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!

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!

Who Reads The kalmstrom.com Blog?

Last week I looked at the statistics for most read blog posts in February, but it is also interesting to see who those readers are. A study of the figures show some expected result but also some nice surprises.

English speaking countries
Visitors from United States and Great Britain dominate among the blog readers every month. This is to be expected, as the blog is written in English and the kalmstrom.com products are popular in these countries. Of course many users want to keep up with the events of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions.

India and China
To our delight we also see that the kalmstrom.com Blog has many readers in India and China. Both countries are in rapid development, and we are happy to be on the scene in India. We hope to soon have a partner in China also, to take advantage of this huge market and the evident interest in the kalmstrom.com Business Solutions software there.

Europe
After USA, UK, India and China comes a group of countries with approximately the same number of Blog visitors. Here we find for example Sweden and Germany, both with many Members of kalmstrom.com Community. Russia and Ukraine are also included here.

Mac users
The Blog statistics also show the visitors’ operating system, and since kalmstrom.com builds applications for Microsoft Office I was first surprised when I saw that 20 % of the February readers use Macintosh instead. Then I realized that many of them probably use Office for Windows in a virtual machine inside their Mac.

I read an interesting article in Business Insider about this use of Microsoft Office, where Matt Rosoff suggests that Microsoft should build first-class native versions of Office for all popular platforms. We have no objections to that!

Smart phones
The kalmstrom.com Blog looks nice in a smart phone also, but only a few percent read the blog on their mobiles. I assume this figure will rise in the future, but not that much. I still think most will prefer to read the articles on a computer, even if my aim is to make them so interesting that you want to read them as soon as you get a chance ;)

One Year Behind The kalmstrom.com Scene

Some members of the kalmstrom.com team are highly visible – like me! You look at the work of our designers as soon as you visit the kalmstrom.com website or use our products, and you meet other team members in support and sales chats and e-mails.

But there are others in the team whose contributions are equally important, even if they are not as easy for everyone to see and appreciate. In this post I will let kalmstrom.com developer Vijayant Rimza represent those team members.

Two brothers
Vijayant – or Rinku, as we call him – joined the kalmstrom.com team one year ago. He then had a good education but not much experience, so he was willing to start as a trainee. We soon saw his skills and hired him as developer instead. Rinku is the brother of our Lead Developer, but he fully earns his place in the team on his own merits. On the image above our CEO is thanking Rinku for good cooperation, and it is obvious how proud his brother Jayant is feeling.

Silver Certification Test
Rinku was the developer who tested our products with a special tool that Microsoft provides to Partners. The result of these tests, together with our other achievements, made us Microsoft Silver Partners as both Independent Software Vendor and Business Intelligence specialists.

Premium copies
Premium Members of the kalmstrom.com Community get their own copy of the application they use. This copy does not have to be registered, and it has the logotype of the Premium Member organization. Rinku is the developer who is creating these copies, and he also makes sure they are updated when we release a new version of the corresponding standard product.

HelpDesk OSP development
In August kalmstrom.com released version 3 of HelpDesk OSP, the add-on that connects Outlook to SharePoint. Rinku created a significant part of the new version, that had a new design , several new features and a simplified login to the SharePoint site. HelpDesk OSP works with any SharePoint site, and we use it ourselves with our Office 365 SharePoint.

Getting rid of the OWC dependency
Several of our applications require installation of the Office Web Components on at least the administrator machine. As OWC have not been installed automatically since Office 2003, evaluators with Office 2007 and 2010 have to download and install them separately. During the autumn one of Rinku’s tasks has been to handle this problem, and we will see the effects of his work in coming new product versions.

Kanban Task Manager
Right now Rinku is engaged in an exciting new product – the Kanban Task Manager for Outlook. This software will visualize the work with Outlook Tasks and make it easy for a workgroup to work together on projects. As SharePoint will be one of the options for sharing and storage, the members of the group may very well be geographically dispersed.

Vijayant Rimza is ambitious, and in addition to the studies necessary for all team members, to keep up with the latest technologies, he also takes courses in Business Management. It has been a pleasure working with Rinku this past year, and we look forward to a continued good cooperation for years to come!

