“If it’s 4:30 pm in Phoenix…”
Have you ever had to plan a meeting for participants across multiple time zones? Outlook can help you out in many cases by allowing you to see more than one time zone or automatically adjusting for different time zones. In this post, we offer tips for time zones and many other issues related to scheduling meetings in Outlook.
Part One: Planning, Changing, Canceling
And, if it’s 4:30 pm in Phoenix, it’s 10:30 am in Sydney — but what day?
Planning a Meeting in Outlook
(Outlook 2002, 2003, 2007)
By Matt Mahoney
The core feature of Outlook is the calendar. This invaluable tool helps you keep track of your appointments and enables you to schedule meetings with colleagues. Here’s how to invite attendees to a meeting.
Outlook 2007:
1. Click the File menu, choose New, and then choose Meeting Request.
2. On the Meeting tab of the Ribbon, click the “Scheduling” button (depending on your mail server configuration, this button may also be called “Scheduling Assistant”), located in the Show group. Then click the “Add Others” button at the Read more…
admin Outlook, Time-Saving Tips How To, meetings, Outlook, time zones
It’s that time of year when we look back on what was and ponder what is to come. The year 2009 brought a number of significant tech developments — the iPhone as a legitimate business tool (AT&T’s bandwidth issues notwithstanding); the Cloud’s emergence; grandmothers embracing social media; Windows 7 — all of which promise to change the way we work.
Still, all our readers cared about was learning how to use a secondary axis in Excel, how to change BlackBerry calendar views, and why help desk techs are so surly.
Here’s a list of our top 10 posts from 2009. Read and enjoy.
10. Get It Together: 5 Ways to Stay Organized in Outlook
9. 5 Lessons to Learn Before Outsourcing
8. A Kinder, Gentler Help Desk
7. Top 5 Most-Asked Help Desk Questions
6. 7 Productivity-Boosting iPhone Tips
5. Out of Office, Out of Mind
4. How the Help Desk Earns its Bad Reputation
3. Follow the Format: 5 MS Word Tips for Managers
2. 4 BlackBerry Tips Every Manager Should Know
1. Management Tool Best Practices: 3 Excel Tips that Promise Charting Greatness
MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps
admin Year in Review BlackBerry, Excel, FACEBOOK, How To, iPhone, Outlook, Social Media, the Cloud, tips and tricks, Twitter, Windows Mobile
We see it all the time. Customers call for help after they’ve wrestled with a software snag for an hour or sometimes more. They preface the call with “I should know how to do this” and “sorry for the stupid question.”
The reports and surveys tell a compelling story. Actual customer feedback is even more powerful.
They are usually exasperated, and often embarrassed. Who wants to admit lack of knowledge, especially if they believe their job is on the line?
The employers themselves, the ones chanting “do more with less, do more with less” at every all-hands and in every company-wide e-memo, are partially to blame. If a corporation doesn’t offer software support, workers must find their own solutions — which usually cost dearly in downtime and lost productivity. If a company does offer how-to support, it’s considered a luxury and its use may be frowned upon. (This recent Dilbert cartoon, sent to me by a colleague, captures it precisely.)
In sour financial times, desktop application support usually is the first to go when budgets are cut. It’s hard to tally its return on investment, and the demand for such support is often hidden.
But the need is there, and even more so now when many companies are operating with fewer employees and the same workload. (See a post I wrote in October titled “Basic Training: Why Workers Need Software Support.”) Read more…
admin Worker Productivity Access, Dilbert, downtime, How To, software support
A Twitter search of “do more with less” returns everything from quotes by revered philosophers (“It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer” – William of Ockham) to rants about how cheaply Blade Runner was made compared to present-day sci-fi films. Read more…
admin How To Blade Runner, CIO, Help Desk, How To, Microsoft Office, productivity, templates, William of Ockham
By far, the most common Outlook question we get here is how to free the application from the shackles of a full mailbox. When you reach the mailbox size limit, your ability to send e-mails is the first to go. For any corporate worker, that’s akin to not having a computer at all.
Often callers want help clearing enough space to send the e-mails that are waiting in the Outbox; they have no time to go over proper mailbox maintenance – deadlines are looming, meetings have started. Read more…
admin How To, Outlook How To, Outlook, tips and tricks, Worker Productivity
We get hundreds of BlackBerry calls a week, and most aren’t from the guy who just dropped his device in a bowl of Wonton soup. Rather, it’s the managers on their way to meetings or hopping on flights who want to know the handy tricks and tips that will save them time and make their smart phones smarter. Here are a few of the notables:
Tip No. 1: How to Filter Incoming Mail
Say, for example, you receive a daily report that you will not read or deal with on your phone and would prefer to just handle it back at the office. Can you create a filter for that?
Of course you can. Here’s how: Read more…
admin BlackBerry, Mobile Devices, Worker Productivity BlackBerry, How To, smart phone
Getting more money allocated to your IT budget is already a Sisyphean effort, even more so in a lean economy. Using a sloppy PowerPoint presentation to argue your case makes your quest even more ineffective. You can’t do anything about the economy, but you can use these tips to make a more effective, polished pitch.
Trick No. 1: Add Narration To Your Show
Adding narration can be helpful if you plan on e-mailing your show or posting it to the web. Follow these steps, Read more…
admin How To, Office 2007, PowerPoint, Time-Saving Tips How To, Office 2007, PowerPoint
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