Get up and running managing IT help tickets and tasks in no time.
The cloud help desk is basically already setup for you. Since your help desk software is online in the cloud, there’s no server procurement, setup, or maintenance. Just sign up and you are ready to go! Make your job even easier by using monitors, alerts, custom ticket attributes, and ticket rules. Get help desk reports with key information like updates on ticket and labor by organization. Not always at your desk? No problem! The top-rated Spiceworks Help Desk Mobile App has the latest ticket updates and push notifications right on your phone or tablet.
Delegating only certain tasks for Active Directory helpdesk management group. Help Desk, etc., so I know a lot of things but not a lot about one thing. Experts Exchange gives me answers from people who do know a lot about one thing, in a easy to use platform.' Active Directory.
Easily setup your email, user portal, and knowledge bases to support your users.
![Active Active](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126140704/163368102.png)
Email is quick to set up and one of the preferred ways for help desk admins and technicians to correspond with users and work their IT tickets. Add the user portal as an easy way for your users to submit new tickets and see progress updates on their existing tickets without having to ask you. You can customize your help desk user portal with the questions you need answered and make it more familiar with your company’s logo. The end user portal integrates with Active Directory (and Outlook, of course), so users can be authenticated into the portal automatically. Use the Knowledge Bases to store answers to commonly asked user questions so you don’t have to respond with the same answers over and over again.
Knock out requests more quickly with your team.
Auto-assign help tickets to your experts and set up multiple role types to make sure your team only sees what they need. If they need help, it’s easy to share tickets and write internal notes back and forth. Working with multiple clients? You can set up separate organizations and user portals that roll up into a master help desk.
Integrates with IP Scanner.
Track the devices discovered by your Spiceworks IP Scanner tool from your tickets. Document your actions and progress on these devices.
Spiceworks Online vs Self-Hosted Help Desk Features
The online help desk focuses on easy to use standard help desk management and the self-hosted help desk adds advanced help desk management.
Standard Help Desk Management | Online Help Desk | Self-Hosted Help Desk | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic ticket management – accept, reply, comment, close | yes | |||||
Advanced ticket management – custom ticket attributes and ticket rules | yes | |||||
Email – optional ticket management through your email | yes | |||||
Reporting – for tickets or labor over a specified time period | yes | |||||
User portal – users can submit tickets and track progress; customizeable questions and company logo | yes | |||||
Knowledge base – provide articles unique to you, your organization, or created by the community | yes | |||||
Dashboard – track things like ticket history and churn | yes | |||||
Active Directory integration – authenticate users to the user portal | yes | |||||
Custom ticket views – set up different views into your ticket queues | yes | |||||
Multi-site support – setup individual sites and user portals that combine to a master help desk | yes | |||||
Top rated mobile app – easily view, reply, and close out tickets, and get push notification | yes | |||||
Largest IT community – get answers about the help desk or how to troubleshoot issues that come up in tickets | yes | |||||
Advanced Help Desk Management | ||||||
Custom and automated reporting – based on criteria like who it’s assigned to, close date, and any ticket and inventory attribute. | no | |||||
Integrated with Spiceworks Inventory – add IT assets and purchasing to tickets | no | yes | ||||
Customized user portal – add additional information and knowledge base recommendations | no | |||||
Customizable dashboard – more options for custom graphs | no | yes | ||||
Exchange integration – use exchange as your email server | no |
Manage help desk tickets… from the palm of your hand.
Field IT support tickets right from your phone or tablet with the free Spiceworks Help Desk Mobile App. Sort all your tickets with quick views, assign tickets to team members, respond to and close tickets, add time worked, change priorities, and more. Get a help desk… without the desk!
One of the most common and necessary IT tasks is managing Active Directory (AD) for any business running Microsoft's directory services. Luckily, there are apps and workaround solutions that can help you maintain AD from your iOS-based mobile device. Let's explore what's available.
SEE:iOS 9: The smart person's guide
AD HelpDesk
AD HelpDesk (currently version 4.1) takes a straightforward approach to managing AD through the use of buttons that perform preconfigured functions such as finding locked accounts and searching for computer objects. It can create, edit, rename, move, or delete AD objects, including password resets for user account management.
More about Mobility
![Active Active](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126140704/403411820.gif)
AD HelpDesk has a preferences section that you can configure to connect to specific domain controllers (DCs), modify attributes when querying databases, or target particular domains for administration, which is a huge help if you're managing multiple forests.
While the app does an admirable job of performing tasks, it can feel kludgy going from one screen to another. Also, the application was developed circa iOS 5 or 6, and the interface shows it when compared to other native apps offering similar capabilities.
Active Directory Assist
Active Directory Assist (currently version 5.0) meshes form and function for a fast, lightweight app that elegantly allows admins to perform similar functions as those listed above and then some.
Texting end users their newly reset passwords is a one-touch feature that eliminates additional steps from the end-user account reset process. You can seamlessly pull up reports to locate expiring accounts or passwords with the ability to sort the data based on time-stamp. With the profile creation feature, IT admins can create a profile based on the specific logon information for a particular domain. When choosing to manage a particular domain, switching domains is as easy as tapping the profile name and voila... you're in.
Active Directory Assist does have a few features that are not found on similar apps that make querying and managing data much easier. The ability to query specific DCs for example, would take considerably less time (and subsequently utilize less resources on the domain) to return results. The targeting capability inherent in AD can save IT support hours by drilling-down, therefore shrinking the search pool to render results quicker.
More about AD HelpDesk and Active Directory Assist
There are free versions of both apps. AD HelpDesk and Active Directory Assist apps are (mostly) full-featured and work without having to register or are limited to a trial time period.
Both apps are limited to common AD management tasks revolving around object management and maintenance. No scripting support or advanced schema administration is present, due to the limited functionality of not using the native AD snap-ins found in Windows.
If more advanced functionality is required, check out these solutions and workarounds.
Solutions and workarounds
VPN + Microsoft Remote Desktop
This workaround requires the implementation of a VPN server to provide connectivity to iOS devices from outside the network perimeter. Once a connection is established via VPN, the free Microsoft Remote Desktop app can be configured to remotely access the server for administration of AD using the native Microsoft snap-in.
ManageEngine ADManager Plus
ManageEngine provides systems, network, and infrastructure management services for SMB and enterprise businesses. ADManager Plus is used to manage every semblance of AD and features an iOS app that is used to communicate with the ManageEngine services.
The app looks sharp and well polished. Its management aspects are very clear and concise, and allow admins to manage almost every aspect of AD with account importing, bulk maintenance tools, and even support for Office 365, Google Apps, and Microsoft Exchange. All backed by Zoho, a trusted leader in CRM technologies.
Server Mobile Admin
A Swiss army knife of sorts for IT, Server Mobile Admin adds common AD tasks to a full kit of systems monitoring, remote access, IPMI-based hardware control, VMware management, network tools, asset tracking, and the list goes on and on.
IT Manager
Another jack-of-all-trades app that serves as a full-fledged monitoring, maintenance, and management toolset for everything from ESXi to Windows to remote access for Macs and Linux, network services administration to BlackBerry BES and Amazon AWS, in addition to support for AD management tasks.
Note: Server Mobile Admin and IT Manager require the use of agents that are installed on all the devices you wish to control remotely, in addition to service licensing costs.
Active Directory Help Desk Permissions
Also see
Active Directory Policy Definitions
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