Display SharePoint Online Web Designer Galleries

When you open the site settings of the default SharePoint Online team site to upload a solution, you will discover that the Solutions Gallery is not displayed in the settings. In a tutorial in the Office 365 from Scratch series I have explained why and what to do about it.

Sandboxed Solutions
Four of the kalmstrom.com SharePoint Solutions - Kanban Task Manager, TimeCard, Study Manager and Calendar Browser - are sandboxed solutions that need to be uploaded and activated in the Solutions Gallery of the site collection where they should be used.

Find the Web Designer Galleries
Most SharePoint admins create new SharePoint site collections for the kalmstrom.com Solutions. Then they can open the Site settings, find the Web Designer Galleries group, select Solutions and upload their kalmstrom.com product.

However, if you try to install your kalmstrom.com Solution on the default team site, you will discover that the Web Designer Galleries group is not displayed in the site settings. The reason is a fairly new setting that prevents users from running custom script on self-service created sites.

Allow script
To solve the problem you need to go into the SharePoint admin center and change the default settings, so that custom script is allowed on self-service created sites like the default team site.

In the demo below I show how to do it, and the process is also described in an article on how to show the SharePoint Online Web Designer Galleries the in the kalmstrom.com Tips section. It is quick and easy – you just need to know what to change!

This blog post was updated 7 December 2017
Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Swedish Midsummer Celebrations

Today is Midsummer's Eve in Sweden, and the Swedish members of the kalmstrom.com team celebrate the shortest night of the year.

Sweden has long and dark winters, and maybe that is the reason why the Swedes have honored the lightest day of the year since long before Sweden was a country. Midsummer's Eve is the day of the main celebrations, and some dress in folk costumes to highlight the long tradition of this festival.



Most Swedes try to celebrate Midsummer in the countryside, so on the island where Sigge and I live and kalmstrom.com has its headquarters, we often have guests for this holiday.

In the morning of Midsummer's Eve, people go out to pick flowers and dress the maypole. "Allemansrätten", the law that gives us the freedom to roam in the countryside, also gives us the right to pick all wild flowers but  orchids and other protected species.

After a lunch on pickled herring, chives, sour cream and the first potatoes of the season, it is time to raise the maypole on a meadow or lawn. Then all join hands and create huge rings, and we sing traditional songs while wandering around the pole. Often special movements have to be performed with each song, and this is a great joy for the children.

In the evening follows a long dinner with friends and family and more dancing and singing in homes that are decorated with greenery to create the right Midsummer spirit. As you can see in the slideshow below, Sweden is at its best this time of the year.



In ancient times people believed that magic was strong during Midsummer's Eve, so it was a good night for rituals to look into the future. Unmarried young girls picked a bouquet of seven different flowers and put it under the pillow to dream about their future husband. Herbs picked at Midsummer were considered to be highly potent, and the spring water could bring you good health.

I hope my readers feel some of that spirit reading this post. Even if you don't celebrate the light in the way the Swedes do it, I know many of you honor it in other ways. Therefore I wish you all a Happy Midsummer! Or as we say in Sweden: Glad Midsommar!

By Kate Kalmström
COO
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Outlook HelpDesk Add-on Updated

Folder HelpDesk for Outlook was one of my first add-ons, created fifteen years ago. Yesterday we released a minor update to fix some bugs reported by users with special environments.

Issue tracking tool
With Folder HelpDesk, a support team can cooperate in an organized manner inside Outlook. E-mails are converted into tickets manually or automatically and gathered in a list with several different views inside Outlook.

As Folder HelpDesk for Outlook 
is a mature product, it has many features. The add-on is used by organizations all over the world
for all kinds of incident management and user support.

Various environments
Folder HelpDesk makes use of Exchange server and is installed in a shared mailbox or public folder. This is the same for all Folder HelpDesk users, but there the similarities often stop. With so many user organizations, the environments where Folder HelpDesk works are very different from each other.

