kalmstrom.com Develops Cloud-Connected Outlook Add-ons

To stay strong and be able to meet future development requests, the kalmstrom.com team has taken on a task that will change our products profoundly. User's don't have to worry, because they will still recognize the product they like and are used to, but the architecture behind it will be much different. The reason for this long term investment, is of course the technical development of the products we build on but also general changes in the business world. We see a future where teams continue to get more mobile and geographically dispersed, and therefore we want to re-build all of our applications for more web-based usage.

All of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons have relied heavily on Outlook public folders or mailboxes for information sharing. This still works well in most organizations, and we will continue to support that usage. However, if we stand still, keep the current architecture and only add new features to our products, there will come a time when they have become old-fashioned. We don't want to wait for that day to make the necessary changes, because then we will prevent Member organizations from meeting and embracing the future. Members of kalmstrom.com Community deserve better! The products from kalmstrom.com must always be a help to make business more efficient.

Our developers have started with the comparatively simple application KBase. This is a knowledge base that is totally integrated in Outlook. The articles may also be embedded in a SharePoint site or OWA or be published to web pages with just a click of a button. The new KBase will have an ASP.NET MVC back-end and an SQL database, which will contain all of the tickets. We will supply this database for free if the user organization does not have an in-house or hosted SQL server or uses SQL Azure. Version 3 of KBase will have both a fully featured web interface and also, of course, an Outlook-interface. In addition, we will also make the web interface fully mobile and touch-friendly.

The new technique will also mean that our products will support the 64-bit version of Office 2010. Some Member organizations have asked for this, but we think most users will stay with the 32-bit version anyway. There are very few add-ons on the market that support the 64-bit version of Office, and the 64-bit version is only needed in special cases. However, for those who need it we want to give that support also.

The kalmstrom.com developer team has been working with this project for over a month, but I did not want to tell about it until we knew that the brilliant ideas of our CEO Peter was possible to realize. His understanding of how different techniques can be combined to create something new is the basis for kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, and now he has once again proved his skill.

kalmstrom.com Products All Get Five Stars On Reopened French Office Marketplace

Microsoft's Office Marketplace is an important marketing channel for the kalmstrom.com products. We get many visitors to the website from Office Marketplace, and those visitors are exactly the people we want to reach. They are often skilled IT professionals who know what they are looking for, and most stay long on our site and study several pages. Many of them also download our products and eventually become Community Members.

Therefore we are happy that the French Office Marketplace now has reopened after being closed for several months. Five of our products are presented there: Calendar Browser, HelpDesk OSP, OLAP Reporting Tool, PF HelpDesk and TimeCard ‒ and they all have highest possible ratings: five stars!

Outlook-SharePoint Publishing and Syncronization

The usability overview and redesign of HelpDesk OSP is finished. Now the kalmstrom.com developers have begun implementing the improvements, but it will still take some time before we can release the new version. I have however published the new logotype and banners on the website, and here I can also show you how the new HelpDesk OSP buttons will look in the Outlook 2010 banner. Nice aren't they?

HelpDesk OSP can be used for anything you wish to publish from Outlook to SharePoint or Office Live ‒ just select a suitable list for it. To make this clearer we have decided to change the captions of the two bigger and most used buttons into "Convert e-mail" and "Blank ticket". The "Convert ticket" button is of course used for e-mail conversion, and data is taken from the e-mail. Use the "Blank ticket" button when data should be filled out manually or taken from the GAL or Contacts.

Both buttons work in two ways: when you click on the button an item will be created in the default SharePoint list, but if you press the arrow all lists used with HelpDesk OSP will be shown. Then you can easily select the right one to publish to.

You may take advantage of your SharePoint site in many different ways. Today I have published a Tip on how to synchronize Outlook calendars, contacts and tasks with SharePoint. It is a quick and simple procedure that may be very useful, but the possibility may be overlooked if you don't know it exists.

Website Update For kalmstrom.com

     
The redesign of the kalmstrom.com website continues. After the latest update in January I was still not satisfied with neither background nor header, but now we have our own designer so I could easily get help.

