Microsoft Office

Keeping track of business assets is a thankless task, but it’s an important one. In our department, the form we use for asset tracking is slightly more sophisticated than the forms I showed you earlier, and it’s used by at least 200 people — not just my immediate team.

From the Microsoft Infopath Blog: Until recently, Margaret, the business administrator in my department, used an Excel workbook to keep track of everyone’s equipment. She would send an e-mail request to the team asking for computer statistics, and we would respond by crawling around under our desks in search of the asset ID stickers on each piece of hardware. Once we found the sticker (usually in the very back, next to all the dust bunnies), we would enter the ID number into the workbook, together with the computer’s name, make, model, and other identifying information. Frankly, it was a hassle for everyone. People often transposed numbers or otherwise entered the wrong thing in the workbook. Sometimes they left out key bits of information. It was then up to Margaret to make sense of it all.

Things are much easier now. Instead of a manual tracking workbook, Margaret uses an InfoPath form to keep track of our computer equipment.

The form consists of some identifying fields, such as e-mail address, name, immediate manager, group manager, and so on. When I first open the form, InfoPath automatically fills out these fields for me based on my network credentials. When I enter a computer name, the form can automatically detect the specs for my computer over the network and fill in the corresponding fields. Now all I have to do is glance at the summary to verify the information before sending it on. If I happen to be working offline, I can enter the specs manually, by following the detailed instructions in a task pane that is part of the form.

Technically speaking, this form is more involved than the other two. Still, if you have an idea for a form, it’s possible to start a grassroots campaign to bring your form to fruition, even if you don’t happen to have the required technical expertise. If you can make a business case for the form, you can get management buy-off. Once you have that, you can work with your IT department or whomever else to identify any design issues and technical requirements.

From the Microsoft Office Sharepoint Blog: So here it goes…. I’ll summarize four very different SharePoint offerings, some of them you probably weren’t even aware were based on SharePoint. Just for fun, I’ll call them Mini, Small, Medium, and Large-SharePoint.

Mini-SharePoint

Office Live Workspace, believe it or not, is built on SharePoint but highly customized and simplified for the end user. The idea is simple – create a workspace (which is like a folder), add files to it, then share it with others. Create and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, pictures, notes, and custom lists with anyone you want. Or use it to share files between work and home, which is a lot easier than emailing files back and forth.

I’ve created one workspace to share files with colleagues, another workspace to share photos with family, and a third workspace to organize forms and schedules for my vanpool.

Find out more at http://workspace.officelive.com

Small-SharePoint

Office Live Small Business is also built on SharePoint but highly customized with Web features, Web applications, and Web site tools. It includes a Web site, multiple email accounts, and Web applications ideal for the small business with up to 10 employees. The Web site features allow you to create a site without knowing a thing about HTML, Web design, or Web creation software. Use the included Web applications to manage and communicate with employees and customers. For simple file sharing, use the Office Live Workspace included with your account.

My goal this year is to move my mom’s real estate practice to the Web using this service.

Find out more at http://smallbusiness.officelive.com

Medium-SharePoint

SharePoint Online, along with Exchange Online, Communications Online, and Live Meeting make up the new Microsoft Online Services. Rather than installing and maintaining SharePoint Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and other server software in your office, just sign up for this business hosting solution and let Microsoft do the heavy IT lifting for you. The service can handle up to 500 individual PC users. Just launch a Web browser, and you have immediate access to your entire business environment.

I would highly recommend this service to any small business that has outgrown Office Live Small Business but is too small to manage a SharePoint deployment.

Find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/online

Large-SharePoint

SharePoint Server (Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server). Last but not least, we have the actual SharePoint software in the box. For the large and enterprise organizations looking to deploy a completely customized and integrated content management solution across the organization, this is what you need. With SharePoint running on your corporate servers, you have complete control over your corporate Intranet, Extranet, and Internet presence, and you can build on the existing collaboration tools, managed business processes, and integration with Microsoft Office client applications.

This is what I use at work every day to communicate with colleagues, collaborate on projects, find critical business data, and actively monitor projects in my department and other departments.

Find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

I hope this clarifies the various SharePoint offerings that you or your business can choose from.

Symptoms
Materials that you print do not look the same when you print them as they do on your computer screen.

