Useful Tools For A Good Support Service

Even if the kalmstrom.com solutions are built to be easy to use, they work in a complex environment and problems may occur. The most vital for a successful support is of course the attitude and skills of the people giving it, but technical aids make a big difference in how smoothly the customers can be assisted. Here are some products we have found useful.

Sharing and organizing support e-mails
The most important support aid is our own application HelpDesk OSP. This Outlook plugin converts incoming e-mails to list items in a SharePoint 2010 intranet, where they can easily be shared and organized.

The kalmstrom.com HelpDesk OSP runs on a server and converts e-mails automatically around the clock seven days a week, and we have customized the SharePoint list to suit our needs. This way we can easily keep track of all cases and have a clear picture of the different issues and the actions taken to solve them.



Online chat service
I have earlier written a whole blog post about the Provide Support chat service we use, but I will still mention it again because this is a great tool. Provide Support were slow in optimizing their tool for Windows 7 so that multiple windows did open when there was a new chat call, but otherwise the tool has worked fine.

This product is easy to use, and the support given by Provide Support is good – via their online chat, of course! The image above shows the control panel Visitors tab, where the support staff can see who is visiting the website and what they are looking at. It is very interesting!


Remote session software
After having used the free Microsoft application SharedView for remote sessions during several years we decided to switch to TeamViewer this summer.

SharedView served us well until we and others started using Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7. Then SharedView was not reliable anymore, and we found it strange that Microsoft was not keeping their own product up to date even if it was free.

Maybe the problems are fixed now, but we are satisfied with TeamViewer and appreciate that nothing has to be installed on the machine our technicians need to take a look at.

With these tools and the knowledge of the kalmstrom.com support staff,  issues are usally solved without delay, and we know our Community Members appreciate our fast service. It feels great when users and evaluators praise the support team for quick and helpful support, and we do our outmost to live up to it.

Release of TimeCard for Outlook 4.4 With Report On Behalf Of

kalmstrom.com Business Solutions is happy to announce the release of TimeCard V4.4. The main new feature, Report on behalf of, is by its nature only for the workgroup version of TimeCard, but as there are some smaller improvements also we have published a new Single version too.

Report on behalf of
The latest new feature has been sponsored by the South African Community Member Hollard, and we are grateful for their support and confidence. The Hollard assistants and secretaries often need to report on behalf of other people, and with the new feature they can do that and still get the correct name into the statistics. Some of these people do not even have TimeCard installed!

It is very easy to use Report on behalf of. The administrator needs to check a box in the Common Settings dialog, and then a new dropdown with names will show in the Reporting dialog. So just go into the calendar you wish to report from, and report as usual. TimeCard shows by default the owner of the calendar as the first alternative in the new name dropdown, so normally you never need to touch it.

More info about TimeCard enhancements
I have written two earlier blog articles about the Report in behalf of feature, "Report on behalf of" feature added to TimeCard for Outlook and How TimeCard Can Report Time For People Who Don’t Even Use TimeCard, so please study them if you want to know more. Also refer to the TimeCard Revisions page for a full list of the improvements in version 4.4.

Free upgrades
Members of the kalmstrom.com Community are entitled to upgrade their TimeCard Workgroup installations without cost. For Member organizations with many users we will be happy to supply an MSI package for the client upgrade. Just contact our support department, and they will send you a download link.

Try TimeCard!
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions gives as much as 60 days of free trial for TimeCard Workgroup, so that you really have time to test the reporting properly.We give support to evaluators, so very welcome to contact us if you encounter problems with the trial or have questions about TimeCard.

First users in a Swedish town
Peter Kalmstrom, the creator of the kalmstrom.com Office applications, made his first TimeCard for Outlook when a Swedish town ordered a time reporting system that would be reliable but also easy for the users to learn. As they were already planning their time in Oulook calendars it was a natural step to build on that platform, and since Peter was an Outlook expert even at that time he could create what the clients needed. They have now been happily using TimeCard for over ten years, through update after update, and seen more and more features being added to "their" product. And our work will continue!

Kanban Task Manager For Outlook - New kalmstrom.com Development Project

Today I am happy to tell you that kalmstrom.com Business Solutions has begun developing a totally new product: a Kanban board inside Outlook, for work with Outlook Tasks. In the images below you first see a traditional Kanban board and then a mockup of the kalmstrom.com Outlook plugin.

Kanban board visualizes the work process
Kanban is a Japanese word for "visual card", and it refers to a way of visualizing work, to make it flow and reduce waste. The traditional Kanban board has cards that tell what and how much should be produced and when it should be done. When managers get such a visual picture of the work process they can quickly reveal bottlenecks and blockers. Less time is spent on trying to sort out how projects are coming along, because everything is visible on the Kanban board.

Kanban integrated in Outlook
If we move the Kanban board into Outlook we get several advantages. We can give a nice, colorful user interface where it is easy to drag and drop tasks between different phases of a project. And you will have it all in front of you in the computer! No cards or pieces of paper are lost because they fall to the floor or someone takes them away to make a note. Tasks are synchronized automatically within the workgroup, so everything is up to date and everyone can see what is happening.

