The kalmstrom.com VIP Status – What Does It Mean?

The kalmstrom.com SharePoint and Outlook Solutions are licensed with a subscription system, and there are three subscription levels. All three levels include free use of the kalmstrom.com software, support and upgrades, but the Premium Subscription level also includes some other benefits. One of them is called VIP status.

Support priority
The most important part of the VIP status is perhaps the first priority of support cases. We of course try to help all kalmstrom.com Subscribers as soon as possible, but if a Premium Subscriber gets a problem with their kalmstrom.com Solution, the team postpones all other tasks to assist the Premium Subscriber as soon as possible. The support mailbox and the online chat are supervised nearly 24/7 even if the office is not officially open, so we can act very quickly if needed.

“In the event we had problems with TimeCard the people and helpdesk of Kalmstrom did a great job in solving the issue on a very short notice”, says Jeroen Graafland at Hay Group, a long time Premium Subscriber. And he adds: “When we discover a bug this is solved on a very short notice and deployed very easily via the update function of TimeCard.”

Influence on development
Another important factor for the Premium Subscribers is the chance to influence future development. Our CEO Peter makes the final decision, as he is the one who can best judge the paths kalmstrom.com should follow towards the future, but he does his very best to include the requests from Premium Subscribers in his plans.

No registration
Premium Subscribers have a special copy of their kalmstrom.com Solution, with the Premium organization logotype on the major forms. We return their confidence by making the Premium copy register free, so VIP Subscribers do not have to hassle with registration keys.

Worth the extra cost?
The Minimum and Medium subscriptions give good value for money, so we don’t recommend the Premium Subscription for all. If you have a small team managing incoming e-mails with Folder HelpDesk or HelpDesk OSP there is no need for a Premium Subscription.

But say that you are a big organization and have one hundred people reporting their time with TimeCard or booking resources with Calendar Browser – then we do recommend for you to consider the Premium alternative. It is there, among big companies and state and municipal authorities, we find the kalmstrom.com Premium Subscribers.

More info
Welcome to contact us if you have questions about VIP status and Premium Subscription. We will do our best to help you judge if it is the right alternative for your organization!

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

(This blog post was updated 4 March 2015)

Keep up with kalmstrom.com on Google+

To give everyone interested a possibility to keep up with the events of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions we offer several alternatives to follow us. Now we have added a kalmstrom.com Google+ page also.

Increasingly popular
According to Business Insider SAI Google+ gets more than 600 000 new users each day and has around 62 million registered users. Therefore it is of course important for kalmstrom.com to give Google+ users an easy way to see what happens in our company.

The kalmstrom.com Blog is the base
I blog several times a week, and I always mention product updates, new development projects and other that is directly connected to I also comment on important news in our business and how they affect our company.

Apart from these obvious subjects I like to tell about local customs, traditions and holidays in both Sweden and India ‒ in the latter case with the help of the kalmstrom.com team members in Indore, of course. And sometimes I just I want to share something that makes me happy or angry. I hope this mix makes the kalmstrom.com Blog varying and interesting to read. It is at least fun for me to write it!

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
the kalmstrom.com software. kalmstrom.com has been represented in social media for around a year, but we have been more active during the autumn. On Facebook and Twitter we use company pages, but on LinkedIn we guide most business contacts to kalmstrom.com CEO Peter’s account even if we have a company page also.

‒ and now Google+
On Google+ we also use a kalmstrom.com company page, and of the medias mentioned above we find it most similar to Facebook. It will be interesting to see how this page develops.

Social media tracking
If you choose to follow kalmstrom.com Business Solution through one or more social media, you will get links to all blog posts. You will also get shorter comments, links to articles and other tidbits that are too short for a blog. However, you will have to click the blog links to read the whole articles and see the images.

Tweet   

Website sharing icons
In line with this elevated activity in social media we have added Like and Share icons similar those here in the blog to some of our web pages. Please, select the icon you prefer and help us spread the word about the kalmstrom.com software!