Resolutions

You may get different information on the screen than what’s printed because of settings on the printer itself. If you change the margin settings on your printer, Microsoft Office Project 2007 may not override those settings. For example, if you set the margins on the printer at 1 inch and the margins in Office Project 2007 at 0.5 inch, then part of each page may be cut off when you print your project.
If you have borders on the screen but they don’t print, try increasing the page margins to 0.5 inch or more (on the File menu, click Page Setup, and then click the Margins tab).
When you preview a view (click Print Preview on the File menu), you may see blank pages that are unavailable. To print blank pages, click Page Setup on the File menu, click the View tab, and then select the Print blank pages check box.
If Gantt bars (Gantt bar: A graphical element on the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view representing the duration of a task.) or Network Diagram (Network Diagram: A diagram that shows dependencies between project tasks. Tasks are represented by boxes, or nodes, and task dependencies are represented by lines that connect the boxes. In Project, the Network Diagram view is a network diagram.) boxes do not print the way they appear on the screen, check the printer’s properties.
If the legend does not print as it appears on the screen, check the printer or plotter drivers.

It takes too long to print my project

Symptoms
Printing your project takes longer than you want it to.

Cause
The amount of time it takes for a project to print depends on two basic factors: the speed of the printer and the size (and complexity) of your project. Printer speed is not solely a factor of how many pages a printer prints per minute. The number of people using the printer (if it is on a network), the amount of RAM in the printer and your computer, and the network settings for the printer all factor into printer speed.

Large and complex projects take longer to print. Even a small project can take a long time to print if you insert graphics into the workspace (workspace: Files and settings you can save and reopen by opening a single workspace file. Workspace files have the .mpw extension. When you create a workspace file, Project creates lists of the current settings, open projects, views, and so on.), header (header: Text that appears at the top of a printed page. A header typically contains information such as the project or company name and the project start and finish dates.), or footer (footer: Text that appears at the bottom of a printed page. A footer typically contains information such as page number, total page count, and date.).

Quirky Thanksgiving trivia:

In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes — creating the first-ever TV dinner. Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food.

Football & Feastin’

Thanksgiving is ruled by two very powerful f-words: “food” and “football.” Nearly as old as the sport itself, the tradition of watching football on Thanksgiving began in 1876, when the newly formed American Intercollegiate Football Association held its first championship game. Less than a decade later, more than 5,000 club, college and high school football teams held games on Thanksgiving, with match-ups between Princeton and Yale drawing more than 40,000 fans out from their dining rooms. 1934 marked the first NFL game held on Thanksgiving when the Detroit Lions took on the Chicago Bears. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving ever since — except, of course, when the team was called away to serve during World War II.

Franksgiving

FDR learned the hard way not to mess with some traditions. In 1939, the President declared that Americans should celebrate the annual feast one week early, hoping the decision would spur retail sales during the Great Depression. But Americans did not react kindly to the New Deal meal. Some took to the streets while others took to name-calling; the mayor of Atlantic City solved the controversy by declaring his residents would simply enjoy two meals — Thanksgiving and “Franksgiving.” After two years of squabbling (or gobbling, as it were), Congress adopted a resolution in 1941 setting the fourth Thursday of November as the legal holiday

Mary Had a Little Thanksgiving Obession

The woman who wrote the classic nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also played an integral role in making Thanksgiving a national holiday. After a 17-year letter-writing campaign, magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale finally convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue an 1863 decree recognizing the historic tradition.

Americans at the Abbey

In 1942, London’s Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. More than 3,500 soldiers filled the church’s pews to sing America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner — the first time in the church’s 900-year history that a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds. It was an ironic gesture given the holiday’s origins as a festival for pilgrims fleeing religious tyranny in Britain.

Read more by clicking above. Happy Thanksgiving!

Create the shared notebook
You can create shared notebooks on a file share or in an existing SharePoint document library on your company’s network. Depending on the sensitivity of the information that you’re planning to keep in a particular shared notebook, be sure to talk to your network administrator about applying the appropriate file permissions for you and your teammates before you create the shared notebook and invite other authors to add information to it.

When you’ve squared away the location and access rights for the shared notebook, it’s time to create it.

Here’s how:

In OneNote 2007, on the Share menu, click Create Shared Notebook.
In the New Notebook Wizard, enter a Name for the notebook, choose Blank in the From Template list, and then click Next.
On the next screen, make sure that the options Multiple people will share the notebook and On a server are selected, and then click Next.
On the next screen, enter the network path of the folder or document library where you want to create the shared notebook.
Clear the Create an e-mail with a link to this notebook that I can send to other people checkbox (I’ll explain later in this article why you’ll want to first customize a new, shared notebook before sending others a link to it).
Click Create.
OneNote creates the shared notebook in the location you selected and places a shortcut to it on the Navigation Bar.