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.

Fast Calendar Browser Fix Thanks To Community Member

Calendar Browser for Outlook was recently updated with support for Office 365 and a possibility to group resource calendars. We have now made another release of our popular resource booking application.

Smooth upgrades for most
Version 7.1 of Calendar Browser was released in January, and Community Members upgraded their installations without issues – until one Member suddenly reported a problem.  Mr. Paul Jennings at Wolff Olins LLC got a permission error when he started Outlook, and since all permissions were correct he was invited to a remote session with one of the kalmstrom.com developers. It showed that this error came due to a saving conflict in the Calendar Browser settings item. It was a bug in version 7.1 that only would affect a few, and it has now been fixed.

One Member report helped another
Very soon after the report  from Wolff Olins another administrator of Calendar Browser contacted us with the same issue, but then we already knew what the problem was. Both Member organizations got help quickly, and now we have released the updated Calendar Browser for all. Even though all Community Members probably have upgraded already, we want to make sure that no evaluator of Calendar Browser will get this error.

Quicker client tool
kalmstrom.com Lead Developer Jayant Rimza took the opportunity to test a new idea, and since it worked as expected he also made another change in the new Calendar Browser setup. This change makes the client tool both load and work faster, and even if it was not slow before it is a valuable enhancement.

Good example
The Community Member who reported this error is a good example on how cooperative users can improve a kalmstrom.com product for all. Paul Jennings wrote an e-mail that clearly described the problem, allowed a remote session where Jayant could see what caused the issue and last but not least showed a positive attitude when he had to come back for another remote session before the problem was solved for him.

Many of the kalmstrom.com Community Members have a similar outlook (sic!) on life and work, and that makes our work rewarding and encouraging. Thank you!

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!

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.

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.

kalmstrom.com Community - Satisfying Software Licensing For All

In the beginning of 2009, when kalmstrom.com Business Solutions had been selling software licenses for nine years, we experienced a growing feeling that we did something wrong. Our applications for Office, Exchange and SharePoint were fine, and our CEO Peter saw a great development potential in them. However, we saw problems with the payment model we used at that time: buy a license and then add a support contract if you wish to use the kalmstrom.com services after the first year.

Unknown users with traditional one-time payments
We sold a lot of licenses, and many of the customers continued to use our products and were known to us. But there was also a big, anonymous group out there who once had bought a license but whom we no longer had any contact with. Were they still using our product? What were they thinking about it? Was it helping them the way they had hoped when they bought the license? For whom were we actually developing our software?

Right to support and upgrades
Another issue was that all organizations were not prepared to pay for support and upgrades of their kalmstrom.com application. Instead they used old versions as long as possible to avoid the cost for a support contract. It did not feel satisfying to know that users were not having the best possible versions of their kalmstrom.com product, but we found it difficult to give free support and upgrades without finding a source of income to finance it.

The Community model
After many discussions within the team we decided to transfer to a subscription system for the use of our products. We would create a Community of user organizations, and Members of that Community would always get support and free upgrades. That way we could make sure that users of software from kalmstrom.com really had got the very best we could offer. Community Members would also have the right to unlimited use of all kalmstrom.com products. More users and products would create a stronger bond between kalmstrom.com and the Community Members, and that was exactly what we wanted to achieve.

The crucial question
Finally, in November 2009, we took the big step. We all felt certain that the Community model would be better for all parties in the long run, but it was still not an easy decision. Would customers be prepared to pay month after month or year after year for the right to use a kalmstrom.com product?

Peter, the creator of the applications, had confidence in their value to the users. But Sigge and I were worried that we would lose customers. And we did lose some ‒ old customers who did not want to transfer to the subscription system and potential new ones who only wanted to make a one-time payment. But we got other customers instead, customers who appreciate the security they get as Members of kalmstrom.com Community.

Improved customer relations
Today, after two years, we are happy we made the transfer. We have a solid base of Community Members, and that means we feel strong when planning for the future ‒ ours and theirs. Now we cooperate with the users in a much better way, because with the Community Members there are never any discussions about support contracts or the right to upgrade.

