk is well suited for any organization that is looking to offer a modern, highly functional, and easy to navigate service desk. We have implemented it across almost our entire University and it has become instilled in our business processes. It does a great job and our customers are very happy using and navigating the platform!
Christopher Fritz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as an IT Ticket system across all departments, where the IT department is the administrator and facilitator. We have managed to get an overview of IT Issues with more, as we also have integrated the self-service system very well and actively will be working on our knowledge database. It gives our upper management an overview of what we're doing in IT and what kind of workload we have. The creation of self-service forms gives an option to streamline processes and make onboardings easier with a checklist.
  • Flexible creation of self-service forms.
  • Simple user management.
  • Nice user community.
  • The dependent drop down in the self-service forms could be made more flexible. It's only possible to do one dependent drop down.
  • The multi-department choice isn't available when creating self-service forms. That would be a nice addition.
  • No proper inventory list on user basis functionality.
Samanage is functioning well in a smaller IT Department where there is no time to do too much customization. It is pretty much a ready to use software to which you can keep on adding on functions you need etc. The reason why I write that it semi-flexible is that you have the option to customize a lot of things, but if you want to make very detailed updates then this won't be the software for you. We are very happy with the software and find that they are listening to the user community, so that you are heard and actually can follow the progress of suggestions that you make.
Chris Peters Sr. | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Service Desk was my choice for a help desk resolution after a lot of time researching the best fit for our organization. It has proved very useful and helpful. I had gone from having no help desk solution. Solarwinds Service Desk has been a great solution and provided excellent tools for me and my IT team.
  • Easy, multiple means of creating tickets
  • Support is responsive when needed
  • Collects information from the monitoring tool
  • Fast to resolve any technical issues with the site
  • Reports - not very "easy" find it hard to report on items I have created
  • Reports - easier use could use more intuitive UI
  • Reports - fill it is missing what should be standard reports for users, etc.
Solarwinds Service Desk has been an excellent easy-to-use help desk solution for our organization. I feel that it could be much more robust with the reporting end of it.
Scott Sokol | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At MLB Network, Samanage is used essentially as a job ticketing tool for our media management team, which handles media organization, archive, retrieval requests in addition to multimedia preparation, delivery, and acquisition of content. It has addressed our need to reduce email congestion, increase department organization and efficiency, and gain greater visibility into the work being requested, and eventually completed by our team members.
  • Easily assign jobs
  • Track work requested by employee/department
  • Track work completed by our team members
  • Needs better integration with email tools like Microsoft Outlook for requesters who still use as a means for creating a ticket
  • Needs better notification preferences
  • Needs a dynamic refresh of tickets page
While designed for IT service desk teams, we have found that our media services team has been successful implementing Samanage tools.

I think it's best suited for organizing and tracking a high volume of requests, and may not work quite as well for those looking to track projects over a longer period of time.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds service desktop is currently used in the IT, HR and Maintenance Departments. IT uses the software for help tickets, inventory control, purchasing, change control, equipment warranty tracking, licensing control, user knowledge base, on-Boarding and off-boarding employees, reporting and program maintenance. Basically, IT uses most, if not all, of its functions. HR and Maintenance use Solarwinds for mainly help tickets. We were able to combine all of our needs into 1 program, saving us tremendous time and money.
  • Customer Support is one of the best I have seen, friendly educated and always willing to help you fix your issue.
  • Customization. This is another very important quality Solar Winds has. From customizing reports, change control templates, user interface, inventory and many more areas.
  • Reliability: SolarWinds has strong performance and we rarely have outages.
  • Price: All-in-one package.
  • Be able to produce barcodes with custom info regarding inventory.
You might not want SolarWinds Service Desk if you are only interested in providing HelpDesk tickets. This software has endless capabilities.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Service Desk in our organization is being used for issues dealing with technology and service request/tracking pertaining some work orders in our industry. SSD is used throughout our whole organization. Biggest issue SSD addresses is approval emails going to the right person. There is no need to open up SSD to approve a request. Most user[s] are able to reply the the "approval email" and go on about their work. Also, Service Request Forms are easier to track by building a process that best meets your organization's needs. You are able to build a checklist type of process for [a] hardware request, or even when hiring new employees.
  • Built-in email replies.
  • End-user feedback.
  • Chat feature.
  • Programing the "Service Request" process commands: if, and's, or.
  • Being able to edit the "Forms" layout including Home Screen of SSD.
  • Last view issues or editing the view you're in when you're an admin.
SolarWinds Service Desk is best suited for help desk and human resources. We only use it for our help desk, but have plenty of ideas for HR that we have not explored yet. Using SSD as our ticketing system is helping more users send in more request[s] because it easy to use.

