In/Out Board Blog

Today, Key Metric Software released OfficeStatus v6.5. This is a free upgrade for any existing OfficeStatus v6 product licensee.

The goal with this release is to improve platform and component compatibility. Toward that end, there are a number of important changes in OfficeStatus v6.5.

• OfficeStatus now supports TLS 1.1 and 1.2.
• OfficeStatus Server now requires Windows Server 2012 or later. OfficeStatus Windows Client requires Windows Vista SP2 or later.
• OfficeStatus Server installer now bundles SQL Server Express 2017.
• Web interface compatibility has been updated to support modern browser releases.
• .NET Framework requirement is now 4.5.2 or later.

These changes are necessary in order to upgrade (modernize) TLS support and bundle a newer version of SQL Server Express.

Note that we still provide access to the previous OfficeStatus v6.2 release, which was the last build of OfficeStatus to support Windows Server 2008 (server components) and Windows XP (client components).

For information on upgrade best practices, please see the OfficeStatus Upgrade FAQ.

OfficeStatus offers Windows desktop, web, and mobile web end user interface options. Regardless of which of these you choose, OfficeStatus can show dates and times in a locale-specific manner.

If you’re using OfficeStatus Windows Client, this happens automatically as long as each end user’s operating system is configured with the correct region and language settings. All versions of Windows allow the end user to specify their preferred date and time formats, and OfficeStatus Windows Client will honor those.

As for the web (and mobile web) interface, OfficeStatus will automatically adapt date/time displays based upon browser configuration. If no browser configuration language settings are available, the server locale will be used.

For example, let’s say I’m using Google’s Chrome web browser. If I navigate to Settings and click the Show advanced settings link, I can then click the Language and input settings button to reveal the following window:

Using the configuration above, the OfficeStatus web interface will display dates and times in U.S. English. However, if I’m from Latvia, Europe this may not be what I want. The solution is to click the Add button in the Languages window shown above and add  the Latvian language to Chrome. Next, I drag and drop Latvian so that it appears at the top of my supported language list:

Now I can click the Done button in Chrome’s settings window and access the OfficeStatus web interface again. This time, I will see date and time values formatted specifically for the Latvian locale. Other browsers (besides Chrome) have similar settings.

If you don’t want to configure each user’s browser, another option is to force the OfficeStatus web interface to use a specific culture configuration. This can be done by modifying the web.config file that resides in the webroot folder below your OfficeStatus Server installation path (for example, “c:\program files\officestatus server\webroot\web.config”).

The web.config file is plain text, so you can edit it with any text editor (we recommend making a backup before editing it just to be safe). Start by finding the following entry:

<globalization culture="auto" uiCulture="auto" enableClientBasedCulture="true" />

If I wanted to force OfficeStatus Server to display dates and times better suited to the Latvian locale, I would change this value as follows:

<globalization culture="lv-LV" />

After making the above change, I save the web.config file and log back into the OfficeStatus web interface (note that all users will be logged out when you save a change to web.config). Again, I’ll see dates and times displayed as expected for the Latvian locale. This will be true for all users, regardless of browser settings.

For a full list of culture codes supported by the “culture” globalization setting above, please click here.

So, as you can see OfficeStatus offers a lot of flexibility in terms of locale support. If you need assistance with any of the above, please don’t hesitate to contact contact us.

Today, Key Metric Software proudly announces the general release of OfficeStatus 6.0.

This new release adds many new product capabilities and feature enhancements, while also striving to keep the product familiar for end users. Our customers indicated a desire for us to minimize user interface changes while moving the product forward in key areas. We believe we’ve achieve those goals with this new version.

Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in OfficeStatus 6:

• Scheduled status recurrence
• Greatly enhanced status board displays
• Redesigned public (large-screen) view
• Numerous reporting improvements
• Overhauled, modernized web interface
• Many improvement to OfficeStatus Windows Client
• Server side user inactivity monitoring
• Many enhancements to resource tracking
• Many administrative improvements
• Much more

For details, please see the following page of our brand new OfficeStatus website:

http://www.officestatus.com/features/whatsnew

Since this is major version release, you’ll need to upgrade your existing OfficeStatus licenses before installing the new version. For information on major version upgrades, please see:

http://www.officestatus.com/order/upgrade

And, as always, please feel to reach out to us (sales@officestatus.com) if you have any questions.

OfficeStatus provides powerful Exchange calendar integration capabilities, allowing the system to update the status of your users based upon their Outlook calendar appointments.

In order to enable this capability, you’ll need to obtain the EWS (Exchange Web Services) URL of your Exchange installation. That URL is then entered into the Exchange Sync page of the OfficeStatus web interface (see screenshot below):

Below, you’ll find instructions for obtaining your Exchange Web Services (EWS) URL, regardless of whether you’re using Exchange Online, Office 365, or an on-premises Exchange installation.contact for other extra installations, such as apps that offer tracking to parents and employers there is a fine line between monitoring and spying. with just spy passwords use pctattletale in a fast and easy way.

For Exchange Online / Office 365

1. Access your mailbox account using Outlook Web App (OWA)

2. Click Options > See All Options > Account > My Account > Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access

3. In the list of entries, locate the server name. The URL of EWS for the mailbox is the URL: https://<ONLINE_URL>/EWS/Exchange.asmx

For Microsoft Exchange (on-premises)

1. The URL will use the following format: https://<EXCHANGE_SERVER_HOSTNAME>/EWS/Exchange.asmx

Today I’m going to show you a simple (yet very effective) means of integrating OfficeStatus electronic in/out board software with Microsoft SharePoint.

Specifically, we’re going to expose the OfficeStatus “public view” (a read-only view that doesn’t require authentication) to SharePoint users. For the purposes of this walk-through we’ll be using SharePoint 2010, but the steps will be similar for other versions of SharePoint.

Enable the OfficeStatus Public View

If you haven’t already, first enable the OfficeStatus public view feature (which is disabled by default). You can do so by logging into the OfficeStatus web interface as an administrator and navigating to Administration | System | Enable or Disable Features. Ensure that the Enable Public View setting is set to “Yes” and save changes if required.

Create a New SharePoint Page

Once you’ve decided where you’d like your read-only in/out board view to reside within SharePoint, create a New Web Part Page at that location. This step is, of course, optional – you might elect to add your OfficeStatus view to an existing SharePoint page (in which case you can skip to the next step).

Creating a new page in SharePoint

Give the page a name, and choose your preferred layout. In the screenshot above, we’re just using the “Full Page, Vertical” layout to keep things simple.

Add a Web Part

After adding a new page, you’ll be looking at the SharePoint page editor. Click on the Add a Web Part link.

Adding a SharePoint web part

Scroll down to the Media and Content category, and select the Page Viewer web part.

Choosing a web part page type

Configure the Web Part

Now click on the “open the tool pane” link to edit the new web part’s settings.

Configuring the web part in SharePoint

In the Page Viewer category, leave the default “web page” selected and enter the link to your OfficeStatus public view. The link will be the same one you use to access your OfficeStatus web interface, only with “/public” appended to the URL. For example:

http://my-server/OfficeStatus/public

You can also elect to add one or more URL query parameters in order to control the default appearance and filtering of the OfficeStatus public view. These parameters include:

• Dept: Enter the specific department you’d like to see in the public view.
• Location: Specify the location you’d like to see in the public view.
• Status: Specify the status you’d like to see in the public view.
• ShowUserImages: Turn this off (“true” or “0”) to disable the display of user images.

Here’s an example URL that uses query parameters:

http://my-server/OfficeStatus/public/Default.aspx?Dept=IT&Status=In&ShowUserImages=false

The above link will, by default, show only IT department members with a status of “In”. User images will not be shown.

You may also want to assign the SharePoint web part a specific height (something like 500 pixels, for example).

With configuration complete, click the OK button to commit the changes.

Final Result & Summary

Now that you’ve established a SharePoint page that contains the OfficeStatus public view, you can configure your SharePoint installation to link to that page in whatever manner best suits your needs.

OfficeStatus view within SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint is an incredibly flexible collaboration tool, and having a read-only view of your OfficeStatus in/out board contained (and easily accessible) within it can be very helpful to users.