Internet Freedom, SharePoint Tips And People - Popular Blog Posts In March

March gave me many different kinds of blog ideas. Some were read by many, while a few seem to have gone by fairly un-noticed. Let’s concentrate on the positive and have a look at what has been popular!

kalmstrom.com Tips
Peter Kalmstrom, our CEO and creator of the kalmstrom.com products, has made a number of video demonstrations on various topics, and month after month the blog articles about them are among the most visited.

Peter is a Microsoft certified SharePoint Specialist and Trainer, and in March two of his SharePoint tips were the most popular: How to add Javascript to SharePoint and How to Archive SharePoint list items. Many more find their way to the Tips section of the kalmstrom.com website, and we are glad our tips are found useful!
  
Kanban Task Manager
The interest for our new Outlook application for Tasks is still high, and January post about the Kanban board for Outlook is still read by many. This is a good omen for the reception of Kanban Task Manager, when it is released in May.   


Important women and men
Articles about people always get many visits, and in March we had Peter’s post on the International Women’s Day on women who had meant much to him. I wrote about our new Developer Anshul Takalkar and of baby Rimza – son of the kalmstrom.com Lead Developer. And the February story about the engagement of kalmstrom.com Developer Kanak Joshi was much read also in March.


Skype and Internet freedom
I try to cover general subjects within the kalmstrom business area, and in March the post about the incredible growth of Skype after the Microsoft requisition arouse interest.

I also wrote two articles about the UNHRC panel discussion on internet freedom on the last day of February. It was so popular that I wrote a follow up where I reported about the results of the meeting. This article was not as much read as the first one, maybe because I was early with the news the day the discussion was held. Probably people read about the discussion more in detail in news media after seeing my article and were not as interested the second time.

  
German and Swedish growth
In February I told you that the kalmstrom.com Blog was most read in the US and UK, and it was the same in March. But then there is a change: where we earlier had India and China on the second position we now have those two plus Germany and my home country Sweden.

In February the third group of countries with many blog readers were mostly European, but in March we find Brazil and Canada here also. I am not surprised at Canada, because we have several Members of kalmstrom.com Community there, but Brazil is a happy surprise. Maybe we soon may welcome our first Brazilian Community Member?

Unknown Mail Limit On Office 365

Each month Peter Kalmstrom, CEO of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, sends out a newsletter to around 8 000 recepients. After the transfer to Office 365 Outlook we have a problem with the sending, since there is a limit of 1500 e-mails in 24 hours – something we did not discover until the sending of this month's newsletters stopped at 1500.

Application to avoid mass-emailing
Peter wanted to send out his e-mails one by one, to avoid the problems with mass-emailing. As he is a software creator specialized in Outlook, it was no issue for him to develop what he wanted, and for several years this application has happily sent out his newsletters in the same way as when you send e-mails manually.

Bad surprise
In March kalmstrom.com migrated from Microsoft Online Services and begun using Office 365 Outlook for the mailboxes. The transfer was smooth, until it was time for the monthly newsletter. Then the sending stopped at 1500, and no more e-mails could be sent. As Peter uses the support mailbox for his newsletter, this meant that no more e-mails could be sent from the support in 24 hours. The support team had to send from the sales mailbox instead, which was a bit confusing for the callers.

Not advertised
Microsoft obviously wants to prevent spam sending from their cloud servers, and that is a good thing – even if we wish it did not affect us! But they do not inform very much about the sending limitation. Peter had of course studied Office 365 thoroughly before the migration, but he had still missed the e-mail limit. He found the rule in the Office 365 Help section.

The Microsoft solution
To solve the problem Microsoft suggests that we create groups of recipients, as each group only counts as one recipient. But that is really not a good suggestion. Then the sending will be mass-emailing, and most spam filters will stop our newsletters if subscribers have not whitelisted kalmstrom.com.

The kalmstrom.com solution
Peter will continue sending out his newsletters with the e-mail application. Either he will send them from another mail server, or he will send only 1400 per day from Office 365. That would give us 100 emails left for support that day, and it is quite enough. The kalmstrom.com products work without issues for most users, so we never have to send so many e-mails in one day.

If Peter opts for the second alternative, it means that all will not have his letters on the same day. I think we all can live with that. The newsletters are still not the quickest way to get news about kalmstrom.com. Those who want hot news will read them here, in the blog!

