Grußworte Deutschland! German Version of Pentalogic Planner for SharePoint

Date:August 18th, 2009 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: SharePoint Planner, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

We are happy to be able to let you know that a German version of the Pentalogic Planner web part for SharePoint is now available.

Although Planner was already partially localized for German, so that German end users would have see Month and Day names in their own language, administration and set up screens were previously only available in English and French.

Read the rest of this entry »

SharePoint Webpart Customer Feedback

Date:August 12th, 2009 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: General, SharePoint Reminder Comments:0 ;

It’s always great to hear from our customers: positive feedback gives us a nice warm glow, and the less positive gives us the chance to work on our weaker points!

This just in from Alicia is definitely of the warm glow variety:

“Thank you so much for all your help. Your responsiveness and professional assistance epitomize ‘customer service.’ We are still working on perfecting our Sharepoint task list, and we literally would not be as far along as we are today without your Reminder web part. It is exactly what we needed!”

Thank you Alicia!

Alicia also put in a request for a new feature for Reminder, which we are incorporating into the next release – watch this space!

So if you have any feedback for us – good or otherwise – or suggestions for product features or enhancements that you would be interested in, please get in touch.

New Hire for SharePoint Webpart Specialists Pentalogic – Clare Stone

Date:August 10th, 2009 Author: Tags: ,
Category: General Comments:1 ;



Clare Stone - Marketing Manager

Clare Stone - Marketing Manager


Since you may have noticed a new name on recent posts in this Blog now seems like a good time to introduce our new member of staff – Clare Stone.

Clare joins Pentalogic as Marketing Manager.  She has a strong background in business and consumer marketing across a number of sectors including finance, professional services, education and the travel industry.  Her roots however are in qualitative research – so she will be able to help us get some real insight into our customers, present and future: how they use our products and services, what they want from us and what they don’t.

Clare does not come from a technical background, so she will also be able to help us keep our focus on producing software which provides neat solutions for the issues SharePoint end users face.

So as always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions then get in touch.

Customize SharePoint Reminder Emails with Merge Data

Date:August 7th, 2009 Author: Tags: , , , ,
Category: SharePoint Reminder, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

Did you know that you can customize SharePoint alerts with Pentalogic SharePoint Reminder webpart by merging data from fields in your lists into the subject and message of each email alert?

This is one of the most powerful features of Reminder  and in this way you can personalise each Reminder email so that you will often be able to include enough data to enable the recipient to complete a task without having to check the task list.


It works just like a Microsoft Word Mail Merge.  Include the Merge data by inserting the name of the field containing the data you want to merge into your email message or subject line in square brackets: [FIELDNAME].

So, for example you may have a list of equipment requiring testing, with its location and the date when the next test is due.  Have Reminder send your service engineers emails telling them exactly what they need to test, where and when.

So you message would look something like this:

“This message is sent to remind you that the [EQUIPMENT NAME] at [EQUIPMENT LOCATION] is due to be tested on [NEXT TEST DUE DATE]”

Which would appear to your engineer as:

“This message is sent to remind you that the Potterton 2000 Gas Boiler at 37 Gloucester St, Bristol is due to be tested on Monday 1st September 2009.”

Your engineer now has all the information needed to get on with the job, without having to check details on the task list.

For more details and examples have a look at the Pentalogic Reminder online manual.

SharePoint Reminder Webpart Free Trial Dowmload

We have moved into a new office

Date:July 27th, 2009 Author: Tags: ,
Category: General Comments:0 ;

In the past few weeks we have moved into a new, custom-built, software development facility in Cheltenham, England.

New office break room

New office break room

Pittville Pump Room

Pittville Pump Room

As well as having possibly the best coffee machine in Gloucestershire our new facility also gives us the ability to offer telephone support to our customers, in addition to the email support we have always offered.

Click here for full contact details.

Cheltenham

Cheltenham


New version of SharePoint Planner webpart (2.5.4)

Date:July 7th, 2009 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: SharePoint Planner, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

A new version (2.5.4) of SharePoint Planner webpart is available to download with the following minor changes :-

  • The Mark Weekends feature will now pick up your non working days and hours from SharePoints Regional Settings (WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007 only)
  • The This Week period settings will pick up the start of the week from regional settings




Regional Setting in WSS3.0

Regional Setting in WSS3.0




You can simply download and install the new version – there is no need to remove the old version first.

Thanks to Michael C and Michael S for these suggestions!

 

New version of SharePoint Planner Webpart (2.5.3)

Date:June 15th, 2009 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: SharePoint Planner, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

A new version (2.5.3) of SharePoint Planner is available to download with the following changes :-

  • Milestones are now colour coded along with Timelines
  • Correction to an error that occurred if a users regional settings (e.g. dd-mm-yyyyy) were different to a sites (e.g. mm-dd-yyyy).

You can simply download and install the new version – there is no need to remove the old version first.

SharePoint Reminder Webpart – Setting a variable Due In or Overdue By time

Date:June 12th, 2009 Author: Tags: , , ,
Category: Calculated Columns, SharePoint Reminder, SharePoint webparts Comments:2 ;

When you normally setup SharePoint Reminder webpart you can specify to send an email alert when a date is Due In X days or Overdue by X days




When column Service Date is due in 5 days




One fairly common requirement amongst users of Reminder is the ability to set variable ‘Due In’ or ‘Overdue By’ times. For example lets imagine the scenario of a company using SharePoint and Reminder to help control the servicing of various pieces of equipment.

Read the rest of this entry »

SharePoint Planner Webpart – New Version 2.5.0 Now Available

Date:March 10th, 2009 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: General, SharePoint Planner, SharePoint webparts Comments:0 ;

A new version (2.5.0) of SharePoint Planner Webpart is available to download.

The main change is the interface has been fully localized in French.

In addition :-

  • New feature to automatically default the web parts Title to the name of the source list and link to the lists default view (WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 only). Both of these settings can be overridden if required using the toolparts Appearance > Title and Advanced > Title URL settings.
  • Correction to an error that stopped the By Category view grouping correctly if you were using a User lookup field with presence enabled.

You can simply download and install the new vesion – there is no need to remove the old version first.

Opps! – DST Bug corrected in World Time web part

Date:March 8th, 2009 Author: Tags: , ,
Category: SharePoint webparts, World Time web part Comments:0 ;

The World Time web part is free web part for SharePoint that enables you to show the current date and time in different timezones.


World time web part for SharePoint

World Time web part


In the last few days we have become aware of a bug that causes it to enter and leave Daylight Savings Time (DST) early, thereby showing the time as an hour too fast (or too slow) for about a week around the time DST starts and ends.


An updated version (1.0.3) that corrects this error is available to download. To upgrade simply install the new version over the top of the old version.

Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused – If you want to know the technical details around this problem then read on…

To find out the date that DST time starts and ends the World Time web part uses SharePont’s API and its time zone information for the current site (Microsoft.SharePoint.SPTimeZoneInformation.DaylightDate) which, according to the SharePoint SDK documentation “Gets the date on which daylight time begins for the time zone as a Date object that has day/month/year.

So for this year it returns a date of “2009-03-02” for most of the North American time zones. But this year DST starts on the 8th of March, not the 2nd.

Digging deeper this article explains how to modify the Timezone.xml file (where SharePoint stores its time zone information) and explains.

“Day represents the nth week of the month when standard time or daylight saving time starts, where n is a number that represents the transition day. If the transition day occurs on a Sunday, the value 1 indicates the first Sunday of the month. The value 2 indicates the second Sunday of the month, and so on. The value 5 indicates the last Sunday of the month.