We received notice of an interesting blog post by Ethan the Kiwi on how to use a Powershell Script to automatically migrate Spiceworks Tickets to the Lansweeper helpdesk. After a first version to migrate Spiceworks tickets using ODBC, Excel, and manual labor he has now cooked up a fully automated version! The blog article features a step-by-step tutorial so you can easily follow along, but do keep in mind that this is not an official Lansweeper procedure.

We are very grateful that Ethan is willing to share his work with the community. We reached out to ask him a couple of questions on is work.

Hi Ethan, tell us a bit more about yourself?

I'm a System Administrator at a company I've been with for 12 years now. My main responsibilities are higher-level troubleshooting, managing the network and servers, and evaluating new systems, like Lansweeper, then implementing, documenting, and training others how to use them. I enjoy using automation scripts, mostly PowerShell, whenever I can.

Why did you create this script?

We'd been using Spiceworks for our help desk tickets and asset management for several years. Spiceworks has decided to stop the development of its on-premises software and move to the cloud. So a migration was in our future either way. In the midst of that, our management was asking for more accurate asset inventory across the company and we decided to take the opportunity to evaluate other ticket and asset software.

Most of the software we tried tended to fit into two categories: too many fields which made basic tasks like entering a ticket too slow, or a high cost per month. Lansweeper had the right options and was more affordable than the other software we considered. Compared to Spiceworks, Lansweeper did a much better job of discovering and updating our assets.

When we decided to move to Lansweeper, I thought it would be pretty straightforward to export tickets then import them. It ended up taking me a few days to figure it out. I ventured down a few wrong paths before I found the right one. Spiceworks' main export feature outputs JSON, but Lansweeper's import feature is looking for a CSV. Converting between the two was tricky. In the end, I found Spiceworks' SQLite database backup and was able to get the data from there. I didn't find any guides for this process online, so I decided to write one to help other IT folks out.

That is very nice of you to do! Could you tell us a bit more about your first experiences with Lansweeper?

Lansweeper really impressed me on the asset side of things. I think my favorite feature is that I can pull up a managed switch in Lansweeper and it will show me which devices are connected to the ports on the switch. You can click a link to see that device and who logged in most recently and such. That process would take much longer before. You would have to console into the switch, get the mac address table, get the IP address from ARPARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is used for mapping a network address (e.g. an IPv4 address)..., compare that to DHCP for the hostname, then check AD for that computer name's description and hope that was accurate. The Switch Port Mapping has been invaluable as we have been upgrading our network switches.

There are a few places where Lansweeper could do with some help. We've had issues where we don't get notified if a user replies to an unassigned email and some email issues like that. The UI is a little dated and mobile support (even web-based) would be nice. I'd like to see Lansweeper be able to get Mac addresses from other subnets on its own.

We will look into that! Do you have any ideas for future scripts?

I've actually written a couple of scripts already that I haven't published yet. The most useful one looks for assets that don't have a MAC address detected in Lansweeper, gets the MAC from Windows DHCP, then adds it to the asset. I have a couple of other ones that help get information from devices that don't follow standard SNMP and don't get picked up by Lansweeper.

Very interesting! Keep us posted on the results.

About this Hero Ethan is System Administrator. I’ve been working in IT for a while, like to automate things, and when I get sick of computers I retreat to the kitchen to bake. Twitter Link

About Lansweeper's Helpdesk Integration

The Lansweeper Helpdesk is fully integrated with our IT Asset Management Solution, so helpdesk tickets can automatically be tied to the assets discovered by our network scanner. This has the advantage that you can instantly fetch relevant assets and network information to solve the problem. Up-to-date and accurate IT Discovery and Inventory is not an afterthought on our Helpdesk. Check out our Helpdesk webinar to learn more.