Switching A Facebook Business Page To The Timeline

Today the kalmstrom.com Community page on Facebook has the new Timeline look. This layout is forced upon us by Facebook, so we can only try to take advantage of the good things and avoid the drawbacks as much as possible. Here I will give my comments to the new design from a company point of view.

Obligatory switch
Facebook users have had the option to use the Timeline for a rather long time, but as I did not like what I saw I did not bother to investigate how the kalmstrom.com page would look with the new design. Not until we had a message that the switch would be forced upon us on March the 30th, I decided to take a closer look at the Timeline.

To get ideas I browsed around to other company pages on Facebook, and I discovered two things: many are still using the old design, and the ones who have switched to the Timeline have not been able to solve the issues I have seen.

Photo album instead of news update
The Timeline design has made Facebook more of a photo album, but that is not how kalmstrom.com Business Solutions wants to use Facebook. Instead we wish to tell our fans the latest from the company and also share other news that we think might be interesting for them. By having a Facebook page for this kind of communication we make it easy for Facebook users to follow kalmstrom.com.

Jumping back and forth across the line
The Timeline gives entries on both sides of a central line, and that makes the rows shorter and easier to read. However, with the old design the order of the entries was obvious, but in the new design you have to look back and forth across the line and you might very well miss an entry. This placement of the posts also lead to other problems.

Gaps give unnecessary scrolling
I wish the Timeline would give me a possibility to move entries without having to changing the date. The current Timeline design is too rigid, and it leads to unmotivated gaps between posts. At the end of the visible timeline, before the “See more …” and "Show all ..." buttons, the design creates gaps if the posts on the two sides of the timeline do not add up.

Highlighting entries creates even more gaps
I like the possibility to highlight a post by making it fill the whole width. This is good if I want to make sure visitors see important news, like an update of a kalmstrom.com product. But highlighting one entry often create new gaps in the flow of entries. Just look at the grey field to the left in the image below. Not very elegant!
  
Why not let us group entries instead?
If Facebook wanted to create something more interesting than the old design, they could have given the possibility to group entries. News from kalmstrom.com on one side of the line and general business news on the other side would have been a better solution for us, and I am sure that also many private users would have found a grouping feature useful.

Compulsory photos
In the Timeline design the Profile and Wall pages are merged together, and below the top cover there is room for a short presentation and some apps. I like to have the presentation visible there, but I don’t want to be forced to show photos. It is not possible to remove the photo app, and if you have no other photos your profile photo is shown there also.

Bad display dimensions
Of course kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has a lot of screenshots from our Office applications that we would be happy to display, but unfortunately the quality deteriorates when I upload them to Facebook. The display dimensions are unconventional, and even if I can drag the image in the viewer I often have to crop or resize the photos before uploading. This cannot be done in Facebook directly. As long as this problem remains I would prefer to just link to the kalmstrom.com website, where the images are of good quality.

Cover image
What I really approve of in the Timeline layout is the Cover image on top. It took some time before I got it right, though. The Facebook instructions say nothing about height but only mention a minimum width of 720 pixels. When I first tried it the image was distorted,  so I turned to the kalmstrom.com graphic designer, Jitendra Joshi. He explained to me that the width is actually  851px, and the height should be 315 pixels, something that is not at all mentioned in the Facebook instructions.

Jitendra created a new cover image with the correct measures, and he added the kalmstrom.com product icons at the bottom, in the “extra” space. You can see it in the beginning of this article, but I hope you want to visit the kalmstrom.com Community Facebook page and have a look at it in full size.

Even if I like the new cover image, the switch to the Timeline took some time that I could have used in a better way. I imagine I am not the only one who wishes that Facebook had come up with something better than the current Timeline design.

Skype And Kalmstrom Both Manage Well After Separation

According to VentureBeat, Skype hit a new milestone Monday this week when 35 million people accessed its audio and video conferencing service at the same time. It seems as if Skype manages well without the kalmstrom.com CEO. Peter is glad to see the success of his former employer, and we are happy to have him more active in the team.

Rapid growth after Microsoft take over
When Microsoft bought Skype in June, Microsoft promised to integrate Skype with its existing products. Except for the beta release of Skype for Windows Phone last week we have not seen so much of this yet, but I assume people feel more confident using Skype now when Microsoft is backing the product. The growth has been rapid, because as late as February 23 Skype for the first time had 32 million people signed in simultaneously.