Jitendra made some suggestions after my ideas, and we presented them to the rest of the team and also to some other selected people. I wanted to keep a dark background, but many in the group preferred something light. Some wanted grey, some blue and others white.

"Too dark, I get a headache!". "Too light, the actual content does not stand out." "Too dominating, the content disappears." "Boring!" The comments were many and pointed in different directions. I wanted a design that suits all but still looks interesting.

After many rounds of suggestions and discussions all could finally agree on a design which is not boring and not give headaches either. I have now implemented it and feel very satisfied. You can see some suggestions above, but welcome to the kalmstrom.com website to see the winning one. I hope you agree with me that it is good!

kalmstrom.com Selected For Excellent Win7 Development

kalmstrom.com products were selected when CNET wanted to show applications whose developers have been extra skillful in taking advantage of the possibilities that Windows 7 gives them. As there are nearly 3 million developers building on Windows out there, we feel we have the right to be proud!
Around 100 applications were chosen, and only 17 in the group Business Related Software. No less than 3 of those 17 come from kalmstrom.com! Both the Workgroup and the Single version of TimeCard are included, as well as HelpDesk OSP, the kalmstrom.com application that connects Outlook to SharePoint or Office Live. We will do our best to live up to the honor and be in the frontline also in the future.

The Importance Of Design - Which kalmstrom.com Application?

Design is a matter of great importance that we feel we have neglected too long. A good design is not only nice to look at. Above all we need design skills to enhance the function of our products and make them easier to understand and work with. Now kalmstrom.com has found a good graphic artist who wants to work with our products. I will tell you more about Jitendra later, but today I will show you the figure above, that will be used for one of our products. Guess which one?

If you know our software and look not only at the distributed figures but also at the icon in the middle, you will probably find the answer: HelpDesk OSP,  the software that connects Outlook and SharePoint/Office Live. I think the figure is a striking symbol for co-operation on support questions that reach the organization via Outlook and are handled by people that might be spread all over the world ‒ like the kalmstrom.com team!

HelpDesk OSP may of course be used for anything you wish to publish to a SharePoint site via Outlook, like job applications, internal messages or suggestions on different topics. However, most of our Community Members acquire the application to handle their support cases in a more efficient way, even if they later make use of it for other things also.

Welcome to the HelpDesk OSP Plans page if you wish to see the screen where the figure above is used and learn more about what will happen to this issue tracking product in the future. We look forward to making it even better!

Easier Resource Booking With Calendar Browser C7, Released Today

The kalmstrom.com team is happy to announce that we today have released version 7 of Calendar Browser for Outlook. This resource booking tool was one of the first that Peter built, and it has been very popular during its ten years on the market. Calendar Browser has of course been updated many times before, but we always kept the folder homepage design. When Office 2010 was published our developers faced a big problem, since it proved impossible to keep the homepage in Calendar Browser. Peter and Jayant finally found a solution - they always do! - and now we can give you a Calendar Browser that supports Office 2010.

As Calendar Browser V7 takes advantage of the possibilities given by the Fluent Interface/Ribbon it is even easier to use than the old version. The resource calendars are now visible directly in in the Outlook calendar view, and more standard calendar features are used. This also means that version 7 can only be used with Outlook 2007 and 2010. For the future this is the right way to go, but it means that we no longer can give an alternative for resource booking with Outlook 2003, which does not have the Ribbon. Community Members who have not upgraded to Outlook 2007 or 2010 will of course still get support for their Calendar Browser V6, but we no longer offer it to new customers.

Welcome to download and try the new Calendar Browser! If you are already a Calendar Browser Community Member, I recommend you to upgrade to version 7 (first upgrade your Office if needed). The responsible for Calendar Browser at each Calendar Browser Member organization will soon receive an e-mail with more info about version 7 and the upgrade. I hope you all will enjoy our rebuilt  tool!

Name Days For Yahoo! Calendar

My first blog post for 2011 happens to be about our most popular product, NameDays, which adds name days to different kinds of calendars and which is totally free. When we released NameDays V4 we had tested it on several different calendars, but not the Yahoo! Calendar.

When asked about it I had to try of course, and YES! it worked also. The Yahoo! Calendar asks for an e-mail or iCal address, but the address to the kalmstrom.com ICS file works just as fine. Therefore we have today a new demonstration on how to subscribe to NameDays if you use the Yahoo! Calendar.