2012 - kalmstrom.com Invests In People And Products

First I want to wish all blog readers a prosperous, healthy and peaceful New Year. Then I will not say more today, as I will call upon our kalmstrom.com CEO, Peter, to inform you about his plans for the future:


I have just left Indore after a very successful and constructive visit. Of course I already knew that we have a talented Indian team, but it was a joy to meet them in person and once again re-confirm it.

kalmstrom.com goes cloudy
To better be able to meet future development requests, the kalmstrom.com team has taken on a task that will change the products profoundly. Current users will still recognize them, but the architecture will be considerably different. 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.


Helping users embrace the future
If we keep the current architecture and only add new features to our products, they will eventually 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!


KBase pilot project
Our developers have started the new development path with the comparatively simple knowledgebase application KBase. We hope to soon be able to release version 3, which will have a fully mobile and touch-friendly web interface in addition to the Outlook interface.

Next step will be to rebuild PF HelpDesk, using what we have learned when developing KBase V3. The new technique will also mean that our products will support the 64-bit version of Office 2010.

SharePoint alternative
So far kalmstrom.com has mainly done client-side applications, but next year we intend to provide also server-side features and mobile applications that use the new SharePoint 2010 tools. For shared information store we also want to add SharePoint as an alternative to a database in Access or SQL.

Then users will be able to send their time reporting data directly to a SharePoint list from TimeCard or store meeting information in multiple calendar lists from Calendar Browser.

Windows 8
By the end of February we expect to see the first Beta version of Windows 8, and this is a fascinating challenge for kalmstrom.com. Judging from the pre-beta developer release there will be no significant compatibility problems for us. Instead we can right from the beginning start taking advantage of the benefits this new operating system will give, like the Metro interface and the integrated Windows Store.

More team members
For all this development we will need more staff, and during my visit to Indore I interviewed several promising applicants. We have already given an offer to another QA Engineer, and more will come.

Extended team for technical support
After having followed the support cases for several months kalmstrom.com developer Kanak is ready for a more active role, and from January she will take over the responsibility for the second line support. This will give our lead developer Jayant more time for planning and guidance of the new staff, but of course he will still be assisting if needed. To further improve the support our Office Manager Vipul will start helping Sigge with the first line. Beside his Master of Business Administration Vipul has a technical background, so that will work fine.

These are just some of the kalmstrom.com plans for 2012. I feel certain that it will be a thrilling and progressive year, and I hope you want to share it with us!
Peter Kalmstrom CEO, kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Continuous Studies Crucial To kalmstrom.com Developers

When you work in a business that changes as fast as ours, you have to be eager to learn new things to keep up. The Indian members of the kalmstrom.com team are all highly educated and intelligent, but they need some help from the expert, our CEO Peter, to learn the most advanced parts of new IT technology. Therefore he takes the opportunity to lecture on subjects important to the future development of the kalmstrom.com Office add-ons now that he is visiting the team in Indore.


A joy for both parties
These teaching sessions have not only been useful but also a great joy for everyone. “I am so proud of my team”, said Peter yesterday evening. “I really loved teaching them today!”

That is a very good testimonial coming from Peter. He is a Microsoft certified Trainer, and in addition to his work as CEO and program designer at kalmstrom.com Business Solutions he lectures on Sweden’s most advanced IT courses. Therefore he is used to ‒ and spoiled with! ‒ having clever pupils.

Lead Developer Jayant counters with: “Peter is a great teacher. Today we learned many new things about the endless possibilities of SharePoint. I am looking forward for tomorrow’s class.”  In the image above you can also see the developers Kanak, Sunil and Vijayant. I asked Siret for a photo, so she slipped into the conference room to take some for me. But the team was disturbed an "kicked" her out again after a few shots. They wanted to continue the studies in peace!

SharePoint expansion
Yesterday Peter was talking about general SharePoint-functionality, tips and tricks as well as development opportunities for kalmstrom.com. Today he will go into some detail on how to start expanding our range of SharePoint products.