Skype Product Manager
For five years, 2005-2010, Peter Kalmstrom was Product Manager for Skype Toolbars. If you have seen phone numbers on web pages turn into clickable buttons, you have seen an example of the kind of work Peter was responsible for at Skype. The integration of Skype in Outlook was of course also Peter's creation. Actually Peter first developed an add-on he called Outlook Skype, which was a big success for kalmstrom.com Business Solutions in 2004. We had to stop selling it when Skype achieved it and Peter was employed by Skype.

Rapid growth for kalmstrom.com too
After five years Peter felt he wanted to play a more active role in his own business, so he left Skype. At that time kalmstrom.com Business Solutions had only a few employees, but today we have more people involved in both Sweden and India.

The kalmstrom.com Office applications are also used by more people around the globe. We will never be able to brag about as many users as Skype, but that is not our aim. Our primary goal is to keep the solid base of users we have today and continue to give them best possible service. The second goal is to improve the kalmstrom.com products and have more Community Members using them. With Peter at the wheel we will surely reach both goals!

From Engagement Ceremony to G-Drive – Popular Blog Posts in February

Six months ago it became possible for me to spend more time on the kalmstrom.com blog, and this has led to a significant increase of readers. As I don’t always write about the kalmstrom.com Office applications but want to discuss other things too, I have a varied group of visitors. It is interesting to see what most of them like to read about.

Engagement and work from home
In the beginning of February Microsoft Sweden proclaimed a “Work from home” day, and my first article about the event was widely spread. I therefore wrote a follow-up post also, to tell how it turned out, but that article was not as popular as the first one. People were probably more interested in the concept than in the result of this special event.

In another much read blog post I congratulated kalmstrom.com developer Kanak Joshi, who got engaged recently. Kanak and her fiancé are Indian, and as I told some about Hindu customs I assume this post was interesting to more than just Kanak’s friends and relatives. Even if she is a nice girl she cannot have that many of them!

Tips and kalmstrom.com news
After these two most popular articles in February came articles who are more into the kalmstrom.com line of business. They are news about a product update – Calendar Browser V7.1 – and about our exciting new project, the Kanban Task Manager for Outlook.

Popular month after month are also the kalmstrom.com Tips. In February most people wanted to know how to add JavaScript to a SharePoint site and how to archive SharePoint list items. Peter Kalmstrom, our CEO, is a SharePoint expert that has earned all Microsoft’s certifications for SharePoint 2010, so of course he has a lot of useful information to share. It is a joy to see that so many take advantage of it.
 

Of interest to the branch
The third group of popular articles are those who concerns the kalmstrom.com branch rather than our own products. This month my report on useful tools when giving support service was read by many, just as my comments on G-Drive, the Google challenge to Dropbox and SkyDrive. After I wrote that blog post I have seen a massive Microsoft campaign for use of SkyDrive with Windows 8, so I am sure I will have reason to come back to this subject.

Google Challenges Dropbox And SkyDrive On Cloud File Sharing and Storage

Last week Wall Street Journal announced that Google will soon release a cloud service for storing and sharing files, similar to the ones already provided by Dropbox and SkyDrive. As the kalmstrom.com team has used Dropbox for file sharing during several years we look forward to the new release with interest. Will Google's G-Drive offer something better?

To store and share files in the cloud
Cloud storage is an alternative to disks, extra hard drives and other medias used for backing up files. Instead of connecting a physical device to your computer and save your files to it, you upload them to a server via the internet. If you give another person access to the folders that contain your files, you can easily share them without having to send them as e-mail attachments or using other more troublesome and insecure ways.

Dropbox or SkyDrive?
When kalmstrom.com Business Solutions looked for a good cloud service for file sharing the most important feature was how quickly files could be transferred from one computer or smartphone to another. We found that Dropbox was superior to Microsoft’s SkyDrive in that respect, so we chose Dropbox, first for our internal files and later also for the setup files of the kalmstrom.com Outlook, Exchange and SharePoint applications.

The kalmstrom.com use of Dropbox
When you download a product from the kalmstrom.com website it is actually not stored there at all. Instead we use a public Dropbox folder, and it has worked just fine. At kalmstrom.com only three people are allowed to upload files to this public folder, so you can feel sure you will get a clean product. But anyone may of course download the files.

