Vikings at the Öland Harvest Festival

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has its head office on Öland, an island off the Swedish south-eastern coast. On Öland we celebrate Sweden's biggest harvest festival each year, and this year one of the villages had a Viking theme.

Important Viking Era port
Köpingsvik is a small village with 600 inhabitants, situated just north of the town Borgholm and the kalmstrom.com head office. Nowadays it is most known for its wonderful beach and the camping sites near it, but it has not always been that way. During the Viking Era, when Nordic Vikings travelled trrough Europe and beyond as tradesmen or warriors, the village had an important port. At that time the name was Köping, and the port was a well known trading center for several hundred years.

Viking theme
The Harvest festival is celebrated all over the island, but in Köpingsvik the activities were more extensive than usual this time. Köpingsvik had been appointed "Öland village of the year", so the grand opening of the festival was held here. In remembrance of the glorious centuries around the year 1000, the villagers decided to give their contributions to the festival a Viking theme.

Viking ship
In the center of the festivities was a newly built replica of a Viking ship. When the festival opened last Thursday afternoon there was a parade of people in clothes similar to those worn during the Viking Era, and at the head of them came the ship drawn by a black and white horse.

Viking chief funeral
To wind up the festival and give the Viking theme a dignified prorogation, a mock funeral of a Viking chief was staged. Now the ship was used again, because it was launched to the sea and set on fire. In the old times this was how dead Viking chiefs were sent on their journey to Valhalla, where the men who died in combat could enjoy an eternal banquet.

Sigge and I of course took part in the festivities, but unfortunately we could not take any photos. Therefore I have borrowed images from two Facebook pages, Skördefesten i Köpingsvik and Klinta Camping. We say thank you to the photografers and to everyone else who made the Öland Harvest Festival a success!

Kanban Task Manager For Outlook V1.1 Released

The kalmstrom.com team is happy to announce the release of a new Kanban Task Manager, the Outlook addon that makes project and task management a sheer pleasure! At least we think so, who have been using it for a while.

Project management inside Outlook
With Kanban Task Manager the kalmstrom.com developers have placed a Kanban board right inside Outlook. It works with Outlook task that have been given some extras, and the automatic synchronization within the team makes it easy for the group to discover bottlenecks and blockers. Here is an introduction to the new version:



More efficient task handling
The Kanban Task Manager tasks have dropdowns for selection of project, phase and responsible.Version 1.1 has several enhancement that make the work with the tasks quicker than in the first version. As I wrote about the improved task handling in Kanban Task Manager V1.1 in August, I will just mention two things here:

• The new color system. In version 1.1 you may connect color to either project or responsible, so that tasks get colored automatically. Without any extra work you will get a colorful interface that is easy to take in.
  
• The possibility to create a task by clicking in a phase. This task is by default marked with the current phase, and if the  Kanban Task Manager homepage in Outlook - the Kanban board -  has been filtered by project or responsible this value will be selected by default also.

Adjustments for big teams

The first version of Kanban Task Manager worked well for smaller teams, but in big teams with many tasks and projects there were some limitations. Now we have added functionality that makes it much easier to work with a large amount of items:

• Search feature. Search the subjects and bodies of all tasks.
  
• Faster loading of homepage and settings. This applies to all alternatives for sharing and storing, but the loading time in the new Kanban Task Manager is especially improved when used with SharePoint.
  
• Auto-complete instead of dropdowns for many items.  When the number of alternatives for project, phase or responsible  is more than 100 a dropdown is not the best alternative for selection. Then the dropdowns are converted into buttons. A click opens a dialog with all the alternatives and a field of the auto-complete type. Write in the first letters and klick OK when Kanban Task Manager has suggested the correct alternative.

Try it!
You are welcome to try Kanban Task Manager for 30 days, and we give full support during that period as well as when your organization becomes a registered user. And if your organization is already managing projects and tasks with the kalmstrom.com add-on I recommend you to upgrade your  Kanban Task Manager installation.

Resource Booking In Version 8 Of Calendar Browser For Outlook

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions is currently developing a new version of Calendar Browser, the application for booking resources within an organization directly from the Outlook Calendar. Most important in this version is not new features but a rebuild that will make Calendar Browser a really modern product with great development possibilites. But let me start with some history:

Created twelve years ago
Peter Kalmström created the first versions of Calendar Browser  for Outlook when clients needed an efficient way to book rooms. One of them was a Swedish town and the other one was a bank, and for both Peter developed Outlook add-ons that used resource calendars. When each resource has its own calendar, you can book the resource by simply making an appointment in that calendar at the time you wish to use the resource.

Standard product for all kinds of resources
Peter was asked to develop more resource booking applications for Outlook, so he decided to make a standard product that still would be easy to customize. That became the first version of Calendar Browser, then called Outlook Calendars. This software could not only be used for rooms but for all kinds of resources that need to be booked within an organization, like cars or even people.

Used worldwide
Peter's Outlook add-on became popular, and today it is used all over the world by many kinds of companies and organizations. A lot has been changed since that first version, but the principle has stayed the same. Many features have been added, often on users request and with the help of sponsorships. Now it is time to make a profound
modernization of the coding and components.

Support for 64-bit version of Outlook 2010 and 2013
So far Calendar Browser has only worked with the 32-bit version of Outlook 2010, like most other add-ons. But the kalmstrom.com products aim higher than the average, so now we will add support for the 64-bit version also. Most people do not need the 64-bit version, but those who do should not be kept from using Calendar Browser. We will also make Calendar Browser compatible with both versions of Office 2013.

