kalmstrom.com Tip: Use CSS in SharePoint 2010

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a time saving invention when you work with websites. Most web designers want to use a limited number of fonts and colors on a site, and they also want all lists, heading types etc. to have the same look. Instead of adding the code for this on each page the info can be gathered in a CSS file. When a page has a link to that file, all formatting info in the CSS file will be applied to the page. Changes in the CSS file will apply to all pages that have the link, so with CSS it is easy to try out and change the formatting of a website.


Microsoft Certified SharePoint expert
CSS may also be used with SharePoint, but working with SharePoint is not exactly the same as working with web pages. Our kalmstrom.com CEO has earned all the available Microsoft Certifications for SharePoint 2010, so he knows how to do it. In the demo above he shows how to get started with CSS in SharePoint. This demo is also included in the Tips section of the kalmstrom.com website.

Create the CSS file in SharePoint Designer
First Peter creates a CSS file in SharePoint Designer 2010, and since he wants to keep it very simple he just makes a change of the text color. When a link to that CSS file is added to the SharePoint homepage in addition to all the CSS files already uses by default, the custom styles is layered on top of what comes out of the box, and the text color is changed.

Add the CSS link in the browser
However, it is not possible to just add a link to the new CSS file in an ASPX page because SharePoint will not save it. Instead Peter explains how to edit a SharePoint web part in a web browser and add the link to the CSS file that way.

Expansion of SharePoint usage
Peter is fascinated by the endless possibilities of SharePoint 2010. For several years HelpDesk OSP has been one of the most popular kalmstrom.com products, and we also plan to add SharePoint as an alternative for sharing and storage in more applications. In the future kalmstrom.com will make a much stronger use of SharePoint than today, but I will come back to that in later articles.

Exchange Resource Calendars Or Calendar Browser for Outlook?

Sometimes people ask us why they should use Calendar Browser for Outlook when they already have the built-in Exchange Resource Calendars. The answer is that Calendar Browser supplies a range of features that cannot be found in Exchange Resource Calendars. These are some things you can only do in Calendar Browser:

Book extra services
With Calendar Browser you may place a supply order with each booking, like catering services, conference material or IT equipment. The admin defines a list of extras that may be booked, and then the user just click
a button in the appointment and fill out the number of items in the dialog that opens.




Search free resources
Calendar Browser has a search function that lets you search for resources that are free on a specific date and time and have a specified number of seats.

Calendar Descriptions
Calendar Browser helps you create elaborate descriptions of each resource. You can describe your calendars with full html, including pictures, links and dynamic content. Use a URL or take advantage of the Calendar Browser HTML editor, where you may either create your description directly or paste existing code.

Structured booking
Many organizations require a Project and/or Cost Center to be filled out when a resource is booked. This may be set to mandatory with Calendar Browser, and the kalmstrom.com add-on can also prevent double bookings or recurring bookings.

Overview of bookings
Even though the ability to view calendars side by side is getting better with each version of Outlook, Calendar Browser´s Overview feature contains many views that Outlook itself cannot yet match, for example the month joined month view and the printable schedule view. There are also dedicated views for showing all extra services booked for a particular day, allowing service staff to print a list of what they are to assemble for the day´s meetings. All of these views are nicely printable.

Statistics
Once your resources are being booked it is only a matter of time before someone asks you for statistics on the usage. Calendar Browser can output all of its data to an SQL or Access database. We also provide a fully featured statistics tool, our own OLAP Reporting Tool, that will allow you to analyze the data in a dynamic way. Once the old appointments are safely in the database you can option to remove them from the Outlook calendars, which improves Exchange performance.

Try it!
Does it sound interesting? If you want to see if Calendar Browser really can help your organization to get a more efficient resource booking system than the Exchange Resource Calendars, you are welcome to download and try the full version of Calendar Browser for 30 days without any obligations. We give support during the evaluation period too, so please contact us if you have questions.

Outlook Booking Tool Updated With Support For Office 365 And Resource Grouping

kalmstrom.com has today released version 7.1 of the resource booking application for Outlook, Calendar Browser . The first version was released over ten years ago, and ever since then this Outlook Calendar tool has been improved and adapted to new technologies.

Outlook Resource Calendars
The CEO and creator of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions got the idea to Calendar Browser when he was looking for a good resource booking software for a client and did not find anything on the market. Peter then decided to use what the client already had and liked - Outlook and Exchange - and built an add-on for it.

He let his client save info about the organization’s bookable resources in calendars, and people booked the resources by simply creating an appointment in the applicable calendar. Calendar Browser was born, and since then it has grown to a mature and popular product that is used worldwide.

Multiple installations
One of the new features in the latest release of Calendar Browser is the possibility to make several installations in the same Outlook. For big organizations with many bookable resources this is an important enhancement: Fewer resource calendars must be loaded if you separate them into several installations. Maybe all users do not need to choose between all resources, and then it is convenient for them to never see those resources at all.

Group Calendars after content
With multiple installations the administrator can group the resources in ways that make them easier to manage. Maybe you have rooms at several locations, or maybe you have several different kinds of bookable resources? Group them into separate installations, and the users can add the groups they need to their Outlooks and skip the rest.I have already written a blog article about multiple installations of Calendar Browser, so please read it if you want a more detailed description. There is also a faq on how to perform a multiple installation.