Instead we all work together towards a common goal: to solve problems and constantly enhance the kalmstrom.com Microsoft add-ons so that they even better meet the requirements from the Community Members. We say a warm thank you to all who have shown trust and faith in the kalmstrom.com team and in our products by joining kalmstrom.com Community!

kalmstrom.com Developers Celebrate Festival Of Light

Today is the first day of the important Hindu festival, Diwali or Deepawali. The Indian employees of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions will be off Wednesday and Thursday, but as usual we can always reach our dedicated lead developer Jayant. This is good to know, in case someone gets an urgent problem with one of the kalmstrom.com Outlook add-ons that Sigge cannot manage in the first line support.

Here kalmstrom.com developer Kanak Joshi will tell us more about the interesting rituals of the celebrations:

Diwali is a festival of colors and lights, and my family celebrates it with great enthusiasm. It is a five day festival, where each day has its own significance. I will share with you how we celebrate each day of Diwali and what rituals are performed in my family.

Dhanteras
On this day, at sunset, my father worships dhan (wealth in form of gold /silver/cash etc.). Dhanteras is traditionally a day for purchase of precious metals.

Narak Chaturdasi
This day is also called “Choti (small) Diwali”. Everyone in my family massages the body with oil to relieve it of tiredness and bathe before sunrise. It is believed that if one bathes before sunrise, one will not go to “Narak" (hell).

Lakshmi Puja
On this third day everyone cleanse themselves and wear new clothes. We worship the Goddess Lakshmi to achieve the blessings of wealth and prosperity. In the morning we make “Rangoli“, a decorative floor design with different colors, and in the evening we light clay lamps and burn crackers.

Padwa / Govardhan Puja
Some people also regard this day as the Hindu new year, so we visit our relative’s houses and wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year. We also worship the cow, who is considered as a mother in Hindu religion

Bhai Duj
The last day of Diwali is special for brothers and sisters. Therefore all my brothers come to my house, and we exchange gifts.

Work For The Future When kalmstrom.com CEO Goes To India

Now it is decided and the journey is booked!

22 December kalmstrom. com CEO Peter will go to India and meet our employees in Indore. On the way there he will also make a stop in Delhi to see Gundeep Sachdev, head of the kalmstrom.com partner TimeRewards.

Last time Peter went to India it was for a wedding in November 2010. kalmstrom.com Lead Developer Jayant Rimza got married, and the celebrations and festivities were a great experience for Peter. This time will be different ‒ all work and education!

Since last year we have employed several young, talented technicians, and now Peter will take the opportunity do teach them the latest specialties needed for development of the kalmstrom.com Office and SharePoint applications.

Siret Toots will go with Peter to India, and while Peter and the developers are studying she will go around looking at offices. She has already begun preparing this with photos, floor plans and maps, to select the ones that are most interesting to kalmstrom.com. We hope to find a really good new office for our growing team, a place that has room for some more people also!

There will of course be time for getting together in a more relaxed way too, and both Siret and Peter are looking forward to meeting the Indian staff "live" and getting to know them better.

New QA at kalmstrom.com

For a long time I was the only woman in the kalmstrom.com team, but during the last year no less than three other women have joined us. The latest one is our new QA Engineer Neha Gupta, who has been with kalmstrom.com since the beginning of September.

Neha has passed both Bachelors of Science and Master of Computer Science exams. As she wants to use her skills as a tester, she finds work in the kalmstrom.com team an interesting challenge.

During the month Neha has been with us she has tested one app for iPhone (iCalendarTimeCard) and one for Android (ShareTask), checked changes in the kalmstrom.com resource booking tool for Outlook (Calendar Browser) participated in planning of the new KBase and tested all products with Windows 8. All tasks have been performed with energy and skill, so you can understand we are happy to have her!

In her free time Neha plays badminton, and just like the kalmstrom.com CEO, Peter, she very much enjoys music, drama and dance. But ‒ again just like Peter! ‒ her main interest is technology and everything you can achieve if you use it in a clever way. Welcome to the team, Neha!

kalmstrom.com Comments On Windows 8

Last week Microsoft released a pre-beta, developer preview version of Windows 8, their new combined desktop, laptop and tablet operating system. Since then the kalmstrom.com team has been testing it, and I want to share some of our first thoughts and impressions with you. I will surely have reason to come back to Windows 8 many times.

