kalmstrom.com On Site For Sweden's Biggest Harvest Festival

Today is the most important day of the year on the island where kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has its head office. It is "Ölands Skördefest", Sweden's biggest harvest festival. People and organizations from the whole island are engaged in the preparations, and we receive visitors not only from the rest of Sweden but also from Denmark, Germany and other countries close by. There is a lot of art, handicraft, food and music, and then best is that everything is high quality. No knick-knacks!

Sigge and I are of course participating, so we will not work much this Friday. The rest of the kalmstrom.com team will be online as usual though, so I don't think work will be suffering. And Monday we will be back again, ready to assist you and answer whatever questions you might have!

Promotions In The kalmstrom.com Team

I am always happy to write about the kalmstrom.com team members, but today I feel a bit extra warm around the heart. Siret Toots has been engaged in the work at kalmstrom.com for nearly a year, but she also had another demanding job and did not have much time. Now that will change. From October Siret is taking over the responsibility for sales and marketing of the kalmstrom.com products and services.

With the growth of kalmstrom.com I can no longer handle both sales, marketing,  documentation and organization, so Siret's decision to accept the position we offered is a relief to me. She is clever and dedicated, so I know she will do a good job that will take kalmstrom.com forward.

Siret is the fiancée of our CEO, Peter. They met when they both worked for Skype, and in Siret Peter has found a loving partner with a strong integrity. She is a great asset to both Peter and kalmstrom.com!

The kalmstrom.com team has more assets! We have been very satisfied with the work of our trainee Sunil Patel, and from October we have hired him as Junior Developer. Also from October former junior developer Vijayant Rimza is called Developer. Vijayant is now able to take on a greater responsibility for development projects, so we feel that he is no longer a junior!

The future looks bright, and I am thrilled to see what these three and the rest of the team can achieve together.

kalmstrom.com Comments On Windows 8

Last week Microsoft released a pre-beta, developer preview version of Windows 8, their new combined desktop, laptop and tablet operating system. Since then the kalmstrom.com team has been testing it, and I want to share some of our first thoughts and impressions with you. I will surely have reason to come back to Windows 8 many times.

Windows 8 is like a new dish ‒ some will be impressed by it and some not. Users who expected just an update of Windows 7 will be very surprised, and in the beginning maybe also frustrated by everything new. I hope they will come over it soon, because overall this is an intriguing change. Or as one of the kalmstrom.com technicians expressed it: "If you don't like Windows 8, then you don't like tech."

What first strikes you when you open Windows 8 is the totally new interface. Microsoft has hidden the traditional windows and instead given us a tile interface like in their mobile phones. The Start bar, which has been there in all earlier Windows versions, is removed and replaced with icons of each installed application. This tile layout is called "Metro", and it is optimized for touch as well as mouse and keyboard.

The Metro interface is meant to make it easy to have several applications open at the same time, not only on a desktop but also in a smart phone. Swiping from the left switches to the next app, but you can also swipe and drag to put several apps on a screen side by side, in the size that you want them. If you need to have many applications open it might be difficult to find them with this system, as you cannot scroll down the Start bar as before. However, since you can move application tiles in the interface and place them where you want them, you can create groups that will make it easier to find applications.

We all like the Windows Explorer in version 8. It has a ribbon interface, like Office 2010, where most of the common tasks are at your fingertips. It also has a backstage view with many useful options.

Now the team is looking forward to testing Windows 8 further once new computers with really good touch-screens come on the market. Microsoft and their hardware partners have been lagging behind Apple for quite a while, but we don´t believe that trend is going to keep. It will be very interesting to see what Microsoft will do together with Nokia, Samsung, Acer, Intel, Dell, Sony and others.

The next 9-12 months should see some exciting development both on the mobile and the PC markets, and the kalmstrom.com team members are glad to be part of it!

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!   

kalmstrom.com Is Testing Windows 8

Yesterday Microsoft released a pre-beta version of their new operating system Windows 8, and we are excited to try it. Even though the kalmstrom.com products interact more with the Office applications than with the operating system, we always follow the Microsoft developments closely.

One thing that especially strikes us, is the trend of making software nicer to look at and easier to use. We have been putting a lot of efforts towards those goals in our own products lately, and we will continue to do so. Now we hope that Windows 8 will make this task easier. For example, could using the Windows 8 Metro user interface make it easier and faster to edit and submit the TimeCard for Outlook time reporting data?

kalmstrom.com CEO Peter and Lead Developer Jayant is already testing the new release, and I will come back to you later with their comments. The installation went smoothly, and now they are both eager to see how Windows 8 can enhance the kalmstrom.com products.