If someone can make a request for something then SSD can be used. You'll be able to track the interaction from start to finish.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds Service Desk to keep up with help tickets from our users. Now, especially with working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been increasingly helpful to keep track of who has needed help and who still requires assistance.
  • Custom Categories
  • Time worked on each issue
  • Comments and information fields so we can keep track of work done
  • Would like previously used tags to appear as options when tagging new tickets
  • Would like to be able to add multiple assignees to a ticket
If you're in need of a tracking tool for your help desk tickets but don't have one already, SolarWinds Service Desk is great because it integrates your inventory management along with any help desk tickets related to the computers and mobile devices in your inventory.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In our organization, we are currently using Solarwinds Service Desk as our primary ticketing system to escalate and handle IT security incidents with customers. Not only for incidents but also for the service request, problem & change management. It improved our response time and allowed us to address problems when we have to go and track down communication. It has also allowed us to set up a self-service portal and a knowledge base for common problems. The SolarWinds Service Desk has been a great solution and provided excellent tools for our service ticket management.
  • The user interface is really simple, even new user can adapt to the tool quickly.
  • The SLA Monitoring system is really useful to know how we're performing. That helps us to give timely service.
  • The Solarwinds Service Desk supports lots of integrations with other systems and they are constantly adding more.
  • The email integration need to be improved, tools like Microsoft Outlook for requesters who still use it as a means for creating a ticket.
  • Should have some sort of sound notification that could be configured with the program to allow audio alerts.
  • Can't disable the email notifications based on categories. Creates problems when closing tickets from customers.
The Incident Ticket management for multiple clients is where this software seems to be really great. The feedback feature on the Dashboard that allows our clients to share to experience is nice to have. The main concern is that we can't use MFA (restricting users to only being able to log with only a username and a password). This is particularly important for administrator accounts.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are definitely not using SolarWinds to it's fullest capacity, and that is great. It offers the flexibility for us to pick and choose which features we want to implement (even within the Service Desk portion of the product) which has allowed us to scale easily. I have 4/10 departments utilizing the software successfully to act as a help desk for 450 employees.
  • Ability to streamline UI for various roles.
  • Extensive administrative settings and options.
  • AI to offer suggestions to techs and requesters.
  • Extremely transparent about any outages, causes, and steps to prevent again.
  • The system is very reliable: has only been inaccessible twice in the past 18 months of daily use.
  • Company will not accept reporting or other customization requests (consider it a new feature)
  • Reporting options are not intuitive & most cannot include details.
  • Little support from SolarWinds.
Although we do not use many aspects of the system, Service Desk processes 2,000 incidents (tickets) per month. Our support team can easily track, assign, and reply to tickets. Screenshots/attachments are easy to add. We gained a higher adoption by allowing end-users to email in requests instead of just using the portal, which is a great feature.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Piloted with only a specific department and then rolled out after 2 years to the whole organization. It addresses the problem of site agents and centralized agents who both can resolve issues users experience on technology platforms. It also addresses the need to aggregate solutions.
  • Issue management
  • Tagging of other people
  • Email notifications
  • Reports
  • Documenting changes
  • Documenting issues
  • Prompting Solutions
SolarWinds Service Desk is great for ticketing/issue management at dispersed or local organizations. The SLA breaches help for management of staff and increases timely resolution. It's not as helpful for time tracking or task tracking unless implemented/strictly used.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have three departments using Solarwinds Service Desk for Incident Management. Users send emails to the department that they need help from and Solarwinds creates the help desk ticket based on the email address sent to. We are also using Solarwinds to track our assets.
  • It is easily customizable.
  • Product support is outstanding.
  • The mobile app is super helpful.
  • It takes time to deploy the Asset management agent onto devices.
  • It would be nice if the page auto-refreshed.
Solarwinds Service Desk is well suited for any department that needs incident management. It is easy to use and the GUI is easy to navigate.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds Service Desk as our incident management tool as well as our asset management tool. We have a small IT team so a cloud solution for service desk tickets fits us perfectly. We purchased it when it was still independent (Samanage). The asset management is great, does not have intrusive aspects on the computers we installed it on, and we have an accurate picture of what we have deployed. The portal view of tickets has also been great at increasing transparency into our activities, plus I am using it for my IT management reporting.
  • Service Desk tool - ability to create / update/ resolve tickets. Flow (ticket life cycle) can be customized, and notifications as well.
  • Asset Management - automatically gathers information from computers using an agent installed on the computers.
  • Reporting - ability to slice and dice tickets to get insight into most common problems.
  • Being a web platform, some of the refresh is problematic. Not sure this can be solved in the tool, it's important to have a clear understanding who owns the ticket.
  • Some time the performance / update speed is slow, but I have to give them credit, this has never resulted in an outage and in general it is solved within a couple of hours.
Works great for smaller IT teams, with fairly vanilla ticket workflows. Great for web access, there is even a mobile app available. Solarwinds Service Desk does not require a large amount of administration, and it's fairly intuitive. Brings great visibility into what is installed, as long as the agent is deployed correctly.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Service Desk is being used by not only the IT dept but our Accounting and HR departments as well. Mainly we in IT use it to track "incidents" that occur with the technology on the floor or with our remote workers. Over time other departments have been setting up tickets such as investigations which are exactly as they sound. Accounting utilizes our Solarwinds Service Desk to help keep track of all the software contracts that are expiring, and for us to remember to get them the monthly invoices for contracts that are related to the IT Dept. We utilize Solarwinds Service Desk to track company assets so by putting in the make, model, and the serial number of every machine that we set up and assign it to a user so when that user submits a ticket we can attach it to their computer. Some business problems it has helped address is being able to show proof to our auditor of our monthly reminders such as checking the generator, reviewing training policies and see if the trainings that went out were actually completed on time.
  • Incident/Helpdesk Ticketing
  • Platform Customization
  • Asset Management
  • Contract Reminders
  • User and Admin Friendly Interface
  • Mobile App flow could be better in regards to incident management
  • Certain customization options aren't very easy to find
  • Difficulty figuring out how to remove legacy categories from incident forms
Solarwinds Service Desk is well suited for helping with tracking incidents, contract renewals, asset management. The reporting is phenomenal once you have fine-tuned it for your needs. Running a vanilla report that's unconfigured will be difficult to understand.