What does a shared notebook look like?
When you’re working in a shared notebook, it will look and work exactly like the personal notebooks on your own hard drive. You can identify a shared notebook by the synchronization status icon that appears over its notebook icon on the Navigation Bar, and by the availability of the Notebook Sync Status button on the toolbar when the shared notebook is open.

Synchronization status over the notebook’s Navigation Bar icon.
The Notebook Sync Status button on the toolbar.

Whenever you’re connected to the shared notebook, a green synchronization status icon indicates that OneNote is handling the synchronization of changes to the notebook between all connected authors. You can click the Notebook Sync Status button whenever you want to view more information about the synchronization status or if you want to manually sync your recent changes to the shared notebook.

Tip For more information about automatic and manual notebook synchronization, see View the notebook synchronization status.

Although a shared notebook is technically available to others from the moment you create it, there are some best practices that you can consider before announcing the notebook’s availability and location to your teammates.

You can set up Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to send an automatic response to some or all of the people who send you e-mail messages.

Without an Exchange Server account, you can combine an Outlook e-mail template with Outlook rules to reproduce the functionality of the Out of Office Assistant available only to Exchange Server account users. By using this combination, you can use your e-mail account to send automated replies to incoming messages.

Important You must leave your computer turned on and Outlook running for the automated replies to be sent.

Step 1: Create a message template
Tip Download a formal or informal out of office message template from Microsoft Office Online.

On the File menu, point to New, and then click Mail Message.
On the Options tab, in the Format group, click Plain Text.
In the message body, type the message that you want to send as your automated reply.
In the message window, click the Microsoft Office Button and then click Save As.
In the Save As dialog box, in the Save as type list, click Outlook Template (*.oft).
In the File name box, type a name for your message template, and then click Save.
Step 2: Create a rule to automatically reply to new e-mail messages
Do one of the following:

On the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, click New Rule.
Under Start from a blank rule, click Check messages when they arrive, and then click Next.
Under Which condition(s) do you want to check?, select the sent only to me check box and any other criteria that you want, and then click Next.
When you see a dialog box informing you that this rule will be applied to every message that you receive, click Yes.
Under What do you want to do with the message?, select the reply using a specific template check box.
Under Step 2: Edit the rule description (click an underlined value), click a specific template.
In the Select a Reply Template dialog box, in the Look In box, click User Templates in File System.
Select the template that you created in the previous section, and then click Open.
Click Next.
Optionally, select the check boxes for any exceptions to the auto-reply rule.
Click Next.
Under Step 1: Specify a name for this rule, type a name for the auto-reply rule, and then click Finish.

Tip Consider creating an Outlook task or to-do reminder to help you remember to turn off this rule when you want to stop sending automatic replies.

The reply using a specific template rule in the Rules Wizard sends your automated reply only once to each sender during a single session. This rule prevents Outlook from sending repetitive replies to a single sender from whom you receive multiple messages. During a session, Outlook keeps track of the list of users to whom it has responded. If you exit Outlook and then restart it, however, the list of the senders who have received automated replies is reset.

Important For the Rules Wizard to send a reply automatically, Outlook must be running and configured to check periodically for new messages.

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 includes a variety of form template samples. You can use any one of these sample templates as the basis for a Groove InfoPath Forms tool. You can add your own customization, or use them without making any design or layout changes. You can also create a new form template in InfoPath starting with a blank form, customizing it in InfoPath, and then importing the newly-created template into Microsoft Office Groove 2007.

Preparing InfoPath Templates to Use in Groove
To use any sample or new form template in Groove, you must complete several form template customization tasks.

Create a new InfoPath form template or select a template to customize.

(Optional) Insert and lay out controls, if necessary. In some cases, you might be able to use an existing InfoPath template as is. You can see detailed information on designing form templates in InfoPath in Microsoft InfoPath Help.

Promote fields in the InfoPath form template design so that they can be recognized in the Groove InfoPath Forms tool.

Set Form Submit options to “Submit to hosting environment”.

Set Form Security options to “Restricted”.

Save the InfoPath template as an .xsn file.