Also for the Premium, register free copies of the kalmstrom.com software we use Dropbox. Here there are only a few people with access rights on either side, so the Premium copy is well protected and cannot be used by anyone but a couple of responsible persons in the Premium Member organization.

The kalmstrom.com team makes good use of Dropbox for sharing files within the group. In my PC I have a number of Dropbox subfolders that I share with different team members, and when one of them has dragged a file to the corresponding folder in her/his PC it does not take many seconds before I have it in my own machine and can open it.

The Google challenge
Google already offers several services for storing data in the cloud, so it is a logical step for this giant to take up the fight with Dropbox. It is said that Google will offer 25 GB of storage for free against Dropbox 2GB, but to really compete and make happy users leave Dropbox I think Google has to make their service better than Dropbox also. Microsoft SkyDrive already offers 25 GB, but they are still not as strong on the market as Dropbox is.

Who is the most reliable?
The outcome of the competition is also a matter of confidence. Whom do you want to entrust your valuable files? Lately Google has received some hard criticism for lack of respect for user integrity, a sentiment that Microsoft has encouraged in various ways. Dropbox, on the other hand, has a good reputation for security and protection of data, and I am sure they will do everything to keep this high regard.

The kalmstrom.com team will monitor the development closely, but today we see no reason to leave Dropbox for any other provider of cloud sharing and storage.

Merry Christmas With 16 Year Old Kalmstrom Family Photo

Another year has gone by, and I want to write a new article to wish all blog visitors a Merry Christmas. These Christmas blogs usually get many readers, and the Christmas post from 2009 is actually one of the most read ever. There are still some people reading it every day around the globe!

Peter and Oliver
In the image above you see two members of the kalmstrom.com team ‒ but not as you usually see them. The Santa is our CEO Peter, who is also my son, and on his arm he is holding his first born, Oliver. Today Oliver is 17 years old, and he works part time with administration of trials, purchases and subscriptions of the kalmstrom.com Office applications. If you want to have a present-day look at them both together, please see the Christmas card at the bottom of the kalmstrom.com home page.

At home in Tallstugan
The photo is taken in Peter’s first house, which actually was a big log house. The address was Tallstugan, Simonstorp, Åby, which means “Pine cottage, Simon’s cabin, River village”. Cute address, wasn’t it? The next owner of that house had to accept a street address instead, but by then we had already let Tallstugan live on in the name of our company, the family business behind the brand kalmstrom.com Business Solutions.

A snowy cottage in the woods
On Christmas Eve Peter slipped down in the basement, took on the Santa Claus dress and grabbed a lantern and the sack with Christmas presents. Then he went out the back way into the snowy woods that surrounded Tallstugan. There, among pines and firs, he lit his lantern and started to plod through the snow towards the door to the patio. Inside Oliver, and later also his brother Joakim, was keeping watch through the windows. When they saw the lantern and the figure holding it they screamed of a delight that was mixed with a bit of horror. At that time they did not understand that Santa was their father, but as you see Oliver was brave and let Santa hold him ‒ after he had delivered the presents!

Dispersed holiday celebrations
This year Peter is not celebrating Christmas with his children, as he and Siret are on their way to Indore to meet with the Indian members of the kalmstrom.com team. Sigge and I will stay on our island off the Swedish east coast, but Oliver and my mother, the kalmstrom.com Matriarch, will at least celebrate Christmas together.

I wish the users of the kalmstrom.com software and all others who also follow my blog a wonderful Christmas weekend!

Invent The Future While Listening To Customers

Yesterday I saw an article with the provoking title: “Mark Cuban on Why You Should Never Listen to Your Customers”. My first reaction was astonishment, because in kalmstrom.com Business Solutions we pride ourselves with ALWAYS listening carefully to our customers.

Listen to complaints but don’t ask about the future
When I read the article I understood what the American business magnate meant, and I realized that the kalmstrom.com CEO Peter had told me the same thing at various occasions, but not in such drastic words: “Yes, we should listen to our customers ‒ or Community Members ‒ and help them solve their problems, but we should not turn to the customers when it comes to decisions about the path for future development. That is my job.”

Peter climbs the trees
In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I saw a metaphore I liked: if a group of workers are building a road through a jungle, the staff must have good equipment and know how to do their job in an efficient way ‒ but someone also has to climb to the tree tops and make sure that the road is built in the right direction. Otherwise it will not be useful to anyone, no matter how smoothly the work on the ground is running. Peter is that person.

