kalmstrom.com Trainee Builds New Reporting Tool

After Peter left Skype he has had more time to lead the work at kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, and we have all seen the difference it has made. We also have a good Lead Developer and a Senior Developer, so now we feel we have the strength to take on trainees more often than before. These are young people who need much guidance, but they can also give fresh input.

Today I am happy to introduce Kanak Joshi, who joined the team a couple of weeks ago. Kanak took her Bachelor of Engineering degree last year, and now she wishes to continue learning application design and development.

Kanak's first task at kalmstrom.com is to create an Excel application that may be used for reporting and statistics. The tool she has begun building is intended as a replacement for our OLAP Reporting Tool. It will create an Excel workbook with reports and graphs for all the information in PF HelpDesk. Later her work will be the basis for similar tools for our other applications also. One benefit of this is that we will remove the dependency on the Office Web Components. This task will give Kanak new knowledge at the same time as she helps us build something many Community Members will find useful.

Kanak likes travelling and painting, and we share a hobby ‒ gardening. "Every morning when I see the flowers in my garden I feel enthusiastic", she says. I understand the feeling, and I am sure Kanak will do good if she brings that enthusiasm into her work! You can find more info about Kanak Joshi at the kalmstrom.com Team page.

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

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

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

TimeCard Single Integrated in the Outlook 2010 Ribbon

The Single version of TimeCard, is now updated for Outlook 2010. The ribbon integration is the same as for the Workgroup version, refer to the blog of 5 August. The image above shows the Start tab of the calendar with the TimeCard buttons in the ribbon.

The Single version is very popular among self employed people. One of them says: "I have configured TimeCard to assist me in keeping real time records of which client I was working on, the processes involved and the document type that I output. In this way I am able to provide clients with detailed analysis of the work I have done, the time involved and references to all documents associated with the time/processes." He even avoided a court process once thanks to his TimeCard records! Read the whole testimonial. It feels good to market a product that can help so many.

TimeCard Embraces Contextual Tabs In Outlook 2010

The Workgroup version of TimeCard has been updated to take advantage of the Outlook 2010 Ribbon (32-bit). If you earlier have used Outlook 2007, the difference is not so big, but Outlook 2010 has something called Contextual Tabs. This means that you while still in an e-mail folder can select an appointment in the To-Do bar, and the Calendar Tools will be visible ‒ with the TimeCard dropdowns and the Expenses button.

The new release has also a new feature, the possibility to map e-mail domain or ID for TimeCard metadata which earlier was introduced in the Single version (refer to the blogs of June 22 and 28). Members, you are very welcome to upgrade your installations.

Have you not tried TimeCard yet? This application for time reporting from inside the Outlook Calendar is suitable for both big organizations and single users who work for themselves. It is one of our most popular products, so why not see how it can help you also?

New Demo for the TimeCard E-mail Mapping Feature

Tha kalmstrom.com team tries to always keep the manuals up to date with new releases, so the TimeCard Single manual was updated with info about the E-mail mapping feature at the same time as the new version was published. Now we have also made a video demonstration about the improvement. Welcome to watch number ten!

Updated TimeCard Gives New Possibilites For Appointment Subject

Today we have had another release, as the Workgroup version of TimeCard was updated. This tool for time reporting from inside the Outlook Calendar has many users, so I know the new feature is welcome. It is now possible to write a subject of your own and still have the TimeCard data automatically added to the Subject. If you check the box for this alternative in Personal Settings, you may now have it all – both the metadata and you own comment. They are separated with :: to avoid misunderstandings, and the metadata always come first. Welcome to upgrade, Community Members!

TimeReporting for the Lazy with TimeCard for Outlook

In April the kalmstrom.com team released an update of the Workgroup version of TimeCard, the application that lets users report time and expenses directly from inside the Outlook Calendar. Today also the Single version has the same improvements and also an additional feature.

A Single user pointed out to us that she wanted to see the default values in the appointment also, when she had enabled default values for empty fields in Personal Settings. Earlier new appointments were not marked with the default values, but they were added at time of appointment posting. Now users who wish to see the default data when they create a new appointment just have to check a box once in the Settings. This box is only active is default values for empty fields is enabled, of course.  

We are always grateful for suggestions that will make our products even more efficient and smooth. The users are the experts on this, and if at all possible our development experts will do their best to make the suggestion reality.

TimeCard Workgroup Updated after Member Request

Today we have released an update of the Workgroup version of TimeCard, the kalmstrom.com add-in for reporting time and expenses directly from the  Outlook Calendar.
A Community Member had problems with duplicate entries, and it turned out that the TimeCard users in this company only reported their appointments once a month. Then the reporting takes some time, and if the connection was lost during the reporting there were duplicate entries in the database.
Therefore our developers have changed TimeCard so that the appointment POST status is updated after each database entry, not when they are all reported. The users in the Member organization – and others too, of course – can upgrade and continue reporting once a month, an everyone is happy! In this update also a few smaller problems were fixed. For details, refer to the TimeCard Revisions page.

Export Appointment Data to Excel With TimeCard for Outlook

TimeCard Single has been updated with the same new features as big brother Workgroup received last week. The possibility to export the first 255 characters in the appointment body to Excel will give great possibilities to Single Users. With the appointment body alternative checked in Personal Settings, you get more data to the Excel spread sheet and do not have to go into the database to get the extra info you need.

With TimeCard you report time and expenses directly from inside the Outlook Calendar. Welcome to download the updated TimeCard Single. Support customers may upgrade their installation without extra cost, and evaluators have as much as 60 days to try TimeCard.

Use Any Character When You Report Time and Expenses With TimeCard

I am happy to announce that the kalmstrom.com developers now have added full Unicode support also for TimeCard, our application for reporting time and expenses from inside the Outlook calendar. The update of the workgroup version was released today, and we will soon publish a new single version also. At the same time they fixed some non critical bugs ‒ see the revisions page ‒ that our QA engineer found, or that were reported to us from customers. As usual we are grateful for all reports about issues with our products. They work in such complex environments that it is virtually impossible to test them all.

Community Members and Support Customers are welcome to upgrade their server installation. Once it is upgraded, the clients will be upgraded automatically if they are connected to the server. Have you not tried TimeCardyet? Please do. Reporting time and expenses directly from the Outlook Calendar is easy for the users, and the drop down selection of data minimizes the risk for errors. The integrated statistics application, OLAP Reporting Tool, is of course also updated for full support of Unicode.

Statistics Tool With Full Support of Unicode

OLAP Reporting Tool is by far the most used application from kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, and the explanation for this is that it is not only a stand-alone product. OLAP Reporting Tool is also integrated in four other kalmstrom.com products – Calendar Browser, HelpDesk OSP, PF HelpDesk and TimeCard. All these are enhanced by OLAP Reporting Tool, the powerful statistics software that helps the management to organize data into simple, understandable graphs and tables. This means that improvements in OLAP Reporting Tool affect most of the kalmstrom.com customers, so we are especially happy about today's update.

Version 3.1 of OLAP Reporting Tool supports all characters. To manage that our skilful developers, Bahrur Ipham and Jayant Rimza, added a new dependency library 'Microsoft Windows Common Controls 5.0'. Most users already have the file comctl32.ocx in their system, but those who don't will be prompted to download this free product from Microsoft.

Today the stand-alone product was released, and the new OLAP Reporting Tool will of course be added in the next updates of the four applications where it is integrated. This means that the kalmstrom.com team looks forward to an increase in the use of the products in parts of the world where the Latin alphabet is not dominating. It feels very exciting!