Okay, now to the purpose of this blog, the new release of ‘OLAP Statistics and Reporting tool for SharePoint list‘. For those of you, who are not aware of my products portfolio, I also have two other OLAP tools – one for Microsoft Outlook and the other for Microsoft Access. Each of this OLAP tool is designed to serve a purpose, which is to extract business intelligence out of the Outlook or Access data.

Before digging down more on the new OLAP tool for SharePoint, let me put forward on the reason why these specific OLAP tools were developed in the first place.

For Outlook, there is hardly any specific OLAP tool that one can use to analyze Outlook data. To some extent, one can use Outlook views of presenting information in a more obvious way in folder, but it does not give you the summarization of data that one needs often, to see broader trends based on aggregated data, and to see these trends broken down by any number of variables. This leads to the development of what is now known as ‘OLAP Statistics and Reporting for Outlook‘.

For Access database, there is no inbuilt OLAP tool in Access that one can use to analyze aggregated and summarized data. Traditional query (Or OLTP) is slow in aggregation task, provides limited interactivity, and reporting is well suited to handle textual information mostly. Moreover, complex calculation are oftem difficult to implement. In short, there are major drawbacks with regards to answering, analysis and reporting with Access database. One can use Microsoft Excel to create an OLAP cube, and analyze it. But the process is cumbersome, and present a learning curve, for average workers and managers. The absence of a simple, and yet productive OLAP tool for Microsoft Access database leads to the development of what is now known as ‘OLAP Statistics and Reporting for Access‘.

OK, now coming to the new OLAP tool for SharePoint list. SharePoint can store business data in lists, such as meetings, time-sheets, contacts, tasks, announcements, sales transactions etc. The main purpose of storing it on SharePoint list is to enabling sharing  among team members in organizations, which is its selling point. However, one of its weak point is the absence of any inbuilt OLAP tool to analyze data in the list. Due to this limitation, often, managers might find themselves spending a lot of time and resource in exporting data to spreadsheet, and performing manual computation and parsing. Some even use specialized data professionals, web parts and a dozen different software packages, just to produce simple reports. Worst, if the report doesn’t have the required information, you will have to start over, wasting precious time.

As there is a time and expense involved in getting answers from SharePoint lists, a lot of business intelligence information often goes unused, due to that fact that, SharePoint is designed to store data, and not to help you analyze it. This leads to the development of ‘OLAP Statistics and Reporting for SharePoint‘, to let you configure OLAP cube from your SharePoint lists, and then analyze and create reports straightaway, out of the box.

Summary:
Product Title: OLAP Statistics and Reporting for SharePoint
Home Page: http://www.assistmyteam.net/OLAPStatisticsSP/
Requirements: OLAP Statistics and Reporting for SharePoint works with WSS 2.0, 3.0, MOSS 2007 and the latest SharePoint 2010 Foundation and SharePoint 2010 Server. And yes, you need to have .NET framework 2.0 installed on the system to be able to play with my OLAP tool.

I have also put up a 9 minutes video demonstration to give you a brief walk-through on how to use OLAP Statistics and Reporting for SharePoint.

Though workers can easily feed their time-sheet data directly in the company’s SharePoint portal, it is not an ideal technique at most time, such as when you are offline, you can’t keep track of your time-sheets. A viable solution is to use a bridging application such as Microsoft Outlook. In fact,  as Outlook being the most extensively used application in a corporate environment  – all day, every day for email communications, meetings and contacts makes it an ideal platform to prepare time-sheets for projects or for any entity via the calendar or task feature. Unfortunately Microsoft Outlook lacks a direct and an efficient solution to track time and expense in its original state. This is further aggravated with little support for a centralized management and distribution of projects, activities and other meta-data. But nevertheless, many workers resort to capturing time-sheet data from appointments and tasks in Outlook and feeding to an external data source manually (often crudely – using copy-paste technique).

Keeping this in mind, we have launched Team TimeSheet for Outlook and SharePoint, a groupware application, that leverages your existing investment in Microsoft Office and SharePoint, to make it very easy for your employees and staffs to prepare time-sheet and other project deliverable in Microsoft Outlook and publish to the company’s SharePoint repository.

