Office 2016 - a small step for humanity

The newest version of Microsoft’s productivity suite is finally released. I have been using the beta versions extensively for many months, and I must say Office 2016 is a small but good step forward compared to the 2013 version. The good things stay the same, and Microsoft has just added some useful features.

Backwards compatible
The default file format is still the same xml and zip based .docx, .xlsx etc.that we are used to, so there is no need to worry about people not being able to read your files. In fact, the Office file formats have been the same for more than a decade now, which is a good thing of course.

Intuitive help
The ribbon works in the same way it has since Office 2007 but with the welcome change of a very intuitive help. It does not only describe what to do but actually takes you to the appropriate button, dialog or wizard. Thus, if you type “table” in the help search box you will be sent to the Insert Table dialog directly, not to a text describing how to do it yourself. Very helpful!

Collaborative Office
Office 2016 will work perfectly well without Office 365, but it is 100% clear that Microsoft is putting their main efforts into making the Office suite more collaborative, and Office 365 is the platform for doing that.

Among the features that allow you to collaborate easier in Office 365 is a much improved co-editing feature, which now allows several people to simultaneously work on the same document, workbook or presentation. You can see what the other editors are doing as they do it, and you can also have a chat-like comments system right inside the document.

InfoPath removed
If you choose to do an in-place upgrade of your Office 2013 installation, you should be aware that both InfoPath Filler 2013 and InfoPath Designer 2013 will be removed during the installation. Therefore you will probably want to stay on Office 2013 if you are using InfoPath. As you probably know there will not be any new versions of InfoPath, and support for InfoPath will end in 2023.

SharePoint Designer
Another application that gets removed during an in-place upgrade is SharePoint Designer 2013. It is available as a separate installation, so if you want to continue using SharePoint Designer 2013, you will need to download and re-install it after the upgrade.

Attach Recent File
Finally I want to mention the new Attach Recent File feature in Outlook 2016. It makes it easier to attach files you have recently worked with, a very common use case. I don’t recommend sending files as attachments, but if it is necessary this is a good way to do it.

Send links, not attachments
The Attach Recent File feature makes it very easy to attach files from your online storage (OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or a SharePoint site). If you select such a file, it will actually not send the file itself but a link to its online storage.

This is interesting and almost the same functionality as our own Outlook add-in SP Attach, even though our solution gives more control over the process!

kalmstrom.com supports 2016
We have been testing the kalmstrom.com products with Office 2016 without problems, but we will still release updates of our Outlook add-ins shortly, with some minor updates in one of the 3rd party components we use.

Learn more
Microsoft of course has more information on Office 2016, and you can learn a lot about Excel 2016 in the kalmstrom.com Excel 2016 from Scratch online tutorials and in my books about Excel 2016. 

The easiest way to acquire Office 2016 is with an Office 365-subscription, but it is also possible to buy a stand-alone version of the suite, as before. Enjoy the new Office!

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

SharePoint Hotspots Images In New Tutorials

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about various ways to add images to SharePoint. Today I want to introduce some more picture tutorials in the 'SharePoint from Scratch' series, where I show how to create so called hotspots images and add them to SharePoint. The same methods can be used for SharePoint 2013 and 2010 on-premise.

Invisible links
An area of a picture can be linked, and if you use an image where several areas are linked to different pages, images or actions we talk about a hotspots image. Such links on an image are also called invisible hyperlinks or buttons, as you cannot see that it is a link until you hover the mouse over it. If you want to show that it is a link, add underlined text to the picture.

Hotspots images cannot easily be created directly in SharePoint. Instead the best way is to create the image first and then add it to SharePoint.

PowerPoint
The easiest way is to create a hotspots image for SharePoint in PowerPoint. When the picture looks good, save the presentation to the SharePoint site where you want to add it. Then you can copy its embed code and add it to a page.

With this method you only have to copy and paste. The drawback is that you get a frame that you might not like, as in the image above. To avoid the frame, you can instead create your hotspot image in Visio or SharePoint Designer 2010.

Visio
When you create a hotspots image in Visio, you save it to the SharePoint site in the same way as with the PowerPoint presentation. To add the Visio drawing to a page, insert the web part 'Visio Web Access' in the page and add a link to the drawing in the web part properties.