Typically, you create and lay out most design objects (forms and the fields that display on forms) in InfoPath. Then, import the solution into the Groove Forms Tool designer. Once imported, you can update the form design in InfoPath and then re-import the form in Groove. Once in Groove, you can add other Groove tool features such as customized views

Open an InfoPath Form in InfoPath Designer
You create form templates in design mode, which is the InfoPath design environment. A form template is a file that uses an .xsn file name extension. The .xsn file defines the data structure, appearance, and behavior of finished forms which are .XML files.

A form template defines several items, including the following:

The controls, labels, and instructional text that appear on the form.

The way that controls behave when users interact with them.

Whether the form has additional views.

How and where the data in a form is stored.

The fonts, colors, and other design elements that are used in the form.

Whether users can customize the form.

After you complete the design of a form template, you make it available to users by publishing it as an .xsn file.

To start working with an InfoPath form in InfoPath Designer:

Open InfoPath.

From the Getting Started screen, select Design a Form Template…

From the InfoPath Design a Form Template screen, select an existing form template or decide to design a new form template.

Additional Recommendations for Configuring the InfoPath 2007 Template
The following are features and functions that are available in InfoPath 2007 templates but are not supported in the Groove InfoPath Forms tool when you import the InfoPath template into Groove 2007.

Secondary user interface features, such as a task pane, menu, menu area, or toolbar integration, are not supported in the Groove InfoPath tool. If an InfoPath forms tool contains these features, a warning message will display when the form is imported.

The InfoPath template must include one or more promoted fields. The Groove InfoPath tool designer only recognizes promoted fields for use in the InfoPath tool design. Additionally, the selected promoted fields must be field types that are supported in the Groove InfoPath Forms tool. For example, the Groove InfoPath tool does not recognize Time fields, even if promoted.

Custom validation settings in InfoPath form fields are not honored in InfoPath form templates imported into Groove. See the Microsoft InfoPath help for more information on adding or removing validation settings.

Select and Promote Fields
As you prepare your InfoPath Forms template, consider which form fields you will want to make available in the Groove InfoPath tool. Select fields to display on forms, to reference in views, and to make available for use in view filters and searches. In making this determination, it is also important that you should consider which field types can be used use in Groove.

To promote fields, do the following in InfoPath 2007:

Open the form template in the designer.

On the Tools menu, select Form Options.

In the Form Options dialog box, click Property Promotion.

Click Add and then select a field to promote.

Repeat until you have selected all fields you want to promote.

Click OK.

Read more by clicking above.

Courtesy if CherylIE at MSFT: Want a little more flexibility in designing your Microsoft Office Live Web pages? Curious about how you could put your navigation bar down the right side? Want to replace the standard footer with something fancier?

Customize a header
If you want to customize the header on a page, you can create a new Web part to display the customized content. The easiest way to create this Web part is to add a custom header module to any zone at the top of the page. The custom header module gives you a head start on the Web part by automatically providing the XSLT code needed to include the company information that you added to the standard header.

Using a custom header module gives you complete flexibility in the design of your header; you can edit the XSLT code or replace it completely by pointing to your own file. For more information about the custom header module, see “Add a custom header using the advanced design features.”

Customize a footer
The custom footer module offers a great starting point for a footer Web part. The XSLT code in a custom footer module automatically includes the footer text and links that you chose for the standard footer for your site. Since the module only affects one page, you can edit the text or change a link without affecting the design of your other pages. For more information about adding a custom footer module, see “Add a custom footer using the advanced design features.”

Have your navigation links appear where you want
Would you like to have the navigation links to other pages in your site appear on the right side of the page? You can add a custom navigation module to the zone on the right side of the page. Without editing the XSLT that comes with the module, you have a Web part that displays links to each of the pages that you chose to include in the site-wide navigation bar.

Here, too, you have full control of the font, colors, and images in this new navigation area, because you have full control of the XSLT code. For more information about using a custom navigation module, see “Add custom site navigation using the advanced design features.”

Use your custom designs on other pages
A module is specific to one Web page. To use a custom header, footer, or navigation module on all the pages in your site, you can create a page that includes the module and save the page as a template for use in creating other pages. For more information about saving a page as a template, see “Save a Web page as a template using the advanced design features.”

Even though the custom header, footer, and navigation modules are found in the advanced design category in Office Live Small Business, they are a shortcut design tool that anyone looking for a little more flexibility in designing one page or their entire site can use. For a quick look at the other advanced design features, check out “Introduction to the advanced design features.”