Excel reports
The current version of Calendar Browser has an integrated statistics tool, OLAP Reporting Tool for Excel, but we have discovered that this tool is seldom used. It gives good reports about how resources have been used, but many have found it a bit too complicated.

We will therefore replace the statistics tool with a number of Excel reports, similar to those that are already used for Kanban Task Manager for Outlook. These reports will be much easier to understand, and as all  Excel functionality may be used they will not only give useful information but will also be possible to customize. For future bookings we will keep the Overview from earlier versions.

Dropdown limitation overcome
Calendar Browser adds a dropdown for selection of project in the appointment of the resource calendar. This is a convenient way of adding a project if they are not too many, but if there are more than 100 projects the dropdown will be converted into a button. Clicking the button gives a dialog containing a list box with all the alternatives and a text box of the auto-complete type, so that selection of the desired value is easy and fast even when there are many projects.

We hope to release Calendar Browser V8 by the end of October, and I will of course come back and tell you when we do.

Software Wrapping - A Fierce NO From kalmstrom.com

The kalmstrom.com download files never contain anything more than we say on the download pages - a clean, digitally signed installation file. We will not abandon our conviction that this is the only honorable way to go, but unfortunately some software companies do not agree.

Wrapping at download.com
A year ago we rapidly withdrew all kalmstrom.com products from the cnet site download.com, after we discovered that this well known download site had started to add other products to the download files they hosted. As we could not be absolutely certain that this would not happen also to the kalmstrom.com applications, we immediately stopped marketing our products via cnet.

Unlucky process of change

At the time of our withdrawal from download.com I thought this ugly phenomenon called wrapping was a temporary blunder from their side, and I could not imagine that more companies would follow suit – at least not big and earlier reliable companies! But that is what has happened, and we consider it a real problem.

Frustrating for downloaders
With wrapping users  get extra software they often neither want nor need, and sometimes those programs make changes in their computers that are difficult to correct. The "present" may also be hard to get rid of. This is especially troublesome for people who are not experts on their computers and must call on help to solve the problems.

Even if there is a box to uncheck if you don't want the extra software, we cannot accept the practice of wrapping. It is too easy to miss this box, and even users who discover it and decide to leave it checked might not understand the implications of downloading the whole package and not just the product they wanted from the beginning.

Hampering for software vendors
Not only the downloaders are affected by the wrapping. We have noted a decrease in the number of downloads from the kalmstrom.com site, even though we sell as much as before. But how much more would we sell if people were not afraid of downloads?

Earlier evaluators downloaded and installed the kalmstrom.com application first and then came to us with questions. Nowadays it is more common that evaluators first contact us and ask a number of questions and then download the product. I assume people want to feel convinced that our product is interesting to them before they "risk" a download, and they also want to be assured that we are here and willing to assist them if there are issues.

The honorable way
Within the kalmstrom.com team we all agree that we should continue giving good information about our installation files and only give downloaders what we have informed about. Everything else would be to deceive evaluators, and we would never want to do that to people who take their time to try our applications.

Wrapping foreign products into the kalmstrom.com downloads might give us a few extra euros or dollars in the short run, but in the long run it would destroy our good reputation. And we would feel really bad about that extra money!

If you wish to read more on this subject from a downloader's point of view, I recommend an article on wrapping by the knowledgable Diane Poremsky at Slipstick.

By Peter Kalmstrom
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

Ganesha Celebration At kalmstrom.com Indian Office

The kalmstrom.com team is built up of two groups of people: one in Sweden and one in India. Ties are strong between the two groups. We have different cultures and beliefs, and as we respect each other it makes work more interesting.

These days, when I see what may happen if disrespect and distrust is allowed to govern, I feel privileged having this possibility to learn how other people see the world. I know many of my blog readers share my interest, and therefore I will today let  the information about the kalmstrom.com products give room for information about traditions among my Hindu friends in Indore.

Ganesha, god of wisdom
By non-Hindus Ganesha's elephantine face is probably the most well-known among the Hindu gods. Ganesh is worshipped as the god of education, literature and knowledge, and he is also the Lord of success who can destroy obstacles and evils. His festival is celebrated in the Hindu calendar month of Bhaadrapada, which usually falls between 19 August and 20 September.

The Indian members of the kalmstrom.com team have created a small altar at the office, and even though Wednesday was a bank holiday they gathered at the office to pay their homage to Ganesha. Office Manager Vipul Dindulkar will tell you about the team's celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi:

An altar at the kalmstrom.com Indore office
Ganesh Chaturthi is the festival for collectiveness, so the team wanted to build an altar for Lord Ganesha in the office and worship him there. We already have a good spirit at our workplace, but this ceremony will further strengthen the harmony and friendliness among us.

Last Wednesday was a day off because of the festival, but we still went to the office – not to work but to gather around the altar and pay our homage to Lord Ganesha with symbolic offerings. In the image below you see one of my colleagues, Lead QA Rinku Rimza, lighting the oil lamp in front of the altar.

Ten days of festivities
A Ganesha idol is a clay figure picturing the god. We have our Ganesha idol on the office altar, just like us many other groups have their own idol. These idols can be small as well as very big, and they are worshipped for ten days during the festival both in homes and publicly. In Indore there are theater and singing performances and also activities like free medical checkup, blood donation camps and charity for the poor.

Idols carry away obstacles
After ten days the idols will be sunk into water –  in the sea or in a river, lake, pond or well. Saturday we will take our idol to the sacred river Narmada, 60 kilometers from Indore.
When we sink the idol we will wish that Lord Ganesh takes all our obstacles with him. According to our faith he will take away the misfortunes of all  those who worship by heart and with the true spirit.