Future technologies
As Peter is a software developer the challenge of staying ahead and show the direction means to choose which techniques to use among all the interesting and feature-rich technologies that is constantly released out there, and to build applications that take best possible advantage of them. Maybe the users of the kalmstrom.com software do not even understand what can be done until they have seen it? But Peter can understand it, and that is why he has chosen to make the products compatible with new platforms like Office 365 and Windows Azure, even though most Community Members still don’t even think about transferring to them. When they want to do it, the kalmstrom.com applications they use should be compatible.

New design
Another example on Peter’s capacity of “inventing the future” (as Mark Cuban puts it) is the extensive development work that is currently going on at kalmstrom.com. Our developers Kanak Joshi and Sunil Patel are working full time with the creation of a new KBase application, which we hope to release soon.  The rest of the kalmstrom.com team has also been engaged in their work, because what we learn from this development with new techniques will be used in the future development of our more advanced products.

Welcome with suggestions
This said I want to make it clear that I don’t mean that Community Members are not welcome with suggestions on new features for the products they use. You are! No one knows better than you what needs to be improved for efficient daily use. But Peter and his developers are the ones who can judge how to achieve the goal in the best way and with best conditions for future upgrades.

PF HelpDesk sponsorship
A very good example on how users and developers can cooperate to improve a product is the joined efforts of Community Member Swiss Post and kalmstrom.com. The PF HelpDesk administrator at Swiss Post sent us a list of features they wanted to include in a future version of this kalmstrom.com issue tracking tool. They were willing to sponsor the development, but instead of adding those features to the current version of PF HelpDesk Peter decided to incorporate them in the next version. This version will be totally rebuilt and partly web based, and even if Swiss Post must wait longer for their features they will get them in a product that will keep for many years ahead. This way Peter could listen to customers and still keep focus on the right direction!

Auto Upgrades Or Not? Microsoft IE Decision And Apple Blunder Inspires Discussion In The kalmstrom.com Team

Users who stick to old versions are not popular among developers, who struggle to create new and better versions and of course want people to take advantage of what they have achieved. At the same time I can understand users who hesitate to upgrade. You know what you have, right? And as long as it works …

Microsoft introduces automatic upgrades for Internet Explorer
Because of this conflict between a company’s urge to spread the latest versions and some users’ sluggishness when it comes to upgrading, it was with great interest that we read Microsoft’s announcement last week. The giant has done what the kalmstrom.com team has discussed many times but not yet applied ‒ introduced an auto-update system, originally designed for security patches. Now Microsoft has decided to utilize that system to “force” users to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer compatible with the operating system.

Apple locks users out of App Store
Another, and more harsh way to make users upgrade is to simple lock them out. That is what Apple has done with users of iOS 3.1.3. Since the update of 16 December these users have not been able to update existing apps, download new ones, rate apps, or view screenshots in App store. In this case I beleive it is unintentional from Apples side, though.

Auto-upgrade for the kalmstrom.com applications?
Other browsers, like Firefox and Google Chrome, already have the auto-upgrading, so Microsoft’s decision is not revolutionary news in any way. However, that and Apple's blunder once again brought up the discussion in the kalmstrom.com team. Should we introduce automatic upgrades for our Outlook add-ons? Members of kalmstrom.com Community have free upgrades, and most of them upgrade quickly when a new version is released. Some wait until there is a problem, though, and we would like to find a way to help them avoid the irritation and disturbance that comes with all software errors.

Companies turn off automatic upgrades?
Microsoft’s automatic upgrade is turned on by default in new PCs, but in many companies they turn it off since they prefer to have more control over the upgrade process. This possibility is of course also open with the Internet Explorer upgrade on Windows machines. However, if kalmstrom.com Business Solutions would spend time on introducing auto-upgrades maybe it would still not be that much used??

Easy upgrades
The result of our discussion was this time the same as before ‒ for now we will not introduce auto upgrades but concentrate on making the upgrades of our products as easy as possible. We know we have already come a long way in that respect. “It was the smoothest upgrade I ever experienced from any software. Ran the install and 5 minutes later we were back up and running, “ says René Le Blanc, IT Manager at Gowlings, a Member of kalmstrom.com Community and user of PF HelpDesk, the kalmstrom.com issue tracking tool for Outlook.

