#57: Excel-lent Conditional Formatting

Posted on December 13, 2024 (Updated December 11, 2024) by ewand

A theme of previous ToWs has been that applications often have lots more functionality than users either know or care about enough to utilise. Two of the simplest yet most impactful ways of handling data in Excel (and in Google Sheets, LibreOffice / OpenOffice etc, which basically copied the functionality) is to create tables from data, and to use conditional formatting to help them stand out.

Select a block of data – and for the purposes of these examples, we’re going to use some sample sales data – and on the home tab, it’s a few clicks to Format as Table. Even if you don’t intend to use more advanced formulae and get into naming tables and ranges, just doing the simple formatting and declaring the top row as headers gives you great ability to sort and filter the data quickly.

If you’re lucky, the table may automatically interpret the contents of your data, too – like understanding date fields. As we’ll get to later, you can even sort and filter by the appearance and not just the actual contents.

Users working on data in Excel which is clearly tabular but has not been defined as a Table, should almost be considered criminals.

Conditional Formatting made easy

Back on the Ribbon, the neighbouring Conditional Formatting control lets you add more pop to an existing Table or any other data. Select whatever cells, columns or rows you want to apply it to, and on the flyout menu you’ll have access to hundreds of options to visually distinguish certain data.

For simple “how to” and a cheesy video, check out the help on Use conditional formatting to highlight information in Excel.

If you need to do stuff that’s more complex, there’s also the option to write a formula but it’s quite different to regular Excel formulae – and can take a bit of working out, especially if it’s more complex. See the “Use a formula…” further down that previous help page.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way if you’re a Copilot user (and if you’re not, Microsoft has started pushing a free 1-month trial – just make sure you put a reminder in your diary or you’ll fall into the trap of subscribing to stuff you might not want). Rather than trying to write a formula and figure out the logic of it, you can just ask Copilot and it will comply…

After it has been applied, you could edit the rule to change its range, tweak the formula or adjust the formatting by going to the Manage Rules option under the Conditional Formatting menu. Make sure the “Show formatting rules for:” filter is set to the right area so you’ll see this and any other rules which may apply.

These rules are very useful for highlighting things that stick out – like due date on a pipeline report which have now passed, or a number that’s radically out of kilter with all the others in an export from a credit card account. If you’re dealing with very large sheets of data, you could filter the view not just by the values but by the colours that your formatting has set:

… thus temporarily hiding any of the rows which are not of interest.

Finally, you can interrogate data within Copilot without having to mess about with filters and the like, for example:

To validate that this is actually true, a pivot table can show the data by different dimensions and allow totalling, sorting and filtering: in this case, sorting (descending) by the sum of all orders:

Pivot Tables are some of the best magic that Excel delivers; it’s been a while since they’ve featured in ToW – leave a comment if you think that needs addressing. See here for more examples of Copilot prompts in Excel.

#55: Quick access to fave notes

Posted on November 29, 2024 (Updated November 29, 2024) by ewand

A few themes have re-appeared on Tip of the Week over the years … saving time by using keyboard shortcuts, finding useful but somewhat hidden bits of Windows or Office apps, etc. One of the most prominent seams to mine, however, has been an undying for Onay-no-tay.

The UX Paradox of Office Apps

Usability research into Office applications once found that 87%* of the new features users asked for, were already in the product – they just didn’t know how to find them. As more and more features were added to apps – Excel particularly, it seems – end-users just didn’t know how to “discover” them. By Office 2000, dynamic “intelli-menus” basically hid options which were more obscure or which an individual just didn’t use, and while it made things look simpler and less cluttered, it made the problem worse.

A wholescale UX rethink in Office begat the “Ribbon”, which is now pervasive in other apps; if you’re interested in such things, check out Jensen Harris’ 2008 presentation on what led to the Ribbon being conceived. The talk offers a great historical perspective but also goes over the thought processes on how these things come about.

* statistic is made up but the story holds true. Who cares if facts and figures are correct as long as the lies are well presented? How do you think Excel charts and PowerBI got so successful?

Not Just Another Toolbar

Even with the Ribbon to make things more ordered, sometimes it’s good to be able to jump straight to a feature you use commonly; the customizable Quick Access Toolbar on the top left of many apps gives you the ability to pin certain commands, and can be an invaluable way of getting to functions you like without delving into Ribbon tabs and menus.

Click the down-arrow to the right of the toolbar and you can pick from a set of suggested functions, or by customizing it, you can delve into any part of the extensive menus and pin just that one feature there. There are commands which are not even on the Ribbon, but you could pin them to the QAT if you like them…

The QAT is present in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook (classic) – but not New Outlook, to some users’ chagrin. It’s not uncommon to find a similar UI feature in 3^rd party apps from the mid-2010s.

OneNote Favo(u)rites (again)

New Testament Tip of the Week #39 covered saving Favourites in OneNote: #39: OneNote Shortcuts, Favourites and Pins. Despite some of the guff being taken up with browser and mobile favourites, the good stuff in that tip was in (once again) recommending the fantastic OneTastic.

As well as providing an extensive macro capability, the OneTastic addin lets you pin a page or section to “Favorites”, and you can later go back to the same menu used to manage the pining, in order to access your previously pinned pages.

For extra goodness, try customizing the QAT and looking for Pin to Favorites…

Select it, click Add >> and hit OK. Now you’ll be able to access the drop-down for Favorites right there from the top left corner…

Happy Friday!

#53: Right tool for the job

Posted on November 20, 2024 by ewand

Anyone who has worked in IT for long enough will likely have seen cases where unwitting users are wielding completely the wrong utility or application to get stuff done. Perhaps the entire company finance system is running on an old Access database, or the accountants were using a spreadsheet for holding something other than numbers? It’s one thing having lots of tools, but knowing which one to use when is sometimes a lost art.

Sometimes, organizational culture is to blame – if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail (as how Microsoft leaders once felt about Oracle’s Larry Ellison saying that “database” was the answer to every question). Some companies use email for everything, others have moved all their internal comms to Teams or Slack, and occasionally use email only for customers.

The advent of Electronic Forms

One early measure of effectiveness of newly-installed IT systems, was the inefficiencies it managed to replace – and reducing paper forms was one often paraded benefit. Literally cutting red tape, not only speeding everything up and reducing wasted paper, moving to electronic forms was and is an easy case to make. Nowadays, you’d use a web form onto some kind of cloudy data store without even thinking about it, but it wasn’t always so simple.

In the late 1990s, forms were a key component of “Groupware”, with Lotus Notes being the early market leader (and which spurred Microsoft into competitive action in trying to build an alternative).

Microsoft had a separate E-Forms product as far back as the early 1990s, running on top of the old MSMail system, later being migrated into Exchange. The idea was that companies could easily make forms to send around in email, capturing data fields and making smart routing and workflow decisions along the way. It’s safe to say, they never really took off…

Outlook picked up forms duty (see here, in the cutting edge “Developing a workflow application” Exchange 5.5 whitepaper). There are still vestiges of Forms Designer in Outlook today (if you’re on Outlook (classic) rather than the upstart New Outlook, that is).

Forms in the 2020s

It’s so easy to use forms now – quickly building a web front end to a set of data is par for the course with Google Forms and Microsoft Forms, to name just two examples. Both are available in free versions (using a consumer Gmail/Outlook type login) or are part of corporate packages which bring extra functions and access to other data.

It is easy to create a form with some simple validation, and then collect responses from people – anonymously or (if they’re in your organization) capturing the logged-in username of the person who submitted it. Results are easily summarized and viewed with charts, word clouds~~wordclouds~~ and the like.

Each form is basically a series of questions, with different types used to validate data – like getting a rating, picking a date, choosing from set options or even entering specific types of text or numbers.

There are lots of scenarios where a simple form could take the place of sending an email – like registering for an event and collecting dietary requirements, or asking a group of people for a time and place that works best to meet; instead of trying to juggle lots of responses, a form could be the ideal way to present options and get their selections.

For meeting arranging scenarios there are numerous ways of trying to make this simpler – from websites like Doodle, the various Calendly/Bookings options for 1:1 meetings, or the former add-in utility FindTime for finding group availability in Outlook, which has now been replaced with a built-in Scheduling poll feature.

2020s meet 2000s

There are some things which should be easy, using Microsoft Forms, that are just not. Even though Forms can be run inside a M365 organization’s own tenant, and therefore we know who everyone is as they’ve already signed in, there’s no way of adding a “Person” to a form, such that they could be picked from the directory.

To do that needs to revert to an altogether older form technology – the SharePoint List. Originating from 2001, SharePoint really hit its stride by 2007, offering lots of web-based collaboration functionality that almost equalled what Lotus was doing a decade earlier. Microsoft did have another forms/data toolset, InfoPath, with SharePoint integrations – but that’s gone away now, not replaced with any single thing. We don’t really talk about InfoPath any more.

Using SharePoint and with~~With~~ a bit of nous, you can~~could~~ quickly build a detailed list – think of it like a simple database – and generate a form with data validation, branching logic and so on.

But a much easier way is to look at the newer Lists web app, which combines simple forms stuff with a SharePoint based back-end, meaning there’s more integration with M365, including directory integration …

… which looks a lot better than having to type someone’s name in.

Lists is part of M365 (look in the app grid on the top left if you go to Office.com and sign in, then peek under the More Apps section). )

In true Microsoft fashion, there are many ways to skin this feline – there’s also Loop, which could be used to do all kinds of groovy things in browsers, Teams, Outlook and more. Oh, and PowerApps. Mash all these tools together and you can build a spidery app legacy to keep your successors entertained for years.

#50: Object Oriented browsing notes

Posted on October 25, 2024 by ewand

Obscure Computer Science theory had an obsession with “object orientation” some years ago; both a technique in how applications are written but also design thinking on how they might be used. Sensei Steve Jobs, while walking the earth before coming back to save Apple, had a famed obsessions for design and rooted his NeXT computer on an object-oriented approach. The NeXT Cube itself was arguably ahead of its time, but in 1990 cost a cool $10K (that’s about $25K in today’s money). There were few takers, though the odd geek still gets excited to pick them up 2^nd hand.

An example of object orientation in user interaction is that you go to a thing you want to work with, rather than a tool with which you want to work. Elements of this are all over UX in Windows, like going to a document in Explorer, and it lets you open, edit, print, etc. Most people will still go to Word and open a file from there; that’s why the Most Recently Used list and Search features exist.

To start something new, you’ll likely open your app of choice then use it to create a file or open an existing one. When did you last go to SharePoint and use the New -> menu option to create a document in situ, much less a OneNote notebook? Exactly.

There are other places where things are less cut and dried: you might open a notebook like OneNote, Evernote, Notion etc, and start taking notes on a thing you’re working on. Or you might want to be in the flow – in a Teams meeting, or viewing a document on which you want to make some side notes – and it makes more sense to bring the notepad to the side and ideally keep the context so when you revisit that document or that webpage, you’ll (optionally) see the notes you had previously.

Progress is not forthcoming

Sadly, as apps evolve some features are sacrificed perhaps because telemetry tells the developer that they’re not much used, or they just decide that newer things are more important. One key villain in this regard is the “new” (Chromium) Edge browser, which left behind many of the features of the old(“Spartan”) Edge, which might not have been much used but then neither was the old Edge. The dev roadmap appears to focus on more ways to inject adverts and to jam Bing services and Copilot into everything, than to actually make the browser as useful as the one it replaced.

Linked Notes

As covered 18 months ago on old testament ToW 683, OneNote has the capability to be docked to the side of whatever other window is being used, and in some cases, maintains a link to the document that is in the main window.

You’d create the page you want to make notes on in OneNote, and when Linked Notes are enabled, it will tie back to the Word etc doc you were using in the other window. That way, if you re-open the notes in OneNote you’re only a click away from pulling up the document they relate to.

If you later go to back to it in Word, however, or open the doc directly from Explorer, there’s no obvious way to bring up the notes you were taking, without going to OneNote, finding the page you took the notes on, and perhaps docking the window again. Even the Linked Notes option on the Review menu doesn’t quite work as expected – it’s for establishing a new link, not reanimating an old one.

This is an example where true object orientation would work well – you’d open the Word doc which you had linked to OneNote, and you’d automatically see the notes in a sidebar.

Remember Internet Explorer?

Even ye old IE had an option of being linked in OneNote so you could take notes on a page you were viewing. Sadly, Edge has torched this feature – along with Reading List and one of the more helpful and semi-OO feature, which didn’t use OneNote but was still potentially handy…

Web Notes RIP

Web Notes was a feature of Old Edge, for jotting down simple notes on whatever page you were viewing, and the next time you visited that same page, the notes would be shown alongside.

Imagine if you were looking to buy a house or pretty much any other major piece of shopping; whilst conducting research, you might browse to several properties of interest and could make some notes about each one – near a good school but close to a busy road, nice rear garden, high crime area down the road, neighbour has planning permission to build a house in their back yard…

It could be so useful to jot the notes as you go and have them presented again if you happen to revisit the same page in future (so you remember you’ve already looked into it). If you could later see a list of every note you took, with a link back to its source, so much the better.

Sadly, there is no way to do this in Edge, without relying on extensions. There are many out there but none really hit the brief well – if you find a better one, please do mention in the comments below.

The OneNote Clipper is worth a look if you want to keep a list of notes with links back to pages, but is old school in that you’d go to OneNote to find that list and then see which pages you had commented on, rather than the more Object Oriented approach of viewing a page and having the notes offered to you.

Perhaps the extension which comes closest to the functional requirement (even if it doesn’t win many prizes for looks) is Note AnyWhere, available from the Chrome store (and can therefore be installed on both Chrome and “new” Edge).

For ease of use, after installation, click the Extensions icon on the toolbar and Pin the Note Anywhere icon to the toolbar, after which taking notes on a new page is only a couple of clicks away. When you next visit a page, previous notes will be displayed (or you can choose to just show a number on the toolbar by the icon, to show how many notes you’ve made).

It would be nice to have some simple formatting, and searching previous notes is a little clumsy (requiring you to sign up and sync with the developer’s web front end), but for a free app that doesn’t (yet) nag you to subscribe for extra functions, it’s not half bad.

PS – Remember, this weekend is when Europe (mostly) ends Daylight Saving Time, meaning next week could see clashing of meetings arranged with international attendees, before North America catches up on 3^rd Nov. New Zealand and some of Australia has already made the leap.

This topic has been covered ad nauseam on previous ToWs … spring forward, fall back…

#49: Managing Multiple Messaging

Posted on October 18, 2024 (Updated October 17, 2024) by ewand

It used to be easy: you had an inbox (real or electronic) and new mail arrived. You’d check the inbox for anything that needed your attention, otherwise just get on with whatever it is that you were doing otherwise. Now, there are so many messaging apps that it can be a headache to not only keep on top of all the inbound contact, but to recall in which app you were having a conversation you want to go back to.

It might be easy if your professional comms is all done via email, but if you’re an itinerant consultant working with several companies, you might even have numerous professional email addresses too so keeping an eye on them all can be a chore.

There’s always a chance you’ll be dealing with LinkedIn or SMS messages with work connections as well, and with friends and colleagues there might be Facebook, WhatsApp and many more.

Two quick tips this week might help to get on top of things, if only a little.

Finding work-related messages in M365

If you use Teams and Outlook for work, with Microsoft 365, then you might already experience discombobulation when looking for something a colleague sent, or some comment discussed in the context of a project… was it in the status email, or in the chat of a meeting? Or a direct message in Teams?

Fortunately, the “Work” search options might be able to help. If your organization has it enabled, go to either Bing.com/work or look at the search option in Office.com while you’re signed in, and you’ll be able to search documents and other sources of data within your M365 environment.

One such is Messages – and the handy shortcut to jump there is aka.ms/messages. Type a search term in there and it will look across both your Outlook mailbox, but also in any Teams messages you might have been part of. Once you get used to checking it – and using the Work search for documents and other stuff – it’s a game changer.

Another trick, for finding documents in your work context, is to search from Windows Search directly by pressing the WindowsKey and typing work: followed by something you’re looking for.

Search across OneNote

Though it’s not strictly messaging, you might have taken notes during a meeting (or even had your friendly Copilot overlord do it for you), potentially spread across several OneNote notebooks.

The search box in OneNote lets you choose if you want to perform a query across the current page, section, notebook etc – but the results you get back can be a bit clumsy to interpret as it doesn’t give any details on which are really old pages and which might have been written recently.

If you haven’t discovered the obscure ALT+O to pin search results, try it out – it lets you group by section, page title or date, and you can expand and collapse the groupings to help locate the most likely page more quickly.

Now, where did you put your glasses?

#47: Using Copilot for (consistent) meeting notes

Posted on October 4, 2024 (Updated October 1, 2024) by ewand

“GenAI” like Copilot and ChatGPT has been evolving quickly over the last year or two, and the more experience people have in using it has also changed their approach. Just as providing better questions to get more accurate search queries from Google / Bing, getting the best results from Copilot or the like might depend on being specific enough with your questions.

Here’s a tip courtesy of Kat Beedim, Microsoft 365 MVP from Microsoft partner, CPS. Kat is using Copilot to summarise the output of a Teams meeting, in an alternative way to the built-in Copilot for Microsoft 365 method which generates a pretty decent summary (and was recently discussed in context of the OneNote integration). While the content is generally good, using the standard approach, you will likely get differing formats of notes from one meeting to the next, depending on what was said.

Kat’s approach is to download the transcript from a meeting that you’ve attended; this may be available to anyone who joined the meeting, even if the tenant hosting the meeting doesn’t itself have Copilot provisioned. In other words, if you have access to Copilot and you can get the transcript from a meeting (which you didn’t organise, maybe even one organised by a different company) then you can generate the meeting notes.

To see if the meeting was transcribed, go back to the Chat or the Recap from the meeting within Teams and you might be able to download the transcript (as a .DOCX file).

Save the transcript file to OneDrive in the same tenant where your Copilot for M365 is, and within a Copilot prompt you can reference it… if you go to Copilot (Work) and press “/” in a prompt, it will let you choose a file (or other source of data).

Kat has provided a very polite and detailed prompt for Copilot to generate meeting notes; by using the same prompt after every project or team meeting, the same format of notes will be preserved.

Copilot, please assist me in converting the attached /(start typing the file name to select it)
into detailed meeting minutes.

Here’s what I need:

1. Identify Key Sections: Break down the transcript into distinct sections: attendees, apologies, introductions, summary of concerns, previous actions discussed, further discussions, recommendations and actions, date of next meeting. Keep to that order.

2. Summarise Discussions: Provide a detailed summary of the discussions for each agenda item, capturing the main points and any consensus reached.

3. Highlight Decisions: Clearly state any decisions made, including the rationale behind them and any dissenting opinions if applicable.

4. List Action Items: Enumerate the action items that came out of the meeting, specifying the responsible party and the deadline for each task

5. Note Attendees: Include a list of attendees and their roles or titles, as well as any apologies for absence.

6. Format for Clarity: Use full sentences and paragraphs, tables, and bold text for emphasis where necessary to enhance readability. Do not use bullet points.

7. Review for Accuracy. Ensure that the minutes reflect an accurate and impartial record of the meeting, and make any necessary edits for clarity and conciseness. Please format the minutes in a professional and presentable manner. suitable for distribution to all meeting participants and for record-keeping purposes. Thank you.

You could also open the transcript directly in Word and enter the gist of the prompt above in Copilot within Word, though formatting is a bit nicer when done from the Copilot for M365 prompt. It might be possible some day to tell it to generate a new document using a set template, but that appears to be a manual process for now.

Feel free to have a play with the prompt to get the format and the answers you want; you have 2,000 characters to give your instructions so be as descriptive as you like.

Kat’s video demo is on Write meeting minutes with Copilot – YouTube.

#39: OneNote Shortcuts, Favourites and Pins

Posted on August 9, 2024 by ewand

Regular ToW readers may share in a collective for OneNote – and there have been plenty Tips over the years to celebrate. There are other note-taking apps out there, of course, but if you have invested time and years of notes in one, it’s hard to shift.

OneNote comes in a variety of versions spanning web, mobile, Mac & PC, and you have the ability to organise pages of notes in sections, groups and whole separate Notebooks, should you wish. Notebooks can be shared with other people and could be used to contain stuff that’s specifically for one particular project or role.

Personal vs Work

If using OneNote on the web (which needs you to be online to access it), you could have different browser profiles for work and home, and therefore all your work notebooks would be in one and your home-related ones in another. The PC version of OneNote lets you mix notebooks from different accounts, so you could have them all open in one app – handy for some, though it can lead to lots of notebooks being open and searching right across them can be bothersome (see Classic ToW #646 for help with that).

If you keep going back to a few pages for shopping lists or the likes, it’s quite easy to grab a link directly so you can find it again quickly. Go to a section or page in the web version and you can right-click to copy a link to it, forming a simple https:// URL to wherever the source is stored (on OneDrive if you’re using a personal Microsoft Account or in SharePoint if using a M365 login).

Save that URL to wherever makes sense for you and it will launch directly to that page in a new browser upon activation.

Desktop vs Web

If you’re using the PC OneNote app, however, you’d want to have the page open in that app rather than in the browser. In the old days, you could drag a OneNote page to your desktop or some other Explorer folder, and it would create a shortcut to it – but not any more.

If you repeat the above process of right clicking / copying a link when in the app, then paste the resulting link into Notepad or similar, you’ll see there are actually two links – firstly, a https:// formatted URL and a second beginning onenote:https:// and finishing &end.

Select and copy the line(s) beginning onenote: to the end, then you can create a shortcut elsewhere – it’s a bit of a palaver, but…

· right-click on desktop or in your chosen folder,

· choose New > Shortcut and paste the onenote: link in there… hit Next,

· give it a meaningful name and save it

· now you could launch OneNote directly to your chosen page, with a simple tap or double click on that icon.

OneTastic to the rescue

A simpler way is to use the Pin to Favorites (sic) feature in the most excellent addon, OneTastic; this lets you create and pin links to a variety of locations, perhaps most usefully within the “Favorites” section of that menu itself – and to recall a Fav in future, just go to that menu to quickly navigate to several pinned OneNote pages and sections.

The “Favorites” location can be accessed in the file system if you like, too – just press WindowsKey+R to get the Run command up, then enter %appdata%\OneTastic and you’ll find the folder in there.

Pin it on the move

Mobile users have a simpler way, at least Android users do. Within OneNote, select the 3-dot menu on the top right of a page, and you can Add to Home screen; this will try to pin a shortcut to whatever kind of homescreen / launcher you have.

iOS users might need to rely on a Widgety solution instead.

#38: Get ahead: get a proper monitor

Posted on August 2, 2024 (Updated August 2, 2024) by ewand

As WFH became normalised during the pandemic, a lot of people went from having access to a reasonable working environment in an office, to sitting on the sofa or camping on a kitchen table. A trend of working from a laptop in coffee shops had already been underway and got additional legitimacy when things opened up again.

For the lucky ones with space at home, the increasing trend for WF there sometimes means they have a better environment than in the office – no desk sharing, putting up with co-workers’ smelly/noisy/annoying habits, perhaps even a faster internet connection. This doubtless contributes to the reported reluctance to return to the rat-race in the office.

Make the most of your screen

One huge downside of working off a laptop is that the screen – even for the biggest ones – is small.

There’s little doubt that productivity gains can be had by having larger monitors or more of them. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch from gave a seminal talk on time management in 2007 – prescient, since he was dying of pancreatic cancer at the time and had only months left to live (his Last Lecture is also worth watching). In that session, he advised that maximizing screen real estate is one of the best things you can do.

The simplest way to improve screen area for a home office desk is to buy a decent monitor. Find one with adjustable height (so you can be looking straight at it, not down at a laptop screen) and position the laptop in front of you, below the monitor.

Extend the desktop to the big screen and make that your main display (so new windows, the task bar, Start menu etc will appear there rather than on your laptop).

Side-to-side

It’d be even better if you can use a proper keyboard and mouse, maybe with a suitable docking station, then park the laptop to the side. Ideally you should prop it up so that its display and your monitor are similar in height – there are plenty laptops stands available, or you could even just put it on a pile of books…

Big screen x little screens

If you’ve had a home office setup for a while, it’s possible you’ll have one or two old monitors that won’t be worth much at resale so you could always bring them into action in a true “multi-monitor” setup (without delving into additional hardware to allow more, Windows 11 supports up to 6 displays).

Then again, a single large monitor might be a bit more feng shui, and there are plenty of good displays out there. A single, widescreen, curved monitor could give you the same kind of functionality as having two side-by regular widescreen ones, with less cabling and fuss.

Modern displays often have USB hubs and lots of other features such as display modes where two inputs are shown side-by-side (so you have two different PCs on display, or a PC on one side and an Xbox on the other half, or take two inputs from one PC into one physical screen – the computer would see it as two side-by-side monitors, which might have benefits when it comes to app layouts).

Managing the placement of windows is a lot easier with the groovy window snapping stuff introduced in Windows 11 (hover over the maximize icon on the top right of your window, and you’ll see options for where to snap it onto the screen… it’s more than just left/right since if you have a mahoosive screen, you’ll likely have several windows side-by-side). If you need more control, or you’re running Windows 10, try the Fancy Zones utility as part of PowerToys.

Dell Ultrasharp and Display Manager

Dell have long made some of the best PC monitors; particularly their more expensive Ultrasharp range. If you’re shopping for a new screen, there are various ways to save money too – they have a Dell Advantage program where you can get specific vouchers (eg Microsoft employees can get theirs by entering their work email here), and they have an Outlet store for refurbished goods.

If you have a Dell monitor already, there’s an app for Windows and Mac which could make your life a little better, especially if you routinely switch between inputs / PiP modes etc – the Dell Display Manager. Connect your PC and the monitor with a USB cable, and you can use the software on the PC to control how the monitor works, rather than monkeying around trying to press tiny buttons to drive the On-Screen Display menu. You can even set up shortcut keys to make it easier to dive in.

Tidy.

#37: What’s your LinkedIn SSI score?

Posted on July 29, 2024 by ewand

Are you the kind of vainglorious blowhard who likes to tell everyone about all your latest achievements or humblebrag your gratitude for some amazing success / that latest certification? Some people think that’s what LinkedIn is for. With over one billion users, there are certainly opportunities for networking and sharing interesting content too, and not all of it leaves its reader feeling queasy.

There’s a scoring facility on LinkedIn, hitherto visible only to subscribers of the $100-1600 per month (yes) “Sales Navigator” product: SSI. Nothing to do with nature sites or social security, Social Selling Index is a score to tell you how well you stack up against your peers when it comes to four pillars of social selling.

It’s available to regular cheapskate LinkedIn free users too – check your score out on https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi

When Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016, the $26B price paid seemed like quite a lot, even if competitors openly moaned about it. In the last fiscal year alone, LinkedIn brought in $15B of revenue so it seems like a pretty good investment all-in. The Microsoft FY24 results are due next week so we’ll see if its inexorable growth continues (hint: it’s been adding 8-9% compared to the previous year over the last 3 quarters, so it’s seems a fair bet).

What is “Social Selling” anyway?

In short, it’s a way of identifying sales prospects and using social media to connect and interact with them. Clearly, LinkedIn thinks it’s the most likely place for this to happen, though some industries and/or demographics might find Instagram or Tik Tok to be their platform of choice.

LinkedIn claims that people who are good at social selling create more opportunities, are more likely to reach their quota, and that 78% of them will outsell their peers who don’t use social media (bad luck if you’re one of the 22% that get outperformed by old style relationship sellers). You could use the Social Selling Index to see how you stack up against those who don’t use social selling skills.

The freebie view of your SSI score doesn’t really give you any explanation as to why it is what it is, nor particularly practical tips for how to get it higher… There are plenty of articles online offering tips on how to make your SSI go up, and the somewhat dry help page for Sales Nav does give a little more info.

It’s a calculation based on 4 pillars:

Establish your brand – basically, how complete is your LinkedIn profile and how much stuff you post/share. Pepper your profile with the right buzzwords and your score might go up. Treat your LinkedIn profile like it’s your CV/resumé with at least a bit of detail of your experience, add a profile photo etc, and you should do OK.

Find the right people – how well are you growing your network with new connections? Finding new prospects and connections might be easier if you’re a Sales Navigator subscriber as the searching tools are more granular, but you can still get a long way with the built-in search and filtering tools. If you don’t want to pay for Sales Navigator, you might still find value in the less spendy LinkedIn Premium.

Engage with insights – a rating where LinkedIn looks at how you engage with other people’s content (liking, commenting) and how much you share yourself (whether it’s reposting or creating something new). Being active in LinkedIn Groups also helps.

Build relationships – supposedly “connecting and establishing trust” – though likely measured by how many interactions you have with people, like commenting on their posts or sending them messages, maybe even commenting or liking back on other people’s comments on your posts.

Normally, you’re the only one who can see your SSI, but if you get an Enterprise license for Sales Navigator, then your admin can see everything and you might be able to see how the other members of your team are doing:

If your company is paying for a Sales Navigator license for you, then it’s always possible you could find that maintaining a certain level of SSI as one of your compensable OKRs.

So, being consistently busy on LinkedIn is likely to make your social selling index go up, even if the things you do are not necessarily examples of good social selling… the maxim of “Empty vessels make most noise” may still apply to LinkedIners who spend all their time doing stuff of low value.

You’ll find lots of online resources explaining why Social Selling is A Good Thing, and how to do it better. There’s even a book about Social Selling on LinkedIn should you feel like some summer holiday reading by the pool.

#36: Navigating Windows by keyboard

Posted on July 19, 2024 by ewand

Now and again, it’s useful to be able to use Windows without mouse or touch, especially should the unexpected happen. Accessibility needs aside, it’s been possible to move around and control Windows since the very early days, just by using combinations of keystrokes.

ALT+F4 is maybe the most memorable (for closing a window), apart from CTRL+ALT+DEL.

A few other window management keystrokes worthy of mention:

WindowsKey+up/down/right/left arrows – maximize the current window to fullscreen (up), back from fullscreen to previous size or minimizes it (down), and snaps the window to one side of the screen or back (left/right).

ALT+TAB / SHIFT+ALT+TAB – cycles through the current open windows (and add SHIFT to go backwards). Releasing the ALT+TAB combo then jumps to whichever window is highlighted; press CTRL+ALT+TAB to just display the open windows, let you move between them and jump to one by clicking on it or pressing ENTER.

ALT+left/right arrow – moves back and forward, as in clicking the back/forward arrow icons in a browser

WindowsKey + number – jumps to the nth application on your taskbar; if you pin an app/window to the taskbar and it stays in the same place so you could use WindowsKey+1 to jump to Explorer, Win+2 to go to the browser etc.

See more here. Many more.

Powered Up

As previous ToWs have mentioned (here, here, here etc), the collection of utilities called PowerToys is well worth installing; one of its default apps is a shortcut guide showing some key WindowsKey + nnn options. (Press WindowsKey+SHIFT+/ to display temporarily).

On the topic of PowerToys, one of the utilities is a special “Run” app which does a good bit more than the standard WindowsKey+R command which displays the old fashioned Run dialog;

PowerToys Run has a load of special characters to make special searches; enter ?? something will search the web using your default, or (optionally) put o: something searches your OneNote notebooks for that term.

Somewhat controversially, the default activation keystroke for PowerToys Run is ALT+Space, which has been a Windows shortcut to display the context menu of the current window. Pressing that combo followed by M or R would be used to move / resize (using the arrow keys) or N and X would minimize / maximize that window.

In a curmudgeonly article, El Reg complained that old school keyboard warriors would be most upset. The also suggest that the pre-Win95 icon for that corner of the window was a Spacebar, supposedly to illustrate that you press ALT+SPACE to open it.

Never fear, keyboard fans – you can simply remap the activation key to something else (like WindowsKey+Space) and the ALT+SPACE combo will continue to work like it’s 1987.