Outlook HelpDesk Add-on Updated

Today we have released an update of Folder HelpDesk for Outlook. It is only a minor update, so if your Folder HelpDesk works well you don't even have to upgrade. But for some users this is an important enhancement, as bugs that only affect certain installations are fixed.

V13 with many new features
In June we published version 13 of Folder HelpDesk. It was a major update in all respects, and it gave our issue tracking add-on for Outlook a real face lift: support for the latest Microsoft platforms, also for the 64-bit Office, a new ticket form, Excel reports, calling from the ticket and much more.

Bug fixes
Now we have to prioritize other applications, but when users report bugs we of course have to do something about them. Although Folder HelpDesk was properly tested before the release some users experienced problems that had to be solved.

We have already released one update of version 13, so this is the second one. We hope all remaining bugs in version 13 are solved now, but you are of course welcome to report anything you find lacking.

Different reactions
Overall the reactions on version 13 have been very positive, like we expected. "Everything is great in V13, and all the users like it", said one administrator.

A few users have been less content, because they have experienced problems after the upgrade. With so many different systems, combinations and configurations among the users it is nearly impossible to cover them all in our internal testing.

What we can do, however, is trying to fix issues as quickly as possible, so that subscribers will not be left alone with their problems.

Upgrade or try
If your organization is already subscribing to Folder HelpDesk for Outlook are welcome to upgrade your installation, in case you have any issues with it. No new license key is needed this time and the upgrade is smooth and quick.

Have you not tried Folder HelpDesk yet? Please download the solution and evaluate it for 30 days. There is plenty of documentation on our website to help you get started. We give our extensive support to evaluators also, so you are welcome to contact us if you have questions.

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

SharePoint 2013 Access App As Inventory

After publishing several Excel-tutorials I am back to SharePoint again, to tell you about another demo in the kalmstrom.com Tips section: how to use a SharePoint 2013 Access App to build an inventory.

Access database
Microsoft Access is included in the some of the Office suites. For extensive storage the database has severe limitations, but for smaller collections of data it is an excellent product that is easy to use.

The kalmstrom.com Outlook applications include an Access option for sharing and storage. When users don't have a more powerful SQL Server or a SharePoint site where data can be shared and stored, our product can create an Access database instead.

Access in SharePoint
There have been several attempts to integrate Access features in earlier versions of SharePoint, but it is not until now, with the Access Services of version 2013, that this integration has become really useful.

The Access Services make it possible to host databases in SharePoint. Access is used to create and design tables, views and so on, but the end-users can now browse to the Access app on their intranet and reach it from anywhere via the internet.

Inventory
As an example for my demo I have chosen to create an inventory, which often is convenient to have on an intranet. I show how to create the app, how to fill it with data – which is done in SharePoint – and how to create a view for it.

The view is created in Access and then launched, just like the database tables I want to use in the inventory, so as administrator of an Access app I will switch between Access and SharePoint. However, the end-users can read and enter data in SharePoint and do not have to bother with Access at all.



kalmstrom.com Tips
In the kalmstrom.com Tips section you can find a step-by-step instruction for how to create an Access Inventory app. There are also many other tutorials, on SharePoint as well as Excel, Outlook and more.

Please visit and browse around, and if you are a Member of the kalmstrom.com Community you are also welcome to suggest new tutorials. I will do my best to explain what you need to know!

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Obama In Stockholm Already!

You might have heard that the US president Barack Obama is going to visit Sweden in the beginning of September. Strangely enough he has already been seen at various tourist attractions in Stockholm, our capital. I can tell you why.

September meetings
The American president will  meet with the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on the 4th of September. Their talks will focus on trade and environment, and Mr. Rheinfeldt has also invited his colleagues from Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland to a working dinner with Mr. Obama.

So what is the US president doing in Stockholm already? Is he really such a fan of Abba that he comes here in advance to visit their newly opened museum?

Embassy joke
No, the reason for the sightings of Mr. Obama is that people from the American embassy in Stockholm have been carrying around a life-size cardboard cut-out of the president during the last few days. They have taken photos of the figure standing in front of various tourist attractions, to highlight what a great town Stockholm is.

The photos have been published on the American embassy's official Facebook page, together with the question "What sites should President Obama visit when he's in Stockholm?"

