Month: March 2009

Return to 2003

Office 2007 has been out for a while now but many people still struggle with the new ribbon menu system. Now I will also admit that when the ribbon first made an appearance on my desktop I too was a little confused at where everything went to. However over time I found that I actually liked the ribbon but I understand it may hinder people who simply want to get things done in Office 2007 like they did in Office 2003.

Personally, I think it was a mistake for Microsoft not to provide some menu migration ability where perhaps the old menuing system could be turned back on for say 60 days to ease the transition. For whatever reason that never happened, so when you started Office 2007 you had no other option but to use the ribbon menu.

For those who still want the old Office 2003 style menuing here’s a potential solution.
 
As you can see from the above picture UBit menu software has a free plug in that allows you to retro fit Office 2003 menus into Office 2007. You sorta have to wonder why Microsoft really didn’t do this? I suppose that’s the benefit of being the dominate provider of desktop software, ‘everyone will change and change on this version’. I really don’t think that helps sell more software given how many people have used office for all those years.

Thanks Dale

Dale Unroe made a comment in a recent blog post about a online video about productivity from Mark Hurst, author of the book Bit Literacy (which is on to read list). If you are interested:

1. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/summit/
2. Select the topic Productivity & Security
3. Half way down the list you should see a video with a heading Bit Literacy

There is also a web site http://bitliteracy.com which includes a same chapter from the book.

 As I said I have not as yet read this book but have it on my list to read. In the meantime take a look at the video and as always if you need assistance with managing your email productivity go to www.doemailless.com.

Simple inbox advice

It is amazing how complex people have made the control of their inboxes these days. You can’t travel far without hearing people complain about ‘How full their inboxes are’ or ‘How many messages they need to respond to’. In truth, the solution is pretty simple yet remains elusive for most.

 

I found a good piece called “An Empty In-Box, or With Just a Few E-Mail Messages?” over at the NY Times. What it suggest isn’t rocket science it is pretty simple as I have always maintained. The most important thing is to limit the time you spend in email. This means disabling notifications and only dealing with email a few time a day rather. Probably the most liberating step, and the one that most people fail to successfully take, is to clear out you inbox. Your goal should be to keep you inbox as empty as possible.

 

When setting out to empty your inbox, be ruthless. If you don’t need it then delete it, if you do then archive it somewhere else than the inbox. There isn’t a need to create a really complex archiving folder scheme because all modern email programs have sophisticated search, so just archive it to one folder and move on.

 

Once you have a clear inbox then you’ll need to work to maintain it that way which is what most people are afraid of, but let me ask you – did you get employed simply to go through email? When the time for performance reviews arrives are you judged on how much email you have? Of course not! You are are judged on getting results for your company and email is simply a tool for achieving that. Like any tool it needs to be used effectively and that, my friend, comes down to you, no one else.

 

If you lead a life that is dominated by you inbox then I feel sorry for you because there is so much more out there to enjoy in the world. If you want to get back in control of you inbox and avoid information overload then I’d suggest you read the article and maybe see www.doemailless.com for more information about getting any help you need.

Too much Twitter

Seems like we are experiencing a Twitter-explosion of late in the media and perhaps this video from the “The Daily Show” might put some perspective on it.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=219519&title=twitter-frenzy

or

However, on a more serious note here’s what Tim Ferris, the author of one of my favourite business books the Four Hour Work Week has to say about using Twitter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3weqLgnPfQ&hl=en&fs=1
Now I reckon there is a business case for Twitter but certainly not the way most people seem to be using it! No matter what you think I can assure that Twitter is coming to a screen near you real soon. As I always say, technology distractions don’t just occur – THEY SEEK YOU OUT.

Tweet, Tweet.

SharePoint videos

Microsoft has just released a swag of SharePoint videos. Details below.

 

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Demo: Use a blog to connect with your coworkers

 

You can use a blog to improve communication in your workplace. The blog authors can post information such as updates on benefits changes, promotions of seminars, and detailed information on policies. Employees can post their questions or comments and see the responses from the blog author.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Search for information on a SharePoint site

 

When you use a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site, you can use the search feature to help you find information, files, Web sites, and people. In this demo, you will see how an employee at a fictitious company called Adventure Works uses search to locate information on a SharePoint site and complete job-related tasks.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Display KPIs in a dashboard

 

A dashboard is a special Web Part Page that displays business data from a variety of different sources in high-level visuals like reports, charts, and key performance indicators (KPIs). The data displayed in dashboards can be filtered automatically or filtered by properties selected by users, enabling comparative data analysis across an organization. Because they pull together important business intelligence data from different sources in an easy-to-understand visual format, dashboards are useful tools that enable managers or decision makers to quickly assess the status of their business. This demo shows you how to create a dashboard page on a Report Center site and how to add a KPI Web Part to the dashboard page to display KPIs. You will also see how to add a KPI Details Web Part to a dashboard to display detailed information about a specific individual indicator.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Make better business decisions with reports and dashboards

 

Business intelligence (BI) is the process of aggregating, storing, analyzing, and reporting on business data in order to support informed business decisions. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides tools that can help you extract data from a variety of sources and present that data in ways that facilitate analysis and decision making. In this demo, you’ll see how employees at a fictitious company called Adventure Works use a Report Center site to create and manage reports, dashboards, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

 

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Enterprise Content Management with SharePoint Server

 

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides powerful Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features for creating, managing, and storing content across an enterprise. In this demo, you’ll learn how a fictitious company called Adventure Works uses SharePoint Server to publish Web pages, archive and audit records, and manage documents. The demo shows how the Technical Documentation team uses a Document Center site as a centralized repository to create, organize, edit, and review all customer-facing external publications, such as user manuals and product specification sheets.

 

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Streamline business processes with forms and workflows

 

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help you integrate and streamline your business processes. You can use the InfoPath Forms Services server technology in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to create browser-based forms and gather data from organizations that do not use Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. People in those organizations can complete forms in a Web browser or HTML-enabled mobile device. Workflows automatically move documents or items through a sequence of actions or tasks related to a business process. Workflows can streamline the cost of coordinating common business processes, such as project approval or document review, by managing and tracking the tasks involved with those processes.

 

Office SharePoint Server 2007 Demo: Simplify collaboration with a SharePoint team site

 

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides organizations with a platform for sharing information and working together in teams. A SharePoint site offers specific kinds of tools and workspaces that you can use to communicate with team members, track projects, coordinate deadlines, and collaboratively create and edit documents. In this demo, you’ll see how employees at a fictitious company called Adventure Works use features on a team site such as lists, document libraries, calendars, slide libraries, and blogs to collaborate on documents, track projects, and share information.

Email “free” days don’t work

One of the “solutions” that companies mistakenly believe will solve their email overload problem is the concept of email “free” days. On a nominated day no-one is allowed to send emails to each other, they must find another way to communicate, be that phone, conversation, SMS, whatever.

 

Now this concept is bankrupt as the article “E-mail ruined my life” demonstrates:

 

E-mail is so ingrained in our working lives that Deloitte’s experiment was abandoned after only a month. But the company still thinks it was worth it.

 

Bzzzzzt, wrong. Email “free” days don’t work because they don’t CHANGE the bad habits people have. All they do is forcibly prevent them but when that edict is removed everyone returns to their former unproductive behaviour. In short, nothing has changed so how do you suddenly expect behaviour to change? It won’t but it seems even large companies can’t understand that.

 

The secret is providing people with the training necessary to change their habits, to improve they way the use emails. It is only with this change will you see an improvement in productivity.

 

For more information about improving email productivity visit www.doemailless.com.

Facebook follies

Now we all probably know the story of Facebook. If not then I suggest you have a read of “How Facebook is taking over our lives” to give you an idea of the impact that it is having and the speed at which it is growing. What many people don’t seem to appreciate is that we are surrendering our privacy to commercial entities like Facebook at an alarming rate.

 

Many people don’t understand that whatever they post on the Internet is generally searchable and available to anyone. A good example of this is “Facebook scam: Ferrari man’s true identity revealed”. In short a recent Facebook scam featured a man standing next to a Ferrari (as if you would drive an Enzo on the road!) claiming that if you followed his method you’d make enough money to own an Ferrari (an Enzo costs over US$ 1 million by the way). Now the interesting thing, as the article details, is that the picture of the man standing next to the Ferrari is actually someone who uploaded his holiday snaps to the Internet and had no idea they were being used in this way.

 

The moral of the story is that you should never upload content that includes ANY private information about yourself to the Internet. I also reckon that you should also specifically avoid photos of yourself or your family. Problem is, many people don’t see anything wrong with it and continue to do so, not appreciating that once it is up on the Internet you no longer have control over it. Would you offer that information to a stranger on the street? Probably not, so why are you offering on the Internet to billions of strangers?

 

Facebook is a commercial entity. Its sole purpose in life if to make money for shareholders. If it allows you to sign up for free where do you think it makes money? It does that by collected as much information about you and selling that. If you willing provide more information, it will sell that also. Don’t be fooled by claims otherwise, your information is valuable. If you don’t think so then someone else certainly does.

 

Don’t get me wrong, things like Facebook and Twitter have their place but you should stop and consider how much information you are giving away and what you get in return. Once you have given that information away chances are you’ll never get it back. So, at the very least, don’t upload a picture of you standing next to a really expensive car or you could be the face of the next Internet scam!

Email interruption

A while back I did a post on Productivity costs of emails based on the average Australian wage. Since then I’ve come across “The cost of email interruption” which is a short report from researchers at Computer Science Department of Loughborough University located in the United Kingdom. Although the report appears a little dated now some of its observations are still very relevant, like:

 

– It was notable that many of the email messages employees received were not really relevant to for them.This usually resulted from an email sent to all employees.

 

– The common reaction to the arrival of an email is not to delay response to a time that is more convenient to the user but to react within 6 seconds, again almost as quickly as they would  respond to telephone calls.

 

It is amazing when you realize that people actually respond to an email faster than they do the phone. Now multiply that by how emails a day they receive and you get an idea of how bad email interruptions are.

 

Here’s another interesting finding:

 

During the study it was noticeable that none of the employees monitored used message rules within their email application

 

That’s right, none of the employees used message rules to filter their incoming emails! Like most applications we have on our machines these days we have no idea of the true power they provide us. We (and our employers) spend so little time learning how to use the technology tools that we are typically using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail. It does the job sure, just not very efficiently.

 

So what’s the solution according to the report?

 

Introduce training to all staff on how to use email in areas such as, setting email priority, email house keeping with message rules, effective use of the user groups and address books,  constructing better structured emails.

 

and having recognized these issues myself that is exactly the training that I provide. Why? because it is truly amazing how much more productive the whole business (or the individual) becomes when they understand how to use email and their email programs correctly. They are never going to learn this on their own, it something they need guidance with.

 

You can find more information about the email productivity training I provide at www.doemailless.com.