International Travellers Reward To Öland, The Home Of kalmstrom.com

kalmstrom.com has its headquarters on an island just off the Swedish sound-eastern coast: Öland.

My parents, Kate and Sigge, also have their permanent home here, so I will let Kate tell you more about Öland and the international reward recently given to "our" island.

Top 30 Islands in the World
Among all islands in the world, the well-known American travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler has chosen 30 that they especially recommend for a visit. I am amazed that our little island so far from the U.S. has been included in the list as number 20, right after the Maldives.

Öland is a paradise for the Kalmström family, but before learning about this reward I did not understand its international attraction.

Motivation
This is the Condé Nast Traveler motivation for recommending Öland as a premier island to visit.

"A vacation spot for Sweden’s royal family, this island in the Baltic Sea is a popular summer getaway for commoners, too. Here you’ll find pretty beaches, dramatic limestone outcroppings, fairy-tale forests, and hundreds of antique windmills. The whole southern portion of the island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site thanks to its well-preserved farming settlement.

Pro tip: Öland is brimming with historical sites, from the prehistoric standing stones at Gettlinge to the medieval ring fort of Eketorp. There’s also Borgholms slott, the ruins of a 12th-century castle ravaged by a 19th-century fire.

Getting there: Just off of mainland Sweden, the island is accessible by car or bus via the Öland Bridge."

More info about Öland
I could write a book about our beloved island, but instead I will finish this post with a few tips on further information about Öland. Wikipedia of course has an article, and the Öland tourist authorities have a site in English. If you search this blog for Öland or Oland, I am sure you will find some additional information too!

Swedish grammar site
For many years I was a teacher of Swedish for immigrants, and I have written textbooks about my subject. These books were the base when the kalmstrom.com team created a website with rules and guidelines for Swedish grammar and word formation.

The grammar site has many pages, and there is a photo from a Swedish landscape on each of them. Not all of the photos are from Öland, but many are! You can also find some of the photos accompanied by Swedish music on the Swedish grammar playlist on YouTube.

Öland seasons
The very best is of course to visit Öland! And if you visit several times it will never be the same, because Öland has something that most of the other island on the list do not have: distinct seasons.

The spring is beautiful with a multitude of wild flowers, and the autumn is mild thanks to the surrounding sea.

The Öland summer is sunny, hectic and crowded, and if you like that you should come in July.

Or do you want solitude? Why not visit Öland in the winter and experience its hash and windy wildness?

Each season has its own magic on the island where we have the privilege to live and work.

Kate Kalmström
Sales and Marketing
kalmstrom.com
Business Solutions

SP Archive Handles SharePoint Survey Lists

Last week we published a new SharePoint solution for customized archiving. We call it SP Archive, and it handles all kinds of SharePoint lists – including surveys.

SharePoint Survey
A SharePoint survey list enables you to create multiple choice, fill-in fields or rating questions that you want other team members to answer. The answers are of course given in the same list, and the survey list also helps you summarize the results.

SharePoint list limit
Surveys can be very useful, and often you want to store the results so that it is possible to review them later. However, the SharePoint list view limit of 5000 rows will eventually give you problems if you keep the data in SharePoint. The best option is to archive the surveys in a database.

Survey archive problem solved
Most lists can be archived to an Access database directly from SharePoint, but you cannot do that with surveys. SP Archive solves that issue, as the kalmstrom.com Solution can archive SharePoint surveys in the same way as all other lists.

Database choice
SP Archive gives a choice of Access and SQL Server database, which is an advantage even for lists where export to Access is possible. For big organizations with much data, the more powerful SQL Server database is a better option than Access.

Column choice
Another benefit of  SP Archive is the selection possibilities. This means that you can decide what parts of the list you want to archive. Maybe you don't need to keep all columns in the survey?

Subscribe
SP Archive is free for organizations who are already subscribing to a kalmstrom.com SharePoint Solution: HelpDesk OSP for Outlook and SharePoint, Kanban Task Manager for SharePoint or TimeCard for SharePoint. And if you are not a kalmstrom.com Subscriber already, you are welcome to subscribe to only SP Archive.

Try SP Archive
But first you should try SP Archive. We allow a 30 days evaluation of the full product, and when you decide to use SP Archive no re-installation or re-configuration is necessary. You can just subscribe to SP Archive, register it and continue archiving SharePoint surveys and any other SharePoint lists.

Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

SharePoint Solution For Customized Archiving Released

Today we have released a new kalmstrom.com SharePoint Solution – SP Archive. The application lets organizations archive SharePoint data in a customized way, to avoid problems with SharePoint list items limits, and as SP Archive saves the list items to a database it is also suitable for backup.

kalmstrom.com Senior Developer Jitu Patidar is our guest blogger today. He has been responsible for the development of SP Archive, and he will tell more about our new kalmstrom.com Solution.

Problem: SharePoint list limits
SharePoint lists have a limit of 5000 rows. When you exceed the list limit you will have problems, so some kind of archiving is necessary. That is why we have developed SP Archive. We wanted to give users of kalmstrom.com SharePoint Solutions a better archiving option than the workflow we had offered earlier.

Solution: Archive to database
When it comes to archiving, a database has considerable advantages to a SharePoint site. Databases are built to handle many items, while SharePoint in the first place is built for sharing.

Because of the database benefits we decided to let the first version of our new kalmstrom.com Solution archive to Microsoft Access or SQL Server. Next version of SP Archive will give a possibility to archive to SharePoint lists also, for those who prefer that.