With Team TimeSheet system, access to centralized project data are streamlined and automated in Outlook with the integration of the company’s project repository. This enables individual worker to prepare time-sheets, tag project meta-data, enter expenses and other deliverable from the familiar interface of Outlook appointment or task items. Once a time-sheet is finalized and ready, it is published to one of the administrator specified SharePoint list in just a single click. This submission process is seamlessly integrated in your Microsoft Outlook and the whole exercise is transparent to the worker. Managers can then use these submitted time-sheets for calculating expenses, payroll or billing on projects, clients or resources etc – to mention a few.

Outlook 2010 calendar with appointments color coded with projects. Ribbon shows time-sheet #11 already reported to SharePoint

This is how the published time-sheet  #11 looks like in your SharePoint site (mapped to a calendar list). Notice the calculated total cost and other expenses as well as the project fields.

Our time-sheet reporting solution can be adapted easily to track, plan and calculate expense for payroll purposes, billing to clients, or simply to record and estimate expenditure on projects. What set it apart from other time reporting solution is the seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint. And as your workers are already familiar with Microsoft Outlook as they use most of the time, the advantages are maximum user adoption, minimum training time and administrative costs, and more importantly, streamlined process of reporting for all employees. The end result is a highly accurate and scalable solution for the organization.

Summary:
Product: Team TimeSheet for Outlook and SharePoint
Page: http://www.assistmyteam.net/TeamTimeSheetSP/
Platforms: Microsoft Outlook (2003, 2007, 2010 – 32 bit only), WSS 2.0, WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007, SharePoint 2010. Even supports SharePoint hosted on web or cloud, such as Microsoft BPOS)
Scope: Groupware (Unlimited Users)
License: Enterprise Wide

We have provided 4 video demonstrations on Team TimeSheet for Outlook and SharePoint, covering administrative configuration, preparation of time-sheets in Outlook, publishing to SharePoint and finally, generating reports and statistics.

Video 1: Configure a Project Data source in SharePoint, Map Outlook fields to SharePoint list fields, add or change drop down list for Projects, Activities, Custom Fields and deploy to all members. Set hourly rates, reporting and notification options for all members.

Video 2: Establish Project Data source connection, choose own Projects and Activities, and reporting behavior in Outlook. Prepare timesheets, record time and expenses against configured projects, publish to SharePoint, make revisions or withdraw timesheet from SharePoint.

Video 3: Work with Team TimeSheet specific views in Outlook calendar and task folder, to ease recording, reporting and updating time and expenses information from Outlook. Present project information in Outlook in an understandable and intuitive way.

Video 4: Generate summarized and aggregated reports on different time interval, analyze timesheets data in multi-dimensional view with OLAP Statistics and Reporting tool and extract business intelligence.

Read the latest CEO’s blog on Attachment Manager for Outlook (Staying on top of mailbox size restriction in Outlook).

Download Link: http://www.assistmyteam.net/AttachmentManager/

To upgrade, shutdown Outlook, and run the new setup.exe and it would detect the previous version, and it would perform the required upgrade.

Here are the changes and fixes in v3:

	Added support for specifying a separate attachment folder for each Outlook folder, in addition to the support for using a global attachment folder for all Outlook folders. If a separate folder option is enabled, on each Outlook folder, a button ‘Specify Attachment Folder…’ button will be visible in the Attachment Manager toolbar or ribbon. You can then choose a file folder from the browse for folder dialog box. If a file folder had been specified previously for the current Outlook folder, the caption of this button will change to ‘Change Attachment Folder…’, and if you hover the mouse over it, it would show the full path of the attachment folder path in the tool tip balloon.
	Added support for batch detachment of attachments from all mail items in the Outlook folder. There is a new button ‘Detach All’ available under the ‘Advanced…’ drop down menu.
	Added support for batch re-instatement of detached files from the attachment file folder back to the original emails in Outlook. There is a new button ‘Re-Attach All’ available under the ‘Advanced…’ drop down menu.
	Added support for automatic detachment or deletion of attachments from the sent items folder. By default, it is disabled.
	Added a new feature whereby you can copy all the attachment files to a user specified file folder, instead of detaching the actual attachments from the emails. For this purpose, there is a new button ‘Copy attachments to a custom file folder’ under the ‘Advanced…’ drop down menu.
	A new enhancement in automatic detaching of attachments from monitored folders and mailboxes, is the addition of scanning at Outlook startup or when a new mail folder is added for monitoring. With this arrangement, existing emails or those emails that arrived in the Outlook folder when Attachment Manager add-in was not running, are automatically processed so that you don’t have to hunt them and detach manually. So, don’t panic when you see the following dialog box at startup.
	Fixed a bug whereby the files links to the detached attachments are not embedded into the email body for few email items. This typically happens to those emails that have both embedded images in the body (inline images) and other attachments (visible with clips).
	Fixed a bug where in reply or forward window, if you try to use the ‘Remove Links’ or ‘Re-attach files’ buttons (located in the inspector ribbon), Attachment Manager does nothing. This behavior only happens on Outlook 2007 and 2010.
	The first option in the attachment naming scheme (which is ‘Received Date/Time + Attachment Name’) is now altered. In the new version, the received date is formatted as ‘yyyy-mm-dd_hh.mm.ss‘.

Added support for specifying a separate attachment folder for each Outlook folder, in additional to the support for using a global attachment folder for all Outlook folders. If a separate folder option is enabled, on each Outlook folder, a button ‘Specify Attachment Folder…’ button will be visible in the Attachment Manager toolbar or ribbon. You can set then choose a file folder from the browse for folder dialog box. If a file folder had been specified previously for the current Outlook folder, the caption of this button will change to ‘Change Attachment Folder…’, and if you hover the mouse over it, it would show the full path of the attachment folder path in the tool tip balloon.
	Added support for batch detachment of attachments from all mail items in the Outlook folder. There is a new button ‘Detach All’ available under the ‘Advanced…’ drop down menu.
	Added support for batch re-instatement of detached files from the attachment file folder back to the original emails in Outlook. There is a new button ‘Re-Attach All’ available under the ‘Advanced…’ drop down menu.
	Added support for automatic detachment or deletion of attachments from the sent items folder. By default, it is disabled.
	Added a new feature whereby you can copy all the attachment files to a user specified file folder, instead of detaching the actual attachments from the emails. For this purpose, there is a new button ‘Copy attachments to a custom file folder’ under the ‘Advanced…’ drop down menu.
	A new enhancement in automatic detaching of attachments from monitored folders and mailboxes, is the addition of scanning at Outlook startup or when a new mail folder is added for monitoring. With this arrangement, existing emails or those emails that arrived in the Outlook folder when Attachment Manager add-in was not running, are automatically processed so that you don’t have to hunt them and detach manually. So, don’t panic when you see the following dialog box at startup.
	Fixed a bug whereby the files links to the detached attachments are not embedded into the email body for few email items. This typically happens to those emails that have both embedded images in the body (inline images) and other attachments (visible with clips).
	Fixed a bug where in reply or forward window, if you try to use the ‘Remove Links’ or ‘Re-attach files’ buttons (located in the inspector ribbon), Attachment Manager does nothing. This behavior only happens on Outlook 2007 and 2010.
	The first option in the attachment naming scheme (which is ‘Received Date/Time + Attachment Name’) is now altered. In the new version, the received date is formatted as ‘yyyy-mm-dd_hh.mm.ss‘.

Support staffs can then use these KB articles to reply to time-consuming and repeated queries from end-users in a single click. Selected KB article can either be embedded directly in the email body, or as PDF or XPS attachment.

The new version is now fully compatible with Office 2010.

Product page - http://www.assistmyteam.net/TeamKB/

For those who are not familiar with ‘Document Exporter for Outlook’, it is an add-on solution for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and 2010 that makes it very easy and effortless to generate PDF, XPS and other document formats right out of your emails and attachments.

So version 5 release introduce support for converting attachments to PDF files. The conversion of attachments to PDF files works for all scenarios i.e., single or multiple mails export to PDF, merging multiple mails to a single PDF, forwarding single or merged emails as PDF etc. PDF output can be controlled in three ways:

* Output to individual PDF – Each attachment can be converted to individual PDF file. The PDF files will be placed under a subfolder (eg. ‘documentName_Attachments_PDF‘ assuming the PDF document of the email was saved as ‘documentName.pdf‘).

* Merge all attachments to a single PDF – All attachments can be merged to a single PDF. This single PDF file will be placed under a subfolder (eg. ‘documentName_Attachments_PDF‘ assuming the PDF document of the email was saved as ‘documentName.pdf‘. The single PDF file that has all the merged attachments will have a name like ‘Documents_mergedAttachments.pdf‘). When multiple mails or appointments are merged and exported, all the attachments of each of the mail or appointment item would be converted and saved to the same subfolder (eg. ‘MergedDocumentName_Attachments_PDF‘ assuming the document was saved as ‘MergeDocumentName.pdf‘).

* Append all attachments to the email PDF – All attachments can be appended to the PDF document of the mail item. This result PDF file will contain the email, as well as all the attachment files. If multiple mails or appointments are selected for a single merged PDF document, all the attachments of each of the mail or appointment item would also be merged to the PDF document.

Only attachments having the following extensions are supported for converting to PDF format:
docx – Word Documents
docm - Word Macro-Enabled Documents
doc - Word 97-2003 Documents
dot, dotx – All Word Templates
htm, html, mht, mhtl – All Web Pages
rtf - Rich Text Format
txt, prn – Text Files
odt – OpenDocument Text
wpd - WordPerfect
wps - Works 6.0-.9.0
xlm, xla – Microsoft Excel 4.0 Macros
xlw - Microsoft Excel Workspaces
xlsx, xlsm, xlsb,xls – Excel Worksheets
xlt, xltx, xltm – Excel Templates
ods - OpenDocument Spreadsheet
csv - Comma Separated Value
pptx,ppt,pptm,ppsx,pps,ppsm – PowerPoint Presentations and Shows
potx, pot, potm – PowerPoint Templates
odp - OpenDocument Presentation

If the attachment is a PDF file, then it is directly outputted or merged along with the other attachments format. Additionally, you can exclude PDF attachments from being included when a PDF email is forwarded.

You can refer to the product page at http://www.assistmyteam.net/DocumentExporter/ for more information.

This OLAP tool works with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Service 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 (SharePoint 2010), as well as with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (All Versions). It consists of two portions – the OLAP Manager and the OLAP Statistics. With the OLAP Manager, you can enter the URL of your SharePoint site (eg. http://companyweb/) such that it would show up all the available lists in a hierarchical tree from which you can select a particular SharePoint list to configure for OLAP Cube. Alternatively, you can also enter the URL of the particular SharePoint list (eg. http://companyweb/Lists/Tasks/AllItems.aspx) to directly load the available fields in the grid for cube configuration. With either techniques, you can choose which SharePoint fields to include in the cube. You can also set aggregate function for the measure fields or define new derived fields such as a hierarchy or a calculated field.

When you click the ‘Run Statistics’ button, it would generate a cube, which will be loaded into the OLAP Statistics and Reporting tool. The OLAP Statistics client consists of grid and chart, pivots, cube structure tree where all the dimensions, hierarchies and measures are listed. Once a particular snapshot of the statistics is achieved, you can share or publish or export it to image, PDF, Excel, or print it. Other features include support for offline cubes, report views and more.

Product page – http://www.assistmyteam.net/OLAPStatisticsSP/

Currently, Project Reporter for Outlook is available as a groupware solution (team edition). A personal edition that reports to a local database would be available soon.

Video demonstrations are also available. More at http://www.assistmyteam.net/ProjectReporter/

We will continue to use ‘SupportCalls System’ interchangeable with the new titles during the transitional period. The old product page will also function during the same period. But we will slowly progress towards complete re-branding to the new titles.

New product page – http://www.assistmyteam.net/TeamHelpdesk