HelpDesk OSP – revision history and current file version

Current file versions


Filename Version Last changed
HelpDeskOSPSetup.exe (Installer) 2.1.403 2010-08-26
HOSP.exe 2.1.206.154 2010-07-26
HOSPCube.exe 2.1.20.176 2010-06-21
HOSP.dll 2.1.0.983 2010-08-26
OLAPReporting.exe 3.01.0319 2010-06-21
NoProgress.dll 1.1.103.2 2010-06-21
HOSPExampleData.exe 2.1.0.6 2010-06-21
Interop.ADODB.dll 2.8.0.0 2009-05-21
Interop.ADOX.dll 2.8.0.0 2009-05-21
Interop.Office.dll 2.1.0.0 2009-05-21
Interop.Outlook.dll 9.0.0.0 2009-05-21
Microsoft.WindowsLive.Id.Client.dll 4.200.519.1 2009-05-21
msidcrl40.dll 4.200.519.1 2009-05-21
Safekalmstrom.dll 4.8.0.1184 2010-06-21
eSellerateControl365.dll 3.6.5.0 2009-05-21
Comctl32.ocx   2009-12-17

Revision history
  
26 August Improved function:
Earlier the HOSP.dll startup type was “load on demand” which meant that the HelpDesk OSP toolbar sometimes was not showing. Now it is change to “OnStart”
The automatic monitoring of a folder is also improved. Earlier the HelpDesk OSP flag in the monitored folder some time was deleted automatically, and it also happened that HelpDesk OSP did not convert emails to ticket if Outlook was not focused.
26 July HelpDesk OSP is now fully optimized for Office 2010 32-bit. The buttons can be found under the Home tab, and we have made use of the possibility to have two buttons in one. This means that Create Ticket and Create Ticket In are one button, just as Create New Ticket and Create New Ticket In.

To avoid problems with old versions that are not adapted to new technologies, a warning screen recommending you to upgrade will be shown when your installation is one year old. The message will be shown for two months, with a countdown, and after that HelpDesk OSP will stop functioning. (Most customers upgrade their installations more often than once a year, so they will not even notice that this reminder is added.)
21 June Update due to change of digital signature
29 March Version 2.1
HelpDesk OSP now supports Forms Authentication.
23 February Two problems fixed:
Apostrophe can now be used in the column names. Earlier a column called for example ”Caller's name” gave an error.
In the HelpDesk OSP Configure dialog, if you entered an incorrect URL (with wrong syntax or misspelled) for a SharePoint list, you were still prompted to enter login and password, which was not applicable as the entered site URL did not exist. Now HelpDesk OSP is modified such that if the entered URL path of the SharePoint list is incorrect, the user will be returned to the dialog box where he/she can enter the correct path. And the dialog will have Cancel button, of course.
2010  
21 December OWA error in the latest update is fixed: If you reply to an email thread from OWA (already converted to a SharePoint ticket), and you have HelpDesk OSP installed on a system with that same mailbox in Outlook, you might receive an error message and the sent email (from OWA) is not added/appended to the existing ticket in the SharePoint list. Fixed now!
 
17 December Enhancements:
  • Support display of inline images in the SharePoint ticket item. If the email in Outlook has any embedded or inline images, they will appear exactly at the same location after it is being converted to the SharePoint ticket.
  • New improved OLAP Reporting Tool included, that supports all Unicode characters.
  • Microsoft Windows Common Controls 5.0 (Comctl32.ocx) added to the setup, as it is used in the new OLAP Reporting Tool.
Bug fixes:
  • If you had a SharePoint site configured, but later changed the password, HelpDesk OSP did not give you an option to re-enter the new password. Instead, HelpDesk OSP throwed an "invalid password" error and did not let you proceed.
  • If you had any Office Live site configured in HelpDesk OSP, you might notice that copies of the sent emails were not being converted i.e., e-mail threading feature did not work for sent emails.
  • If the email body field was not mapped to a SharePoint list field, then it might show you a login error and ticket might not get added to the SharePoint list.
4 December On Outlook 2007 with HelpDesk OSP installed, when you close Outlook, the Outlook.exe might not be shutdown and might consume 100% CPU in the Task Manager. The only way is to end Outlook.exe explicitly from the Task Manager. The problem seems to be due to HelpDesk OSP addin not executing all the Objects unloading when the Outlook terminate/close event is triggered. This issue is now fixed.
5 November New features:
  • Now the e-mail threading feature works also for e-mails sent to or replied from Outlook Web Access (OWA). This works if at least one of the responsible staff is running HelpDesk OSP in Outlook. You can also design a special system where Outlook is running all the time and configure HelpDesk OSP to catch all incoming as well as outgoing emails for email threading.
  • In the registration dialog box the Purchase option is removed due to change in our licensing scheme.
  • In the HelpDesk OSP Example Data, example tickets are created in the background and the user doesn't see the progress.
Buxfixes:

Fixed issue when creating new ticket.

When e-mails with Russian/Hebrew/Greek contents are converted to tickets, and if Ticket URL embed is enabled, the converted e-mails get appended with the ticket URL, but that leads to losing the Russian/Hebrew/Greek characters and instead, there are lot of garbage unreadable characters. This is fixed now, but only if the language of the local setting of the user's system is set to the same language as that of the email.
14 October Several improvements:
  • HelpDesk OSP can now create tickets from e-mails with RTF body.

  • A line break with a dotted line is given at end of each thread so that between each thread in the ticket there is a noticeable vertical gap that makes the thread easier to follow.

  • Updated version of Outlook redemption library added.

  • A new field "Recipient" (To,CC,BCC fields of the e-mail) is added in the HelpDesk OSP Configuration, and this field is available for mapping to a SharePoint field, just like other Outlook fields.

  • New version of OLAP Reporting tool included.
23 September Another bug fix:

If the E-mail Threading option was enabled in the HelpDesk OSP Settings, if you composed and sent a new e-mail, the copy of that e-mail under Sent Items got converted into a SharePoint ticket automatically, and was moved to the HOSPSentItems subfolder (under Sent Items), and a ticket ID under bracket was appended to the subject.
22 September Bug fixes:
  • Handled the scenario when tickets can't be created from certain emails or outlook items in auto-mode.
  • Fixed the issue with invalid character like(&) in email category, subject and Sender Name
  • Fixed the Outlook crash and Outlook.exe process using exceptionally high CPU, when Outlook is shutdown
3 September Bug fixes:
Some users got a message to map e-mail threading field even though "Enable Email threading" option was unchecked.
Non-English OS might get an error message "The string was not recognized as valid Boolean." As TRUE/FALSE (Boolean) was used as command line parameters to HOSP.exe, in non English OS, it could throw a mistype error because other language will have their own TRUE/FALSE notation. This is fixed by using numeric values for TRUE/FALSE
24 August Version 2.0
New feature: E-mail Threading
Bug fixes:
1. In the earlier version, you might get a permission denied error when trying to save the HelpDesk OSP settings. This usually happens for those on Windows Vista where the settings tries to save the XML file under the installation folder of HelpDesk OSP. This is fixed in version 2.0 by using the user's document folder.
2. Earlier versions of HelpDesk OSP might throw an error when using Office Live list on 64 bit OS. Version 2.0 fixes this compatibility issue.
7 July Some bug fixes:
1. Fixed error that came up when trying to save login information with blank password.
2. When a user entered an incorrect login credential, HelpDesk OSP gave an invalid authentication message and if user had chosen to save the login credential, it also saved that the incorrect login information, leading to the error being persisted in subsequent operations.
3. When a user keyed in the wrong URL of the SharePoint\Office Live site, HelpDesk OSP could not validate the site, due to which the creation of the hidden global list (for setting) failed and that lead to an error.
4. When giving an invalid character in SharePoint URL, instead of of giving a warning message HelpDesk OSP used to throw a runtime error.
5. On some particular languages, some of the UI controls did not fit and phrases were truncated, leading to incomplete info being communicated to the user. Now, the controls are generously sized, to accomodate phrases length in different languages.
3 July For some users the buttons were still not visible in the license dialog. Now it is fixed!
When uninstalling Help Desk OSP from Add/Remove programs, the user is now asked if the settings file (HOSPSettings.xml) should be removed too.
1 July Bug fixes for problems that only happened to some users:
1. While trying to register HelpDesk OSP an odd size registration form with no box to enter the license key was shown.
2. When trying to run the HelpDesk OSP statistics, a warning message about a missing list was shown even if list was present.
3. When creating example data using HOSPExampleData.exe, if the user chose more then one tickets to be loaded, he/she was prompted with a confirmation message every time a ticket was created.
26 June A language problem was corrected. Users with non-English OS did not always see their OS language in HelpDesk OSP. Instead, English was shown.