SharePoint Designer 2010
Another option, that also gives a picture without a frame, is to create a hotspots image in SharePoint Designer 2010. The possibility to create hotspots images has been removed in SharePoint Designer 2013, but if you have a SharePoint Designer 2010 without updates, you can open a SharePoint Online or SharePoint 2013 page in SharePoint Designer 2010.

When you use SharePoint Designer 2010, you create a new SharePoint page in SharePoint Designer, insert an image and add the hotspots image. Then you can simply copy the image code and paste it into the page you prefer.

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

SharePoint 2016 Preview Trial Set Up

SharePoint 2016 is the new version of SharePoint that is intended to be installed on your servers, on-premise. In a series of Tips articles with video demonstrations we are showing how to set up a good trial environment of the Preview version.

SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint Online
Office 365 SharePoint Online is easy to reach and maintain, but there are reasons to select an on-premise version too. Some features work better or are only included in the on-premise version, and your organization might have decided not to use cloud-services. No matter the reason, if you run your own servers, SharePoint 2016 will be the version for you once it is released.

The release of SharePoint 2016 has been postponed, and now Microsoft plan to release it Q2 2016. In the meantime we have the SharePoint 2016 Preview version, and it gives a good indication of things to come. It is obvious that Microsoft's goal with SharePoint 2016 is to create a bridge between Office 365 and on-premises installations for those who can’t put everything in the cloud.

Virtual servers
In the SharePoint 2016 Trial series I show how to set up a virtual evaluation environment. I use Microsoft Azure, but most of the principles and steps described are just the same if you are running the test on your own virtual or physical servers.

You will need a network, a Domain Controller, an SQL server and the actual SharePoint server. It is possible to run all three roles on one machine, but I like to keep them apart. That gives me an increased performance, and I can re-use the Domain Controller and the SQL server for other purposes, for example a SP 2013 or SP 2010 environment.

Azure templates
Two of the virtual machines I create are based on specific Azure templates that contain the SP 2016 beta and the latest beta version of SQL Server. The third machine is a Windows Server 2012. This server is promoted to Domain Controller, and when that is done I join the other two machines to my new domain.

Remote Desktop Connection Manager
Before I continue with the installation and configuration of the SQL and SharePoint servers, I add the virtual machines to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection Manager.

You may of course also connect to the virtual machines by using the Azure Connect button, but if you use the Remote Desktop Connection Manager you will be able to copy and paste between your virtual machines. It is also much easier to switch between the VMs when you use the Remote Desktop Connection Manager.

SharePoint 2016 walkthrough
When SharePoint 2016 has been installed I make a quick walkthrough of the new look and point out some of the new features, especially the hybrid features that allow you to connect an on-premise and an online SharePoint.

kalmstrom.com SharePoint Solutions
kalmstrom.com has seven (soon eight!) solutions for SharePoint, so my colleagues and I are eager to test the new SharePoint features and to try our products with the new version. We have solutions for resource booking, project management, time reporting, issue tracking, online studies and more.

So far we don't see any problems in the support for SharePoint 2016. Should we find any issues in our testing, they will be solved in good time before the SharePoint 2016 release!

Are you curious about SharePoint 2016 and want to evaluate the Preview? In that case I hope my step by step instructions and video demonstrations will be helpful in the setup!

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

E-mail Conversion Button in New Kanban Task Manager For Outlook

The workgroup version of Kanban Task Manager for Outlook has been updated with a new button for e-mail conversion and support for inline images in the task body. The responsible developer, Jitu Patidar, will tell you more about it.

Convert e-mails into tasks
With the new version of Kanban Task Manager you can convert e-mails into tasks by pressing a button. This gives a better conversion result than the earlier drag and drop, which does not convert inline images and also can distort characters.

HTML issues
In the workgroup version of Kanban Task Manager the tasks are shared, and the task information is stored in an SQL or Access database table or a SharePoint list, which synchronizes with the Kanban Task Manager Outlook folder.

The Outlook task item only supports Rich and plain text, while the database/SharePoint list only supports HTML and plain text. This creates a problem when you drag an HTML e-mail to the Kanban Task Manager folder to convert it into a task.