Here are Peter's own words:
"So far we have mainly done client-side applications, but we intend to provide also server-side features and mobile applications that use the new SharePoint 2010 tools. All of our applications rely on a shared information store. Usually that is a network file share with a database in Access or SQL, but we hope to add SharePoint as an alternate choice for all of our applications shortly.

Thus Members of kalmstrom.com Community will be able to send their time reporting data directly to a SharePoint list from TimeCard and store meeting information in multiple calendar lists from Calendar Browser. We also hope to merge the features of our two issue tracking applications, HelpDesk OSP and PF HelpDesk by adding more server-side functionality to HelpDesk OSP. "

Saturday studies
When Peter is not visiting the team still has common studies. Every other Saturday is working day in India, but the kalmstrom.com team normally use these days for studies. They meet at the office and go through a program Peter has prepared for them, and in the evening they often have dinner together, when also the non-technical staff join in.

These Saturdays are much appreciated by the team, and in the end all users of the kalmstrom.com software will benefit from them. A knowledgeable team that work well together can do much to improve the products, and Peter welcomes all suggestions from his team and listens carefully to their opinions. When everyone pulls in the right direction it will show in the result!

kalmstrom.com Earns Microsoft Silver Competency Of Business Intelligence

In August I had the great joy of blogging about the first Microsoft Silver Competency for kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, which was awarded to us in our capacity of Independent Software Vendor. As only few of the Microsoft partners reach this level, the first Silver Competency was an important step that made the kalmstrom.com Office applications stand out on the marketplace.

We have seen a significant raise in the number of serious evaluators this autumn, and I think the Microsoft Silver Partnership is at least part of the reason. Now we have achieved yet another Silver Competency, and even if it does not feel as fantastic as the first one we are happy about it.

BI Expertise
To gain the Business Intelligence Silver Competency we of course had to show Microsoft that we have the required know-how also in this field. Two assessments had to be taken: Sales and Marketing + Microsoft Licensing Online. I managed both!

Another important factor in earning the BI Competency was that all the more advanced Outlook add-ons from kalmstrom.com have an integrated statistics application, OLAP Reporting Tool. One of them had to pass a Microsoft test, and we chose to enter with PF HelpDesk, the issue tracking software that works inside Outlook.

The third requirement was met when helpful Members of kalmstrom.com Community gave us the right to use them as Microsoft references for our products. A warm thank you from the whole kalmstrom.com team!

Updated Silver Partner logo
If you look at the kalmstrom.com homepage (or above), you can see that the kalmstrom.com Microsoft Partner logotype has been updated with the new BI Competency. This shows new visitors that kalmstrom.com Business Solutions holds a high standard and is reliable and experienced at working with Microsoft technologies.

Licensing and marketing benefits
To show their appreciation of the Silver Competency, Microsoft gives us several advantages over other partners, like a number of MSDN Subscriptions. They are valuable to the kalmstrom.com team, as they give us most of what we need to develop applications on the Microsoft platform.

Microsoft also gives us a prioritized marketplace exposure and access to various marketing resources. All this means that the second Silver Competency will help kalmstrom.com Business Solutions grow and develop even better products than before!

MS Business Intelligence Silver Partnership Coming Together For kalmstrom.com

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has earlier earned a Microsoft Silver Competency as Independent Software Vendor, but we are not the ones to sit and rest on our laurels. Instead we aim for more recognition, and as the testing of our products gave enough credit for the Business Intelligence Competency also, it was the most natural next step.

To get the Business Intelligence Silver Competency we needed a few more customer references and certifications, and now I am proud to announce that we have conquered that obstacle also. Helpful Community Members have given us recommendations with the special information about their use of the kalmstrom.com Office add-ons that Microsoft wants, and I have passed two assessments: Microsoft Sales and Marketing and Microsoft Licensing Online. This means that the kalmstrom.com will soon have two Silver Competencies and an even stronger position on the marketplace.

Gartner analyze recommends subscription model like that of kalmstrom.com

Gartner, Inc. claims to be the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Today I read one of the Gartner reports, and since it was about subscription models I found it very interesting.