Easy to learn
In many organizations, and certainly in all kalmstrom.com Member organizations, the staff is already using Outlook for various kinds of work. With a Kanban board in Outlook they will not have to learn another system. The kalmstrom.com Kanban Task Manager will use as much standard Outlook features as possible, and therefore it will be easy to understand and use.

Design idea for Kaban Task Manager
Kanban Task Manager will work in an Outlook folder, and when a user opens that folder he can reach the workgroup’s different projects. The project he worked with last time will be open by default. New projects and tasks can be created with a few simple steps.

Sharing Projects, Phases and Tasks
Kanban Task Manager will have three Microsoft options for sharing: an Access database, an SQL Server database and a SharePoint site. If the Access option is selected, none of the users must have Access installed, because the ability to read and write to an Access databases is included in Office. With the SharePoint alternative the workgroup can be geographically dispersed, so this option is great if you for example are working on projects that require specialist competence that might not be accessible within the office or even in the company.

The development of Kanban Task Manager has just started, and it will take some months before we can release the finished product. We are all excited about our new Outlook-addon, and I will of course come back with more news and images later. Welcome to contact us if you have suggestions or comments on the kalmstrom.com Outlook Kanban plugin. We are always grateful for constructive input!

UPDATE: Kanban Task Manager for Outlook was published in June 2012. More info at: http://www.kalmstrom.com/products/TaskManager/

SOPA, PIPA And Now ACTA - New BlackOut Protests In Poland

Today Wikipedia reveals the result of the website black-out I wrote about last week, and the figures are impressive. I quote from Wikipedia:

During the blackout:

• The Wikipedia page about SOPA and PIPA was accessed more than 162 million times during the 24 hour period.
• More than 12,000 people commented on the Wikimedia Foundation's blog post announcing the blackout. Most supported the blackout.
• More than eight million looked up their elected representatives' contact information via the Wikipedia tool.

Did all the protests help? No, that cannot be claimed, at least not yet. Support for SOPA and PIPA has decreased in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate, but work on the two bills continues.

At the same time many are discussing ACTA, The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This is an international trade agreement, which is negotiated by the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and a few other countries. The goal of ACTA resembles that of SOPA and PIPA: to enforce copyright and tackle counterfeited goods. The United States, Australia, Canada, Japan and a few others have already signed the treaty.

One big problem with ACTA is that all the negotiations are held in secret, and a wave of protests has arisen against the treaty. I am glad that Sweden has acted for better openness. The European Union has not signed ACTA, but now the Polish government has announced that it will.

Therefore, tonight many Polish websites will go dark for one hour to protest against their government's plan to sign the ACTA treaty. For the same reason Polish government websites have been attacked during the last days, and several of them were paralyzed on Sunday and Monday.

Still the Polish leaders say that they will to stick to the plan. And what can they do? Of course they cannot give in because of website attackers.

To close down a website is a more honorable way to show ones opinion. Even if we don’t know yet if the US protests will make a difference, the Wikipedia statistics clearly show that they were noticed. In that respect they were not made in the dark!

The 35 dollar Aakash Tablet Improved

Last week it was announced that the second version of the Android based Indian tablet computer Ubislate7 would be released in April. Ubislate7 is commonly called the Aakash ‒ which means “sky” in Hindi. It is a fitting name, because the Aakash has a very special story. I only hope this version will live up to the expectations.

A computer for “the masses”
The most fascinating with the Aakash project is that it takes advantage of the high level of technological know-how in India (which also kalmstrom.com Business Solutions makes use of) to reduce the differences in education and economic conditions in this vast and varied country. The idea behind the Aakash tablet has been to develop a very cheap but yet good tablet computer “for the billion Indians who are cut off”, as Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of the manufacturing company DataWind expresses it.

Government support
The Indian government supports the project and has ordered 100 000 tablets, whereof 30 000 have been delivered. The plan is to give the Aakash to students of government schools and colleges for free and use the tablet to link 25000 colleges and 400 universities in a huge e-learning program. Also for other Indians the state is subsidizing each tablet with 15 US dollar, so that the cost is only 35 dollar.

Sold out
Today it is however not easy to get hold of an Aakash. When the first version was released in December 2011 it was sold out in just three days. Then Datawind was not able to deliver more tablets, and they were also accused of giving bad support to those who actually received an Aakash.

Skimpy technique
Unfortunately Aakash1 was a big disappointment from a technical aspect. One of the drawbacks was that it only supported wi-fi. Several parts of India still do not have access to networking options such as wi-fi, and since one of the main ideas behind the Aakash is to bridge the gap between the rural India and technology this is a serious limitation that makes that goal more difficult to meet.

New hope
The Indian government has been striving hard to make the Aakash project a success, and last week the minister of Human Resource Development , Kapil Sibal, expressed his confidence in the upcoming Aakash 2, the UbiSlate7+. It will have several improvements, like longer battery life and a faster processor. The new version also supports GPRS (SIM and Phone functionality), which means that it may be used with 3G and not only with wi-fi.

Premature release?
We are very aware that the balance between the urge to get a product on the market and the need for further development is difficult to keep, and maybe DataWind made a mistake and released Aakash too soon? It might have been better to wait with the first public release until the tablet held a higher standard. If the second version is as good as expected, many of the first buyers will probably regret their hasty purchase?  

It will be very interesting to hear the reactions on Aakash2 in April, and I will surely have reason to come back to the Aakash tablet later.