Conversion experience
To solve this problem we had to find a way to convert the Rich text formatted task body to HTML when saving it to the database or SharePoint list and then convert it back from HTML to Rich text in the synchronization process.

Luckily we have two other Outlook add-ons which convert e-mails with all formatting kept: HelpDesk OSP converts e-mails into SharePoint list items, and Folder HelpDesk

converts them into issue tracking tickets in an Outlook folder. The design of these products helped us find a solution to the Kanban Task Manager issue.

Convert button
We decided to add a Convert button to the Kanban Task Manager ribbon group in the Outlook mail view. Now you just have to select the e-mail you want to create a task from and press the Convert button.

In the Kanban Task Manager settings the admin can decide what to do after conversion: always open the task, never open it or ask. When you open each task after conversion, you can select Project, Phase and Responsible (and your custom tag) directly.

If you choose to not open the tasks, they will be placed in the first phase on the kanban board, where you can easily find them and tag them with your Kanban Task Manager parameters. You may even call that phase "Not Assigned".

Open button
When you select an already converted e-mail in the e-mail view, an Open button will be displayed. Click on the button, and the corresponding task will open in a new window.

Inline images
Another piece of news is that Kanban Task Manager now supports embedded images, and bold and italic text. The formatting and images are shown when you open the task.

You cannot see the images or formatting on the kanban card. We have chosen to only show plain text on the cards, to give the kanban board a clean look and make it easy to overview.

Single version
In the Single version of Kanban Task Manager you can drag e-mails to the Kanban Task Manager Outlook folder and convert them into tasks that way. Here we have no synchronization issue, because each Single version installation is used by only one person. We will still update the Single version too, because a Convert button is easier to use, and we want to give the Single users the possibility to have inline images.

Upgrade
I recommend current users to upgrade their installations. We give kalmstrom.com Subscribers free upgrades, and the upgrade is quick. Each user should download the .msi file and run it. Then the installer will find the earlier installation and upgrade it automatically. Refer to the Revisions page for a full list of enhancements and bug fixes.

Try it
Do you need to share Outlook tasks in a workgroup and want to use the kanban  method to visualize the work process? In that case you are welcome to try Kanban Task Manager for Outlook. There is plenty of documentation on our website, and should you still have questions I hope you will contact us. As Support Lead I will make sure you get quick and adequate assistance!

Jitu Patidar
Senior Developer, Support Lead
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions

5 Ways To Add Images To SharePoint

When you add images to a SharePoint page it looks more attractive, and the users will have an enhanced experience of working with SharePoint.

In a few articles in our new SharePoint Online from Scratch series, we describe different ways to add images to a SharePoint page. The most common way is to use the Picture button in the SharePoint ribbon, but you may also add images into dedicated picture web parts.

Picture button with three options
The SharePoint Picture button has three options: “From Computer”, “From Address” and “From SharePoint”.To insert an image “From Computer” works as when you upload images to Facebook or other social media.

Everything on the web has an address, so you can add images from websites through a link via the “From Address” option. You can also insert an image from the site collection itself by using the “From SharePoint” option.

No Control with URL
In the second and third options the images will not be copied to your SharePoint site collection. Instead they are just linked to the SharePoint page. This may be an advantage but also a problem, as you have no control over your image if you don’t also control the original place.

However, if the image is deleted from the original place, no image will be shown on your SharePoint page. On the other hand, you will have an updated image if the original image is updated, and that might be beneficial.

Image Viewer Web Part
In SharePoint versions before 2010 the only way to add a picture to a SharePoint page was to use the Image Viewer Web Part. Nowadays there are more and easier methods to add images, but the Image Viewer Web Part is still there and can be used.

Picture Library Slideshow
When you upload pictures to the Picture Library Slideshow Web Part you will get a nice thumbnail view. You can also create a slideshow with the images available in the Picture Library Slideshow Web Part. The only restriction is that the Picture Library Slideshow Web Part should be in the same site and not in the same site collection.

Links can be added to images in various ways, and in my next blog post about SharePoint pictures I will tell you how it can be done.

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