What is a subscription?
Gartner defines a subscription business model as a model where a product or service is paid for on a continuous, periodic basis. The model gives the customer ongoing access to the product/service for the life of the subscription agreement. Gartner also remarks that the model fosters a degree of customer experience or customer loyalty that is unique and different from what you get with a purchased product.

kalmstrom.com Community ‒ the right decision
This month I have written two blog posts about the kalmstrom.com subscription model, one about the two year anniversary for kalmstrom.com Community and another one about the statistics of that duration. In both posts I could conclude that transferring to a subscription payment model was a good decision, and now Gartner has come to the same conclusion about subscriptions in general.

Expanding payment model
Gartner predicts a strong increase of the "subscription economy". Especially companies who provide products that can be delivered electronically or digitally should consider this alternative. Gartner recommends businesses who are not offering subscriptions yet to put a priority on assessing this alternative now, to not miss the opportunity.

Subscription models raise new concerns
The kalmstrom.com team has long ago learned that the subscription payment model brings some new factors into the customer relations, and Gartner also points out that the subscription business models raise new concerns regarding managing subscriptions and subscribers. To kalmstrom.com this closer relationship to the user organizations is nearly always something positive. We were aware that the relation would change when introducing the Community, and we looked forward to it.

kalmstrom.com on the right track
As I said in the earlier blog posts we are very satisfied with our transfer to a subscription model, but of course it feels good to know that world leading analysts recommend others to do just what kalmstrom.com has already done. We are also happy about all Community Members who understand and appreciate the benefits of subscribing to kalmstrom.com Office applications instead of buying them.

OLAP Reporting Tool Gives Community Statistics

Last week kalmstrom.com Community celebrated 2 years, and we have now looked at the statistics a bit, of course using our own applicationOLAP Reporting Tool. Here are some interesting facts and changes.

How many products?
Community Members are entitled to use the kalmstrom.com applications freely, without any extra costs for additional products. This is obviously not the feature that dips the scales in our favor, though, because ever since the start most of the Community Members have been using only one of the kalmstrom.com products.

The main selling point when choosing kalmstrom. com is something else. Organizations search for a product that fits their needs, and when they discover the kalmstrom.com solution they find it worth the money regardless of the possibility to have more. Today 87 % of the Community Members are using one product, 8 % are using two and only 5 % are using three products. Nevertheless we will keep that option open to all our current and future Members.

What products?
PF HelpDesk has been the kalmstrom.com flagship for many years, and this tool for issue tracking within Outlook is still the most popular one. After it TimeCard for Outlook and HelpDesk OSP for Outlook and SharePoint has approximately the same number of user organizations. Calendar Browser is used by only 10 % of the Community Members, but during the last few months we have had two new Premium Members on our resource booking application for Outlook. As we also see an increasing interest in evaluating Calendar Browser, we believe it will have a higher user percentage next year.

Who are the Community Members?
All kinds of organizations have joined kalmstrom.com Community, from small local businesses over public and governmental entities to large worldwide companies. It is fascinating to see how the percentage of Members from outside Europe and USA has grown during the two years of kalmstrom.com Community. From 8 % after 6 months the figure has now risen to 22 %.

We still get most new Community Members from Western Europe and the US, but we are excited about the kalmstrom.com expansion in other parts of the world. The fact that they know about and trust kalmstrom.com Business Solutions in New Zeeland, Australia and Canada is no surprise, but we now also have Members in South Africa, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Hong Kong, Greenland and Barbados ‒ just to mention some of the new countries.

Discount to schools and charities
As both Sigge, Siret and I are former teachers it feels good to be able to give a 50 % discount on the Community fees to educational institutions. The kalmstrom.com products are especially popular among universities. We also grant this discount to charities, and we hope it will give them a possibility to do a bit more good with the money they else would have paid for software ‒ or give them the possibility to work more efficiently with software they could not afford at all without the discount. The percentage of schools and charities has been relatively stable at around 18 % all the time during the two years since we launched kalmstrom.com Community.