There are a lot of comments and suggestions, and even if the president will not have time to see many of them during his 2 days visit I hope they will attract interest from other potential visitors to Sweden.

Sweden is beautiful
"There are many beautiful and interesting places in Stockholm, and we're always keen to show these to the world," embassy spokesman Jeff Anderson explained to The Local.

He is right of course, except that he could have said "Sweden" instead of "Stockholm". Our country has many more wonderful places, and one of them is, Öland, the island where the kalmstrom.com head office is situated. The royal family has its summer residence here, so maybe we will see the American president on Öland some day also?

Kate Kalmstrom
Marketing and Documentation
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

New kalmstrom.com Developer Inspired By Nature

A month ago we were happy to welcome another experienced software developer to the kalmstrom.com team. Sharad Verma will lead the JavaScript group and take part in all development, and eventually we also hope to include him in the support tasks. Here is his story:

First I want to thank Peter and Kate Kalmstrom for letting me introduce myself in this blog. My first month in the team has been very interesting, and I can see a great future with kalmstrom.com.

I completed my Master of Computer Application in 2010. After five semesters at the university, I joined one of the Indore IT companies for a major .NET technology project of six semesters, which was required for my exam. That company later wanted to hire me as a Junior Developer, and I stayed with them for three years and worked on various projects.

I have small and sweet family. My father is a retired government officer, my mother is a house wife and my wife is a teacher of English literature. My very first aim is to make my family members happy.

The photos in this article comes from a journey to Manali that me and my wife made to celebrate our marriage anniversary. We love to travel to places of natural beauty, because they give a message of peace and passion to our community.

Manali is a small town in the Himalayas. It is a very popular spot for mountain trekking and river rafting, and of course we tried both. In the Rohtang pass, at an altitude of 3978 meters, my wife and I felt as if we were in heaven, because it was such a beautiful place. On another occasion we dressed up in the traditional costumes of the area.


During my first month at kalmstrom.com I have mostly worked with next version of TimeCard, a solution for time reporting from the Outlook calendar. It will have three versions, a single user version for Outlook and two workgroup versions – one for Outlook and one for SharePoint.

TimeCard will also support the 64-bit versions of Office 2010 and 2013, so it is a challenging development project. Most applications developers choose to only support the 32-bit versions, but I have understood that kalmstrom.com wants to give more.

I am looking forward to pursuing my career in the kalmstrom.com team. It is a work environment that will utilize and reinforce my technical abilities, and I know I will also gain new cutting edge skills and experience in the rapidly changing field where kalmstrom.com is a player to count on.

Sharad Verma
Software Developer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Unlock Cells In Locked Datasheet With Excel Cell Style

Earlier this week I wrote about Excel formulas for multiplication and division, and I mentioned that I used cell styles to show what cells contained formulas. Today I will present a demo that explains more about Excel cell styles.

Save cell formats in cell styles
There are several ways of giving a certain style to multiple cells in an Excel datasheet without applying them separately to each cell. You can for example format one cell manually and then copy the format to other cells, which I also show in the tutorial about multiplication and division formulas.

When you use cell styles for formatting, you will have the different styles easy at hand in the banner. Excel has a number of pre-defined cell styles, and you can also define your own cell style, like I do in the demo below.

Sales prognosis
It is common to use Excel for sales prognoses, because in Excel it is easy to see how the result will be affected by changes. To get a realistic result it is however important that changes are entered in the correct cells. In the demo I show examples on that.

Lock cells
To prevent users from changing values in the wrong cells it is a good idea to lock the cells that should not be touched. I demonstrate how to do that in two steps:

1. Create a cell style that unlocks the cells it is applied to.
   
2. Lock the whole datasheet for editing.
   

Now all cells are locked except those that I applied the unlocked cell style to, and if someone tries to change the value in another cell Excel will give a message that it is protected.

To make it more obvious what cells can be changed I finally modify the cell style I created so that all unlocked cells will be filled with a green color.

Use with kalmstrom.com products
Most of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons have Excel reports on how the product is used, and you can of course use cell styles or any other formatting with those reports.

They are standard Excel sheets that get data from a database or a SharePoint site connected to the add-on, and they can be handles just like any other Excel sheets.

Please watch the demo and visit the kalmstrom.com Tips section for more Excel tutorials!