Re-create and solve
The kalmstrom.com QA team tests each new version of Folder HelpDesk thoroughly in different milieus, but it is impossible to test every setting where Folder HelpDesk is used. Therefore we are grateful when users report issues and give us a chance to do something about them. By learning about the subscriber's environment, our technicians can re-create the problem and solve it.

Helpful subscribers
Yesterday's update of Folder HelpDesk is the result of fruitful cooperation between the kalmstrom.com developers and QAs on one side and a few subscriber organizations on the other side. Bugs were reported, studied and solved to everyone's satisfaction.

We especially want to thank the Folder HelpDesk responsibles at The Swiss Post for their patience and readiness to answer all our questions. Their environment is a bit unusual, so they encountered several of the bugs that now have been fixed.


Upgrade
Now when all known bugs are removed, we of course want to release a new version for all. Subscribers are welcome to upgrade Folder HelpDesk without any extra costs. Refer to the Folder HelpDesk Revisions page to see which problems have been solved in this update.

Try Folder HelpDesk
If you need a good issue tracking tool that works completely inside Outlook, I recommend you to download and try Folder HelpDesk . Please contact us if you have questions. Your e-mail will be well received!

Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

SharePoint Resource Booking in Upcoming Release

Calendar Browser for SharePoint is the next kalmstrom.com Solution. Today I can show you the slideshow presentation of our new SharePoint Solution for resource booking.

Calendar Browser: Create an event = Book a resource
Calendar Browser is fully integrated into SharePoint. Its features allow you to book resources, such as meeting rooms and audio-visual equipment. For example, you can identify the available resources and book a conference room when you plan a conference. This solution lets you create and manage bookings for any kind of company resources.

Calendar Browser is deployed at site level and can be used on any SharePoint site. It is a Sandboxed SharePoint Solution that should be uploaded to a SharePoint solution gallery and activated there and on each site in the collection where it should be used.

Calendar Browser is intended for

• Resource reservations
• Meeting planning
• Equipment booking
• Scheduling
• Overview (month, week, day)
• Use of custom colors for project or similar

Calendar Browser for SharePoint provides multiple resource booking facilities. You can configure and describe the available resources, guard against double bookings and also use recurring resource reservations.

Color coding in Calendar Browser
You can use different colors for projects in Calendar Browser, which will help you to differentiate all the projects. If “project” is not a good parameter for your organization, you can rename it to something more suitable. Visualizing is everything!

More Calendar Browser features

• Edit, delete or create new resources with a few mouse clicks.
• WYSIWYG Html editor for resource descriptions. URL descriptions also possible.
• Users search resources, see descriptions of them and book directly ‒ all in the same SharePoint page.

Calendar Browser for SharePoint will be a kalmstrom.com Gold Solution, just like the Outlook version of Calendar Browser. Now we will finish the documentation work and make sure Calendar Browser for SharePoint works smoothly in all user cases. We hope to release our new kalmstrom.com Solution in a few weeks, and after that you can start booking resources on your team site!

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

Junior Developer Finds His True Self At kalmstrom.com

Today I am happy to introduce a new employee at the Indore office. Bhupendra Singh joined the kalmstrom.com team as a trainee three months ago, and now we have hired him as a Junior Developer.

The right trainees will advance
The people who work with the kalmstrom.com Solutions must not only be technically advanced. They must also have a capacity to think out of the box and be imaginative problem solvers. Such persons are not so easy to find, but taking in trainees is a good way of looking for them.

Some of our current team members began their career at kalmstrom.com as trainees, and after a few years they are now skilled technicians with a deep understanding of our products and the platforms they build on. I am sure Bhupendra will be another one of them.

Bhupendra's story
I was born and brought up in Indore, India, and I graduated from the Indore Institute of Science and Technology in 2013.

Like every college graduate I asked myself what to do next. Should I go for further studies? Should start earning my bread and butter?

Contractor training
At that time I was selected for training in a young engineer contractor scheme, launched by the Chief Minister of our state, Madhya Pradesh.