Promising future for kalmstrom.com Community
Looking back gives knowledge and inspiration, but mostly the kalmstrom.com team is looking forward instead. We study the development in our branch, carefully choose our battles and select the challenges that might be useful to overcome or sidestep. The future for kalmstrom.com Community looks bright, and next blog will probably be about future plans or new releases again.

kalmstrom.com Trusted By Microsoft's Office Marketplace

Microsoft’s Office Marketplace is an important meeting place, where selected software vendors may present their products to IT responsibles and others who are looking for suitable programs for their organizations. For several years already, around 20 % of all visitors to the kalmstrom.com website have found their way to us through the Office Marketplaces of different countries, so it is really important for kalmstrom.com Business Solutions to have good representation there.

Strict requirements
To be allowed to present the kalmstrom.com applications on Office Marketplace we must fulfill certain rather strict requirements. When these are reached we have to apply for each product at each country’s Office Marketplace. Earlier we had to renew the applications for each product and country every year. After the renewal the Microsoft staff of each country again examined our products and their presentations on the kalmstrom.com website, before granting us permission to continue showing our software at Office Marketplace for another year.

Trusted
Now I am delighted to announce that Microsoft staff in a number of countries have given us the confidence to stay much longer time on their Office Marketplaces without the need for renewal. For Germany we now have renewal dates in 2020, for Mexico in 2026 and for Canada and Australia even in 2029 for several products! This of course makes us happy and proud, and it also makes our job a bit easier!

Why this faith in kalmstrom.com?
We are of course grateful for the confidence Microsoft has shown us. Not only do they let us present our software on their prestigious sites but they also trust us to keep up the high quality for many years to come! Perhaps our Microsoft Silver Partnership plays a role, but the first extended presentation periods were actually given to us before we achieved the Silver Competence. I think our long time at Office Marketplace and the high ratings from users are more decisive factors. kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has been on Office Marketplace since 2006, and all our products have received very high ratings.

Five star ratings
On Office Marketplace visitors are given a possibility to rate products they know on a scale between 1 and 5, and it is a great satisfaction that many of the kalmstrom.com products have achieved the coveted 5 stars. See for example HelpDesk OSP, that connects Outlook to SharePoint or the time reporting tool TimeCard for Outlook ‒ or OLAP Reporting Tool, the statistics application that is integrated in nearly all kalmstrom.com products but also may be used as a separate product.

The kalmstrom.com team is acutely aware of the responsibility that comes with the trust Microsoft has endowed in us, and we will do our outmost to retain the high quality of both software and website presentations.

Finnish Versions Of Outlook Add-Ons From kalmstrom. com

When Siret Toots joined the kalmstrom.com team we did not only get an excellent Sales manager but also a much longed-for translator into Finnish.

Finnish software for Outlook +Exchange/SharePoint
Finland has many users of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons, but so far the Finnish translation has not been up to date. We are therefore happy to announce that new translations are on their way for all our products. Hyvät Suomalaiset, olete tervetulleita kokeilemaan kalmstrom.com tuotteita Outlook + Exchange tai SharePoint! (Finns, you are very welcome to try the kalmstrom.com products for Outlook + Exchange or SharePoint!)

Resource booking in Outlook with Calendar Browser
The kalmstrom.com resource booking tool for Outlook was the first one to be fully translated, so the latest version of Calendar Browser will be completely in Finnish for users with a Finnish Office. As Calendar Browser is a product that may be used by a great number of clients, it was an important first step. When booking a room or a car from your Outlook calendar it feels better to have the add-on in the same language as Outlook, and the risk for mistakes is minimized.

Time reporting in Outlook with TimeCard
TimeCard is another kalmstrom.com product that may have many users. A number of big companies are Members of kalmstrom.com Community, and they let hundreds of employees report time and expenses directly from the Outlook calendar to a central database. Siret has just finished the Finnish translation for TimeCard, and in the next release we will add the new phrases to this software. Also the Single version will be updated, so that Finnish businesses of all sizes can use TimeCard in their own language.