Windows 8 is like a new dish ‒ some will be impressed by it and some not. Users who expected just an update of Windows 7 will be very surprised, and in the beginning maybe also frustrated by everything new. I hope they will come over it soon, because overall this is an intriguing change. Or as one of the kalmstrom.com technicians expressed it: "If you don't like Windows 8, then you don't like tech."

What first strikes you when you open Windows 8 is the totally new interface. Microsoft has hidden the traditional windows and instead given us a tile interface like in their mobile phones. The Start bar, which has been there in all earlier Windows versions, is removed and replaced with icons of each installed application. This tile layout is called "Metro", and it is optimized for touch as well as mouse and keyboard.

The Metro interface is meant to make it easy to have several applications open at the same time, not only on a desktop but also in a smart phone. Swiping from the left switches to the next app, but you can also swipe and drag to put several apps on a screen side by side, in the size that you want them. If you need to have many applications open it might be difficult to find them with this system, as you cannot scroll down the Start bar as before. However, since you can move application tiles in the interface and place them where you want them, you can create groups that will make it easier to find applications.

We all like the Windows Explorer in version 8. It has a ribbon interface, like Office 2010, where most of the common tasks are at your fingertips. It also has a backstage view with many useful options.

Now the team is looking forward to testing Windows 8 further once new computers with really good touch-screens come on the market. Microsoft and their hardware partners have been lagging behind Apple for quite a while, but we don´t believe that trend is going to keep. It will be very interesting to see what Microsoft will do together with Nokia, Samsung, Acer, Intel, Dell, Sony and others.

The next 9-12 months should see some exciting development both on the mobile and the PC markets, and the kalmstrom.com team members are glad to be part of it!

HelpDesk OSP For Outlook And SharePoint - New Update

Yesterday kalmstrom.com Business Solutions published an update of the newly released version 3 of HelpDesk OSP, the Outlook add-on that connects Outlook to any SharePoint site. Most Community Members have already upgraded their installations, and with so many new users something happened that we don't like: bugs were discovered. We test our software thoroughly, but still some problems slip through now and then.

The problem concerned Outlook 2007 and 2003, where the HelpDesk OSP buttons in Outlook for default list did not work as they should. Therefore users had to select list for conversion even if they wanted to use the default list, and for a blank ticket they were asked to select caller from the Global Address list instead of being prompted with the new Caller dialog.

As many of the HelpDesk OSP users have Outlook 2010, it took a while before we got the first report about the issue. It came Monday, and in a remote session with the Community Member Tuesday our eminent lead developer saw where the problem was. And Wednesday it was solved and an update was released!

The kalmstrom.com developers even had time to add a new feature, requested by another Community Member: support for sub sites to Office 365 SharePoint. I recommend HelpDesk OSP users with Outlook 2007 or 2003 or users of the Office 365 SharePoint sub sites to upgrade.

Have you not tried HelpDesk OSP yet? Please do, if you need to publish from Outlook to the company SharePoint site. HelpDesk OSP enhances both Microsoft products, and with the kalmstrom.com subscription system you will always have a well functioning software adapted to the latest technologies. As this example shows we fix bugs very quickly!   

kalmstrom.com Is Testing Windows 8

Yesterday Microsoft released a pre-beta version of their new operating system Windows 8, and we are excited to try it. Even though the kalmstrom.com products interact more with the Office applications than with the operating system, we always follow the Microsoft developments closely.

One thing that especially strikes us, is the trend of making software nicer to look at and easier to use. We have been putting a lot of efforts towards those goals in our own products lately, and we will continue to do so. Now we hope that Windows 8 will make this task easier. For example, could using the Windows 8 Metro user interface make it easier and faster to edit and submit the TimeCard for Outlook time reporting data?

kalmstrom.com CEO Peter and Lead Developer Jayant is already testing the new release, and I will come back to you later with their comments. The installation went smoothly, and now they are both eager to see how Windows 8 can enhance the kalmstrom.com products.

