Forget a leisurely Sunday drive or going to a restaurant without a reservation. Today, everyone wants everything to be convenient and fast. We have drive-through everything – photos, pharmacies, weddings, and anything else you can dream of.

There’s no need to wait in line at the local Blockbuster; you can watch Netflix on demand. You can order your groceries online and have them delivered, print a boarding pass at the airport kiosk (no humans necessary!), and have your dry-cleaning delivered with just a click. Even GPS systems, which were once a luxury in cars, are becoming a standard. Have we lost our sense of direction? No, we like having a faster, more convenient way of getting there. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Excel, ROI, Worker Productivity Excel, Help Desk, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity

According to a leading industry source, more than 50 percent of enterprise-sized IT infrastructures are running mixed Microsoft Office end-user environments. Half the knowledge workers are running 2003; the rest are getting to know 2007 and the Ribbon.

When half your knowledge workers are using one version and the rest another, that’s a whole lot of lost functionality — and wasted time.

The recession and Office 2007’s immense learning curve are partly to blame, but, ultimately, it’s you, the IT leader, who must take responsibility for diminished return on investment. There’s still time to finish your migration; here are six reasons why you should:

1. ROI: You purchased X number of licenses and only have migrated half. You do the math: You purchased the upgrade for a reason — to take advantage of new and easier to find productivity features.

2. The dreaded Office 2007 learning curve: As evident in the hundreds of expletive-laced Tweets about Office 2007, the new user interface is a downright shock to many knowledge workers. Where’s the file menu? How do you save a document? What is this Ribbon? If you finish your migration, you will not have to face these questions again when you decide to upgrade to the next version (which also has a Ribbon interface). Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Finish What You Started, Office 2007 CIO, downtime, learning curve, Office 2007 migration, ROI, software support, the Ribbon

A random sampling of tweets about Office 2007 offers no surprises. Users are frustrated, desperate, confused, angry even. No matter where you are in your 2007 migration – research and planning stage; implementation; post-migration – you will hit some snags, to be sure. How you handle them may dictate future budget allocations, even the health of your IT department. Here’s what you should know before you choose a migration plan and partner: Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Office 2007, ROI, Worker Productivity Office 2007, Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity

On the surface, it seems a no-brainer: Why pay extra to hire an outside company for desktop application support when the demand does not exist? This perception is confirmed by the small percentage of all help desk calls that relate to desktop applications. However, those numbers represent only a fraction of what truly exists.

Lesson 1: Icebergs and Undergrounds

In the common view of desktop application support, calls typically account for less than Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Computer Literacy, PowerPoint, ROI, Worker Productivity best-of-breed, Help Desk, Outsourcing, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity

In previous posts, I examined why corporate workers hesitate to call their help desks when stuck with a software quandary. I referred to the so-called stupidity factor, or fear of looking stupid, as one of the top reasons.

In an e-mail response, a reader pointed out an even greater obstacle, something he called the infuriation factor. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Computer Literacy, How To, ROI, Worker Productivity best-of-breed, CIO, Help Desk, IT leaders, Outsourcing, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity

In a previous post (see Real-Life Help Desk Tales, Part 1), I touched upon why people don’t call the help desk when they need software assistance (fear of looking stupid, unpleasant past experience, assumed time investment). In this post, I will take a closer look at the stupidity factor. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Computer Literacy, How To, ROI, Worker Productivity CIO, Computer Literacy, Help Desk, IT leaders, mariachi band, software support, Worker Productivity

Consider the following scenario: The entire staff of an elementary school was recently upgraded to Office 2007. When Teacher A began creating a new lesson in PowerPoint, which is something she does on a regular basis, she couldn’t figure out how to align her text.

After more than an hour of trial and error Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Computer Literacy, Office 2007, ROI, Worker Productivity Cat Stevens, Help Desk, Office 2007, PowerPoint, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity

As children, we were taught to share and were even graded on it in some preschools or kindergarten classes. As adults, many of us will work on projects with a team, or at least solicit an opinion on work we do.

Although having many minds working on a project usually yields a much better product, one person is often left with the onerous task of pulling it all together.

Although having many minds working on a project usually yields a much better product, one person is often left with the onerous task of pulling it all together. Whether you are a contributor or an organizer, these tips will help you understand how software can help you collaborate.

Using Track Changes for Collaboration (Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007)

By David McQueary

Collaborating on a document can often become confusing and frustrating if it is not clear which changes have been made and by whom. Even worse, when you overwrite text in a document without indicating you have made a change, the original text is not recoverable.

Using Word’s Track Changes feature can eliminate these frustrations.

When Track Changes is enabled, Word assigns a different color to each of the individual editors of a document to show which editor made which changes. When text is deleted, it is not completely removed from the document; instead, a strikethrough effect is applied to show that the text was deleted. Editors can also use the Comments feature to type questions, answers, or general messages to other people working with the document.

Word 2007:

1. Click the Review tab.

2. Click the Track Changes button in the tracking section and choose Track Changes.

Word 2002 and 2003:

1. Click the Tools menu and choose Track Changes.

Word 2000:

1. Click the Tools menu, select Track Changes, and choose Highlight Changes.

2. Check “Track changes while editing.”

3. Verify “Highlight changes on screen” and “Highlight changes in printed document” are checked; if not, check them.

4. Click OK.

You can also enable the feature in all versions by using the key combination Ctrl+Shift+E. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To Help Desk, Microsoft Word, Office 2007, software support, track changes

Way back in April 2009, I posted a piece on CIO.com titled “Office 2007 Doesn’t Really Suck; It’s Just Misunderstood.” Little did I know it would create such a fuss.

Over the past 11 months, the piece has received a smattering of comments, many of which are tinged with vitriol. Office 2007 doesn’t just suck, according to CIO’s readers; it’s reviled, despised, detested, loathed.

Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version of Office is hardly a political move.

Here’s a sampling of the comments:

“I’m a longtime Office user (since its inception). Office 2007 is an abomination and shows just how out of touch those developers are with real world use and workflow.”

“Thought my suckage meter was just already broken or something, it being beyond the warranty period, but as the 10 or so days went by from having installed this step backwards in software development, and having not latched onto what I had assumed was some kind of groundbreaking innovation in GUI, I started to suspect that Microsoft’s product itself had gone beyond the limits of my suckage meter and broken it… and everyone here has affirmed that.” Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Office 2007, Rants AT&T, CIO.com, FORTRAN, Help Desk, Icelandic, Office 2007, software support, Swahili

Poka-yoke – I never had heard the word before, but I was delighted to discover it two weeks ago in a Harvard Business Review article written by Michael Schrage.

Poka-yoke is Japanese for “mistake-proofing.” Think of the “In Case of Fire Break Glass” boxes found in office buildings. Because they include a wee stick with which to break said glass, they would qualify as poka-yoke.

Best of all, your employees will experience minimal downtime and very little lost productivity.

In business, Schrage explains, poka-yoke is the “simplest, cheapest, and surest way to eliminate foreseeable process errors.” He urges managers to perform a poka-yoke audit of their own department.

“What are the persistently simple — and simply persistent — dumb mistakes we make that our technologies can help us catch and destroy?” he asks.

Here’s where I believe IT managers should start: the help desk.

Say your company is planning an Office 2007 migration, and you, as CIO, have decided that because of the current economic climate, assistance isn’t needed. After all, your reliance on internal help desk staff during previous Office upgrades didn’t turn out disastrously. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney Office 2007 Migration Assurance Program, ROI CIO, Harvard Business Review, Help Desk, Japan, Michael Schrage, Outsourcing, poka-yoke, software support