Support for Office 365
As usual kalmstrom.com aims to support the latest technologies, and therefore we have made Calendar Browser V7.1 compatible with Office 365, Microsoft’s new cloud-based platform. This means that all major kalmstrom.com products now have support for Office 365.

View Personal Calendars
Calendar Browser may be used with all kinds of Outlook calendars - public folders, direct booking mailboxes or personal calendars. Therefore Calendar Browser is not only a booking tool but also a tool for viewing calendars. Instead of adding resource calendars you may add the calendar of each user. The Overview feature of Calendar Browser can then display several kinds of views of the content in many people's calendars.

Upgrade or Try
Members of kalmstrom.com Community are welcome to upgrade to version 7.1 of Calendar Browser without any cost. If your organization don’t use this kalmstrom.com tool yet, you are very welcome to download and evaluate Calendar Browser for 30 days without any obligations. We will give you all possible assistance to make it a happy experience!

Keep up with kalmstrom.com on Google+

To give everyone interested a possibility to keep up with the events of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions we offer several alternatives to follow us. Now we have added a kalmstrom.com Google+ page also.

Increasingly popular
According to Business Insider SAI Google+ gets more than 600 000 new users each day and has around 62 million registered users. Therefore it is of course important for kalmstrom.com to give Google+ users an easy way to see what happens in our company.

The kalmstrom.com Blog is the base
I blog several times a week, and I always mention product updates, new development projects and other that is directly connected to I also comment on important news in our business and how they affect our company.

Apart from these obvious subjects I like to tell about local customs, traditions and holidays in both Sweden and India ‒ in the latter case with the help of the kalmstrom.com team members in Indore, of course. And sometimes I just I want to share something that makes me happy or angry. I hope this mix makes the kalmstrom.com Blog varying and interesting to read. It is at least fun for me to write it!

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
the kalmstrom.com software. kalmstrom.com has been represented in social media for around a year, but we have been more active during the autumn. On Facebook and Twitter we use company pages, but on LinkedIn we guide most business contacts to kalmstrom.com CEO Peter’s account even if we have a company page also.

‒ and now Google+
On Google+ we also use a kalmstrom.com company page, and of the medias mentioned above we find it most similar to Facebook. It will be interesting to see how this page develops.

Social media tracking
If you choose to follow kalmstrom.com Business Solution through one or more social media, you will get links to all blog posts. You will also get shorter comments, links to articles and other tidbits that are too short for a blog. However, you will have to click the blog links to read the whole articles and see the images.

Tweet   

Website sharing icons
In line with this elevated activity in social media we have added Like and Share icons similar those here in the blog to some of our web pages. Please, select the icon you prefer and help us spread the word about the kalmstrom.com software!

2012 - kalmstrom.com Invests In People And Products

First I want to wish all blog readers a prosperous, healthy and peaceful New Year. Then I will not say more today, as I will call upon our kalmstrom.com CEO, Peter, to inform you about his plans for the future:


I have just left Indore after a very successful and constructive visit. Of course I already knew that we have a talented Indian team, but it was a joy to meet them in person and once again re-confirm it.

kalmstrom.com goes cloudy
To better be able to meet future development requests, the kalmstrom.com team has taken on a task that will change the products profoundly. Current users will still recognize them, but the architecture will be considerably different. We see a future where teams continue to get more mobile and geographically dispersed, and therefore we want to re-build all of our applications for more web-based usage.


Helping users embrace the future
If we keep the current architecture and only add new features to our products, they will eventually become old-fashioned. We don't want to wait for that day to make the necessary changes, because then we will prevent Member organizations from meeting and embracing the future. Members of kalmstrom.com Community deserve better!


KBase pilot project
Our developers have started the new development path with the comparatively simple knowledgebase application KBase. We hope to soon be able to release version 3, which will have a fully mobile and touch-friendly web interface in addition to the Outlook interface.

Next step will be to rebuild PF HelpDesk, using what we have learned when developing KBase V3. The new technique will also mean that our products will support the 64-bit version of Office 2010.

SharePoint alternative
So far kalmstrom.com has mainly done client-side applications, but next year we intend to provide also server-side features and mobile applications that use the new SharePoint 2010 tools. For shared information store we also want to add SharePoint as an alternative to a database in Access or SQL.

Then users will be able to send their time reporting data directly to a SharePoint list from TimeCard or store meeting information in multiple calendar lists from Calendar Browser.

Windows 8
By the end of February we expect to see the first Beta version of Windows 8, and this is a fascinating challenge for kalmstrom.com. Judging from the pre-beta developer release there will be no significant compatibility problems for us. Instead we can right from the beginning start taking advantage of the benefits this new operating system will give, like the Metro interface and the integrated Windows Store.

More team members
For all this development we will need more staff, and during my visit to Indore I interviewed several promising applicants. We have already given an offer to another QA Engineer, and more will come.

Extended team for technical support
After having followed the support cases for several months kalmstrom.com developer Kanak is ready for a more active role, and from January she will take over the responsibility for the second line support. This will give our lead developer Jayant more time for planning and guidance of the new staff, but of course he will still be assisting if needed. To further improve the support our Office Manager Vipul will start helping Sigge with the first line. Beside his Master of Business Administration Vipul has a technical background, so that will work fine.

These are just some of the kalmstrom.com plans for 2012. I feel certain that it will be a thrilling and progressive year, and I hope you want to share it with us!
Peter Kalmstrom CEO, kalmstrom.com Business Solutions