All products will be updated for Finnish
One after one the kalmstrom.com products will be updated with a full Finnish version. I may not mention it here in the blog every time, but it will certainly be included on the Revisions pages. The kalmstrom.com team is looking forward to seeing more organizations from Finland joining kalmstrom.com Community!

Update Of kalmstrom.com Resource Booking Outlook Add-on

I am happy to announce that kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has released a new version of Calendar Browser, the popular resource booking application for Outlook. To book resources with Calendar Browser is meant to be as easy as creating an appointment in the Outlook calendar, and for most users it is. However, two organizations had problems with Calendar Browser and could not use the add-on as they wanted. The kalmstrom.com team could solve the issues, and now we give the new version to all.

One Community Member wanted to use Calendar Browser on machines with multiple profiles installed on each PC, but that created difficulties in loading the calendars. With today’s version they can use Calendar Browser without problems.

The other Member had a lot of calendars full of recurring appointments, and that made the loading of the Overview very slow. We made the loading faster by making Calendar Browser load appointments from only a certain time to the Overview. By default the period is one month ahead, but each user can set the date range needed.

With today's update of Calendar Browser we have also taken another step to get rid of the dependency on Office Web Components, as they are no longer needed for the Example data. Evaluators with later Outlook versions might not have them installed since Microsoft has chosen to not install them automatically. Now these evaluators can create Example data without having to install OWC first. The integrated statistics tool still needs OWC, but we are working on that last part also.

Please refer to the Revisions page for a full list of the enhancements and bug fixes. Community Members have free upgrades, as usual.

Are you looking for a resource booking tool that is easy to learn and manage? In that case I recommend you to try Calendar Browser. I am sure you will like it and be yet another satisfied subscriber to a kalmstrom.com product.

Absurd Call From CNET

In August I blogged about the unacceptable wrapping the cnet site Download.com had begun practicing. They wrapped other downloads into installers, so when downloading from Download.com you could get unwanted programs that made changes to your computer and could be difficult to get rid of.

Product downloads from kalmstrom.com Business Solutions must NEVER give anything else than the clean and genuine software the downloader wants to try or use, so we decided to remove all our products from the cnet site.

After I had explained why we wanted to withdraw cnet's right to host our products, they were quickly taken away without further comments. However, today we got a "heartbreaking" e-mail from cnet: "We miss you ‒ please come back!"

In this impudent e-mail cnet tries to entice kalmstrom.com to return to Download.com, and their method is outright shameless: they offer us a chance to win hotel nights, a flight or entrance tickets to the International CES in Las Vegas! (Which by the way is free if you registered before 1 September.) I feel both angry and ready to laugh at this ridiculous attempt.

We require a lot more than that to budge from our convictions. To give up our principles and let someone tamper with our installation files would be to give up kalmstrom.com!

Promotions In The kalmstrom.com Team

I am always happy to write about the kalmstrom.com team members, but today I feel a bit extra warm around the heart. Siret Toots has been engaged in the work at kalmstrom.com for nearly a year, but she also had another demanding job and did not have much time. Now that will change. From October Siret is taking over the responsibility for sales and marketing of the kalmstrom.com products and services.

With the growth of kalmstrom.com I can no longer handle both sales, marketing,  documentation and organization, so Siret's decision to accept the position we offered is a relief to me. She is clever and dedicated, so I know she will do a good job that will take kalmstrom.com forward.

Siret is the fiancée of our CEO, Peter. They met when they both worked for Skype, and in Siret Peter has found a loving partner with a strong integrity. She is a great asset to both Peter and kalmstrom.com!

The kalmstrom.com team has more assets! We have been very satisfied with the work of our trainee Sunil Patel, and from October we have hired him as Junior Developer. Also from October former junior developer Vijayant Rimza is called Developer. Vijayant is now able to take on a greater responsibility for development projects, so we feel that he is no longer a junior!

The future looks bright, and I am thrilled to see what these three and the rest of the team can achieve together.