By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Internet Access To All Goal For New Partnership

The world leading technology companies Ericsson, Facebook, Samsung, Nokia, Opera, Mediatek and Qualcomm have joined forces and formed a global partnership, internet.org. Their aim is to give internet access to all people on earth.


Only 2.7 billion have internet access
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions had been an unfeasible business without the internet, and my own whole carreer has been built on the possibility to reach customers, partners and employees via the internet.

On the other hand, the first web page was published only 20 years ago, and still nearly two thirds of the worlds' population are locked out from all the chances given to us by the internet.

Three paths
According to the new internet.org website, the founders will work along three paths to reach their goal:

• Make the technology cheaper – "No one should have to choose between access to the internet and food or medicine."
  
• Develop methods for more efficient data transmission.
  
• Introduce business models that will give more ways to go online.

Open new markets
I feel happy about the new partnership, and that a branch of one of the founding companies is a Member of the kalmstrom.com Community  makes it even better!

Of course the founders of internet.org have their own motives for their project, because they need the new markets that will open when more people get connected to the internet. If they succeed and their efforts lead to a quicker and more equal extension of the internet,  kalmstrom.com will also beneft from it on a smaller scale.

Knowledge and contact
But it is not only business. In general I really believe that the internet can help us creating a better world by making it smaller and easier to understand.

I value my internet contacts highly, and the internet is a source of knowledge that I use daily, so I wish the founders of internet.org good luck with their partnership. When strong forces like these companies work together they should be able to make a difference!

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

SharePoint Task Manager Customization With InfoPath

Kanban Task Manager currently comes in two versions that may be used together: one for Outlook tasks and one for SharePoint tasks. The SharePoint tasks are easy to customize, but if you want to change the task form there are some things to consider.

Form customization with InfoPath
As all SharePoint lists items the tasks of Kanban Task Manager for SharePoint can be customized. The most common way is proably to add and delete columns in the task form.

When you use the Enterprise version of SharePoint 2013 you can also customize the task form itself with the integrated InfoPath tool. In the demo below I am explaining how to do it and what to think about.

Try it first!
I recommend that you activate Kanban Task Manager on a separate site in the collection to test your customization idea. When you try it on a site where Kanban Task Manager is not normally used, you can make sure it really works as intended before you implement it on a site where a group is actually working with Kanban Task Manager.

Related Items
With SharePoint 2013 the new column type “Related Items” was introduced in the task lists. It might be useful when you want to add related items to a task, but unfortunately it does not go well with InfoPath.

"Related Items" is hidden by default, so users never see it when they select phase, project or responsible in a Kanban Task Manager tasks. Therefore it can be deleted from the task list without problems and without anyone noticing it.

Same for all
What I have advised above is valid for all task list customizations with InfoPath. If you have connected Outlook to a SharePoint Task list with HelpDesk OSP and want to customize that list with InfoPath, you should also remove the Related Items first.

As HelpDesk OSP is not installed in SharePoint but only in Outlook, you don't have to try the customization on a separate site. But you should test it with another list before you modify the list that is connected to Outlook.

Only for Kanban Task Manager
When you customize the Kanban Task Manager task form you must do one more thing: change the information source for phase, project and responsible so that it is not linked to item. In the next version of Kanban Task Manager this change before customizing with InfoPath will not be needed.



I have recorded a few more demos on SharePoint and InfoPath that you might be interested to watch before you start customizing your task form. Please refer to the kalmstrom.com Tips section to learn more.

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Excel Formulas That Multiply and Divide In Home Costs Calculator

Last week I wrote about Excel formulas and about my first demo on basic use of them. That demo shows how to make Excel calculate sums.

Now I have recorded another tutorial for the kalmstrom.com Tips section: Excel formulas for multiplication and division.

Excel reports
The reason I am publishing a series of Excel tutorials right now is that we have begun using Excel for statistics in the kalmstrom.com applications.

Currently our helpdesk products as well as our resource booking add-on and our solution for project and task management in Outlook have these Excel reports. Soon we will add them to our Outlook add-on for time reporting too.

We have of course made it easy to create reports on various aspects of how the kalmstrom.com products are used, but it is also possible to create custom reports on the data.