Do you prefer another calendar, one that is not mentioned on our website? Please contact us, or try for yourself. Maybe our ICS files work for you also?

kalmstrom.com Wishes A Peaceful and Prosperous New Year!

The year is coming to its end, and I look back to what I wrote when 2010 was new. I talked about the release of PF HelpDesk V11, about our big hopes for kalmstrom.com Community and about Outlook 2010, which I then tested in a Beta version. It feels so long ago!

PF HelpDesk V11 is now in common use and we even have version 11.1. It works well - which does not mean that we don't have a lot of plans for enhancements! The most important one is the addition of the SQL Azure database alternative, which will come in the beginning of 2011.

Many old and new customers have shown us the confidence of joining kalmstrom.com Community, and that has given not only the Members but also the team a new security. It means that we can take kalmstrom.com to a higher level, a work which has already begun and which inspired me when I chose the image for this blog post.

Update to support of Office 2010 went smoothly for all products but our resource booking tool Calendar Browser. We had hoped for a release of version 7 in December, but unfortunately we did not manage that. It will come after the holidays in the beginning of January instead, and for many of you maybe that does not make a big difference.

During 2011 we hope to engage more employees and also extend our partner cooperation, all to improve the current products and to develop new ones. For the new applications we will especially plan for use with iPhone and other smart phones.

The kalmstrom.com team thank all Community Members for a good relationship during 2010. We are grateful that you help us meet the coming year with confidence and high expectations. Let us hope for a peaceful development in the world and for the same good spirit among it's leaders as we have in the kalmstrom.com team and Community.

Watch The First Calendar Browser V7 Demo!

Now it is only a matter of days before version 7 of our resource booking application for Outlook is released. The Calendar Browser documentation is being updated while the testing continues, and as you see from the video demonstration above we now have a functioning product. Just some smaller adjustments have to be made before we can give Calendar Browser V7 to all Members who need a booking system that works with Office 2010.

Welcome to have a look at the demo! I think you can see just from this short video that it will be a joy to book resources with the new Calendar Browser.

Calendar Browser V7 Released Soon

We hear that users of our resource booking tool for Outlook are waiting eagerly for the new version, and I can now tell you that development of Calendar Browser V7 has entered the testing phase. The icons in the Outlook ribbon have been updated too, and you can see the result here above. The buttons are nice and well integrated, aren't they? I think it looks as if Microsoft put the Calendar Browser buttons there from the beginning!

The icon update has of course not been allowed to delay the release. Other issues have taken care of that quite well! Limitations in Outlook 2010 have been a challenge for our Lead Developer Jayant Rimza. As the ingenious developer he is he has found ways around them, so that Calendar Browser still can work as intended and be possible to enhance in the future. We hope to be able to publish version 7 before Christmas, with at least most of the documentation also updated.

Three Generations In kalmstrom.com

In October Sigge and I had a dear visitor to our home in southern Spain. Our grandson Oliver ‒ Peter's eldest ‒ had holidays from school and came to see us. We had a nice time together and also took the opportunity to introduce Oliver to part of our work. During the week Oliver spent with us he learned and took over some of our administrative tasks, and now he has been managing them for well over a month. With a good result!

We of course knew that Oliver, being Peter's son, is very used to handling a computer. He had never before used a SharePoint intranet, but he promptly understood how it worked. We have also found that he is quick but yet careful, so that we can trust that his tasks are being performed correctly.

Oliver is still a student, but we hope he will make a great future for himself. It does not have to be within kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, but for now it feels good to have included the third generation in the family business! The image shows Sigge and Oliver while hiking by the Straits of Gibraltar.

Calendar Browser Buttons Now In The Outlook 2010 Ribbon

Development of version 7 of Calendar Browser proceeds, and we hope to release it by the end of December. Today I can show you how the buttons in our resource booking tool look when they are moved to the Outlook 2010 ribbon. Nice, isn't it?