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.

From Trainee To Junior Developer With kalmstrom.com

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has a new junior developer. If you follow this blog you might recognize Kanak Joshi, because I introduced her as our trainee in July. Kanak had then been with us for some weeks, and we had already seen that she performed her tasks willingly and quickly.

Now we have understood that Kanak is also a quick learner and a person who can find her own solutions. This is exactly what we need in the kalmstrom.com team, and therefore we were happy to offer Kanak a position as junior developer.

We are certain that Kanak will contribute to the kalmstrom.com development with new and clever ideas. When Kanak has learned our products better she will also take part in our user support. We prefer to have our technicians engaged in the support, to be able to give the knowledgeable service we are praised for and also to give them first hand understanding of any problems. Kanak will be a good help in remote sessions and second line support.

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions Has Achieved Microsoft Silver Partnership

Today I can write a much happier blog post than yesterday, because now I have good news to share with you: kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has become a Silver Partner to Microsoft. Only 5 % of all Microsoft Partners reach this level, so it really makes us stand out on the market.

To be Silver Partner we had to show Microsoft:

• That our products are good enough ‒ by passing certain Microsoft tests
  
•  That we have the sufficient knowledge in the team ‒ by passing certain Microsoft exams
  
• That our customers like the products ‒ by giving references to Microsoft

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has reached Silver level as Independent Software Vendor. Maybe you ask why it is not “Software Developer”? That is due to Microsoft’s definitions: a “software developer” is someone who sells code and all rights to it. We instead maintain the legal rights to our products and sell licenses for use, so “Software Vendor” is the correct term for kalmstrom.com .

I have now placed the Silver Partner logo on our homepage, so all visitors can see that kalmstrom.com Business Solutions is reliable and experienced at working with Microsoft technologies. It is a security for new visitors to know that we hold a high standard, and we hope it will further increase the demand for our products and services. The Silver Partnership also gives the kalmstrom.com team other advantages, like access to more Microsoft resources. This will be useful in our future development work.

We are very grateful to the Community Members who gave us references, and I also want to say a big thank you to the kalmstrom.com team members. You should all feel proud and take credit for our joined achievement!

HelpDesk OSP For Outlook And SharePoint - Version 3 Released Today

Today kalmstrom.com has released a new version of the incident management tool for Outlook and SharePoint, HelpDesk OSP. I have written about the new design and the Blank ticket options earlier, so here I will concentrate on another important improvement  ‒ the facilitation of the login to SharePoint from Outlook.

That the login to the SharePoint site is easy is of course essential for users of HelpDesk OSP, so version 3 has several enhancements to simplify it. For example, HelpDesk OSP now tries to load the default network credentials for authentication and only asks for credentials if there is no success. HelpDesk OSP V3 will also correct the path if a user writes the list URL instead of the site URL when selecting SharePoint site. Our support staff has seen that error quite often even though we have done our best to inform about the correct way to do it. For use with Office 365 we have added a new authentication type: Claims-based Authentication.

Please refer to the HelpDesk OSP Revisions page for a full list of enhancements and bug fixes. Community Members are welcome to upgrade, but you will need a new registration key this time. Contact me, and I will send it to you.

If you are new to HelpDesk OSP, I recommend you to try it! You may evaluate the add-on for 30 days without obligations, and remember that it works with all SharePoint sites and templates. HelpDesk OSP is a very versatile tool for any kinds of publishing from Outlook to SharePoint.

New kalmstrom.com Trainee Helps In .NET Framework Project

As I told you a couple of weeks ago kalmstrom.com has decided to take on more trainees, and today I am happy to introduce Sunil Patel. He is Master of Computer Applications, which is a three-year Professional Master's degree in Computer Science awarded in India, and he joined the kalmstrom.com team in the beginning of July.

Sunil already had experience from several projects where he worked as a developer/programmer when he chose to become a trainee at kalmstrom.com to learn more. We appreciate his ambition and believe our cooperation will be good for both parties.   

