Issue Tracking And User Support In Outlook

Version 12 of the kalmstrom.com issue tracking application for Outlook will soon be released, and today I can show you the new slide show. If you are into user support or incident management  I suggest you have a look at it, to get an introduction to Folder HelpDesk!

Convert incoming Outlook e-mails into support tickets
With Folder HelpDesk incoming e-mails are converted into support tickets right inside Outlook, and a workgroup can co-operate on taking care of incidents, solving issues and giving user support without ever having to leave Outlook. The product is highly customizable, and you may use either a shared mailbox or a public folder to share the support tickets.

Slide show presentation
I have written about Folder HelpDesk before, both generally about version 12 and in descriptions of the automatic e-mails sent out by the application and of the e-mail history options. Maybe you have read these blog posts and want to know more? The slide show below gives you an introduction to Folder HelpDesk.

Helpdesk usage and settings
The show begins with some user support cases, where incidents are reported by telephone or e-mail and converted into tickets. After that presentation there are some slides for the administrator, where we show how to make the most common settings. Much more info can be found in the Folder HelpDesk user manual, which will soon be released also. The slide show is just an overview over how our issue tracking application works.

Statistics and reporting tool
Folder HelpDesk has an integrated statistics tool, OLAP Reporting Tool for Excel. This is an advanced report generator which gives managements a useful tool for creating all kinds of reports and study how tickets have been handled.

Knowledge base
There is also a knowledge base connected to Folder HelpDesk. Before a support case is closed you can save the ticket as a knowledge base article by just pressing a button in the Folder HelpDesk ticket. As the knowledge base articles can be full text searched and also sorted in categories, it is easy to find the solution to an earlier issue if it should occur again. The name of the knowledge base is KBase, and just like OLAP Reporting Tool it is also sold as a separate product.



Many organizations worldwide already know how the kalmstrom.com helpdesks can facilitate their user support and issue tracking. Folder HelpDesk has been on the market for 12 years - earlier under the names Outlook HelpDesk and Public Folder HelpDesk - and we will continue adding new features that will make the issue tracking even more smooth and easy.

Norway In A Singing Protest Against Fascism

In July last year Norway was hit by a terrible deed when a right wing terrorist who wanted to hurt the Norwegian Labour Party killed 77 people, most of them young. I wrote shocked blog post about the murders in Norway right after they had happened.

Now the terrorist is on trial, and he has explained that the murders were "necessary" to stop what he saw as brainwashing of the Norwegian people performed by the Labour Party. He hates the idea of a multicultural society, and as an example on the “brainwashing methods” he mentioned a popular children’s song, a translation of Pete Seeger’s My rainbow race. This song says that no race is superior and we should all share the resources of the earth.

Many Norwegians were upset, and someone wrote a post on Facebook and urged people to go to a square near the court at noon today, to sing the song together. The call was heard, and around 40 000 people gathered! That is a lot for a town of a million inhabitants on short notice and on a rainy weekday. This is only one of the many examples on how the attack has united the Norwegian people, and I say: Bravo Norway!

Manage Live SharePoint Data In Microsoft Access

A SharePoint site is a very useful platform, but SharePoint cannot handle everything we might want to do with our data. The Microsoft developers have realized that and made it possible to use the SharePoint data with some of their other programs. When you utilize these possibilities you get nearly endless opportunities to work with your SharePoint list items. Here you can learn how to use live SharePoint data in Access.

Access gives extra functionality
When you link data from a SharePoint list to a table in Microsoft Access, you can do much more with your data than you can if you only use SharePoint. This is what Peter shows in the demo:

• How to Search and Replace
• How to make Queries  
• How to show the list data in Forms  
• How to make printable Reports from the list data  
• How to use Visual Basic with data from a SharePoint list

Power use of SharePoint and Access
In the demo below you will meet Peter Kalmstrom, CEO of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions and creator of our Office applications. He says that having Access in the toolbox is nearly a must for power users of SharePoint, and he should know that. Peter is himself a power user of both Microsoft products.