The course gave me a license that is required to sign contracts for governments road and building works, so I registered a company and begun working in that business together with a cousin.

However, the question was still bothering me. Was this the work I wanted to do for the rest of my life? The technology, programs, and logics running in my blood cells was saying a big NO.

I left the management of my company to my father and my cousin and begun looking for another career.

Explore the real me
Fortunately, in March 2015, I got the opportunity to work with the kalmstrom.com team. Here I was offered an opportunity to explore the real me – or at least the engineer in me.

I joined the kalmstrom.com team as an intern and got the opportunity to develop my skills under the guidance of my colleagues and seniors. At first I worked on design issues of two SharePoint solutions: TimeCard Mobile and Calendar Browser.

After that I began enhancing the kalmstrom.com registration website, which includes designing, programming, and database management.

Music frees the mind
In my free time I like to listen to music, because music is something which always keeps your mind fresh. I also like to visit and explore new places.

Family of IT Professionals
I am blessed with a wonderful family of six members. My mother is a home maker, and my father is a retired bank employee. He is engaged in trade-union matters and is currently the Vice President of All India Bank Employees Association and the General Secretary of Bank of India Employees Union.

My elder brother, who is a Senior Software Engineer and lives in Japan, will soon marry. His fiancé is a Senior Technical Writer and works for a Swedish company (Ericsson) just like I do. My sister lives in Mumbai. She is an  IT analyst, so we are all in the IT business.

Questions answered!
At the kalmstrom.com, Indore office, I have found the answer to my questions about the future. Now I feel very satisfied with my work, because it gives me a chance to continue learning things I am interested in, at the same time as I have begun earning "my bread and butter"!

Bhupendra Singh
Junior Developer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Office 365 In New Tutorial Series

Do you want to learn more about Office 365? If the answer is 'Yes', you are welcome to follow the new tutorial series on Office 365 in the kalmstrom.com Tips section.

Web based Office
Office 365 is the web based version of Microsoft Office, which is delivered to the users through the cloud. Office 365 includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and web-based versions of the traditional Microsoft Office applications.

Supported by kalmstrom.com
All kalmstrom.com Solutions work with Office 365, so we have decided to give a closer exposure of Office 365 to our subscribers. Now after releasing Excel 2016 from Scratch, we are back with a new series: Office 365 from Scratch. The course is however suitable for everyone who wants to learn more about Office 365.

Office 365 from Scratch
I call the series Office 365 from Scratch, because I begin with the very basics: Office 365 setup, sign in, add users and install Office 365 pro plus. Then I continue with descriptions of the Office 365 features.

Study step by step
The kalmstrom.com Tips section contains many demos and articles. Most of them do not directly concern to the kalmstrom.com Solutions, but they might still be useful to our subscribers. They have often been created after requests from subscribers, so they are not assembled in an organized order.

The Office 365 from Scratch tutorials, on the other hand, are ordered from basic to advanced, so that new beginners can follow the series. If you are already using Office 365 but you want to have a better understanding of Microsoft’s cloud platform, you can browse among the articles and study what suits you best.

Easy navigation
To give a better understanding, the Office 365 from Scratch tutorials include both articles and demos. Each article describes the content of the demo, and some of them have step by step instructions.

For an easy navigation, the bottom of each article page contains arrows that link backward to the previous and forward to the next article. Some of the demos and articles have been launched, and now it is time to take a tour.

You are most welcome to share your thoughts and comments on the Office 365 from Scratch tutorials. kalmstrom.com Subscribers may also suggest articles to be added to the Tips section, and we will do our best to create them.

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

Outlook Kanban Task Manager For Lots Of Tasks

We have released a minor update of Kanban Task Manager for Outlook to enhance the experience for users with a huge number of tasks. Thanks to our Support Lead, a customer with problems had help quickly, and all users will have a new version.