During his first weeks Sunil has transferred the PF HelpDesk web form code into ASP.NET, a Microsoft server side scripting technology which enables scripts embedded in web pages to be executed by an Internet server. Sunil's work is part of our long-time plan to make more extensive use of the .NET Framework environment. Our youngest application, HelpDesk OSP, was built on the .NET platform from the beginning, but our other products still use some older technologies that we need to replace. This transfer will give us great possibilities for future development of our products.    

Sunil has of course also participated in the study sessions that Peter and Jayant have held with the younger team members. Ongoing education has always been important for kalmstrom.com, but we have now taken it a step further and set apart certain work hours for common studies and discussions. I am sure this will reflect in the kalmstrom.com products and benefit our Community Members in the long run.

Sunil is very interested in cricket. During his studies he was a member of the college team, and now he plays for for the Star Cricket Club in Indore. Welcome to the Team page, if you wish to read more about Sunil and the rest of us.

New Senior Developer For Cloud Based kalmstrom.com Solutions

For quite some time kalmstrom.com has been looking for another developer, who can help us expand into cloud-based services. Now we have found the right person, and I am happy to introduce Kaushal Bharadia, who has been with us since the beginning of May. Kaushal will also help us develop new features for our products, and he will make it possible for us to accept more of all the requests for special solutions we get.

Kaushal Bharadia is a proficient developer with long experience of object-oriented programming and design. He is an expert in Microsoft .Net Technologies, so his skills are is just what the kalmstrom.com team needs. He is currently building the new version of HelpDesk OSP, called HelpDesk OSP Azure, which I described in the blog post of 22 June. Kaushal also did most of the programming for a special application requested by a Swedish building company, where we created a synchronization-engine between the cloud-based Office 365 and the likewise cloud-based ERP-system Fortnox.

Kaushal and I have a common interest: mountain walking. We both find this an excellent way to counterbalance work at the computers. You get exercise and fresh air, and at the same time you can enjoy a beautiful scenery ‒ and get nearer to the clouds! The photo above shows Kaushal at a cave on top of a mountain. If you wish to read more about Kaushal and other members of the kalmstrom.com team, welcome to the Team page on our website.

PF HelpDesk With Support For Office 365

The development of support for cloud solutions continues at kalmstrom.com Business Solutions. Our Outlook helpdesk was recently updated to a new version, Public Folder HelpDesk V11.2. It has full support for Russian and several other enhancements, but above all it gives the possibility to use Microsoft's cloud-based SQL Azure database for tickets and settings. Now the kalmstrom.com team takes one step more towards the clouds by making PF HelpDesk compatible with Office 365 also.   

Microsoft’s cloud based Office is still only available in Beta, but far-seeing  Community Members have already shown an interest in using our products with Office 365. HelpDesk OSP and TimeCard already work with Office 365, but the products that have a folder homepage in Outlook must be rebuilt.   

PF HelpDesk may be installed in any Outlook folder, and the folder homepage solution has been used ever since the application was created more than ten years ago. It has many advantages: it gives a nice graphical interface, displays the views and provides a handy search capability. The homepage is also involved when you create a new ticket ‒ but it cannot be used with Office 365.   

Since the folder homepage solution does not work with Office 365, we have to find new ways to give these functions in PF HelpDesk. At the same time we cannot accept that Members who don't want to use Office 365 gets something that is not as good as before. Ideally the next version should be better for them also. This is not an easy task, but our developers are experts on ingenious solutions. They already have a plan for how to both replace the homepage and make PF HelpDesk even better for all.
  
Most changes are made “behind the scene”, and many users will never notice them. What the helpdesk staff will see is the new search dialog and the addition of a gallery control. This control will show all custom views, and you can easily switch views from there. And to create a new ticket? Isn’t that the most important feature of all? Yes, it is, and don't worry - we will solve that also :-)   

Since Community Members are already waiting to use PF HelpDesk with Office 365, we have made the development of the new version a high priority task, and we hope to release it soon. I will come back with more info about this exciting project later.