Correctly used Excel is an excellent tool, and I hope that the new Excel reports and my tutorials will stimulate kalmstrom.com Community Members to extend the use of it.

Home costs
Excel is not only useful in business related reports and statistics. Like many others I use Excel for private calculations too, and as an example for my tutorial I have taken such an application: the costs of owning a home with a mortgage.

In the demo I show how to make Excel calculate the different costs associated with the home, and I create the formulas in a way that make it easy to introduce changes.

If, as an example, the interest is changed, I can enter the new interest in one cell only, and Excel will calculate the home costs with the new value.

Make it look nice 
When the formulas are in place and work as they should, it is a good practice to apply formats and cell styles to make the Excel sheet more appealing and easier to read and use.

In my example I remove the decimals and set the cell styles so that cells with formulas and cells with input values look different.  That way I can quickly see what can be changed and what should be kept as it is.


In the kalmstrom.com Tips section you can find many more pointers and "how tos" on SharePoint, Excel, Outlook and other platforms. Please take a look! If you are a Community Member you are also welcome to suggest new demos that would be good to have in the Tips section.

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Leverage Your Microsoft With The kalmstrom.com YouTube Channel

The kalmstrom.com demos and tutorials on YouTube are popular, and I like that the YouTube team continuously gives us new features that really make a difference in experience for both publishers and viewers.
Now I have taken advantage of a new feature called "Channel Trailer".

Late start
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions were late out on YouTube, because I could not accept the bad quality YouTube gave my videos in the beginning.

It was not until YouTube introduced the possibility to upload and show high-definition videos that I considered YouTube good enough. With HD even the details  became clear in the Outlook, Excel and SharePoint installations I needed to show.

97 videos
From 2010 kalmstrom.com Business Solutions begun publishing on YouTube. Today we have 97 videos that in some way deal with the Microsoft platforms SharePoint, Excel or Outlook.

As most of the first videos now have been removed I must have uploaded well over 120 demonstrations and tutorials on my own or Microsoft's products since I first begun using YouTube.

Product demonstrations
My first videos on YouTube were introductions to the kalmstrom.com Outlook and SharePoint solutions. These demos were embedded on the homepage for each application. We also create demos with user instructions, and nowadays we upload all such product videos to YouTube.

Tips and pointers
Other kalmstrom.com YouTube videos give a more general knowledge about SharePoint, Excel and Outlook than the product demos, and I sometimes use them when I lecture on IT courses.

These tips tutorials attract a great interest, and I plan to make more of them. To not burden the kalmstrom.com applications with the production costs, I have decided to allow advertisements on the demos that explain Microsoft's products rather than my own.

Statistics
It is interesting to follow the Analytics for the kalmstrom.com YouTube channel. The most watched video ever is the introduction to HelpDesk OSP, which is one of the product demos.

Second and third are two SharePoint tutorials, Add An InfoPath Form to A SharePoint 2013 FormLibrary and Create a Small Business SharePoint intranet.

Channel trailer
The Analytics is only one of the YouTube features that have enhanced the platform in the last years. The video channel is another one, and recently we got the possibility to add a trailer to the channel. This trailer is only shown to new visitors, not to the welll over 500 subscribers.

I was a bit hesitant to add the channel trailer here, because I actually want you to visit the kalmstrom.com YouTube channel and look at it there instead. But here it is anyway, so that subscribers also get a chance to watch it. I hope this trailer shows the essence of what kalmstrom.com stands for.



When you go to the kalmstrom.com YouTube channel, you will see all the playlists where our videos are gathered, and in the SharePoint 2013 playlist you will see another new feature: the custom thumbnail that give all these tutorials a similar look.

I will create more videos for my YouTube channel, and I will also try to use the features offered to give you the best possible experience. See you there!

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Correct Excel Formulas From Start

The kalmstrom.com Tips section has a new Excel tutorial, and this time I demonstrate the basics of Excel formulas. If you are not already used to working with formulas, I recommend you to watch it.

You can do a lot with Excel if you know how to make the program count numeric values for you, but there are some pitfalls you should be aware of.

Calculate with Excel
The main reason for Excel's popularity is its capacity for calculations that can be used in  different kinds of dynamic presentations. Excel formulas tell the program what cells to use and what to do with the numeric values in those cells.