Faster Outlook startup
The update of Kanban Task Manager came after a subscriber complained that the earlier version slowed down the Outlook startup. The kalmstrom.com Support Lead, Senior Developer Jitu Patidar, found that this organization had a huge number of tasks on the virtual kanban board, and that was the reason for the sluggish Outlook start.

Jitu researched the problem and changed the Kanban Task Manager code so that Outlook now works fast again even for this customer with so many tasks. To avoid that other subscribers get the same issue, he wanted to release the new version for all.

For many users
Both the Outlook and the SharePoint versions of Kanban Task Manager are popular kalmstrom.com Solutions, and several of the subscribing organizations have many users. This is how we intend the solution to work, and soon after the first release  in 2012 we published a blog post on how we had prepared Kanban Task Manager for Outlook for use in big organizations. Therefore, it is  important to us to quickly correct any issues.

Developers in the support
When you contact the kalmstrom.com support, your case is taken care of by a developer directly.
This way customers get qualified assistance without delays, and the developers learn to understand how our products are used and what customers need.

The new Kanban Task Manager release is a good example of the benefits of this system. The responsible developer does not have to rely on a report from a first line support worker. Instead he (currently all our developers are men) has a direct contact with the caller, and our customers appreciate our qualified support highly.

Upgrade!
kalmstrom.com Subscribers have free upgrades, and if your team uses Kanban Task Manager for Outlook with a lot of different projects and tasks, I recommend you to upgrade your installations.

Try Kanban Task Manager
Kanban Task Manager for Outlook is installed on each PC where it should be used, and the tasks are shared via a database or SharePoint. The tasks are regular Outlook tasks with extra dropdowns for selection of project and responsible.

Does it sound interesting to your organization? Please watch the demo above to learn more – and there is much more documentation on the website.

We allow a 30 days free trial of Kanban Task Manager, so you are welcome to download the add-in. During the evaluation period our developers give the same high level of support services as when you subscribe to one of our products, and you are always welcome to contact them.

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

Swedish Companies Follow kalmstrom.com To India

A few days ago I wrote about the Indian state visit to Sweden. Today the Indian President is leaving our country after a very successful visit. "It is a milestone", said the Swedish Prime Minister, and I share his joy together with my Indian colleagues.

The most important part of the Indian President Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Sweden was the meeting with the Swedish Prime minister Stefan Löfven. Yesterday the two leaders met, and as you see from the photo below they were both happy with the meeting. Stefan Löven declared that he has high hopes for the Swedish relations with India.

The Indian President and the Swedish Prime Minister signed a number of memoranda of understanding. The agreements include sustainable urban development, medical research and business opportunities for small and medium businesses. Stefan Löfven described the meeting as a milestone in relations between Sweden and India.

"We have had a very long relationship with India", explained the Swedish Prime Minister. "Indians appreciate that we were very early to recognize India and establish diplomatic relations. We already have an ongoing cooperation in research, health and sustainable communities, which we will now build stronger."

kalmstrom.com has been in India for ten years. Of course there were some difficulties in the beginning, but it has always been interesting and never boring.

Nowadays the company and the Indian branch are well established. The cooperation between the Swedish and Indian teams runs smoothly, our business is expanding and there have been many, many good laughs like the one in the image above!

Below I am together with some of the Indian team members at a celebration in the Indore office. Note that the clocks on the wall show Indian and Swedish time!

So far we have been rather unique among Swedish family businesses to invest in India, but according to the Swedish Minister of Enterprise, Mikael Damberg, more companies will be following our example.

"For many years a number of major Swedish companies has existed in India, but as the country is developing rapidly we see that more small and medium-sized companies invest in India. Many exciting new companies see opportunities in India", he declared when meeting the Indian President.

It has been an inspiring state visit from the worlds largest democracy, and I hope all good intentions will be beneficial for Indians as well as for Swedes.

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

SharePoint News Aggregator Web Part

The kalmstrom.com team does not only develop standard solutions. When time allows we also create custom solutions, and those are often SharePoint enhancements. Today I will tell you about a recent project that we call SharePoint News Aggregator.