IFrom the MS Outlook blog: f you read RSS feeds in Outlook like I do, you might notice that the default list view isn’t ideal for blogs written by a single person. Since the author is usually the same for my RSS feeds, I’d much rather have the subject of the article be the most prominent piece of information. So what’s my solution? To create a custom view for my RSS feed folders!

Creating a custom view

1. To define a new view for your RSS feeds, start by clicking View | Current View | Define Views…
2. Click New… to create a new view:
3. Fill out the Create a New View dialog box…

Rename the view (I chose to name mine “RSS”)
Leave the default type on Table.
And change the Can be used on option to All Mail and Post folders.
Click OK.

4. Click on the Fields… button.

5. The only change you need to make here is the order in which the fields are displayed. Click Subject and then click Move Up, then click OK.
6. Now you’re ready to apply this view to your RSS feed folders! In one of your RSS folders, go to the View menu and select your new view (mine’s called RSS) and you’re done!

To use this view on other RSS folders, repeat Step 6 for each folder.

Using RSS Feeds in Outlook 2007

Using Outlook to manage and read your RSS feeds has several advantages over a stand-alone aggregator, including the ability to place flags and run rules on any RSS feed to which you subscribe.

Some of you might be wondering what is RSS? Really Simple Syndication (usually referred to as RSS) is a way to get updates to websites sent to you instead of having to go back to the web to see if any changes have been made. In this way, you can keep up-to-date on news and information from many different sources in one place. For example, you could subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog to be notified when we post a new article. You could also subscribe to the MSNBC Top Headlines RSS feed to keep up to date on top news stories. Many companies are starting to use RSS feeds internally to provide their employees with information that doesn’t need to be e-mailed to the entire company.

In the past, people had to use a stand-alone RSS reader such as FeedDemon or an Outlook add-in such as NewsGator to view their RSS feeds. Outlook 2007 now includes a built-in RSS reader, so now you can treat your RSS the way that you treat your mail (using flags, categories, search folders, rules, etc.) without having to use a separate application.

While Outlook is running, it will periodically check the feeds to which you have subscribed and download any new content. Outlook shows an unread count for each feed next to the folder, so you can quickly see if there are new items you haven’t read yet. Because Outlook downloads the RSS feed data from onto your computer, you can access that data even while offline.

Treat RSS just like E-mail
You can delete posts as you read them or keep posts of interest long after they have been removed from the feed. You can also categorize posts, move them to a separate folder, or flag them for follow up as you please. For example, if you are subscribed to a feed from your company’s website, you can easily keep posts mentioning your projects and discard those that are of no interest to you. Or you can set up rules that move interesting RSS posts to your Inbox to bring them to your attention.

If you decide that a feed is no longer important, you can remove the feed by deleting the feed’s folder in Outlook. Outlook will stop downloading new content for the feed and move all the existing downloaded posts to Deleted Items.

One of the really great things about RSS in Outlook is how well it integrates with some of the other features in the product. For example, I have several RSS feeds to which I subscribe but am not interested in every post they publish. Instead of scrolling through each feed manually, I use a Search Folder that searches my subscribed feeds for posts with keywords on topics of interest.

Backing up by using SQL Server tools

SQL Server backup and recovery tools allow for the greatest versatility in recovering your Office Project Server 2007 deployment after a failure. SQL Server tools have the following advantages:

Using the Full Recovery model for SQL Server databases allows for recovery to the point of failure in the event of a database loss.

Office Project Server 2007 and related databases can be synchronized by using transaction log marking. This allows for database consistency during database recovery.

SQL Server tools have the following disadvantage:

SQL Server procedures can be complex and require a good knowledge of SQL Server itself and SQL Server databases. We recommend a trained SQL Server database administrator be responsible for these procedures.

Which should I use?
Which backup method to use depends on the requirements of your organization and the availability of trained resources to manage the process. SQL Server tools offer the most versatile options for recovery, but they are more complex to use. SharePoint Products and Technologies tools are simple to use, but only allow recovery to the last full or differential backup, meaning there will generally be some data loss. SharePoint Products and Technologies tools also require the system to backed up during a period of inactivity to ensure data consistency across databases.

Use SharePoint Products and Technologies tools if:

You have a deployment which is not in use for several hours, usually at night, when backups can be performed.

You can tolerate data loss of up to twenty-four hours (the time since the last daily backup).

Your organization does not have trained SQL Server database administrators or IT personnel who can manage the processes of using SQL Server tools.