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 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.

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!   

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.

Microsoft Pinpoint Lists Products From kalmstrom.com

For several years Microsoft's Office Marketplace has been an important marketing channel for the kalmstrom.com products. It has given us many new visitors to the website ‒ and also many customers, since those visitors often are just the skilled IT professionals we want to reach. Now Microsoft has given us another opportunity to introduce our products to this group of people: Microsoft Pinpoint.

Microsoft Pinpoint was introduced in the U.S. a couple of years ago as a way to help small and midsize businesses to connect to Microsoft partners like kalmstrom.com Business Solutions. However, that first version of Pinpoint was more locally aimed and not as interesting to us as Office Marketplace. Recently Microsoft changed their Pinpoint site, and now we can showcase our applications in a better way and also more efficiently explain how they extend and enrich specific Microsoft products and platforms.

All kalmstrom.com products are now listed in the 51 English speaking countries supported by Pinpoint and in the only Swedish speaking one. Soon we hope to be on the pages for Spanish and German speaking countries also.

When we were accepted at Microsoft Pinpoint we were also given a chance to be presented at special platform marketplaces. Some testing and verifications are needed, though, and our dedicated junior developer Vijayant Rimza is busy with that task right now. It will take some time, but so far PF HelpDesk has passed the test for the Windows Azure Marketplace, and HelpDesk OSP is already listed on the Microsoft Office 365 Marketplace. We will continue the work!

Estonia - New Market For kalmstrom.com

Today I have the pleasure to introduce to you our new translator, Siret Toots from Estonia. Siret will localize all kalmstrom.com products for Estonian. Calendar Browser and HelpDesk OSP are already finished, and the translated phrases will be added to the next updates of those products.

Siret will also be responsible for the marketing of PamFax in Estonia and for the translation of this tool for easy and secure faxing into Estonian. Later Siret will complete the kalmstrom.com Finnish phrase lists, which need an update as some phrases are missing and shown in English instead.

It is not easy to translate our phrase lists, because you need to understand the product and not only know the language well. For example, if you find the word "book" in the phrase list for our resource booking tool Calendar Browser, you need to understand that it means "reserve" and is not referring to a book you can read. Siret is both dedicated and cooperative, so I feel confident that she will give us good translations and eventually new Members of kalmstrom.com Community.

ShareTask - Manage Your SharePoint Task List While On The Run

In earlier blogs I have told you about about the re-design of HelpDesk OSP, the kalmstrom.com application that connects SharePoint to Outlook. Today I can present the first image of ShareTask, another great product for SharePoint users. ShareTask connects SharePoint to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, so with this app in the smart phone you can work with your SharePoint Tasks while travelling, waiting for the dentist, seeing a boring TV show ‒ you name it.

ShareTask will work with all kinds of SharePoint lists. With ShareTask you may add, edit and delete SharePoint list items directly in your iOS device. You may change item status, add new comments and upload images from the camera or gallery to SharePoint.

HelpDesk OSP users will of course find ShareTask very convenient, but this app is an independent product. It does not require anything more than iOS, SharePoint and an internet connection. We hope many will discover and use this ingenious little app, which gives users an advantage that we so far not have seen on the market.

Outlook-SharePoint Publishing and Syncronization

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

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

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

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

New Developer In kalmstrom.com Team

The kalmstrom.com team has a new Member, and I am happy to introduce you to Vijayant Rimza, our new junior developer. After taking his Master of Computer Application exam Vijayant started as trainee with us, and what we saw made us believe that he will eventually be as good as his older brother, our Lead Developer Jayant. Vijayant already has the ambition and the dedication, and he is very intent on improving his skills. Therefore he continues to study in his free time, both English and programming. We give him a warm welcome to the team.

Right now Vijayant is working with the implementation of the new design for HelpDesk OSP, the application for publishing to a SharePoint site via Outlook. His work at kalmstrom.com will be very varied, so it will give him excellent experience and a good opportunity to grow.

Vijayant has a gift that we were not aware of until I asked about his interests for this blog ‒ he paints and does pencil drawings, and very good also! Above you see him looking at one of his comic figures. This means that we suddenly have two artists in the company, even if only graphic designer Jitendra Joshi makes his living from the talent. I wonder how this will affect kalmstrom.com in the future? We surely have a very interesting time ahead of us!

kalmstrom.com Selected For Excellent Win7 Development

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

Outlook Issue Tracking Tool Updated

Today kalmstrom.com has published an update of PF HelpDesk, to solve some irritating bugs. We had hoped to add the SQL Azure database alternative and some other improvements from the Plans page in this release also, but those new features are unfortunately not sufficiently tested yet. However, yesterday Sigge had to tell four Members to restart Outlook because they got an error message due to slow Outlook response, and that is at least three too many!