However, we will continue making improvements on both the server and the client side. We already supply MSI installers for Community Members with many client users, and the kalsmtrom.com developers always look for ways to enhance the upgrade experience for the users. That way we hope to persuade all users to upgrade willingly and voluntarily!

kalmstrom.com Welcomes New Office Manager

Today I am happy to introduce a new member of the kalmstrom.com team, our Office Manager Vipul Dindulkar, who has been with us for a month now.

The proper education
Vipul has worked as an office administrator for five years, and during this time he also completed his Master of Business Administration, studying in his free time. Before that Vipul had achieved a degree of Bachelor of Computer Science degree, so he has just the right background for his new position with kalmstrom.com.

A new office for the Indian staff
We have already seen good example on Vipul’s energy and drive. When he joined the team a month ago his most urgent task was to find us a new office in Indore, because we had outgrown the old one. Vipul went around looking, photographing and negotiating, and everything was reported back to us in tidy Excel lists and images. We decided on a good office that the Indore team members liked, and Vipul arranged to have it renovated and furnished in a very short time.

Increased efficiency
Now Vipul will start on more ordinary office tasks. He will take care of the administration for our Indian office, where most of the actual development and testing of the kalmstrom.com software takes place, and some of the general kalmstrom.com administrative tasks will also be his responsibility. As Vipul has a background in computer science, he can also assist in more technical matters when needed, and that is important to us.

We hope that Vipul will enjoy working in the kalmstrom.com team, and I am sure he will be a good help in making the administration efficient.

New Microsoft Recognition For kalmstrom.com CEO

A month ago I wrote a blog post about the kalmstrom.com CEO Peter Kalmstrom, and I called him a true renaissance man because of his many talents - Outlook, Excel and SharePoint specialist, innovative developer and a good teacher. Now Microsoft has also given him recognition, as Peter has earned the Microsoft Certified Trainer certificate.

Peter allowed to teach for Microsoft Certifications
According to Microsoft definitions “Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) are the premier technical and instructional experts on Microsoft technologies, and are the only individuals authorized to deliver training for Microsoft Certification.” Peter has no less than fifteen such certifications in his expert fields, Outlook, Excel and SharePoint, and as he also has good teaching skills he is really well equipped to instruct others.

Congratulations, Peter!
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions recently earned its second Microsoft Silver Competency, this time for excellent insight in Business Intelligence procedures and products. This achievement is the result of a team work, and all members of the kalmstrom.com team can and shall share the glory. In contrast the new Trainer recognition is Peter’s accomplishment only. The rest of us can only applaud and congratulate him!

How To Embed A YouTube Video In A SharePoint Site

Our CEO, Peter Kalmstrom continues to share his vast knowledge of SharePoint with useful tips published on the kalmstrom.com website. Now he has released a demonstration on how to embed a video from YouTube into a SharePoint site.

All from guidelines to entertainment
Video demonstrations like the one above can be very useful to have on a SharePoint intranet, for instructions, lectures, information or maybe just for fun! A video from the latest office party will be a popular addition to the site, and it will enhance the good spirits within the group.

Not as easy as you might think
To embed a YouTube video in SharePoint one would think that you only have to add the embed code from YouTube into the SharePoint HTML, just like you do when you embed it in another website. And if you do so it looks very good at first ‒ but only until you save. Then the video disappears again.

Add a Web Part
To make the video stay also when you have saved the page, you must add a Content Editor Web Part and then add the embed code there. Peter shows you how to do that in a few easy steps. Try it, and you will have yet another way to use your SharePoint site!

kalmstrom.com demos
On the kalmstrom.com website you cannot only find demos in the Tips section. We also use them to present the various kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons, and each one of the products has a Demonstrations page with a number of recorded instructions on installation, configuration and usage. The video demonstrations are of course not as easy to update as the manuals, but they are good complements that really show users and evaluators “how to do it”.

Export Excel Lists and Connect Them In SharePoint

The kalmstrom.com CEO, Peter Kalmstrom, is a Microsoft certified expert on both Excel and SharePoint, and he is happy to share his knowledge. Now he has published another demo on how to transfer data from Excel to SharePoint. This time he shows how to export Excel lists, and then he explains how to connect the two new SharePoint lists on a page.

