Ross Goodman

Work

Favourite Shortcut Keys – Outlook

by Ross (Admin) on Aug.09, 2010, under Microsoft, Office, Technology

Apple Keyboard (with Avid shortcuts; Letterboxed)
Creative Commons License photo credit: laffy4k

If you look at the left hand menu you will see the items:

  • Mail
  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Tasks
  • etc

These can be quickly accessed by using the following shortcut keys:

  • (Ctrl+1) – Mail
  • (Ctrl+2) – Calendar
  • (Ctrl+3) – Contacts
  • (Ctrl+4) – Tasks

In addition, when you use Ctrl+1 to access mail, this takes you to the folder that you were last using, if you would rather jump straight into your In-Box – use (Ctrl+Shift+I).

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Google Calendar Sync – Auto Run

by Ross (Admin) on Apr.16, 2010, under Microsoft, Office

A nice quick hint.

I kept forgetting to start Google Calendar Sync when I started Outlook. I don’t always start Outlook when I start my laptop and I’m not always online when I run Outlook so puting it in my Startup folder is not really an option.
My solution, a macro that runs when Outlook starts that gives me the option of running Google Calendar Sync if I feel it’s appropriate.

Private Sub Application_Startup()
Dim response As Integer
Dim RetVal

response = MsgBox(prompt:=”Do you want to run Google Calendar Sync?”, buttons:=vbYesNo)

If response = vbYes Then
RetVal = Shell(“C:\Program Files\Google\Google Calendar Sync\GoogleCalendarSync.exe”, vbMinimizedNoFocus)
End If

End Sub

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How Annoying is the Microsoft At Home RSS Feed?

by Ross (Admin) on Jan.27, 2010, under Microsoft, Office

Microsoft At Home
I’m using Microsoft Outlook 2007 and I think it’s a great piece of software.
It has a built in RSS feed reader. Typically I use Google Reader but as that can’t handle authenticated feeds I’m using Outlook for all of my work related Sharepoint feeds.
In order to introduce people to RSS, Microsoft have included two “standard” RSS feeds: “Microsoft At Home” and “Microsoft At Work”.
The only problem is, I’m not really interested in reading these feeds.
(continue reading…)

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Oracle Datatype Conversions

by Ross (Admin) on Apr.15, 2009, under Oracle, Work

Last week I gave a colleague a demonstration on why, if you have numbers stored in a character string you should convert them explicitly to numbers:

select ‘Yes’
from dual
where ‘1000′ between ‘000′ and ‘999′;

‘YES’
—–
Yes

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Protected: Tell Me When The DB Is Back

by Ross (Admin) on Apr.07, 2009, under Oracle, Windows, Work

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Blogging Whilst Employed – Beware!

by Ross (Admin) on Mar.23, 2009, under Business Objects, Dimensional Modelling, Work, XI 3.0

october05.0103
Creative Commons License photo credit: eshm
I was having a flick through my employment contract and I found the following clause:

13.2
You agree that during the course of this contract and after the termination of the contract for whatever reason without limit in point in time you will keep in confidence and shall not disclose to any person unless authorised to do so with the prior written consent of the Company the following:-
13.2.1 Any consultancy know-how, methods, tools, techniques or intellectual capital.

I realised that some of my blog entries or tweets could fall foul of this clause so I asked for written permission to continue blogging generic “work related” content such as Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Modelling and Business Objects.
Rather than granting this and leveraging the fairly good google rankings that my posts seem to get I was asked to remove all work related posts.
Business Objects Best Practice (higher ranking than BusinessObjects.com)
Business Objects New Features (Page One)
Dimensional Modelling (Ralph Kimball ?)
As such I have password protected all of my work related posts.
If you are struggling to find content there are a variety of searches that could turn up interesting content.
Alternatively you can go to my company site, contact details can be found here or here.

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A Song For Business Intelligence ?

by Ross (Admin) on Mar.11, 2009, under Work

What song do you think best sums up Business Intelligence?
.... Middle...
Creative Commons License photo credit: mistress_f
(continue reading…)

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Protected: Business Objects – Best Practice – Report Design

by Ross (Admin) on Mar.04, 2009, under Business Objects, MIG, Maxima, Maxima Information Group, Work

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Business Objects – Best Practice – Universe Design

by Ross (Admin) on Mar.01, 2009, under Business Objects, MIG, Maxima, Maxima Information Group, Work

Business Objects – Best Practice – Universe Design

The purpose of this document is to provide a description of what I consider to be best practice when designing a Business Objects Universe. We will also describe the reasoning behind the suggestion.
Startrails
(continue reading…)

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GTD and RTM – The Missing Link (Penny Drops)

by Ross (Admin) on Jan.31, 2009, under Work


I’m a big fan of Remember The Milk (RTM) and David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD).
The one concept that I have been missing in the whole process is how to set reminders for following up emails.
I regularly use a waitingfor tag and a tag for each persons name but my habit of actually creating the task is not quite there yet.
The habit is no longer needed now.
I have “discovered” that from RTM | Settings | Info there is an “Inbox EMail Address”. For any e-mail I want to chase I simply BCC the message to this address and it creates a task in my inbox. The body of the message goes into a note attached to the task.
All I have to do then is move it to the appropriate list and set any tags or due date.
I would recommend using BCC, if anyone discovers your inbox e-mail address then they will be able to create tasks in your inbox too!

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