Here you see all four buttons, but the Manage button can be hidden. In that case the Administrator reaches the settings by running the Settings file instead. The Overview gives information about future bookings, the Search button brings up a dialog where you can search for free resources at a specific time and the Description button shows a description of the selected resource. Past resource usage is studied with the integrated Statistics application OLAP Reporting Tool, just as before.

Calendar Browser V7 will only support Office 2007 and 2010, and when it is released we will stop marketing the current version. Community Members who still use Office 2003 can keep version 6, though, because we will continue supporting it until all Members who use Calendar Browser have upgraded to an Office version with the Fluent Interface/Ribbon.

The Outlook 2010 Calendar was so different to earlier versions that it felt impossible for us to continue developing the product with the folder homepage (the main user interface in all earlier versions). Instead we had to find an solution that would keep for the future. This means using the Ribbon, even if it also means that we for a period will have to support two different versions of Calendar Browser.

Peter Left Skype for kalmstrom.com

Our CEO Peter left Skype in October, after five years as Product Manager for Skype Toolbars. He will now dedicate himself more to kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, and he has a lot of ideas ‒ as always! They are too many for a blog, so this time I give the information in a press release instead. Welcome to read it if you wish to know more about the inventive creator of the kalmstrom.com products and his plans for the future!

Member Survey Gives Advice About Office Support

How far back should we support? We begun asking ourselves that question after the release of Office 2010, when we had a situation where we supported five Office versions. Five versions are more than what is common in the business, but on the other hand kalmstrom.com Business Solutions is not ‒ and should not be! ‒ a common software developer.

But if we don't use our resources in the best possible way? Of course we want our products to be compatible with as many Office versions as possible, but on the other hand most Members of kalmstrom.com Community have modern environments. Should we spend time developing and testing our products for all five versions of Outlook, or is it better to take the time we use on the lower versions and spend it on other development instead?

To get an answer to that question we decided to ask the users ‒ the Members of kalmstrom.com Community. Our development efforts are for them, so getting their opinions was the right thing to do. Peter, our CEO, sent an e-mail to all Community Members to ask their advice, and now most of them have answered.

The information we received shows that we can take away support for Outlook 2000 and 2002 without problems. From now on we will no longer test new versions of our products on Outlook 2000 and 2002.

For Outlook 2003 the situation is different. A number of Members still use Outlook 2003, but most of them mentioned that they plan to upgrade soon or at least during 2011. We will therefore keep the support for Outlook 2003 for now and assess the situation again by the end of 2011.

We are grateful for all replies. Now we can feel certain we have made a good decision, and we must not ask ourselves if we might have left users stranded out there. We will still give support for Outlook 2003 for the organizations who need it, but by giving up the support for the lower versions we will have more time for product enhancements and maybe even new products.

Members, we have of course saved the info about your Office versions, so please tell us when you upgrade so that we can change our records. Thank you all!

PF HelpDesk V11.1 Released

The kalmstrom.com team is happy to have released version 11.1 of our issue tracking add-on for Outlook, PF HelpDesk. Some bugs are fixed in this update, but above all there are several enhancements that will make PF HelpDesk even nicer to work with.

Among the improvements are better handling of the ticket attachments, better possibilities to drag and drop or paste to the ticket and better use of the Open Ticket button. We have also added an option for excluding a machine from the automatic conversions of e-mails to tickets. This setting is placed under the E-mail folders tab, where you add the folders to be monitored automatically. For more information about version 11.1, please refer to the PF HelpDesk Revisions page.

We could not add the SQL Azure database alternative this time, but Abhishek is working on it so we will soon update PF HelpDesk again. Now I just want to say a warm thank you to all Members who have reported problems or suggested enhancements. Your help is much appreciated, and you are very welcome to upgrade your PF HelpDesk installations.

Have you not tried PF HelpDesk yet? If you need a tool for handling incoming e-mails within a workgroup and still stay inside Outlook, I recommend you to take a look at Public Folder HelpDesk! In spite of the name it may also be installed in a shared mailbox.

Calendar Browser 7 with Support for Outlook 2010

In August we felt forced to share the news that Calendar Browser, our resource booking application for Outlook, would not be compatible with Office 2010. There were big problems with Calendar Browser and the Outlook 2010 Calendar. I know, problems are for solving and that is what our developers do all the time, but in this case the task seemed nearly hopeless. But only nearly, because now the problem is solved and we have begun developing Calendar Browser V7!