If you use SharePoint but don’t know how to export Excel lists to your site or how to connect lists in SharePoint, I sincerely recommend you to watch it. Also if you already know it, you might still get some other useful tips from Peter’s demo.

Export Excel lists to SharePoint
Peter starts with exporting his Excel lists “Customers” and “Countries” to a SharePoint site. In the “Customers” list there are some multiple line fields that cannot be used for sorting and filtering but Peter shows how to change them into single lines.

Connect SharePoint lists
Peter continues by showing how to connect the Countries list and the Customers list on a page, so that he can select a country and see what customers come from that country.

The possibility to connect two SharePoint lists to each other on a separate page is very useful. On the kalmstrom.com intranet SharePoint site there is one list for Customers and one for Purchases. Of course you can have all the info in one list, but loading, filtering and sorting works better if we separate the data into two lists. The two lists are connected on a CustomerPurchases page, though, and when I open a customer organization on that page I can see all data for that organization + all their purchase information.

More info on the kalmstrom.com website
In the Tips section of www.kalmstrom.com the various tricks are listed in the order Peter shows them, and for each trick the steps he performs in the video demonstration are described more in detail. Welcome to have a look at the article “Export Excel lists to a SharePoint site and connect them”. The kalmstrom.com Tips section also contains pages with tips on Outlook, Skype, Exchange, SMS and more. These tips are not directly connected to the kalmstrom.com products for Office, Exchange and SharePoint ‒ for them we have a lot of documentation on other pages. Here we have instead gathered information that may be useful for many, either you are a kalmstrom.com Community Member or not. Welcome to see for yourself!

Raised Value For kalmstrom.com Products

In November 2009 kalmstrom.com BusinessSolutions introduced a subscription system for all more advanced products, which I wrote about in two blogs,8 November and 16 November. During these two years the kalmstrom.com software applications have been much improved. Generally speaking our development work follows three paths, even if they intermingle.

The first path is to make the kalmstrom.com Officeadd-ons compatible with new Microsoft technology. In 2009 most of our customers still used Windows XP or Vista, but Windows 7 was released during the autumn and the kalmstrom.com team updated the products to support the new operating system. At that time we had already updated the products for in Office 2007, and when Office 2010 came one year later we could take full advantage of the ribbon ‒ which brings us to the second path.

When new technology is introduced the kalmstrom.com developers don’t just ask themselves how to make our software compatible with it. Another very important question is to ask how to use the new technology to our advantage, to make the kalmstrom.com products better and easier to work with. That is the second development path: to continuously make the applications better. Here we have a big help from Community Members. They use our products on a daily basis and often give us suggestions to enhancements. We always listen, and if possible we realize the customer’s request.

The third path is for the long run, and it is the responsibility of our CEO and our Lead Developer. Peter and Jayant follow very closely what happens in our branch and among all interesting new technology they try to select the most suitable to build on for a strong future. 

During the two years of kalmstrom.com Community we have not raised our Community fees, but now we feel it is time to do so. Old monthly subscribers who don’t break the subscription will still pay the old fees, but yearly subscribers and all new Community Members will have to pay a bit more.

We will use the extra revenues to hire more developers and another QA Engineer. This way the development work can advance faster, and I am sure both old and new Community Members will appreciate the improvements during the next two years of kalmstrom.com Community.

Connect To kalmstrom.com On LinkedIn

For a rather long time I have not done much about my representation on LinkedIn, but now I have decided to use it as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. Many in my branch prefer the more professionally aimed LinkedIn to other social media, and I have therefore updated my LinkedIn account with much more info than before.

kalmstrom.com Blog
To make the kalmstrom.com Blog easier to follow for my LinkedIn contacts I have connected it to LinkedIn. This way all my contacts can see our latest posts on their LinkedIn homepage. The blog is the best way to follow what happens to the kalmstrom.com products, and we also give comments on other activities in the branch or near the kalmstrom.com team members.

kalmstrom.com products
Kate has updated the LinkedIn information about kalmstrom.com Business Solutions and also added some of our products. As they are new on LinkedIn we have not yet received any recommendations on them, but I am sure they will come.

Connect
I have sent connect invitations to some Community Member who were suggested to me, but please don’t wait if you did not receive one yet. Connect to me instead! I will be happy to say yes.

Peter Kalmstrom
CEO, kalmstrom.com Business Solutions