HelpDesk for Outlook and SharePoint updated

The kalmstrom.com Outlook add-on HelpDesk OSP has been updated to fix a bug and a language issue that bothered to some users and to add improved support for big attachments.

Connects Outlook to SharePoint
HelpDesk OSP creates a connection between Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint, so that incoming e-mails may be converted - manually or automatically - into items in a SharePoint list. That way they can be shared also in a geographically distributed team, and members can add comments and suggestions in the ticket/list item. HelpDesk OSP is mostly used by support teams, but it is of course useful for any incoming e-mails. The application can even distribute different incoming e-mails to different lists.

Several e-mails in the same ticket
When the e-mail thread feature is enabled all e-mails regarding the same case is added to the first ticket, and it is also possible to merge several tickets into one. This way the work with the tickets can be more efficient. And of course you have all the possibilities of SharePoint also, as any list can be used with HelpDesk OSP and all the standard features of SharePoint can be utilized.

A minor update - and a major one
The kalmstrom.com technicians are working with a major update of HelpDesk OSP, which will make it compatible with the 64-bit version of Outlook 2010. In spite of this we released a minor update today, to solve a bug that some of our Community Members have experienced. That is normal kalmstrom.com policy: we make all our products easy to upgrade, and if there is a problem we release a new version.

Now we discovered that e-mails were not automatically converted in some cases when Outlook reacted slowly. Another issue came in the English version of HelpDesk OSP: if an e-mail answer came from a non-English Outlook, the e-mail threading did not work. Both these issues are now solved.

Attachments, formatting, images - everything goes into the ticket
When an incoming e-mail is converted into a ticket the e-mail formatting, images and attachments are going into the SharePoint list items as well as the body text and caller info. However, a Community Member who received very big attachments had problems including them. The attachments size depends on the Internet speed, so to support big files the attachment adding timeout value was raised from 100 seconds to 10 minutes. That should make it possible to include even big .bmp files on a slow connection.

Free upgrades
Subscribers of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons should always have well functioning software, so therefore the subscription fee includes support and upgrades. If you have experienced problems with HelpDesk OSP you are very welcome to upgrade your installation.

Try it!
If you use Outlook and SharePoint and need a smooth way to share your incoming e-mails I recommend you to try HelpDesk OSP. We allow an evaluation period of 30 days for the full version.