A Microsoft Surprise

Last Friday Sigge and I were pleasantly surprised, when we received a delivery from Microsoft. As I told you in my latest blog kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has earned a Microsoft Partner Silver Competency ‒ Independent Software Vendor. However, we thought we would receive all the benefits over the Internet and had no idea that we would also get some physical proof of our accomplishment. It felt like Christmas when we opened the package and found a plaque in form of a beautiful glass sculpture to hang on the office wall.    

The text on the plaque is signed by Steven A. Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation and Jon Roskill, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group. This is their message: "For your commitment to creating and delivering innovative customer solutions and services based on Microsoft technologies, we proudly recognize your dedication to excellence."

The package also contained a Microsoft Partner banner, which we will display at our Indian office, and license and access keys that Peter and our developers are happy about. This Silver Partnership is an encouragement to us all, but it is also a responsibility we will do our very best to live up to.

HelpDesk OSP For Outlook And SharePoint - See The New Design

Soon kalmstrom.com Business Solutions will release a new version of HelpDesk OSP, and today I can show you the new slideshow for this incident management tool. Most screenshots come from Outlook 2010 and a SharePoint 2010 site on Offce 365. It might take some time for the slideshow to load, so I suggest you read this blog post before you take a look.

Version 3 has a new design, which we hope will make it very user friendly. After listening to input from Community Members, we have also decided to change the captions on two of the Outlook buttons, to better explain what it is all about. "Create ticket" has become "Convert e-mail", and "New ticket" is "Blank ticket" in V3.

The Blank ticket button now gives the alternative to create a totally new ticket, without picking  caller info from the Outlook Contacts or GAL. Also this feature comes after a request from a Member organization, where people wanted to use HelpDesk OSP for entering new list items to the company's SharePoint intranet directly from Outlook.

More new features have been added to the new version of HelpDesk OSP, and I will tell you about them when I announce the release. We have just a few small adjustments left, so it might even be this week!

kalmstrom.com Uses, Resells And Develops For Office 365

The kalmstrom.com team is geographically distributed, so our intranet is a vital place for sharing and cooperation. It simply must work, and therefore only the best is good enough. We begun using SharePoint very early, and as our CEO Peter is a Microsoft certified SharePoint specialist he has been able to configure the site to make the most of it.

When Office 365 was introduced Peter saw the advantages of this cloud based service, which also has SharePoint 2010. A subscription was necessary anyway, because we need to test our products with Office 365, but Peter decided that we should use Office 365 for our internal purposes too.

We manage our support e-mails with our own product HelpDesk OSP, and today we have it running all the time on a server, automatically converting e-mails from our OWA on Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite into tickets on our SharePoint site in Office 365. We will however soon start testing our new HelpDesk OSP Azure. It will run on Windows Azure and convert e-mails received in our Office 365 Outlook into list items on our Office 365 SharePoint site.

As you understand the kalmstrom.com team has a deep understanding of Microsoft's cloud-based platforms. It was a logical step to apply for authorization to resell Microsoft Online Services. We were granted this right in July, and we have already sold Office 365 to one company after advising them on what subscription and configuration would suit their needs. Always feel welcome to contact us for consultation!

kalmstrom.com Authorized To Sell Microsoft Online Services

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions is now an authorized Microsoft Business Solutions Reseller with the right to receive fees for selling Microsoft Online Services. Don't worry, we will continue developing and selling our own products. However, as a complement we can now give better advice and service to Community Members who wish to transfer to MS Online services like Office 365 or Windows Azure. In the future, when our products become more cloud based, kalmstrom.com will also offer a hosting service.

To gain the authorization we had to show that we understand Microsoft's cloud based services and are able to judge what platforms and configurations that would suit each Member best. This deep knowledge of the online Services is of course necessary for the kalmstrom.com team. We aim to always learn the latest technologies to take advantage of the benefits they can bring to our products, so when Microsoft started launching online services kalmstrom.com were close on their heels. The certification above is only one of the proofs on our ambition.