Since more than ten years Access has been one of the database alternatives for sharing and storage of  data in the kalmstrom.com applications, besides SQL Server, and in recent years we have added SharePoint to the options. We also have a product that converts incoming Outlook e-mails into SharePoint list items, HelpDesk OSP.

Microsoft certified SharePoint specialist
Peter has earned all the available Microsoft certifications for SharePoint 2010, and he is also a certified Trainer on SharePoint 2010. He has shared his deep knowledge in several earlier kalmstrom.com Tips, and now he offers you one more tutorial video demonstration.  


Link SharePoint list items to Access The actual linking of the SharePoint data to the Access table is handled elegantly by the two products - you don't have to do anything more than pressing the right button.

Peter shows how to link from the SharePoint list datasheet view to Access. Another possibility is to link from an Access table to SharePoint, which is shown in the kalmstrom.com Tips page about linking live SharePoint list items to Access

Welcome to have a look! I hope you will find the demo useful.

Microsoft Supports "Telework Day" In Estonia

In February I told you about the Swedish “Work from home day”. On 31 May Estonia is trying something similar, and Siret Toots, kalmstrom.com Sales and Relations Manager, will tell you more about it.

Different point of view
In Estonia the “Work from home day” is called “Telework Day”. This gives another angle to the event, concentrating more on the technical possibilities to work via the internet rather than staying at home to work from there.

In Sweden Microsoft was the sole organizer of the day, but in Estonia it is arranged by a group consisting of Microsoft Estonia, the Estonian Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Smart Work and Elion, a company that offers a comprehensive range of telecommunication services in Estonia as well as other countries. The image below is a part of the nice banner used to advertise the event.

High tech country
As to telecommunications Estonia is an advanced country, with a 99% wifi and a 100% cellphone coverage. Therefore it is very suitable for being on the forefront when it comes to “teleworking”. Welcome to learn more about the Estonian technical revolution in my blog post on our Independence Day.

Microsoft employees work outside the office
Estonian Head of Microsoft, Rain Laane, points out that their employees already work remotely for about half of the work hours. “We save money and get an increased flexibility and efficiency”, he says. “And job satisfaction is beginning to increase.”

In Estonia as a whole 57% of the business meetings are done via the Internet, and 76% use a smartphone for work, according to a survey conducted by Microsoft and Elion in February.

High expectations
The same study showed that 80% of the respondents would like to work outside the office. Looking back on the development in Estonia during the last decades I am sure they will get that opportunity!

Will EU Parliament Vote No To ACTA Without Hearing The EU Court?

I have earlier discussed the ACTA treaty in a couple of blog posts, and in February I wrote about the European Commission's decision to let the EU court clarify whether the ACTA treaty complies with the fundamental rights and freedoms agreed on by all EU Members. Recent announcements imply that the Parliament might not accept ACTA anyway.

On the 29 March the rapporteur on ACTA for the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, Ms. Amelia Andersdotter, proposed that Parliament withholds its consent to ACTA. And today the ACTA blog reports about a similar decision from the second biggest Parliament group.

The ACTA Blog is managed by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, an association dedicated to defend a free and competitive software market and informational freedom. Today’s article has information from a meeting between the EU Parliament's rapporteur on ACTA, Mr. David Martin, and the Parliament group Alliance of Socialists & Democrats, where Mr. Martin himself is a member.

Mr. David Martin has been appointed to submit a proposal to the EU Parliament regarding ACTA, and according to the blog post Mr. Martin says that the hopes of ACTA are not significant enough when weighed against the concerns of what the proposal will bring. Therefore he will recommend the Parliament to reject it.

ACTA is a proposed trade agreement between the EU and several other countries including the United States, with the aim to combat counterfeiting. Neither the conservative or the liberal Parliament group has yet voiced a united opinion on the treaty. Like the other owners of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions I follow the debate with interest, and I am sure I will have reason to come back to it..