Thanks to the formula you can quickly see what happens if you change a value in one or several cells, because the result of the calculation will change automatically.

Make prognoses with Excel
As Excel makes it so easy to see what happens when values are changed, the program is often used for prognoses. We are all aware that a prognosis is not a true fact but just a qualified guess about the future, but I think we too often assume that the selection of data and the mathematics behind the prognosis are correct. But that is not always the case.

Student discovered mistake in famous white paper
Some months ago we could read about a grave mistake in Excel calculations made by an economy professor and a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. In 2010 they presented a research paper called Growth in a Time of Debt, which was widely spread and influenced politicians all over the world.

The paper claimed that growth slows down dramatically  in an economic crisis when the size of a country's debt rises above 90% of Gross Domestic Product. The study attracted much attention, as it seemed to answer the question about how to act in a crisis – stimulate economic growth or cut spending and raise taxes? – with the advice "hold on to the money".

When a student failed to replicate the findings he finally asked for the Excel spreadsheet used by the experts, and as he studied it he found an error. When it had been corrected the prognosis was modified considerably!

Double-check!
I think this story is worth remembering, because it shows how important it is to:

• include the correct data in the calculation
  
• create the correct formula for the calculation
  

Excel is an excellent tool, but you have to understand the mathematics behind the formulas. Excel does not do the math for you, and it certainly does not tell you what data is relevant to include in the calculations.

That said, I urge you to try Excel formulas if you have not already done it. In my demo I try to explain the logics behind the formulas, so I hope it will give you a good start!



Later I will record another tutorial with more advanced formulas, and you can already find several Excel demos on how to create graphs from tables with numeric values in the kalmstrom.com Tips section.

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

TimeCard for SharePoint Under Development

I am excited about our current development project, TimeCard V5, which will give TimeCard Workgroup users the option to report time and expenses from SharePoint and not only from Outlook.

Report time from the calendar
The idea behind TimeCard is that you should report time from the same place as where you plan your time, to avoid double entries.

Time is planned in a calendar, so that is where the reporting should be done too. I chose to create my application for the Outlook calendar, as Outlook is widely used and a good platform to build on.

Reporting to database
When TimeCard was developed 13 years ago, most people reported time to a database in a local network, so we gave TimeCard the options Access or SQL Server database. For users who needed to report from outside the network we offered reporting from the Outlook calendar to an ASP page, that forwarded the time reports to the database.

SharePoint superior cloud platform
Today, when the internet makes remote work so much easier, many want to both plan and report their time in a cloud calendar. Therefore it is time to take TimeCard to the cloud as well.

I have found SharePoint to be the by far best cloud solution. If you have followed this blog you know that I aim to give all the kalmstrom.com products a SharePoint alternative.

Plan and report time in the cloud
Version 5 of TimeCard Workgroup will give the option of using the new TimeCard for SharePoint, either as a separate solution or in combination with the Outlook version.

Each user will have his/her own SharePoint calendar, and when the Outlook version of TimeCard is used with the Outlook calendar, TimeCard will synchronize appointments in the two calendars. Time and expenses can be reported from either SharePoint or Outlook.

Similar to Kanban Task Manager
If you know the kalmstrom.com application for project and task management, you have already realized that TimeCard for SharePoint and TimeCard for Outlook will work together just like Kanban Task Manager for SharePoint and Kanban Task Manager for Outlook. You can either use both versions together or opt to use only one of them.

And ASP?
I recommend Community Members using TimeCard and ASP reporting to transfer to SharePoint when TimeCard V5 has been published, but I am not sure all  can manage that. I therefore sent an e-mail and asked them yesterday.

If necessary we will continue to support reporting via an ASP page, but should none of the current Community Members need it for future time reporting we will remove that part from TimeCard.

Customer care
My first aim is to keep subscribers happy, so that they keep using my products. That is why I sent my e-mail to ask about ASP usage.

To the customers, this is one of the advantages of being a subscriber instead of a buyer – the kalmstrom.com team is always there for them. We are happy to give assistance, answer questions and make sure the applications work well. We don't leave you on your own after the purchase!

Release plans
In addition to the SharePoint option, TimeCard V5 will have a new design, Excel reports and support for the 64 bit versions of Office 2010 and 2013, so it will be a while before we have put all parts together. We have recently added more developers to the team, though, so I hope we can release TimeCard V5 in October.