Collect news on one page

The idea of a News Aggregator first came from our partner GDM. One of their customers needed a possibility to see what was published in the SharePoint farm without going from one site to another and search for information. We quickly agreed on the development of a SharePoint web part that collects news and announcements from a whole farm or tenancy on one page.

Sandboxed solution
We created News Aggregator as a sandboxed solution, which is uploaded to the root site of each site collection and activated there. When that is done, News Aggregator can be added to any page in the same way as you add other SharePoint web parts.

Add URLs
When the URLs to Announcements and other lists in the farm or tenancy have been added to the web part, News Aggregator is ready for use.

The collapsed list of announcements and other news items shows the headings of all items, and when you expand a heading you can read the body text. Click on the body text, and you will be navigated to the actual item.

Variation for developers
Custom solutions like News Aggregator give a change to our developers and testers. They know the kalmstrom.com Solutions very well and are continuously working to enhance them. However, custom solutions give variation and an extra challenge, in the same way as brand new kalmstrom.com Solutions do.

First responsibility
News Aggregator was a relatively small project, so I decided to give the responsibility to one of our younger developers, Arpeet Gujarathi. It turned out very well. Arpeet transformed my design ideas into a solution that both we and the customer are satisfied with.

Arpeet participated in the development of Study Manager, our recently published learning platform for SharePoint. He did a good job there, so I found him ready to take on the responsibility for a new development.

Are you interested in hiring kalmstrom.com Services? Our expert fields are Office and SharePoint solutions, and we are open for all suggestions. Tell us what you want to do, and we will find the best way to get there!

Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Indian State Visit To Sweden For Research Collaboration

Cooperation between India and Sweden is nothing new, but currently the Indian President visits Sweden to strengthen the bands that connect the two countries. Here at kalmstrom.com we have had an intense and fruitful collaboration between India and Sweden for ten years, and now we hope for the same success on a higher level.

Royal welcoming ceremony
Yesterday the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, landed at the Stockholm international airport, where he was met by the Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel.

Later the same day the President met Queen Silvia and King Carl XVI Gustav at welcoming ceremony at the Royal Palace.

No visit to Öland
The Swedish Royal family has their summer castle near the kalmstrom.com head office, but they received the President in the Stockholm palace and not here on our beautiful island.

However, Stockholm is also at its best this time of the year, and I hope the President saw some of it during his ride in a horse-drawn cortege through the streets of the Swedish capital on Sunday afternoon.

Innovation and research cooperation
Shri Pranab Mukherjee will meet with several government officials, including Prime Minister Stephen Löfven and Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, to discuss how India and Sweden can enhance their collaboration.

The President will also visit the Nobel Institute and the research university in Uppsala, north of Stockholm, where he will give a speech on ”Tagore and Gandhi: Do they have Contemporary Relevance for Global Peace?”.

The theme of the visit is innovation and sustainable development, and the purpose is to promote trade and research exchange between Sweden and India. Leaders in both countries expect a number of key agreements to be signed.

Namaste Stockholm 
This is the first time ever an Indian head of state visits Sweden, and to celebrate that an Indian festival called "Namaste Stockholm" (Hello Stockholm) was held in the Swedish capital a week ago. Unfortunately I could not attend, but ten to fifteen thousand others were more lucky.

The kalmstrom.com team as forerunners
Cooperation across cultural and religious borders is not only fruitful - it is necessary. I am happy to be able to say that the kalmstrom.com team members are forerunners, not only in technical development but also when it comes to bi-lateral interchange.

The kalmstrom.com Solutions are good examples on what cooperation between India and Sweden can give. I value my skilled and reliable Indian colleagues highly, and I feel their appreciation in all contacts.

We all gain from our work together, but the kalmstrom.com Subscribers, who use our products, are of course the real winners!

Read about the outcome of this state visit in a later blog post.

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