Two bugs were also fixed: e-mails with digital signatures were not converted properly, and some users got an invalid credential error when they tried to convert e-mails.

Passwords are now encrypted when saving to the settings XML, for better security.
¨
21 May Version 1.4 released!

New Features:
  • Addition of Office Live List in HelpDesk OSP. The app now supports Microsoft Live Office lists, (apart from standard SharePoint lists) for storing helpdesk tickets. In the HelpDesk OSP Configure tool, there is an option of selecting the particular site (either SharePoint or Office Live site). To make use of OfficeLive lists, the system needs to have Office Live SDK installed. By default, the HelpDesk OSP setup automatically installs the OfficeLive SDK libraries (Microsoft.WindowsLive.Id.Client.dll, msidcrl40.dll) to the client system.
  • Global Setting. HelpDesk OSP now saves the SharePoint/Office Live lists settings in a hidden list 'HOSPSETTING' of the SharePoint/Office Live site. This is done to enable multiple users to share the same settings, thereby, minimizing the manual steps to add/configure lists by every user.
  • Example data tool. HelpDesk OSP now has a new example data tool 'HOSPExampleData.exe' with which, you can load example tickets in a SharePoint/Office Live list.
Enhancements:
  • Added "..." in Edit button in 'Add/Remove email folders to monitor' tab.
  • Added New tab titled 'General Settings' in HelpDesk OSP configure tool, contains all general setting of HelpDesk OSP.
  • New option added under the 'General Settings' tab, 'Show captions in HelpDesk OSP toolbar buttons', with which, the captions of the HelpDesk OSP toolbar in Outlook can be disabled/enabled (such that if user wants a shorter toolbar, it can fit)
  • The license button in the HelpDesk OSP Outlook toolbar is removed and instead, it is moved to the 'General Settings' tab.
  • When user don't have write permission over the SharePoint list, creating a ticket from Outlook would throw an error. This is now displayed in a friendly, informatory way.
3 March New update due to a defective OLAP Reporting Tool that was included in yesterday's release.
2 March In Outlook 2007 with Vista, when closing Outlook, some users received an error message about "Outlook has stopped working". We therefore made a change in the error logging to solve this problem.
OLAP Reporting Tool was updated to the latest version.
25 February New Feature: each monitored e-mail folder can be associated with a specific SharePoint list, so tickets are created from incoming e-mails automatically in that particular SharePoint list.
The following changes are made to the HelpDesk OSP configure dialog:
  • The 'Add/Remove e-mail folders to monitor' tab is modified to allow user to select a particular SharePoint list for a email folder.
  • When adding a new e-mail folder using the '+' button, it will prompt to select an e-mail folder in Outlook, after which a small dialog window prompts again to select a SharePoint list to which the e-mail folder will be associated.
  • Added a new button 'Edit' which enables the user to change SharePoint list for a selected e-mail folder. A small dialog box will appear where the user can specify an item from all the available SharePoint lists.
Note: SharePoint list association with e-mail folder only works in automatic conversion mode (i.e. when the HelpDesk OSP add-in monitors that e-mail folder). When converting e-mails to SharePoint ticket manually from any e-mail folder, the SharePoint list set under the 'default List' in 'Add/Remove email folders to monitor' tab is used.

Bugfix: When HelpDesk OSP generated SharePoint tickets from multiple e-mails in quick succession, it happened that users got a runtime error regarding the inability of HOSP.exe process to write the XML file 'HOSPCallBack.xml'.
We acknowledged that the error was due to a concurrency issue and have now redesigned the workflow of writing SharePoint specific ticket information back to the HOSPCallBack.xml to fix this issue.
2009  
19 December An Outlook synchronization problem was fixed by a bypass
17 December Easier to use HelpDesk OSP in a system with locked machines.
Earlier the HelpDesk OSP add-in (HOSP.dll) was registered under HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry hive, which meant that it was only registered for the current user (the one who performed the installation) even if the files were installed for all users on that system.
Now the add-in is registered under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which means that anyone in the administrator group can install the product for all users of the machine.
6 December Error message about hexadecimal value fixed
7 November Bug fix: When someone tried to create a ticket using the "Create ticket" button from the e-mail window and then open a second e-mail at the same time, the SharePoint ticket URL was embedded in the second email instead of the original email. This was a bug in Outlook 2003 or before, and it has now been fixed.
4 November Auto-conversion can sometime get stuck, that is, a particular folder is NOT monitored by the HelpDesk OSP addin for incoming e-mails due to an invalid Post Item flag (with the subject 'Folder is monitored by HOSP'). This post item is inserted into the monitored folder (if it is not already there) by HelpDesk OSP signifying that a particular user is monitoring the folder and that no other users should monitor it (so as to minimize the risk of conflict and multiple tickets creations from a single e-mail). But automatic conversion will not work thereafter for a particular monitored folder for any user, if the Outlook.exe of the user monitoring that folder crashes.
This is fixed in the current update by implementing the following checks when the user starts Outlook:
HelpDesk OSP checks when the Post Item flag was created. If the creation time was well before 24 hours, HelpDesk OSP assumes that it is probably an invalid flag and that, the current user should be allowed to monitor that folder. So, it removes the flag and updates it with the latest user and folder monitoring continues.
31 October Minor bug fix + updated OLAP Reporting Tool
17 October Change:
The ticket status dialog when converting e-mails to SharePoint tickets is shown by default. To hide it, uncheck the box under the 'E-Mail folder' tab of the HelpDesk OSP Configure dialog.
Bug fix:
The priority of the created SharePoint tickets defaulted to 'Low' priority regardless of the priority/importance defined in the source emails (in Outlook). This has been fixed!
18 September You might get a Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0 or 'Class not registered (MSADOX.DLL)' when using HOSP Statistics (HOSPCube.exe) over Vista 64 bit. This is now fixed!
16 September Bug fixes:
1) When a SharePoint ticket was created from an e-mail, clicking the URL link of the ticket in the e-mail sometimes came up with HTTP 400 bad request in IE. However, under the SharePoint list, the ticket was created. This was due to a bug arising out of a encoding problem in the SharePoint list name that has either a whitespace or an & symbol. This is resolved now.
2) In the SharePoint list configure tab, the URL link of the selected list displayed in grayed out textbox is now URL encoded.
3) You might earlier get a HTTP 400 error when clicking a SharePoint ticket URL embedded in an e-mail when the list belonged to a subsite of a SharePoint site). This was because the embedded URL had duplicate subsite name in the embedded ticket URL. This is now fixed.
8 September Two bug fixes:
When using HelpDesk OSP with the MS SharePoint template 'Service Requests' list, you earlier might get a whitespace between Service and Request in the ticket URL embedded in the converted Outlook email. Clicking this link gave a HTTP 404 Not Found error.
When configuring HelpDesk OSP Settings, if there was a particular SharePoint list entry, which no longer existed at the SharePoint site, the user could be prompted repeatedly for a failed login.
5 September HelpDesk OSP 1.3 first commercial release! 30 days trial from the date of installation. Purchase of license from within the product. License button added in the Outlook toolbar. The integrated statistics application, OLAP Reporting Tool, is registered automatically when HelpDesk OSP is registered. Various bug fixes.
22 August The following bugs are fixed:
  • When converting an e-mail to a SharePoint ticket, HelpDesk OSP showed an encoding error if a certain portion of the HTML document of the email was not in conformity with the HTML web specification. In such a scenario, HelpDesk OSP will now simply upload the e-mail as a .msg file. It will also write some short description of the nature of the problem in the description field of the ticket. Eg. "Due to a .html encoding problem, the body field is not available. Instead, the file ’OutlookEmail.msg’ is attached with this ticket. "
  • When a e-mail with attachments was converted to a SharePoint ticket, a SOAP exception error could be shown. Such error typically arised due to problem in the attachment file (like corruption). In such a case, HelpDesk OSP will display a friendlier message.
  • An "Object required" error sometimes came up when switching from one Outlook folder to another.
  • Some users got an empty HelpDesk OSP Setting dialog box multiple times. This happened when auto-conversion of e-mails to SharePoint tickets was enabled. 
14 August Bug in Dutch version fixed: in HelpDesk OSP Settings and Statistics tool, the list entries can be displayed as '%1 op %2', instead of 'Tasks on intra.sharepoint.com'.
13 August New Beta version of HelpDesk OSP with several improvements:
  • HOSP Statistics tool (HOSPCube.exe) is moved to .NET platform (that is, it requires .NET framework 3.5 or above).
  • HelpDesk OSP Statistics has an enhanced, more user-friendly interface such as data grid control to display tickets, resizable form and more control and responsiveness over SharePoint list query processes.
  • SharePoint fields having alternative or choice datatype are now supported to be included in the statistics (.cub)
  • HelpDesk OSP now support windows authentication (NTLM). This means, if HelpDesk OSP is used within a company network via a domain user account, it will make use of the windows authentication mode to connect to the SharePoint site (that is, no login dialog will be displayed). If however HelpDesk OSP is used to connect to a SharePoint site outside of the company network (via the internet), it will prompt for a valid user credential.
  • Beta testing extended till 10th September 2008.
21 July A new HelpDesk OSP that also works with SSL:
  • HelpDesk OSP now supports SharePoint with Secure Socket layer (SSL) over HTTP (HTTPS). eg. https://somesharepoint/helpdesk.
  • The domain field is configurable.
  • HelpDesk OSP Statistics (HOSCub.exe) can now extract/create a .cub file also from SharePoint lists that uses HTTPS (SSL).
  • HelpDesk OSP Settings will ignore any certification error coming out of the secured SharePoint Site (HTTPS).
    (In internet explorer, this certification error will not allow the SharePoint site to be loaded instantly. You will have to explicitly click "Continue to this website (not recommended)". This is not the case with HelpDesk OSP though.)
17 July Some bugs in the recently published version were reported to us, so we fixed them and published a new version. These bugs were:
  • Problem when configuring multiple SharePoint sites at one time

  • Problem when switching between Outlook folders.

  • Problem when creating a new ticket after a user remove the SharePoint website list from the setting of HelpDesk OSP in Outlook and then re-configured another SharePoint site in the settings.
15 July Beta Testing is extended until 15th August, and the following bugs have been fixed:
  • When creating new ticket or converting an email to ticket, and when user was prompted for authentication (if the login was not configured to be saved), if the user clicked 'Cancel', the ticket anyway got converted.
  • Invalid site authentication message when trying to work with multiple SharePoint sites (i.e. with different domain names). In HOSP Settings, when trying to query another SharePoint site over an already configured site, it failed to authenticate.
  • Duplicate entry of list name in the URL caption (only applicable when using list of a SharePoint sub site). However, this URL duplication was not used in the inner working of the application,
    and hence it was not a fatal error.
Another improvement is that when ticket is created from an e-mail in Outlook, it will display the SharePoint ticket in Edit Mode when the user clicks on it.
 
27 June The following bugs have been fixed:
  • When the ScreenSaver was running in the system, Outlook crashed.
  • When any ticket was created using HOSP it created two files(HOSP_DBUG_TICKET.xml & KalmstromNuLog.txt) in the C: drive of the System.
  • The Statistics button gave a message the Beta period was over.
  • The Statistics button gave an error message: Attempting to create a new Scripting Dictionary object. This component is usually installed with Internet Explorer 4.0 or later.

See also

HOSP home
Buy
Try
Upgrade
Demonstrations
Manuals
A slideshow made in PowerPoint Slideshow
Press release
  FAQ


Comparison with
   PF HelpDesk



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HelpDesk OSP is updated often. The main reasons  for this are:
  • We want to adapt to and take advantage of changes in the Microsoft software we build on.


  • When we receive reports about bugs we fix them as soon as possible.


  • Of course we also try to add new features that our customers ask for.

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HelpDesk OSP for Outlook and SharePoint converts e-mails to SharePoint list items