I will come back and tell you more about TimeCard V5 in this blog later, and you are of course also welcome to contact us with any questions you might have.

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions.

Sandbox Laptop For New kalmstrom.com QA

We are happy to have a new Quality Assurance Engineer in the kalmstrom.com team. Ankita Kunchal begun working at the Indian office a month ago, and she has already become a valuable colleague. And her choice of photos for this blog post shows that she has a sense of humour!

"Learns quickly"
I have not co-operated much with Ankita, so when I prepared this blog I talked to Vijayant Rimza, our Lead QA. Vijayant has introduced Ankita to her tasks and supervised her progress, and he had only good things to say about her.

All new members of the kalmstrom.com team must start with a learning period, and Vijayant asked me to point out that Ankita grasps new things quickly and remembers what she has learned. This is crucial in our business, where we continuously have to update our knowledge.

#3 among graduates
Vijayant was not the first to notice that Ankita is a quick learner. When she took her Bachelor of Engineering in 2012 she was rewarded a bronze medal for being the third best of all graduates at her college this year. After that Ankita was trained in another software company before we offered her a position.

Desktop applications
“I have always tried to learn new things, and in the kalmstrom.com team I do that every day”, says Ankita. “I especially like that I can test different kinds of desktop applications now and not only web based solutions.”

Product testing
During her first month with kalmstrom.com Ankita has helped us with the testing of first Kanban Task Manager for Outlook and then HelpDesk OSP for Outlook and SharePoint.

We have now released updates of both these Outlook add-ons, and Ankita is concentrating on TimeCard for Outlook V5, which will require extensive testing before next version can be published.

Laptop in the sand
Ankita loves to travel, so before she begun working for kalmstrom.com she took a vacation and made a journey. When she visited Aksa beach in Mumbai she created a laptop in the sand, so that she could chat with her friends and tell them about the trip ;-)

Basket player
In her free time Ankita likes to dance, cook and play basketball. She is not tall, but she is quick and a good goalscorer. I am sure she will get a few hits in her work at kalmstrom.com also!

You are very welcome to the team, Ankita! I am looking forward to getting to know you better.

Kate Kalmström
Marketing and Documentation
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Use Excel Charts To Visualize Data - New kalmstrom.com Demo

The kalmstrom.com Tips section earlier had some tutorials for Excel 2010, but now I have also created new ones for Excel 2013. One of them explains how graphs and diagrams can be used to illustrate data.

Visualize complex data
A chart is a diagram or graph that  visualizes numerical data. When they are correctly used, charts make it much easier to understand relationships and changes in large quantities of data. Good charts can make complex data accessible, as information can be taken in more quickly than the data that they are created from.



Changes over time can be shown with a line chart, and a pie chart is good for data that represents percentages. Bars or columns are excellent when you want to compare data and show relative sizes.


Misuse
Charts can also be misused and create confusion or even be misleading. I am sure you have all sometimes looked at a chart in a newspaper or on a website and asked yourself what it is supposed illustrate. And I hope you don't fall for the commercial advertisements that show only the top of a bar graph to make very small changes look bigger than they actually are.

Learn all options
To be able to use the correct chart for each type of data you need to learn the different kinds of graphs and diagrams. Then you know what the alternatives are and can judge which to use in each case.

My tutorial below is just a starter, but I illustrate how using the wrong chart can create overwhelming graphics that is even harder to understand than the original data. And of course I also suggest a better way of doing it!

Excel reports
Most 2013 versions of our products give a possibility to create Excel reports on application data, and I hope users will take full advantage of all the possibilities Microsoft gives us in Excel. The default reports can be manipulated with the standard Excel features, and you can also create custom reports on the data.

Kanban Task Manager for Outlook has 7 default reports, Calendar Browser has 12 and Folder HelpDesk as many as16. All reports are presented with both a table and a chart.

In HelpDesk OSP, which uses SharePoint, we have chosen to give no default reports but instead let the users select in a dialog what SharePoint list and fields should be included in each report.

Welcome to watch the demo! In the kalmstrom.com Tips section you can find more tutorials on Excel and also on Outlook, SharePoint and other subjects.


By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Manager
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions