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Today I am providing some answers to common questions we get asked and not just focusing on Windows 10. However I will have one little Windows 10 section as well for those who have updated already.

Are you actually harnessing the power of Office 365?

Jethro-Facebook-Office-365-Mobility-Business

When you made the strategic decision to move some or all of your business to the cloud with Microsoft Office 365 that was a good call. But since you made that call have you actually extracted as much value from this tool as possible, or is a large part of your investment lying there just untapped?

With our free customer audits we offer the opportunity to discuss what you have in place and what you don’t but could be utilising. Here’s a quick checklist. Are you utilising the power of these products?

Feature

Description

Major Benefits

Who should use

Skype for Business

Instant Messaging and Hi Def Video conference communicator for staff, customers and suppliers

Find out about Skype for Business

Hi Def Video conversations

Instant messaging

Presence indicator

Tightly integrated with Outlook

Presentation and webinar system

Any business with multiple staff

Any business with customers or suppliers who use Skype or Skype for business

Anyone who uses Outlook heavily

Anyone who needs to share their content via voice conference or webinar (private or public)

SharePoint

Document management system

Find out about SharePoint

Multiple version management

Single point of reference

Reduce attachments in email

Remote / mobile access to documents

Collaborative (multi user) editing

Any business creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets, video content or PowerPoint decks

Any business with staff roles and security levels for access

Any user who has more than one device (e.g. laptop and PC, or tablet and mobile)

Any business who collaboratively creates documents

OneNote

Note taking application that includes web clipping, email saving and screen shot saving

Find out about OneNote

Organise notes, to do lists, screenshots, and other important information in one place.

Easily share some or all of any notebook with multiple people as read only or read write

Automatically syncs across every device you own with no need to save

Anyone who writes to do lists

Anyone who needs to store important information like passwords

Anyone who needs to share with staff important information e.g. shared notes about customers

Anyone who needs to create screenshots and turn them into images

Delve

Delve displays information that is most relevant for each person based on the work they are doing and the people with whom they are engaging

Find out about Delve

Surfaces information already being created in the organisation by other people you might not know about

Improves collaboration

Integrates with Yammer

Any business with a team working on a projects or shared work

Any user wanting to find other documents in the organisation

Any business with 3-5 or more staff who create and edit documents

Yammer

Private Enterprise Social Network.

Also allows connection with external networks

Find out about Yammer

Find information and answers to common questions easily

Communicate with peers and colleagues on projects and documents

Network with others inside and outside your organisation

Any business with multiple locations or remote workers

Any business that works with customers or suppliers who also use Yammer

Any business that runs projects

Sway

Online publishing tool

Find out about Sway

Create and share polished, interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more

Any business creating presentations or reports

Any user creating content

Anyone needing to provide a slick looking web presentation of their information or data

Contact us now to if you haven’t had your free audit or want to know more about any of these products.

SEO Is no longer an option for business it’s a Must

Here is a fairly long explanation of what SEO actually is if you ever wondered just what those telemarketers are offering when they ring up and say they can put you on the front page of Google. I debunk the myths and explain the actual science of SEO so business owners can understand it.

image001Definitions

  • SEO – Search Engine Optimisation – commonly referred to as getting on page one of Google for a search. However there is a lot more to it than that. It is actually about ensuring that the website has all the components in place to assist the search engine crawlers (Bing Yahoo and Google) to rank you correctly. There are a number of components and I have attached a cheat sheet that describes most of these. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
  • SEM – Search Engine Marketing – paying for ranking improvements by the use of AdWords, Click marketing and other techniques.
  • SMM – Social Media Marketing – very broad term around utilising social media as a marketing tool
  • Black hat SEO – refers to aggressive and often “bad” methods of attempting to “game” the crawler algorithms by taking advantage of them. Usually a short-lived approach and is generally only used by the scammers – those who call up in a foreign accent and tell you they want to help you improve your SEO. While these often work well for 1-2 months the end result is usually a lower result as you can get blacklisted for doing it.
  • White hat SEO – the professional approach to doing it right using known techniques that actually work.

Measurement

There are some easy ways to define measurement and then a whole range of additional metrics that are far more in depth and specific. The first task is of course a goal or goals that need to be set in order to measure improvement of the metrics against those goals. For example measuring the number of people who come to the site isn’t really relevant without adding in calls to action and then measuring those calls to action. Then you can determine if a particular piece of work changed any of those things.

Using Google analytics is extremely important and should be enabled by your web developer. If you are not sure ask us. Metric management is about tracking the specific stats against a goal and the changes as you do things. Google analytics can measure how many people clicked on the contact form page and how long they stayed there, where they came from and where they went next. Some of the specific things that can be measured external to the google analytics are the number of enquiries you receive from the website forms. This can then help us create a ratio as follows:

no of people viewing a sales page : no of people clicking from the sales page with a call to action to the contact form page : no of enquiry forms received : your conversion from those enquiries to sales. Example 1000:150:8:5

This then allows you to set a goal around that ratio metric – e.g. increase the numbers or improve the ratios.

The actual measurement then requires three things:

  1. A measureable goal
  2. The stats being collected from the website
  3. And the additional stats provided by yourselves.

Additionally Goals themselves should be what is known as SMART goals:

Creating S.M.A.R.T. Goals

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistic
  • Timely

Specific: A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions:

  • Who: Who is involved?
  • What: What do I want to accomplish?
  • Where: Identify a location.
  • When: Establish a time frame.
  • Which: Identify requirements and constraints.
  • Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

EXAMPLE: A general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a specific goal would say, “Join a health club and workout 3 days a week.”

Measurable - Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.

To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as……

How much? How many?

How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable – When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.

Realistic- To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress.

A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labour of love.

Timely – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday” won’t work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, “by May 1st”, then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal.

Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.

T can also stand for Tangible – A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses, that is, taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing.

When your goal is tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.

How do we do this?

SEO is primarily about two things – Content and Currency.

Search engines rank you for the content on your site. They crawl words within context looking for relevancy. They look for timeliness or recentness.

This has to be developed backwards from the goals.

First you have to develop an avatar or a generic target customer. You create a mythical person who is your ideal next customer – the person you want to be having that phone call with selling your services. Once you identify the problem that person has that you can solve for them, then you need to work out how they find you. E.g. what was the problem? What words did they type into google to start finding solutions to the problem? How did that then find your website? When they found your website (page on your site) how well did the words you wrote confirm for them that you know how to solve their problem and convince them to contact you?

This leads you or us then to the ability to write content for your site that meets this objective. The more pages that can be written describing the real problems your customers have and how your company solves them. The more keywords there are that can be crawled by the search engines and the higher you will rank for those keywords. Adding in external links and other reference material, and then being referenced by other sites, analysts, uni students doing assignments on that problem and writing websites about them, etc. will help your rankings.

SEM – paying for it

A natural extension to the first component is to start paying for the results using AdWords and click marketing. E.g. paying for your site to be ranked higher or in suggested or advertised results sections on searches for certain keywords. Note there is no point doing this until you are already ranking well for those keywords. Your site needs to already have good content with those words before you can do this effectively.

SMM or Social Media Marketing

A powerful tool to massively leverage the ability for people to find your content and also improve SEO is SMM. This is extending the content you write on your site out into social media space – LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter are probably the best places and definitely Facebook as well. Each space has a different set of “rules” and ways to work and Twitter and Facebook also have the ability for you to pay money to advertise.

How do we help?

We have a very specific targeted approach to this and can assist at any one of three levels:

  • We can do everything for you including writing the articles
  • We can assist you by doing the technical and web stuff after you have written the content yourself
  • We can teach you how to do it yourself and then stand back and let you go to it on your own.

Our approach is simple.

The first step is to have a planning meeting where we assist in working out goals, setting a timetable of 6-12 months for content creation, determining the scope – e.g. website alone or extending to Social Media

From there we can help you work out who does what and what the cost will be.

Each step we take helps you identify the goals, how will measure it – who does what and how much it will cost. No black box “pay $40 a week and we will get you onto page 1” false promises.

Contact us today if you want a free analysis of your website for the 7 most common mistakes most business websites make (Usually $199). If you want a free SEO cheat sheet email and I will send one to you.

Is Your WordPress site secure?

wordpress-logoWordPress is one of the most popular CMS (Content Management System) website software out there. We have developed a lot of WordPress sites for our clients. What many people don't realise is that both the WordPress core system and all of the available WordPress plugins are vulnerable to hacking, and need to be monitored and kept up to date on a regular basis.

Keeping your website up to date will help safeguard and eliminate uninvited intruders or bugs on your site.

Nearly all of our clients take the approach to allow us to manage all aspects of the domain name management, hosting, development and ongoing maintenance. However we do allow our clients the flexibility to host elsewhere, manage the site and maintenance themselves if they wish.

Obviously we can’t be responsible for their site if issues occur if they’re choosing to host elsewhere or managing the site themselves. And unfortunately some people fail to keep their ‘versions’ of software and plugins up to date, again causing possible opportunities for hacking. The lack of updates, coupled with poor hosting environments can leave a website wide-open for security threats.

But time and time again, we have clients who do it themselves come to us pleading for us to help them out of a horrible hosting mess or to fix the site when it gets hacked or goes down.

Where there are WordPress sites there are hackers, and over time we’ve seen an increasing number of hacking attempts and malware on WordPress sites. We daily get reports from our managed sites indicating the targeted attacks occurring and the successful blocking of those attempts.

What Jethro does for our managed WordPress clients

  • Our servers are entirely owned and managed by us. There are no other resellers or websites on the server that we don’t have control of. When you host with crazy domains or any of the other cheap hosts you are subject to the fact that there are hundreds of not thousands of other sites on the same server – and while your site might not have any issues something happening to one of those other sites might cause your server to go down.
  • We monitor the servers constantly. Both at the server level where we receive text message and email notifications if something occurs, and at individual site level.
  • We harden the security of the default WordPress site way beyond the standard install. The standard install script most hosters offer for DIY leaves folders unprotected, easily guessable admin user names and no usually no password complexity requirements. We ensure that the site is as hard as possible to get to.
  • We don’t install 35 “that might be nice to have” plugins that may cause compatibility issues, security flaws or other issues. Every plugin we use has been tested over a long period of time, is compatible and has good developer maintenance.
  • We offer a maintenance service level agreement for all our clients that includes regular off server backups, plugin and core updates, documentation of all changes made and easy recovery if problems occur and active monitoring of the site.

Talk to us today about your WordPress website and ask us for a quick analysis of the site for potential problems. Better yet let us maintain this business asset for as little as $550 a year.

Welcome to the New Windows 10

Your Start screen

The Start menu is back—and it’s more personal, more organized, and more fun than before. Go to Start Windows logo icon on the taskbar on your keyboard. You'll find your most used apps on the left, the All apps list, and shortcuts to other locations on your PC, like File Explorer and Settings

win 10 start screen

Windows 10 Store

win 10 storeThe Store is a one-stop shop for music, videos, games, and apps.

Try out an app before you buy it, or pick a free one. Your Windows 10 apps will work on all your Windows 10 devices.

Application Switcher and Virtual Desktops

Click the application switcher for quick access to all your running apps. Or create and switch between virtual desktops.

win 10 desktops

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As always Jethro is your web, cloud and technology specialists. I am constantly learning new things and spending time researching, playing and testing new systems and reading about other people in the IT world doing the same thing. If you want to follow along with what I share in various spaces then connect with me:

All content © Tim Miller. Feel free to share or send these emails on. If you want to unsubscribe just reply with Unsubscribe in the subject.

2012-07-14 Brisbane French Festival 017Did you know that today was Bastille Day? Will you be celebrating?

Just as this French National day commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution I hope that this newsletter can help you begin a revolution at work with some innovative ideas utilising Office 365.

Quickly create an Online Survey – using Excel and OneDrive

When you login to Office 365 you should see an icon in your apps list for OneDrive. This is your personal user accounts 1TB of storage space. Once you go there online you get access to some interesting features not available on your PC.

 

One of these is the ability to create an Excel survey. Click the New icon and then choose Excel Survey. You will get a prompt to create the Survey workbook with a title and then the opportunity to create questions with options for free text, Yes No, your choice selections and so on. The resulting survey that is created can then be shared with anyone you want to. For example please take this short survey.

There are lots of really awesome use cases for this. Use this as a pre appointment data collection option with a tablet with customers who walk into your business, use at trade shows or send it to customers with a QR code after they purchase from you for post sales feedback and follow-up. Results can be seen real time in the office in a spreadsheet that you can customise as necessary.

office 365 apps list

excel survey 1excel survey 2

Contact us now if you would like to learn more about creating Online Excel Surveys.

Using Sway to generate Online Documents and websites – no programming!

Nearly every business uses PowerPoint and Word. Turning your documents into online applications is far easier than you might think. Using Sway (on your Office 365 app list or by going to www.sway.com) you can turn your existing PowerPoint and word documents into websites that you can send your customers to. For example here is the digital strategy presentation we give to our customers. This took 5 minutes to upload and tweak using the visual tools in Sway.

digital strategy

Talk to us about using Sway to enhance your online presence, integrate with social media and incorporate into client presentations. Upgrade your Corporate Look!

Using Delve to improve your Corporate Communications

Businesses today create large amounts of data. From sales reports, customer presentations, tenders and quotes, SOP, Office Procedures and other how to documents to excel spreadsheets and power points there is endless amounts of data being created. SharePoint is the ideal place to store all this data as it is so easily accessible by all users from any location and on any device.

But how do you know what is being created? Are you repeating work that someone else has done, or do you need to copy and paste boilerplate text? What about utilising someone else’s spreadsheet to get you started with that new analysis report your boss just asked for? Office Delve is the new tool being rolled out in Office 365 to assist with surfacing information that is tailored to you.

From the Office Website:

Delve helps you discover the information that's likely to be most interesting to you right now - across Office 365. You don't have to remember the title of a document or where it's stored. Delve shows you documents no matter where they're stored in OneDrive for Business or in Sites in Office 365.

Delve also lets you view your colleagues' profiles, or edit your own. Your profile is like an electronic business card you share inside your organization.

Delve never changes any permissions, so you'll only see documents that you already have access to. Other people will not see your private documents. Learn more about privacy.

When you and your colleagues view, edit, and share each other's documents, Delve learns from how you work and tailors the information to each of you on your personalized Home page. What you see in Delve is different from what your colleagues see.

delve

But how do you know what is being created? Are you repeating work that someone else has done, or do you need to copy and paste boilerplate text? What about utilising someone else’s spreadsheet to get you started with that new analysis report your boss just asked for? Office Delve is the new tool being rolled out in Office 365 to assist with surfacing information that is tailored to you.

From the Office Website:

Delve helps you discover the information that's likely to be most interesting to you right now - across Office 365. You don't have to remember the title of a document or where it's stored. Delve shows you documents no matter where they're stored in OneDrive for Business or in Sites in Office 365.

Delve also lets you view your colleagues' profiles, or edit your own. Your profile is like an electronic business card you share inside your organization.

Delve never changes any permissions, so you'll only see documents that you already have access to. Other people will not see your private documents. Learn more about privacy.

When you and your colleagues view, edit, and share each other's documents, Delve learns from how you work and tailors the information to each of you on your personalized Home page. What you see in Delve is different from what your colleagues see.

Talks to us about getting Delve working in your organisation

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As always Jethro is your web, cloud and technology specialists. I am constantly learning new things and spending time researching, playing and testing new systems and reading about other people in the IT world doing the same thing. If you want to follow along with what I share in various spaces then connect with me:

What’s the biggest challenge facing you in business right now?

If you don’t read the rest of this article maybe just take 30 seconds to email me and send me an answer to that question. It’s possible I can locate something or know something that can help you. Or maybe one of my other clients can; the power of networking is invaluable!

Seminar Update

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If you missed the seminar we will be holding a repeat one. However we are aware Wednesday mornings are not good for a lot of people. We are also prepared to come and do a customised version directly with customers and their staff for a flat fee.

Contact us now if you want to do this for Your Business

Windows 10 Specifications

More and more information is coming out around Windows 10 and the specifications have now been released for the upgrade. There potentially will be deprecations of applications and features. The official Windows 10 Specifications page lists the minimum requirements for hardware and also lists all the potential issues.

WARNING! At this stage if you are running a small business network with a server we don’t recommend upgrading to Windows 10 yet. If you are running individual PCS then there should be no problem, but I would recommend either doing it on a non-critical machine first or asking us to assist. Finally you should have a Microsoft ID before upgrading. Windows 8 users will likely already have one but Windows 7 users might not.

Talk to us first if you are not sure about updating to Windows 10.

Office Shortcut Keys

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Learning to use Office applications effectively is critical for information workers. So many hints and tips are out there it is sometimes hard to know where to start. Even the little ones we provide in these newsletters or online are just a drop in the bucket.

Today we are going to show you a bunch of really effective short cut keys that we use regularly and that once mastered will speed up your use of Excel. Print these out maybe and put them near your screen. I have highlighted the best ones that are my constant use Go Tos.

Keys for moving and scrolling in a worksheet or workbook

Arrow keys: Move one cell up, down, left, or right

CTRL+arrow: key Move to the edge of the current data region
HOME: Move to the beginning of the row
CTRL+HOME: Move to the beginning of the worksheet
CTRL+END: Move to the last cell on the worksheet, which is the cell at the intersection of the rightmost used column and the bottom-most used row (in the lower-right corner), or the cell opposite the home cell, which is typically A1
PAGE DOWN: Move down one screen
PAGE UP: Move up one screen
ALT+PAGE DOWN: Move one screen to the right
ALT+PAGE UP: Move one screen to the left
CTRL+PAGE DOWN: Move to the next sheet in the workbook
CTRL+PAGE UP: Move to the previous sheet in the workbook
CTRL+F6 or CTRL+TAB: Move to the next workbook or window
CTRL+SHIFT+F6 or CTRL+SHIFT+TAB: Move to the previous workbook or window
F6: Move to the next pane in a workbook that has been split
SHIFT+F6: Move to the previous pane in a workbook that has been split
CTRL+BACKSPACE: Scroll to display the active cell
F5: Display the Go To dialog box
SHIFT+F5: Display the Find dialog box
SHIFT+F4: Repeat the last Find action (same as Find Next)
TAB: Move between unlocked cells on a protected worksheet

Keys for moving in a worksheet with End mode on

END: Turn End mode on or off
END, arrow key: Move by one block of data within a row or column
END, HOME: Move to the last cell on the worksheet, which is the cell at the intersection of the rightmost used column and the bottom-most used row (in the lower-right corner), or the cell opposite the home cell, which is typically A1
END, ENTER: Move to the last cell to the right in the current row that is not blank; unavailable if you have selected the Transition navigation keys check box on the Transition tab (Tools menu, Options command)

Keys for entering data on a worksheet

ENTER: Complete a cell entry and move down in the selection
ALT+ENTER:
Start a new line in the same cell
CTRL+ENTER:
Fill the selected cell range with the current entry
SHIFT+ENTER:
Complete a cell entry and move up in the selection
CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER:
Enter an array formula (must be used when editing an existing array formula)
TAB:
Complete a cell entry and move to the right in the selection
SHIFT+TAB:
Complete a cell entry and move to the left in the selection
ESC:
Cancel a cell entry
BACKSPACE:
Delete the character to the left of the insertion point, or delete the selection
DELETE:
Delete the character to the right of the insertion point, or delete the selection
CTRL+DELETE:
Delete text to the end of the line
Arrow keys:
Move one character up, down, left, or right
HOME:
Move to the beginning of the line
F4 or CTRL+Y:
Repeat the last action
SHIFT+F2: Edit a cell comment
CTRL+SHIFT+F3:
Create names from row and column labels
CTRL+D:
Fill down
CTRL+R:
Fill to the right
CTRL+F3:
Define a name

Keys for working in cells or the formula bar

BACKSPACE: Edit the active cell and then clear it, or delete the preceding character in the active cell as you edit cell contents
ENTER: Complete a cell entry
CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER: Enter a formula as an array formula
ESC: Cancel an entry in the cell or formula bar
CTRL+A: Display the Formula Palette after you type a function name in a formula
CTRL+SHIFT+A: Insert the argument names and parentheses for a function after you type a function name in a formula
CTRL+K: Insert a hyperlink
ENTER (in a cell with a hyperlink): Activate a hyperlink
F2: Edit the active cell and position the insertion point at the end of the line
F3: Paste a defined name into a formula
SHIFT+F3: Paste a function into a formula
F9: Calculate all sheets in all open workbooks
CTRL+ALT+F9: Calculate all sheets in the active workbook
SHIFT+F9: Calculate the active worksheet
= (equal sign): Start a formula
ALT+= (equal sign): Insert the AutoSum formula
CTRL+; (semicolon): Enter the date
CTRL+SHIFT+: (colon): Enter the time
CTRL+SHIFT+" (quotation mark): Copy the value from the cell above the active cell into the cell or the formula bar
CTRL+` (single left quotation mark): Alternate between displaying cell values and displaying cell formulas
CTRL+' (apostrophe): Copy a formula from the cell above the active cell into the cell or the formula bar
ALT+DOWN ARROW: Display the AutoComplete list

Keys for editing data

F2: Edit the active cell and put the insertion point at the end of the line
ESC: Cancel an entry in the cell or formula bar
BACKSPACE: Edit the active cell and then clear it, or delete the preceding character in the active cell as you edit the cell contents
F3: Paste a defined name into a formula
ENTER: Complete a cell entry
CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER: Enter a formula as an array formula
CTRL+A: Display the Formula Palette after you type a function name in a formula
CTRL+SHIFT+A: Insert the argument names and parentheses for a function, after you type a function name in a formula
F7: Display the Spelling dialog box

Keys for inserting, deleting, and copying a selection

CTRL+C: Copy the selection
CTRL+X: Cut the selection
CTRL+V: Paste the selection
DELETE: Clear the contents of the selection
CTRL+HYPHEN: Delete the selection
CTRL+Z: Undo the last action
CTRL+SHIFT+PLUS SIGN: Insert blank cells

Keys for selecting cells, columns, or rows

CTRL+SHIFT+* (asterisk): Select the current region around the active cell (the current region is a data area enclosed by blank rows and blank columns)
SHIFT+arrow key: Extend the selection by one cell
CTRL+SHIFT+arrow key: Extend the selection to the last nonblank cell in the same column or row as the active cell
SHIFT+HOME: Extend the selection to the beginning of the row
CTRL+SHIFT+HOME: Extend the selection to the beginning of the worksheet
CTRL+SHIFT+END: Extend the selection to the last used cell on the worksheet (lower-right corner)
CTRL+SPACEBAR: Select the entire column
SHIFT+SPACEBAR: Select the entire row
CTRL+A: Select the entire worksheet
SHIFT+BACKSPACE: Select only the active cell when multiple cells are selected
SHIFT+PAGE DOWN: Extend the selection down one screen
SHIFT+PAGE UP: Extend the selection up one screen
CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR: With an object selected, select all objects on a sheet
CTRL+6: Alternate between hiding objects, displaying objects, and displaying placeholders for objects
CTRL+7: Show or hide the Standard toolbar
F8: Turn on extending a selection by using the arrow keys
SHIFT+F8: Add another range of cells to the selection; or use the arrow keys to move to the start of the range you want to add, and then press F8 and the arrow keys to select the next range

Let us know if you like these tips or want to know how to use any of the Microsoft Office products more effectively. Training your staff in how to use their computers more efficiently and effectively is a small investment that can make them more productive.

Call us today!

Social Media Images Sizes

Jethro-Marketing-facebook-highlight-mar-2015-1

There are so many different social media platforms and they all have different recommended image sizes for use in the header, profile pic and content. It can be very difficult working out what size to use where. Getting it wrong can mean that images don’t display correctly, scale badly, crop text or logos from the image or worse. We actually use a spreadsheet tool we have developed to identify the correct sizes for to convert images to for each platform as well as many other regular formats such as A4 portrait and landscape, DL flyers, business cards and more. If you struggle with this talk to us and we can help. In the meantime this website gives you a great cheat sheet for social media image sizes on some of the more popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest) and the sizes to use for headers, profile pics and inline content.

Ask us for help with developing great images with text overlays for your social media advertising and web content

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As always Jethro is your web, cloud and technology specialists. I am constantly learning new things and spending time researching, playing and testing new systems and reading about other people in the IT world doing the same thing. If you want to follow along with what I share in various spaces then connect with me:

All content © Tim Miller. Feel free to share or send these emails on. If you want to unsubscribe just reply with Unsubscribe in the subject.

clip_image012

Did you know that email newsletter campaigns are more effective than any social media campaign as a way to grow your business? If you want help writing and sending newsletters like these that you can send to your mailing list then just talk to Tim today. Let me know if these are useful for you – and if you have a burning “how the heck do I do that?” question then ask that as well and we can write about it next newsletter.

Advance Notice

We will be running a Seminar early June with Jerrod D. Smith Attitude Coach. Pre-register your interest as we expect to sell out early as seats are limited to 25

Cloud Management Tips – Accounting systems

One of the easiest places to find potential time and therefore cost savings is in shifting your business accounting into the cloud. There are numerous advantages, but also some things to watch out for.

Advantages of cloud accounting

This isn’t an exhaustive list but some of the more popular features that most cloud accounting packages will offer or use as promotional or sales features:

  • Access to your data anywhere on any device (note this isn’t always true – many do not have apps that work on all mobile platforms and many have plugins that are also similarly hampered.)
  • Access to your accountant for live data review. Not having to close off your accounts, send them to your accountant and then wait for them to finish with them before carrying on working (or go and make the same end of year journals they just made) is a huge advantage. Your accountant can login (usually free) and make the changes while you can continue to operate.
  • Up to the minute reporting. This sounds good but isn’t necessarily so. As a management accountant for many years I know the danger of providing inaccurate data to business owners. GIGO or Garbage in garbage out is a software development acronym that also applies to Accounting packages. If you don’t have all the data entered in correctly then the reports you might be relying on could be inaccurate.
  • Licensing cost means updates are “free” and you are only paying an easy monthly fee. This has a catch for some systems – if you stop paying – your stop having access to your data. Some systems have offline data, others will allow you to download into excel. But this can catch people out so make sure you choose the right package.

So how can you choose? We are partners with Financials for Office 365 so our advice could be biased but we can certainly give you some broad level advice as to which package might or might not be right for you. However for true unbiased advice feel free to get in touch with one of our customers Dianne Kennedy from Small Business Know How on 07 3343 3796.

We can sit down with you and talk about your current accounting system and how to migrate this into the cloud in the most cost effective and efficient manner. Call to discuss today on 0414 770 002.

Windows 10 is Nearly here – crazy amount of news being released

Windows 10 will be released later this year. And if you upgrade from Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows Phone 8.1 in the first year from its release you will get the upgrade free*.

I'm not going to try and talk about everything Windows 10 related that has happened in the last 2 weeks. There’s been an avalanche of news both from Microsoft itself and also from the media speculation and hype growing around release dates, inclusions and exclusions and so on.

w10-solitaire

Here are a few key points:

  • We are telling customers to hold off on Win 8.1 upgrades now. There is no point in spending money on that when the Win 10 upgrade from Win 7 will apparently be free and “painless”. Of course we will be testing that thoroughly before we start assisting our customers to upgrade. However if you want to be a test dummy then feel free to let us know. There is a 12 month free upgrade deadline from release date so you do need to factor that in.
  • The new apps store will include carrier billing – that means not having to enter credit card details on a mobile device – it will bill your mobile carrier instead. And there’s a rumour that iOS and Android apps will be ported into the store.
  • A release date was “leaked” for July – still not confirmed officially but seems pretty likely. A second release of October will likely be for the first major refresh with features that didn’t make the cut in July being implemented in this one.
  • Solitaire is back – hooray! The best time waster of all. Where is the productivity tip here?

If you are interested in previewing Windows 10 we can show you some devices with it running and then talk about when your business will migrate to Windows 10 and take advantage of the under the hood features that will make your staff more productive.

*Doesn’t apply to customers running Windows Enterprise or on Software Assurance.

Office 365 Introduces Outlook Clutter Feature

o365-clutterClutter is a new feature being progressively rolled out to Office365 customers. If you want to try it ask me and we can see if it is available for you and turn it on. It is turned on organisation wide but off by default and needs to be enabled per user account.

How Clutter works

Clutter learns from your actions to determine the messages you are likely to ignore. As less important messages arrive, they are automatically moved to the Clutter folder. Clutter does this by leveraging Office Graph’s sophisticated machine learning techniques to determine which messages are Clutter. It gets smarter over time, learning from your prior actions with similar messages, and assessing things like the type of content and even how you are addressed in the message. The Clutter experience is personalized to each individual and reflects an email experience that adapts to your actions and preferences without you having to do anything. The information Clutter learns from each user’s actions are only applied to that user’s experience and are not shared with anyone else.

More info here http://blogs.office.com/2014/11/11/de-clutter-inbox-office-365/

Let us know if you get a lot of email per day. There are smart ways to work with your inbox that can help save you time and money. Training your staff in how to use email more efficiently and effectively is a small investment that can make them more productive. Call us today!

Using Absolute References in Excel

Excel uses a powerful vector system for managing formulas. Each cell can be linked to many others using formulas. In a simple way of explaining this, 2 cells can be added together in a third cell using a formula that references them. Most people do not know how to use absolute references to speed up their formula development time, and ensure accuracy of formulas in a table. I have a comprehensive article online detailing what they are as well as how to use them. Read all the instructions on how to use absolute references in your formulas at http://spyjournal.biz/back-basics-using-absolute-references-excel

If you want to know more about using some of the more powerful functions in Excel to improve your productivity then give us a call.

Google Mobile Friendly Test – do you pass?

 

In case you haven’t heard the biggest thing in recent times in search engine optimisation happened back on 21 April 2015 (22nd for Australia). Google implemented a major search engine ranking algorithm change for mobile search. With a huge rise in the use of mobile devices for search, and the high likelihood of local search using these devices it makes sense for Google to deliver localised results. However they are now saying for a mobile user the results should be optimised for the mobile device. So if your site is not optimised for mobile (passes the mobile friendly test) then it will automatically drop down the rankings in preference of sites that are friendly.

Test your site today https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ Enter your domain name.

If you fail the test talk to us about if you even need to pass. And if you do then we can work out the most cost effective way for you to achieve that. It doesn’t need to cost thousands of dollars.

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As always Jethro is your web, cloud and technology specialists. I am constantly learning new things and spending time researching, playing and testing new systems and reading about other people in the IT world doing the same thing. If you want to follow along with what I share in various spaces then connect with me:

All content © Tim Miller. Feel free to share or send these emails on. If you want to unsubscribe just reply with Unsubscribe in the subject.

Did you get Skype for Business installed? The recent upgrade for all Office 365 users should have taken affect by now. Talk to us if not.

Remember you can find the Lync app for iPad and iPhone in the iTunes store, Android app in the Google play store, and the Windows phone app in the Windows Store. In all cases you just need to sign in using your Office 365 credentials.

Cloud Management Tips – Migrating your data to your Cloud Storage

clip_image001You might have files on your computer that you want to copy to your cloud storage areas. Before you just start copying them én masse you might want to consider some important things first.

Storage Limits

There are more storage limits on services than just the total space although that is critical to think of. Many services what file types can be stored. There are also usually limits on the number of files, and individual file sizes. Usually the retail or free service is limited more than the business or paid service as well.

Accessibility

Not every loud storage solution makes it easy to access your files. Ensure that the app is available on your platform of choice, that files can be selectively synced and that you can access your files when you need them by testing with a few simple ones first.

Editing

Not all services or apps allow editing of the documents in a browser or on a mobile device. If you need to edit documents on the go then check this feature out first.

Sharing and Security

There are different ways to share with each different service. Some like SharePoint can share a single file as read only or edit. Others like Dropbox can only do that a folder level. Check what you need before deciding which to use.

We can sit down with you and talk about your current data storage and how to migrate this into the cloud in the most cost effective and efficient manner. Call to discuss today on 0414 770 002.

Windows 10 is coming – Free Upgrade from Windows 7 or 8

windows 10 logoWindows 10 will be released later this year. And if you upgrade from Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows Phone 8.1 in the first year from its release you will get the upgrade free*.

Some of the features from Windows 8 that some people found annoying have been removed or changed in Windows 10. These include:

  • Full screen modern app windows can now be moved and resized like regular resizable windows and are no longer full screen or docked in the sliding panel. Each has the familiar resize icons on the right hand side for minimise, restore and close.
  • Internet explorer is now going to be one version – not two – and never knowing which is which will be gone! The new browser is codenamed Project Spartan. Stay tuned for this one.
  • The Start screen is fixed. There is a start menu just like in Windows 7, and the revised start screen can be customised to show apps that you choose so you can have the best of both worlds. It can be toggled to full screen or work just like the old Windows 7 one did – your call!
  • The corner based navigation system is gone. When you stick your mouse in the corner the apps and charm bar wont display. In fact the entire charm bar has been replaced by a really cool notification centre similar to what windows and android phones have that can be pulled up or down, and used to see notifications and dismiss them as necessary.
  • VERY COOL – a multiple desktop function built in. you can have multiple desktops with different applications open on each one and switch between them. Excellent for laptop users.

office 365 on the go survey detailsSpecial Deal – If you are interested in previewing Windows 10 we can show you some devices with it running and then talk about when your business will migrate to Windows 10 and take advantage of the under the hood features that will make your staff more productive.

*Doesn’t apply to customers running Windows Enterprise or on Software Assurance.

Office 365 gives You more Mobility

Have you ever checked your mail in the bathroom? What about taken a business call while at the beach? While we all need balance in our lives, being more mobile can both be a curse and a blessing.

Check out this info graphic that shows some interesting stats. Can you identify with any of these? Or are there some other spots they missed? What about the movies? Ever responded to email while munching on popcorn? I’ll post this on Facebook for you to respond with your plugged in confessions! Confess now!

Let us know where you need better access to your data and we can help you design a solution that works for you or your team. Telecommuting can save you money and make your staff more productive. Call us today!

Using The Round Function in Excel

The ROUND function is extremely useful to truncate calculated values with long decimal places to the 2 decimal places we need with currency calculations. Typically where this is a problem is where you have calculations on financial figures being added up and the sum at the bottom “appears” to be wrong. Solve the problem of a board member adding the figures on a financial report with a calculator and then calling you out on the total (this happened to me once).

Read all the instructions on how to use this powerful function online at http://spyjournal.biz/excel/ROUND

If you want to know more about using some of the more powerful formulas in Excel to improve your productivity then give us a call.

Social Media Tips and Information – What not to do!

I bet you have heard of someone who shared something inappropriate on social media who now wishes they hadn’t. Maybe it adversely affected their employment, relationships or even got them fired. While there are (maybe not as obvious as they should be) levels of TMI (too much information) that personal sharing from our friends and family can cause us to cringe, it’s just as bad for business.

Having a social media policy is one thing. But do you have a strategy documented for dealing with the worst case scenario, an employee upsets customers or even without that provocation they just go rank on you. Do you know what you should, and equally important, shouldn’t do?

If managing social media seems like a scary prospect for your business (and it can be) then try out sourcing it to us. Our global team of social media experts can work with you to successfully represent your business in social media.

Follow us on Social Media

As always Jethro is your web, cloud and technology specialists. I am constantly learning new things and spending time researching, playing and testing new systems and reading about other people in the IT world doing the same thing. If you want to follow along with what I share in various spaces then connect with me on these platforms:

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