Two other problems also needed to be solved urgently: for some users blank tickets were created in the database, and running the Maintenance utility in the Settings could make all tickets set to closed, not only the ones that had been manually deleted from Outlook. We are grateful to the Members who reported these issues to us, as we had not discovered them in our tests. Now they are fixed together with the slow Outlook response error. Work with the enhancements continues with high priority, so we hope to soon give you another update with these included.

HelpDesk OSP Handles Proxy Server

The kalmstrom.com issue tracking software that connects Outlook and SharePoint has been updated. Now HelpDesk OSP can use proxy settings, which is helpful for organizations who are using a proxy server for their internet connection. By default HelpDesk OSP reads the proxy host name and port from Internet Explorer, if proxy is enabled there of course, and makes the connection via the proxy server.

Another proxy server address and port may also be used. All proxy settings are done under the HelpDesk OSP Settings General tab. We thank our Lead Developer Jayant Rimza, who once again has created a new feature that has improved HelpDesk OSP for current and future Members of kalmstrom.com Community.

Merge Support Tickets with HelpDesk OSP

If you have many support tickets, you might want to merge some of them into one ticket with more content. This is now possible with HelpDesk OSP.

kalmstrom. com is today happy to announce the release of an updated HelpDesk OSP with a new feature, “Merge Tickets”. This feature is very convenient if you wish to create tickets with content from several ones, for example by merging all tickets from a certain client into one "Parent ticket".

In the Configuration dialog, which opens from Outlook, we have added a button to open the Merge Tickets dialog. Here you may select what tickets and fields should be merged, what to do with the "Child Tickets" and if attachments should be included. Please read more in the updated manual.

We will continue developing this feature with a filter possibility and an option to have the Merge Tickets button directly in the Outlook toolbar, but those enhancements will come in a later release. Members, welcome to upgrade you installations and try the new Merge feature! I am sure you - like us - will send a grateful thought to the sponsor SuniTAFE, Australia, who helped us realize this improvement of HelpDesk OSP.

HelpDesk OSP for Outlook and SharePoint - a Product for the Future

HelpDesk OSP is the youngest product from kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, created only two years ago. Since then a lot has happened to the product, and it has become the most popular among new customers. This feels very encouraging, and we will of course continue to improve HelpDesk OSP just like we do with all products.

Since the kalmstrom.com team is a geographically distributed group we use HelpDesk OSP ourselves for our support management, and even if it works well as it is we of course get ideas for enhancements and new features. We also get suggestions from users, and we are grateful for any input.

Yesterday we released a minor update of HelpDesk OSP, and today we have published a new Ideas page on the website. We will make such pages for all products, but this is the first. Welcome to have a look! And if you use HelpDesk OSP, or wish to start using it, please give us your comments.

Efficient Issue Tracking for Distributed Team with HelpDesk OSP

The kalmstrom.com team uses HelpDesk OSP for support cases. We also use this incident management tool in other situations where e-mails need to be organized and discussed among us, for example to sort and comment on job applications.

Since the team members live and work far apart in different countries, we use OWA for the e-mail and have HelpDesk OSP installed on a server where Outlook is running 24/7. We can always access the tickets from our smartphones, which is a big advantage for those of us who travel a lot.

Even if we don't use all the possibilities SharePoint gives - because we don't need them - we are very satisfied with our software and with having this connection between our e-mail and our intranet. Since we often get questions about how to use HelpDesk OSP for a distributed group, we have made a faq that explains how we have set it up. Welcome to read more about our way of using HelpDesk OSP!

Ticket Toolbar With New Functions in PF HelpDesk V11

Today kalmstrom.com has released an update of Public Folder HelpDesk , our issue tracking tool for Outlook that also may be installed in a shared mailbox. Above you see the new ticket toolbar strip. It has been changed after Members have pointed out how it could be enhanced. As always it is the people who use the application each day who best can tell us how to improve it, so we are grateful for all suggestions. Even if we cannot realize them all, and certainly not at once, you can feel sure that we remember them.