After many discussions and discarded ideas our CEO Peter and Lead Developer Jayant could find a solution that will not only solve the problem with Outlook 2010 but also make Calendar Browser strong for the future. The most important change in version 7 will be the removal of the folder homepage. During Calendar Browser's ten years on the market the folder homepage has been the main user interface in all versions. Now we will instead move that functionality to the Calendar Browser Client Tool, and the Microsoft Fluent Interface/Ribbon will display the needed buttons and fields.

In our efforts to solve the issue we discussed building a totally new resource booking software, to help all users of Calendar Browser who sooner or later would get problems because the application did not support Outlook 2010. We will probably still build something that uses SharePoint, just like we already have helpdesks for both Exchange and SharePoint. But when the immediate problem is satisfactory solved this can be allowed to take its time and  must not be rushed. This feels very good, and I congratulate Peter and Jayant who found the solution. I also congratulate the users of Calendar Browser. Now you can soon upgrade to the latest and best versions of both Outlook and Calendar Browser . I will of course come back with news in the blog, and we have also created a Plans page for Calendar Browser. Welcome to visit it!

kalmstrom.com Welcomes New Developer

The kalmstrom.com team has been extended with a new developer, Abhishek Sharma. Abhishek is an expert of .NET development for Windows and web and of relational databases. He has already shown what difference he can make for our products, as he is the developer behind the third database alternative for PF HelpDesk, SQL Azure. It is not released yet, but Abhishek has already begun adding SQL Azure to TimeCard also.

Abhishek Sharma likes to counterbalance sitting in front of the computer with playing cricket and working in the garden. Cricket is nothing for me ‒ I walk instead ‒ but just like Abhishek I find gardening a perfect way to relax the brain and come closer to nature. I hope we get a chance to compare our gardens eventually.

Welcome to kalmstrom.com, Abhishek! We hope you will enjoy the work, and we are sure you will be a great asset to the team. Now we are even better equipped to meet the challenge of creating the best possible software for our Community Members.

Use PF HelpDesk V11.1 With SQL Azure

The kalmstrom.com team is currently developing version 11.1 of our Incident Management tool PF HelpDesk. It will be released now in October, and among the new features is a third database alternative: SQL Azure.

SQL Azure is Microsoft's cloud database, offered as a service and running in Microsoft datacenters around the globe. It is highly scalable, so you may either start small or serve a global customer base immediately. You only pay for what you use ‒ scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t.

PF HelpDesk has so far offered two database alternatives, Access and SQL Server. The Access database is free, but it  has security issues and only gives a storage capacity of 2 GB. This means that
you cannot handle large data requests, and if you are close to the maximum amount of data it will run slowly. Therefore we have often recommended customers to use an SQL Server database instead, and this is still a good alternative for big companies who need an SQL Server anyway. However, an SQL Server is not trivial to manage.

With an SQL Azure database Microsoft handles all maintenance. The environment is very secure and you don't have to think about backup and recovery. For a distributed team SQL Azure has another great advantage: you can reach it from any system. All you need is an internet connection!

Version 11.1 of PF HelpDesk will have more enhancements. Please refer to our Plans page and see what new features are "Under development".

kalmstrom.com Welcomes New QA Expert

The kalmstrom.com team is happy to welcome a new QA Engineer, Alena Prokudina from Novosibirsk, Russia. Our former QA, Dina Romanova, has left us to study for a doctorate, but first she suggested that Alena should replace her. Dina was a very good tester, so she realized that we would
require a highly qualified person, and Alena has taken Dina's place in an excellent way. Her first task was the recently published HelpDesk OSP, and now she is testing and giving valuable input on the next update of PF HelpDesk.

Alena has a Master degree in IT and has worked for four years with Software Quality Assurance and Requirement Analysis. Besides her work Alena is interested in snowboarding, yoga, reading and cooking. Our team cooperation works great, in spite of the geographical distances, but unfortunately they mean that Alena cannot easily give us samples of her cooking expertise also!

We are glad to have Alena on board, and we wish Dina all the best in both life and studies!