Watch The First Calendar Browser V7 Demo!

Now it is only a matter of days before version 7 of our resource booking application for Outlook is released. The Calendar Browser documentation is being updated while the testing continues, and as you see from the video demonstration above we now have a functioning product. Just some smaller adjustments have to be made before we can give Calendar Browser V7 to all Members who need a booking system that works with Office 2010.

Welcome to have a look at the demo! I think you can see just from this short video that it will be a joy to book resources with the new Calendar Browser.

PF HelpDesk V11.1 Released

The kalmstrom.com team is happy to have released version 11.1 of our issue tracking add-on for Outlook, PF HelpDesk. Some bugs are fixed in this update, but above all there are several enhancements that will make PF HelpDesk even nicer to work with.

Among the improvements are better handling of the ticket attachments, better possibilities to drag and drop or paste to the ticket and better use of the Open Ticket button. We have also added an option for excluding a machine from the automatic conversions of e-mails to tickets. This setting is placed under the E-mail folders tab, where you add the folders to be monitored automatically. For more information about version 11.1, please refer to the PF HelpDesk Revisions page.

We could not add the SQL Azure database alternative this time, but Abhishek is working on it so we will soon update PF HelpDesk again. Now I just want to say a warm thank you to all Members who have reported problems or suggested enhancements. Your help is much appreciated, and you are very welcome to upgrade your PF HelpDesk installations.

Have you not tried PF HelpDesk yet? If you need a tool for handling incoming e-mails within a workgroup and still stay inside Outlook, I recommend you to take a look at Public Folder HelpDesk! In spite of the name it may also be installed in a shared mailbox.

Improved HTML Editor in Updated Public Folder HelpDesk

PF HelpDesk V11 has been updated again, this time with some enhancements and a couple of bug fixes. The most important improvement is the new HTML editor, which gives more possibilities than the old one. New buttons are added for font color and background color. A context menu is also added and will be shown when you right click on the editor. With the earlier editor font and color was sometimes changed  when a ticket was opened several times, but that will not happen with the new editor.

Please refer to the Revisions page for a description of all changes. We are grateful to Community Members who have pointed out to us how PF HelpDesk could be an even better application. All suggestions have not been implemented yet, but you can feel sure they are not forgotten! Welcome to upgrade PF HelpDesk, all Members!

Have you not tried PF HelpDesk yet? If you are looking for an application that helps your workgroup cooperate on incident management inside Outlook, this is the perfect tool for you. It can be installed in a public folder or a shared  mailbox, and the full product may be tested for 30 days without any obligations.

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.

First Setup of PF HelpDesk V11

I have received the first setup of version 11 of our issue tracking application Public Folder HelpDesk. Our developers still have some problems with the upgrade procedure to solve, but I could make a new installation and record a Presentation demo where you may see the new HTML ticket form

Another improvement in the new version is that we use our own installer, which you can use as many times as you wish. This means that it will be much easier to install and upgrade multiple installations with PF HelpDesk V11. Welcome to watch the demo!

Public Folder HelpDesk V11 with better ticket form

This month the kalmstrom.com team has tried to prioritize work with the new version of our issue tracking application Public Folder HelpDesk. The most important improvement in version 11 ‒ and a big one! ‒ is that the ticket form is changed. Because of some bugs in the Outlook forms we have chosen to not use them in most of our solutions, but for PF HelpDesk we earlier judged the benefits greater than the disadvantages. However now our skillful developers have found a way to keep the benefits and get rid of the problems!

The new form has two parts, an upper part built in HTML and a lower built in Visual Basic 6. The HTML part contains the fields that are most interesting for users to customize, and since we use well known HTML code here it will be easier than before to adapt the ticket to the needs of the organization. Another advantage with the new ticket form is that it loads faster than the old one.

Even if the ticket form will be easier to customize we want to give you a good default ticket. Right now we discuss the layout within the team. Many suggestions have been sent back and forth, but now I know that it will be something like in the image above, even if details might change before release. Our QA engineer, Dina Romanova, has started testing version 11, and we all hope that she does not find too many bugs, so that we soon can publish the new version of PF HelpDesk. We know many are waiting for it out there!

Minor Update of Public Folder HelpDesk for Outlook

In his latest newsletter Peter hoped that there would be no more releases of our issue tracking application Public Folder HelpDesk, before version 11, but today we had to make a minor update since several users had problems converting e-mails containing attachments. If you get an error report that talks about attachment, I recommend you to upgrade ‒ if you have a support contract, of course, but nowadays most of our users have that.

The work with PF HelpDesk V11 continues, and we plan to have a prototype ready for testing by the end of this week. I look forward to see what our developers have managed this time, and I promise to keep you informed!

Outlook helpdesk supports Unicode

The Unicode work at kalmstrom.com Business Solutions goes on, and today we have released an updated PF HelpDesk that supports all characters. Unicode is a standard that allows computers to represent text expressed in most of the world's writing systems in a consistent way. As this standard is used in the Microsoft products the kalmstrom.com applications are built on, it is possible for kalmstrom.com to make products that can be used all over the world and by users with different kinds of alphabets. PF HelpDesk is already used in countries with non-Latin characters, and for them I hope this new feature will be a great improvement. 

More and more companies decide to invest in a helpdesk system for issue tracking and user support, and for a team that is connected within a LAN PF HelpDesk is a good choice. PF HelpDesk can be installed in an Exchange public folder or in a shared mailbox. (For a more distributed group we recommend HelpDesk OSP for Outlook and SharePoint/Office live.)

Since Outlook only fully supports Unicode from version 2003, this enhancement of PF HelpDesk actually also gives it a limitation. Now the PF HelpDesk administrator installation must be performed from a system with Outlook 2003 or higher. This is not required for the client tool installation, only for the installation on the sever, and users with Outlook 2000 and 2002 can still work with the tickets.

Welcome to try the new PF HelpDesk!

Teamwork gives new version of Public Folder HelpDesk

Our new QA Engineer does really keep the kalmstrom.com developers busy! Today we have released an update of our issue tracking software PF HelpDesk, an application that can be installed in a shared mailbox as well as in a public folder and that works totally inside Outlook. As much as twelve bugs have been fixed. Of course they were not critical, but they were still annoying for the users who experienced them.

We are happy to have such a good team, with a thorough tester and developers who know how to fix the problems, but we also depend on customers who report issues. Sometimes our technicians cannot replicate an error, and in those cases the cooperation from the user is invaluable.

Have you or your colleagues experienced a problem with PF HelpDesk? Are your organization a Support Customer or a Community Member? (Yes, some have joined the kalmstrom.com Community already.) In that case you are welcome to upgrade your installation. There is a great chance that the
issue will disappear