The new toolbar has a button for Save and Close Window to the left. Further to the right we have new buttons for High and Low Importance and also a new button for Print Ticket. The old buttons Save, Close Ticket, Create Task, FAQ, Forward and Add to KBase are placed in the same order as before between the new buttons, and Delete Ticket is left on the far right side.

Some bugs were also fixed in this release, and I suggest that you take a look at the Revisions page if you are already using PF HelpDesk V11. All Community Members are welcome to upgrade!

Have you not tried PF HelpDesk V11 yet? Please download the application! I am sure you will like it.

Office 2010 Released Worldwide - Compatible Products from kalmstrom.com

Today Office 2010 is released for all, and we congratulate Microsoft to yet another step forward. There are many interesting things to tell about the new Office version, but I guess you rather want to hear what I have to say about the compatibility of our products.

The current situation is that all our products except Calendar Browser works with Office 2010. The Outlook buttons are not in their usual places, though, but under the last tab on top, Add-ins. We will of course optimize all our products for Office 2010 as soon as possible, but as all the others work we have to start with Calendar Browser.

If you use Calendar Browser, my advice to you is to wait with the upgrade to Office 2010 until we have published a new version of our resource management tool. If you use, PF HelpDesk, TimeCard, HelpDesk OSP, KBase or OLAP Reporting Tool, you may very well start using Office 2010 right away. The button issue is not a show stopper.

PF HelpDesk V11 With New Technologies For The Future

Public Folder HelpDesk V11 is released! Many users have waited for the new version of this tool for incident management inside Outlook. So have the kalmstrom.com team, as V11 builds on more stable technologies than earlier versions.

It has not been an easy task to change the build and at the same time keep and even improve the benefits of the Outlook integration, but our skillful developers Jayant Rimza and Bahrur Ipham has managed it. QA Engineer Dina Romanova’s scrupulous testing and close cooperation with the developers has also been crucial to the creation of version 11, and our trainee, Niklas Svensson, has given valued input. Thank you all, for your efforts!

As I have written some earlier blogs about PF HelpDesk V11, you probably already know about the two major improvements, the new ticket form and the new installer. Welcome to visit the version 11 page for an overview and the Revisions page for a full list of the enhancements!

Since the ticket form is new, the upgrade was a tough nut to crack. At one stage there were two manual steps to perform, and not very easy ones either! Fortunately these issues were solved too, and now the upgrade is automatic. You may perform it from any client, and you only need to select your PF HelpDesk Outlook folder in the process. Then the installer will do the rest.

Upgrades are free for Members of kalmstrom.com Community, and the PF HelpDesk admin in each organization will get a personal e-mail with the new registration key. Then you may just upgrade and enjoy! If you are not a Member yet, I recommend you to join us as soon as possible to benefit from the advantages.

Updated PF HelpDesk V11 supports Office 2010

Public Folder HelpDesk V11 was released nearly three weeks ago, and the interest for our incident management tool for Microsoft Outlook has been great! This was expected, and expected was also that some of all who downloaded the new version would have problems.

Our products work in such a complex environment that it is virtually impossible to test every combination of software and ways of using them. Therefore we are always grateful for reports from users.

As always our technicians have done their best to solve the problems as quickly as possible, and today we have published an update where all known bugs are solved. The users who have complained about errors have been very helpful in the troubleshooting, and they have already received files that have solved their problems.


We get more and more questions about Office 2010. PF HelpDesk V11 and our other products already work with the new version of Office, but we have not yet optimized them for Office 2010. For PF HelpDesk this means that you will find the toolbar on top if you use Outlook 2010, in the last tab.

The improvement work continues, so our Members can feel confident about the future of PF HelpDesk.

Public Folder HelpDesk V11 - One Step Closer to ITIL

The release of Public Folder HelpDesk V11 comes closer. In this version of our Outlook issue tracking application we have made an adjustment to ITIL terminology: The earlier terms Problem, Problem Type and Problem Category have been replaced by Incident, Incident Type and Incident Category.

In ITIL backed organizations the term Problem is used for recurring errors which need a long term solution, while Incident is an error that have a relatively quick solution. As most issues reported to a helpdesk is of the Incident kind, we decided to use that term instead.

As the PF HelpDesk V11 ticket form is easy to customize, you may of course use any terms that suits your organization in the tickets. However, from version 11 Incident is the default term for the problems, suggestions and other issues that PF HelpDesk helps workgroups to cooperate on.