It's less appropriate for tracking investigations. This is often best left in email with HR. The knowledge base is good, but could use some improvements particularly when typing out the knowledge base articles as they are defined.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use the Solarwinds Service Desk in the capacity of incident management, change management, issue tracking, asset management, and technical information repository. Other departments within our organization use it as well for non-technical issue tracking and workflow/process management. The main business problem it addresses for us is in the efficient tracking and management of trouble tickets within the organization.

  • The platform is pretty easy to use by non-technical staff.
  • Setting up and managing things like single sign-on and automatic user-provisioning is straightforward when coupled with Azure AD.
  • Customizing categories and workflows was fairly simple.
  • Asset management could be better.
  • Using the platform to track orders could be better as custom PO numbers cannot be entered in a searchable way.
  • Integrations with other service desk applications still could be improved, but has gotten a lot better with the Solarwinds acquisition of Samanage.
Solarwinds Service Desk works pretty well for an organization of our size. We moved from an internally-hosted solution to this and found it much easier to manage and much more feature-rich than many other entry-level solutions. In the less appropriate sphere, I could see this being a platform some organizations could outgrow as reporting needs and user counts expand.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We started off using Solarwinds Service Desk in our IT department as a replacement for TrackIt to keep our knowledge base and track incident response. Soon after implementation, we brought in our Facilities Services, Document Services, and Office Services groups, built out service catalog items for those groups, and opened our self-service portal to the entire firm. Having these different service areas linked in the Solarwinds Service Desk has broken down silos between departments. We look forward to bringing in other departments such as Accounting, HR, and Marketing in the future.
  • Communication - public and private comments on incidents keep technicians and requesters in touch throughout the life cycle of an incident.
  • Accessibility - there are multiple ways to engage through the service ranging from entering tickets, chat, and having email directed to auto-create incidents.
  • Self-service - users can request help or services, report problems, and look up information from the knowledge base without assistance, which lends to a more informed and self-sufficient workforce.
  • Service - it's easy to communicate questions or problems to Solarwinds Service Desk support and they are generally very capable, responsive, and willing to escalate feature requests.
  • Service Catalog - it's impressive how much you can accomplish when building out a catalog item; however, there is room for improvement as you cannot go too deep into conditional logic. For instance: building out a request for travel where a user might want to select one or all of hotel, air, and car can only really be effective for one of those items. You'd have to create three separate catalog items, which makes no sense. I believe they'll remedy this shortcoming eventually, though.
  • Change Management - the communication within change management isn't as polished as it is in the incidents module. Notifications do not fire when expected. There has been a recent update to change management, so this may have improved.
  • Reminders - when a task is created and a due date applied, an email with a calendar reminder is sent. The .ics reminder is clunky (not editable) and has to be actively added to one's 3rd-party calendar program. Reminders and notifications WITHIN Solarwinds Service Desk could be far more robust for agents and task-users.
I think Solarwinds Service Desk is well suited to an IT environment where tracking incidents and communicating with requesters is a high priority. Organizations that want to bring service into focus between historically siloed departments would be well advised to consider Solarwinds Service Desk. I think this platform would be less productive for smaller organizations, as the cost would be prohibitive and may not see a sufficient return on investment.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Service Desk is used within our IT department to catalog and prioritize requests. It allows a standardized process for users to request IT support and allows IT and management to view current and historical requests.
  • Ticket Management
  • Automated notifications
  • Setup
  • Reporting / Data Exports (Currently manual request to generate *.csv)
  • Limited configuration and customization options in base product
  • User management
Any team providing core support for a larger organization would benefit from a tool like Solarwinds Service Desk. We use this in IT, but it could be useful for groups such as HR to manage employee questions and requests, or a centralized marketing department, requisitions team, etc.

The tool seems optimized for use within an organization. I don't see how it would support external customers in a clean fashion.
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