Customized Archiving
From the start we decided that SP Archive must let users decide exactly what items and fields should be archived, and the selection must be easy to make and change. We also wanted to give the possibility to use several databases with SP Archive, for example different databases for different lists or SharePoint sites.

We created a Settings dialog, where SharePoint sites and lists are added to SP Archive and an Archiving dialog where users select first SharePoint list, then fields and finally items to archive. The selection of items is simplified by numerous filtering options.

Excel reports
When the selection is done, there is a possibility to export the selected items and fields to an Excel sheet. It gives a quick overview of the data you have exported. Attachments can be included in the archiving to the database, but they are not included in the Excel export.

Archive or backup
When you archive old or unused SharePoint list items to a database you probably don't want to keep them in SharePoint, because of the 5000 items list limit. But we have not developed SP Archive to automatically remove the archived items from SharePoint. Instead we give the option to either remove the items or keep them in SharePoint, and that way SP Archive may be used for backup of SharePoint list items too.

SP Archive remembers
We think people often want to archive items from the same list in the same way, and therefore we have made SP Archive remember the field selection and filter option choice. This way the archiving or backup will be very quick after the first time.

Small team
SP Archive is a comparatively small-scale solution, so we have only been two developers working actively with the development. Junior Developer Ankit Raghuvansi made much of the actual coding under my supervision. But the whole team has studied SP Archive, and their comments and enhancement suggestions have been very valuable. Thank you all!

Subscribe or get for free
If your organization already subscribe to a kalmstrom.com SharePoint solution, you don't have to start a new, separate subscription to SP Archive. From today SP Archive will be included in your current subscription, so please contact us and we will send you a key.

Should your organization not be using a kalmstrom.com SharePoint Solution yet, you are welcome to subscribe to SP Archive. Because even if we developed SP Archive for our subscribers, this solution is beneficial to all SharePoint users!

Try SP Archive!
Whether you are a kalmstrom.com Community Member or not, you are very welcome to download SP Archive and evaluate the solution for 30 days without any obligations. If you have questions, I am here to assist you together with my colleagues in the kalmstrom.com Support team.

Jitu Patidar
Senior Developer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

SharePoint 2013 Search Tutorials on kalmstrom.com

SharePoint 2013 comes with a very capable search engine. Much can be achieved with just the standard features, and admin with some extra knowledge can enhance the search possibilities further. To encourage exploration and use of the SharePoint Search I am planning a series of tutorials on this subject.

How SharePoint Search works
The SharePoint search engine crawls through the content sources and builds an index of the words used in all files and items. The search engine also records where those files are stored and which users are allowed to read the information.

When a user performs a search, the search engine compares the searched words with the index and returns the appropriate items, sorted by relevance. But even if these basics are the same for all SharePoint versions, there are differences in how to get there.

Office 365  ̶  convenience
In SharePoint Online, which is included in Office 365, the Search is already configured, and SharePoint Online users can just start searching their content without bothering with search configurations and crawling options.

I recommend SharePoint Online for smaller businesses, as it is easier to start using than the on premise versions. The drawback of that convenience is that you have much less control than what you get with a SharePoint on premise installation.

SharePoint on premise  ̶  control
When you start using a fresh SharePoint 2013 on premise, the SharePoint Search does not work at all. Just like many other features in SharePoint on premise, the search engine first has to be configured. The advantage of the manual configuration is that you have control over the features and can customize your SharePoint, but the administration of SharePoint on premise of course requires more knowledge than the online version.

Crawl options
When configuring the SharePoint Search for a SharePoint 2013 on premise installation, you have three crawling options to be aware of:

• Incremental crawls: described as finding all additions, removing most deletes and updating most of the security rules for items in the index.
• Full crawls: find all changes, but take a long time to run and cannot run in parallel with incremental crawls. A full crawl is especially needed after information architecture changes, such as adding or changing content types, managed properties or indexes.
• Continuous crawls: similar to incremental crawls but run faster, update the index quicker and can be run in parallel with full crawls. Without advanced configuration you will usually get a 15 minute freshness on your index with this option.
  
  The continuous crawls are part of the enhanced Search feature in SharePoint 2013, and this is also the mode used in Office 365 SharePoint Online.

In the demo below I show how to set the crawling schedule for SharePoint 2013 on premise search engines. For more info and a step by step instruction, please refer to the kalmstrom.com Tips article on how to configure SharePoint Search.

Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

From Skype to Lync

Communication is a key factor for business success, and as I have wide experience from Microsoft’s communication platform Lync I have recorded a demo of the most interesting features.

You can watch the demo below and also in a new Tips article on the kalmstrom.com website.

Similar to Skype
Microsoft Lync is a communications platform with many similarities to Skype. However, while Skype is used by individuals all over the world, Lync has been developed primarily for business use.

I was a Product Manager at Skype from 2005 to 2010. At that time Skype and Microsoft were competitors, so even if my major area was the Skype toolbars, another task was to keep track of Lync capabilities.

Virtual connections
Lync gives secure communication between customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners over the internet. It is compatible with many different devices, so it allows users to work from wherever they want.

Document and Program sharing
For the last few years I have been teaching Lync as part of my Office 365-courses, and my students are often impressed by the Lync possibility to share documents and programs online. Both parties can of course see the document or program, but that is not all because both can actually work on it too.

Whiteboard
The enhanced Lync conversations also include a feature that has become my favorite: the whiteboard. In the demo below I am showing how to use the whiteboard to discuss a floor plan. The whiteboard discussions will be even more useful if you also record them, and that is another Lync possibility.

In the Tips article about Microsoft Lync we give an outline of all that is described in the demo below. I hope you will find it useful!

Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions