Cool things from last week

It seems that whenever I’m at a Calconnect event, I come back with several cool new things I learned.  Here’s the list from last week’s adventure.

1.  Doodle.com – I already blogged about it, but I liked it enough to show it again.

2. Quickly identify where your IP address physically is located. Pretty cool. http://www.liveipmap.com/

3.  My friend Guy showed me extraordinarily lovely photos created by taking several images – over and under exposed – and then merging them into one image. It’s called HDR – High Dynamic Range and the photos are spectacular.  They almost don’t look real.  Here’s a link to some stunning images.

http://www.online-photoshoptutorials.com/2008/10/17-of-the-most-visually-beautiful-hdr-images.html

Only three things this time – but they were nifty

Do you Doodle?

Ok, here’s a first.  Two blogs in the same day.  But I just stumbled on something totally cool and it warrents a second post today.

Have you heard of Doodle.com?  This is a super nifty site where you can schedule an event or send out a poll to large amounts of people, quickly, easily and free.  It’s growing at around 10% per month via word of mouth.  I just used it today to send out a poll asking about whether or not people knew you could schedule meetings and send invites via email – see my prior post.  I used Twitter to send out the poll link and yikes, I got three hits almost instantly.   Nifty indeed.

Here’s the link – http://www.doodle.com.  Give it a try.

If you send it will they come?

I’m sitting here at Calconnect, (http://www.calconnect.org) a meeting comprised of vendors, universities and companies who all share an interest in Calendaring and Scheduling. As I sit here listening to everyone talk about standards and what the customer wants, it occurs to me that there are probably still quite a few people who do not realise what you can do with calendaring products today.

This thought generated today’s blog post. In a few paragraphs I’m going to try to shed some light on the great things you can do with many applications today and the things that are “coming.”

Ok, let’s use the following scenario. You are planning a meeting and you want to invite several people. There will be a conference room involved along with a projector, and oh, the people are all in different cities and possibly even different timezones. This same scenario could be a family reunion at a resort with dinner invites as well. You get the idea.

Next, let’s set the environment of the meeting organizer. In our scenario, the calendar applications are Outlook 2003, Lotus Notes 7.0 and Google Calendar. Double-clicking on a date on the calendar opens a dialog box where you can put in a subject for the meeting,set a location, choose a resource like a conference room or a projector, and select the attendees. When you save the entry, it then sends the meeting as an invitation to anyone who is not on your Exchange server or part of your mail network. Ok, easy.

Here’s where I wonder how many people realize that when you save this meeting, special files are sent to the attendees. These emails have a little attachment called an ICS file. Inside that attachment are all the meeting details – or the calendar smarts. This tells the calendar application of the attendee that this is a meeting invitation and go do something. Typically, when you open it in your email application a special box will pop up asking you to ACCEPT, DECLINE or suggest an alternative time. That’s pretty cool and the good news is in our scenario both Google and Lotus Notes will “behave” appropriately and let you accept the meeting and add it directly to your calendar. Now, that’s cool.

The reason I wonder how many people realize this works this way is because I was sitting next to a guy on a plane a few weeks ago. We were sitting there on the ground waiting to get permission to take off – the classic “tarmac wait and wait” state. The pilot said OK, we’re going to be here a while and the guy next to me figured OK, he would do some work and pulled out his laptop, cell phone and wireless card. Here’s where I was bad and sort of watched over his shoulder. Yes, I know, I was bad.

Here’s what transpired. He got on his cell phone and said “hey, I need to set up a meeting so I’m sending you an email asking for times you are available. Also, I’ll send you an email with the time and date of the other meeting too.” Then, he opened Outlook, sent the email, went to his calendar and manually added the meeting, not putting in the email of the recipient. Hm. His phone rang, and the guy said he got the email and needed to do it on another day. My seatmate then got into Outlook and manually moved the meeting to another date. When he hung up, I bravely said I didn’t mean to be eavedropping but did he realise he could have opened a calendar entry in Outlook, added his friend as an attendee and mailed it – thereby doing two things with one action. His eyebrows went up and he said – “really, cool.” And he proceeded to pick up the phone, call his friend and say “hey, I want to try something out.” He then did what I suggested and lo and behold it worked. Not only did it work, his friend tried suggesting an alternative date, my seatmate received the file and lo and behold it moved on his calendar. You would have thought I had showed the guy the way to the fountain of youth. Something so simple yet to him vital. Why didn’t he know about this – who knows.

That’s when I wondered how many others don’t realize this happens. Maybe it’s because they tried and it didn’t work so why bother? Not sure.

Taking our scenario a bit further, what I want is the ability to check when people’s calendars have open timeslots. This is called searching for Freebusy. The good news is there is work going on now to make this happen. This to me is huge. And taking it a bit further, I work with people in other countries and on different timezones. Calendar applications all seem to operate differently with regards to how they handle timezones. Part of the problem is each app uses a different source for validating timezones. Some of the work going on is to put in place something called a timezone registry where applications can simply “call home”, pull in the current timezone listing, hang up, and everyone is on the same page. Mostly. We’re not there yet, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

So, I’ll continue doing my random surveying of people to see how many realize you can do these kind of things with calendars. It should be interesting.

Staying nimble in a bleak economy

Well, this blog entry is late because I’ve been doing what most people are doing now. Trying to keep my head above water in lean times. That being said, I figured that would be good blog item to talk about what we are trying to do and what we’ve done in the past to stay in business. Which, by the way, is now 11 years and counting.

Our first requirement to become more nimble was after 9/11. Most of our business was focused around Corporate America. Well, they shut their doors on spending and we ended up looking for business elsewhere quickly. I had spent 9 months managing a team rolling out ACT while still employed in Corporate America. I swore I’d never touch it again. Well, one of my favorite expressions is “never say never.” I took a chance, spent quite a bit of money and went and got certified in ACT. Part of the process of becoming certified meant I was put on their partner website. A client called exactly one month after we were put on the list and that turned into a contract that paid for the certification process three times over. Ok. Good idea. Successful conclusion.

In fact, we haven’t looked back since. ACT has become an integral part of our business. So much so that it has caused my other favorite expression (or better said – Alarm) to go off – “never put all your eggs in one basket.”

We do a lot of things besides ACT but since we train, customize, resell, and develop Addons for the product, it has become our cash cow. Now, though, people are watching their dollars. People are spending but much more reluctantly. This has sent me once again into nimble mode to see what we can do to keep the coffers full.

Ok, so here’s what we’re doing. I took a look at which industries were still calling and looking for ACT. I decided those groups would become the focus of a couple of marketing campaigns. I took some time to research what were the buzzwords and issues for those groups and made sure our campaigns addressed those issues.

As for my ACT clients, I figured they too were all in the same boat as we were. They were doing whatever they could to keep money rolling into their businesses. One thing in their favor was they all had ACT. ACT is sitting there with “gold in them thar hills” – meaning data saying who hadn’t been contacted, who wanted certain products, who preferred what, etc. It was time for my clients to drill down into their ACT data and mine the gold. That became the next focus of our group. We started looking for ways to make it easier to see the data.

I attended a session on a cruise that talked about custom reports (www.crystalclearessentials.com). Steve Stroz, a reporting guru, had a great idea about showing people reports and pointing them at the source. He also had done a few dashboards using a custom tool developed by Sage. I had already had Don working on the dashboard DLL and had dashboards of my own. I saw what Steve had done, and created some similar dashboards kicked up a notch based around things my clients wanted, packaged them up into an easy to install package (complete with our logos) and sent out a email blast about them. The email basically showed people how the dashboards looked and how easy it made it to spot problem areas or potential goldmines. I have since fallen in love with the dashboards because it is immediately apparant that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Case in point. I was at a client site doing ACT training. The group in the audience was less than receptive to the idea of needing to input data. They figured management would never look at it, so why bother. Well, then I showed them a dashboard. This particular dashboard showed activities. One person had been doing a super job of keeping their activities in ACT. Their bar line was 4 times larger than everyone else. Did I mention this group was very competitive. That chart was exactly what was needed to motivate that crew. And it made it clear to me that text is fine, but graphs are powerful. Oh, and management liked viewing them as well. Hm, there went that idea that management wouldn’t be looking at the data.

Which leads me to the next thing we’ve been doing to keep money flowing into the business. Again, I started looking at what people can do to get a better idea of what is going on with their business. Most everyone has Excel in house. Not everyone, though, is well versed in Pivot Tables and charts. I had two customers call for Excel training and that is what we focused on. One of my recent posts talked about showing Pivot tables to a client and it made their trip to our office worth the price of admission. And they were there for ACT training. However, it was the Pivot tables that made their day. Well, ok, Mr. Customer, you want to focus on Excel Pivot tables – we can do that.

That’s where being nimble comes into play. When the economy changes or events arise that drive business away from your door, you need to be nimble enough to change directions or tactics. You need to be aware of what is going on with your customers so you can point them towards things that will help not only them but you as well. It’s not quite the same as “you want me to jump how high.” It’s more of a “well, it was purple last week, it’s green this week.” I guess it’s like being a chameleon. You have to be able to change your colors when necessary. The trick is knowing which color and how fast.

We’re still working on our own color changes. When the phone is not ringing as much, we are using the time to work on the new processes, ideas or campaigns. Use the time to put in place new tools or products to sell. Yes, it’s scary when there is less money coming in but you have to do it. Every time I freak out about the number of calls that day I go back and look at what I was able to accomplish because, indeed, the phones weren’t ringing as bad. Hm. Ok. And we are now starting to see the results. The phones are starting to ring again – in answer to those emails I sent out. Yep, I struck a nerve. People are looking for ways to mine their data. Cool. Guess I better get back to doing just that. Being nimble and working on a new idea.

See ya….

I needed a day like today….

Once in a while, a day comes along where you realize “this is why I do this.”

We are ACT consultants. That is a good thing and somedays a bad thing. ACT is sooo much better now with version 11. However, there have been days where it wasn’t so.

I had two people from a new client in my offices today doing an “Advanced/Power User” ACT 2009 Class. The class was customized for their requirements.

Or at least that is what was scheduled. What happened, as usual for me, is it turned into a “here’s how you can use ACT” to satisfy your requirements and let’s plan what you need to be doing. In other words, it turned into more of a consulting gig than a training gig. That’s what happens a lot. I get started, they jump off their seats, and we’re off to the races.

I had gotten an email from the client with their “vision.” I always ask for these when I do customized training so that I am totally prepared for what they are looking for. They came in expecting an ACT class – well, it turns out they weren’t sure what they were expecting.

This was an interesting client. They drove 5 hours to Chattanooga to meet yesterday with another client of mine. That client is an LTL trucking company meaning they sell “lanes” – Atlanta to New York for example. My client sells trucks. My client is their customer. the new client knew my client was a big ACT user – 65 users in fact, so they met with them to see how they use ACT.

At their recommendation, they then met with me for training. Today they showed up for the training and met with me to see how they could get to where they wanted to be with regards to selling better and using ACT.

That’s where the fun began. Do you know/remember how gratifying it is to show somebody something and they almost jump off their chairs. It was that kind of day. We have all dealt with the “holy s…., ACT is broke” days. So, I really needed a “wow, you mean ACT can do that….” day. When they saw what we could do with Dashboards, I thought they would explode. Those of you not taking Dashboards and making them shine are missing the boat.

When I showed them Pivot tables from the Opportunties to Excel extract, I thought the Sales Manager would faint dead away. He looked at me and said “What are Pivot Tables.” We spent the next hour showing him what he could with some data he had on his laptop. He said “Pat, I have spent 100’s, and I am not kidding, 100’s of hours putting together Excel spreadsheets for reports from our mainframe data and in one hour you just showed me the answer.” He was literally “overwhelmed.” Speechless – almost.

He was one of those guys you try to keep on a path – who will take you on a circle instead. He saw what he could do and was already at the pass waiting on us to catch up. How refreshing is that.

I can’t express enough words to say how much I needed a day like today. There is so much power in ACT. When you get someone in the room (ok, really now, I’m getting goosebumps) who sees what can happen and how it can revolutionize their business ( a business that is 45 years old) it, again, justifies why we do what we do. And again, it justifies to me why I love working with smaller organizations. They just appreciate you so much more.

So, for those of you out there looking for more revenue or more business, take a look at what you know. If you know ACT – you know sales guys. You know how to make it “attractive” to those sales guys. And, you have Excel in your back pocket. Excel is such a powerful tool that simply showing Pivot tables to a client can be business “altering.” And it makes you a vital piece of their business future.

This was the first time they had met me. They drove 5 hours to get here. They said, about two hours into the session, it was worth the trip. They also said “we will want you to come to our offices in 6 months.”

By the end of the day and after the Pivot “epiphany”, it was “can you be at our offices within the next three weeks.”

How such a simple little thing as an export to Excel can totally change the entire session around. Yes, ACT is cool and they are going to do this. But the Excel reporting on their AS400 data – now that’s so much farther down the path than they were thinking that they were out of their seats and almost out of their skins.

Like I said – I sooooo needed a day like today. It was reaffirming – it made me realize I have value to add – always knew that but sometimes when you are trying to fix what’s broke in ACT, you question yourself. Wow, such a good day.

So, here’s hoping you all get one of these days soon. It makes it all worth it…

Black holes and Boomerangs

Today I’m writing a blog entry that’s a departure from topics I normally write about.  A while ago I wrote an article for a newsletter and I called it “Black holes and Boomerangs.”  The article was about managing projects.

All of us at some point have either managed people or projects or have been the recipients of project assignments. And, we’ve all witnessed projects that fail or are delayed for a variety of reasons.  What I’m going to talk about today are two types that can really be time drains or hurt a company.

Let me first explain what I mean by the title.  We’ll start with Boomerangs.  These are the projects that start out fine.  For example, you give someone a project, you give them what you feel is enough information to manage the project, and two weeks later, the project ends up back on your desk, unfinished.  Reasons for this are often “I couldn’t figure out what you wanted” or “I couldn’t make this work” or “I can’t do this project.”   Two weeks have passed and you are no further along and you end up having to do the work or spend time figuring out what you need to do in order for the other person to handle the project.  I’ll talk more about this a bit later.

On to Black holes.  These are my least favorite of the two – if favorite is a proper word for this.  Black hole projects are just what they sound like.  These are projects or tasks that go out into a blackhole and are never heard from again.  Ever.  They are not completed.  You hear no status reports.  Nothing.  Nada.  Typically, a weekly status report or a staff meeting can handle this but in a busy office, there may not be time for those.  So, these projects fall off the radar scope until you get irate phone calls from clients.  Sigh.

So, how do you handle these black holes and boomerangs.  Carefully.  In some cases, depending on the person, I’ve discovered there is no solution. Well, there is one – you don’t assign projects to those people.  But, to me, that’s giving in.  My mission is to get the work done.  And, I want that person to succeed as well.  If that happens, it’s a win for everyone, and it’s especially gratifying to me to see this happen.

Here’s some tips I’ve uncovered over the course of trying to solve these project pitfalls.

Does the person who has been given the task have all the details they need.  Do they have the authority to do what they need to do without coming back to you to ask questions. In particular, if something else comes up, can that person judge which project to work on first.  Balancing workloads can be easy for some, but not for others.  Some people simply cannot multi-task.  When they discover they are behind one solution is to return the project saying they can’t work on it. If you know you have someone who falls into this category, then the right thing to do is only assign projects to them when you know they can devote time to the project.  This may be tough in a small office, but it beats having the project languish and then reappear in two weeks no further along then when you started.  This same person can often be guilty of the blackhole syndrome.  It’s easier to just let it sit on the pile then say something.  Hopefully, nobody will notice it’s not done and it will go away all by itself.

Another reason tasks go astray is because of not setting expectations.  Does everyone understand the project and is everyone aware of the deadline?  Did you actually say “this needs to be done by this date?”  Projects with no deadline or priority end up being just that – low priority.  If they have no deadline, it means “oh, I can work on this later” and no priority means “oh, this is not that important and I can wait a bit.”  However, if a project is assigned, there has to be some kind of deadline or it didn’t need to be done at all.  The message here is don’t assume anything.  Make sure everyone involved is aware of the due dates and assign some level of priority to the project so you can then do load balancing of the work.  I have a saying here – if it makes us money it comes first.  That’s an over-generalization but it’s a start.  We all get sucked into time draining wormholes like email, newsgroups, research, internet sites, and the list goes on.  Now add Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin to the equation and you can see where it gets tough to balance your workschedule.

If you don’t have time for staff meetings, then put a reminder in your tickler file, calendar application or CRM system like ACT to ask about a project task.   If you have a deadline set for 2 weeks, then have the reminder show up two or three days before the deadline.  Send a quick email or IM and ask “how’s it going.”  The trick here is to do what makes sense for you.  If you are always in email, send yourself and the project owner an email asking for an update.  Warning – this may become another black hole but at least you’re keeping on top of things.  If you prefer instant messaging, send an IM.  Do whatever you need to so that something pops up in your face saying “check on me.”

Bottom line – there will always be reasons projects and tasks don’t get completed.  Do what you can to provide as much detail as possible to ensure you get the results you want.  And make sure you ask – don’t get caught up in day to day minutia.  Take the time to followup so things don’t go bump in the night or get so far gone as to be unrecoverable.

Facebook – the next frontier

My last several blog entries have been talking about Twitter and social networking.  During  my journey of discovery, it quickly became apparent I also needed to look at Facebook.

I had a Facebook page that I had started months ago but never did anything with.  Having not spent much time logged in I had no idea what the Facebook environment entailed and what it had to offer.

To learn more about what was going on I decided to update my Facebook page and start poking around.  Well, if I thought Twitter was amazing, Facebook blew it away.  In fact, it’s much more viral.

Within a day, I was getting emails from friends asking me to connect with them on Facebook.  I get emails from LinkedIn connections, but not nearly so fast.  This was literally within hours. 

Not only friends contacted me, but family members I hadn’t heard from in decades.  There was a tragic death in my family and my niece was trying to reach  me.  She found me on Facebook and sent me an email.  I had lost touch with her and didn’t know her married name so it was impossible for me to find her.  Instead, she found me.  The circumstances were a sad one, but the results were phenomenal.

That was just the beginning.  I started to explore the applications, some of which are just downright annoying.  Some, however, are fun and make it interesting to use Facebook.

My network started to broaden based on who my friends were linked to.  It’s not quite the same as Twitter where people you don’t know start following you because you posted a very public comment and they thought it was interesting.  On Facebook, you get connected to people similar to Linkedin.  These are connections you know and trust.  Next, I learned that people update their status on Facebook which posts on their “wall.”  You can see what people have said, and they, in turn, can see what has been written on your wall.  People can comment on your status or on any links, pages, or groups you have set up.  It’s a wonderful way to market a business, or champion a cause.  The next thing I did was connect Twitter to Facebook.  By that I mean I enabled the Twitter connection on Facebook so my Twitter comments updated my “status” on Facebook. 

This weekend, though, I found out the real power of Facebook.  I was working on an issue with an Act conversion.  I was lamenting about the complexity of moving attachments during my conversion.  Three of the people connected to me on Facebook saw my status update and commented with suggestions on what I could use to handle my situation.  That was a surprise and extremely helpful.  And unexpected.

Later in the evening, someone else commented on something posted by another of our “friends in common” and I liked what I read and commented as well.  The topic was cooking and a nice long dialog started.  I thought this would be good as a group and setup one and invited the people in the discussion to the group.   Several others noticed the group and joined as well.  Within minutes.  That’s what I meant by viral – it spreads like a virus.  But a good virus.

As I watched the events occur during the evening, it hit me that this was way beyond emailing and instant messaging.   If I wasn’t on Facebook, and wanted other people to know what was happening, I would have had to send out a broadcast email  or instant message to everyone.  Point of fact, I wasn’t really asking for help – I was commenting on something that was happening during my day.  The help came free of charge – without me asking.  Whoa Nelly, that’s amazing.   I didn’t have to send it an all points bulletin to everyone.  

Well, actually, by posting my status, I did send it out.  But in a different way.  I ”posted it” to my Wall.  Anyone logged onto Facebook who was connected to me saw my status updates.  The notification section told them I had posted an update.   It’s like Twitter, but different.  It’s Twitter on steroids.

So, where does this take me in my journey of discovery.  Well, a lot further down the trail.  I realize you need both.  Twitter is the short, quick updates of 140 characters that you can manage updates from a phone.  Facebook is a page of your life.  Your Twitter updates are there to update your status and spread the word, if that’s what you are trying to accomplish.  Facebook then takes it to the next level allowing you add groups and specifically target projects, business applications and personal interests, like cooking.

It’s not a case of which one you use.  You use them both.  It’s how you use them to the best advantage that is the question. My next step is to figure this out along with how LinkedIn fits into the puzzle.

Oh, and warning, don’t get sucked into the games that Facebook has.  I was sent an Easter Egg and several hours later I am still here gathering away.  Help me – I’ve fallen and I can’t get up……

Ciao for now.

Calendaring on mobile devices

Today,  I’m sitting in a conference room  at Microsoft attending a calendaring and scheduling event (http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect14.shtml).  I attend these events three times a year.

The session I am in now is talking about calendars on mobile devices.  The issue being addressed is the fact that many mobile devices do not support features, you, as a phone user, would like to have.  Examples are the ability to search for open slots on other peoples calendars.  Other examples are managing timezones where the calendar app is smart enough to know I am setting up a meeting in one timezone but attendees are in other timezones and will need to see times that are relevant to them.  There were other examples as well, but it all boiled down to devices supporting vcalendar, a ten year old specification, instead of supporting iCalendar, the newer one.

I started thinking about whether or not people actually care.  Do you want to schedule an appointment on your phone? And invite people using the same phone?  And search for free time on people’s calendar using a phone instead of a web brower or a computer?  My original thinking was no, because the calendar applications are so limited.  But now there are very smart phones in the wild and why can’t it happen.  Hm.

Taking it to the next level, on my Treo, I should be able to click on a contact in my address book and click a button that sets up an appointment on my calendar and, oh, gosh, sends an email to that person inviting them to a meeting.  Oh, since we’re dreaming here, how about a button that says “check to see if this person has an opening next week.”  Yea, I know.  I believe in the Easter Bunny too.  But why can’t this happen.  If it could, maybe then people would want to use their phone to do sophisticated calendaring operations.

The challenge is convincing the network operators like Verizon and AT&T that this is a good thing.  That it might actually increase their revenues with data traffic.  That it might make their clients happy campers. 

The session I am sitting in is pondering how do we convince the operators that this is a good thing.  The device manufacturers have told us we have to convince the Verizon’s of the world to make a change to an environment that will support enhanced calendar operations.

But this leads me back to my original quandry.  Is it what people really want?

If you think it is, let me know.  Post a comment.  And thanks for doing that.

Ciao from Redmond.

More on Twitter

This week I’m at a business meeting at Microsoft in Redmond, WA.  I have some spare time so I’m continuing my efforts at learning the Twitter world. 

I’ve spent the last two weeks familiarizing myself with Twitter.  A couple of clients asked if this was something they should look into as yet another way to market themselves and their business.  My initial reaction was probably not.  However, that is no longer the case.  I’m kind of overwhelmed at the power of this environment.

I started exploring posts using the search link.  It’s amazing the excellent information and tips you can find out on the “tweets.”  Yes, I know they say don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.  And for the most part, I undertand that and practice “safe searching” as a general rule. 

Yet, the little tips I’m finding and reading on Twitter are excellent and very helpful.  The trick is finding who to follow and how many.  This could easily become an addiction or at least a time consumer and that’s not something I need right now.

Today, though, I helped someone on Twitter as a favor and she posted a really nice Tweet about me and my business.  How nice was that.  Ah, how nice was that indeed.  Instant word of mouth marketing simply by lending a hand.  Hm, ok, this is making me rethink my initial reaction about Twitter.  In fact,  I went out and updated my Twitter profile with more information about my website and interests.  At the same time, I went and updated a bit on my Facebook page as well.  In these lean times, it pays to put information out in as many places as possible.  And this is not spamming because the people need to come to you – not the other way around. 

As you know I am fond of saying…How cool is that.

Ciao from Redmond

This week’s Cool Tips and Learnings

In the process of helping clients, I often stumble on cool new things or tips.  It is nearly impossible to learn everything about an application or device.  I find it’s when I’m helping others that I learn the most.

So, this week, here’s some goodies I came across that I will share with all.  They are in no particular order – just how I am finding them in my brain’s backup repository, dark dusty place that it is.

First tip.  My contact manager of choice, ACT, works with Outlook.  Ok, cool.  So, in Outlook, ACT becomes another address book.  Now, imagine you have a Global Access List (often called a GAL) if you are on an Exchange server, plus any local address books and now an ACT address book to boot.  How do you tell Outlook which one to search first.  Ah, that’s the tip here.  This tip may be different depending on your version of Outlook, but I think the core stuff all is the same.  Click on Tools – Address Book.  Easy enough.  Now, in that dialog box click on the Tools menu within the Address book.  Don’t think I’ve ever clicked on that menu item.  That’s the secret (or not so secret) place where you can choose which list to show first and in what order.  Nifty cool indeed.

Second tip.  Ever send something to the printer and have it print backwards – like looking at a document in a mirror?  Well, it turns out that there is a setting called Mirror Image on a lot of printers and it can get set somehow by other print jobs.  When you go to print the document having issues, click on Properties or Options or whatever points you at the Landscape/Portrait section.  The Mirror Image is there.  Who knew…

Third tip.  If you read this blog, you know we work with the ACT contact manager program.  A cool ACT  is that in version 2009, you can type an email address in Notes or Histories and it becomes “hot” meaning you click on it and it opens an email box.  This even works on the detail section of an Opportunity.  That one rates a star.

Last but not least the forth tip is another ACT tip that can be used in other applications as well.  First off, let’s set the stage.  HTTP://,  FTP://, Mailto://and FILE:// are URI’s (Uniform Resource Identifier).  We all should know what they do.  One opens a web page, one connects to an FTP site, one sends an email and one opens a file on your computer.  With me so far?  Well, another URI is CALLTO://.  This is the nifty one.  It will start up whatever program is set on your computer for voice calls over the Internet – say like Skype.  You can find what your computer is set to use on Internet Explorer in the Tools – Internet options section under programs.  Look for Internet Calling and see what shows up.  If you have Skype you can either choose it or Netmeeting which comes with Windows.  I believe if you have something like Vonage, it shows up as well, but don’t hold me to that.  Now, what’s the ACT tip.  In ACT, you can create a field and set it to be a URL field.  That means when you type in an address, it turns it click-able (also meaning hyperlink) and you can then initiate a voice call from that field.  Taking that a bit farther – in the field you would type callto://+12223334444 or whatever the number is.  I think you get the idea.  If you have another application of any sort, say like a Word document, that allows you to put in hyperlinks, you can put in a link that will trigger a voice call.  Think of the ways you can utilize that neat idea.  Just start a paragraph saying something along the lines of “Do you have Skype?  Want to call us today?  Click here.”  Presto.  Instant marketing.  This one rates two stars.  And a smiley – 8-).

That’s all folks.  Have a good weekend.