Wellington Office User GroupWellington Office User Group19 September 2007
Main Topic: Technical Writing
Peter Graham
Secondary Topic: Microsoft Visio - data linking
Steve Schapel, Microsoft MVP
Review by Steve Schapel
Session review coming....
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20 June 2007
Main Topic: Making the most of the Office 2007 Interface - The Ribbon differences between Office 2007 and the more familiar versions...
Jonathan Stuckey (Microsoft)
Review by Harry, Enthusiastic Office User
It’s been a while since our last meeting, and been longer since I could tear myself way from the office to attend. Since then, Office 2007 has been released, Vista hit the shelf and petrol went up again, again and again. Tonight’s session was held at the NZ Post building, in the very nice board room. Pizza and beer was served first, just as well as Jonathan and the team had a little “technical” trouble with the data show and laptop getting together. Thank goodness the new Office Ribbon works so much better.
Firstly we covered the “help” in Office. For those of us that remember “Clippy” (who probably did more harm than good) will know that good help is hard to find. In fact if you got past the helper, the material has always had a lot packed into it. After Clippy was killed off, the help has always been a key way to learn the application or function. Office 2007 continues to build on this feature and now offers content help. Hover over a function and up pops information about the function, “press F1” for more and the help loads related to the function. More help is provided online via videos and interactive demos (see below).
Jonathan presented the 2003 menu structure against the 2007 version to show how similar the new ribbon is and even thought it appears to be larger, in fact for those that use two rows, it is similarly sized. Additionally, all of the work has been done to make those deeply hidden features brought to the surface to enable quick and easy access. This resolves one of the biggest issues for request from users for features that were already in the applications, just too hard to find.
As can be seen by the shot of the PowerPoint, Excel and Word ribbons key common functions are now grouped and the grouping of functions around activities in the life cycle of a document. Previously related functions were spread across a variety of menu items. A good example if the Insert group, which now contains all of the insert items.
For those that just can’t get past the new ribbon, a download (for a fee) is available for each application however Jonathan warns that there will be a loss to the users of some of the new functionality.
Following a good session on all of the key items and questions from the group, Steve demonstrated a nifty utility that enables the menu’s to be quickly customized to suit ones own needs. Steve has arranged a great deal on this utility, contact him for the details and check it out at http://www.ribboncustomizer.com. Of course those that like to DIY, Office has the ability to be customized through XML and programming.
Our thanks to Aniela Mackiewicz and Dai Bevan at NZ Post, for organising to sponsor this month's meeting.
Thanks also, for sponsorship, to:
Patrick Schmidt, Ribbon Customizer
ESET, NOD32
Some excellent information/learning resources provided by Jonathan Stuckey:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/getstarted/FX101938921033.aspx (see 'find familiar commands')
Self-paced training
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/FX100565001033.aspx
Interactive Demos – Help & How to…
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/FX100485311033.aspx
Get Started with the 2007 Microsoft Office System
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/getstarted/FX101923361033.aspx
Answers to specific questions raised at the meeting
http://blog.datamanagementsolutions.biz/2007/07/protecting-style-in-ms-word.html
http://blog.datamanagementsolutions.biz/2007/07/custom-toolbars-2007.html
Next meeting 19 September.
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21 March 2007
Main Topic: Overview of Microsoft Office Project - Youssef Mourra, Pacific Training
Review by John Price
The meeting this month was a great success. It covered MS Project (Microsoft Project 2007) and feedback from the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Conference held in Redmond which by all accounts sounds like quite an experience hearing Bill Gates speak and meeting the person who invented C#.
The guest speaker was Youssef Mourra from PIPC who has worked with MS Project since its first release. He gave a great commentary on MS Project and project management.
Youssef started by giving an outline of project management and how this ties in with MS Project. Then he showed how to organise projects and the various methodologies for carrying out projects. He finished by giving an excellent demonstration of the MS Project suite of products and how these would be used in a real life situation.
Overall it was a great meeting and what I found most useful was having an expert in the field to show how these tools should be used. I had always thought there was only one product which had a limited usage but Youssef was able to demonstrate the many components that make up MS Project and how these should be used within an organisation.
Thanks to Stephen Isaacs from Microsoft for his support, including the provision of some exciting "spot prizes", one of which being a copy of Vista Ultimate, which was well received.
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21 February 2007
Main Topic: Overview of Microsoft Office Groove - Jonathan Stuckey, Microsoft
Review by Steve Schapel
This was a very interesting look at Groove, all the way from "What is it?" to a demonstation of how easy it is to set up and use.
Groove is primarily targetted to those who are very mobile, or who need to work collaboratively with widely distributed groups.
According to Jonathan, it is the #1 download from microsoft.com, so apparently it's catching on!
Jonathan provided the following information:
Groove 2007 product guide:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/groove/HA101680011033.aspx
There are 14 case-studies for Groove 2007 (client scenarios)
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?ProTaxID=2890
There are 3 specifically on Groove Server scenarios (managing corp data / sharepoint to field)
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/search.aspx?ProTaxID=3061
The original Groovenetworks internet site is still available, we run this for supporting install base we acquired up to acquisition of the company last year:
http://www.groove.net/home/index.cfm
Customer references are on:
http://www.groove.net/index.cfm/pagename/CustomerStories/
Govt specific scenarios as I described ref. Hurricane Katrina are summarised
Government Customer Stories:
California Department of Justice's Criminal Intelligence Bureau (CIB)
"Groove has enabled us to create what I call virtual analytical units, where a number of intelligence analysts from California and even other states can collaborate without having to be in the same room. We can get a lot of different eyes looking at a case - and end up with a much better response."
-- Ed Manavian, Chief, California CIB
Florida Division of Emergency Management
"[Groove's] the tool that I see closest in its design and purpose as to how information flow actually works in a real disaster vs. trying to make the disaster information flow fit the inherent limitations of the tools"
-- Craig Fugate, FDEM director
"We chose Groove to support a requirement we had called Virtual Team Services Edge because it is very powerful in meeting the needs of those on the move, those who need to work offline, or those that may well be cut off from central servers. [Groove's] peer-to-peer capabilities keep people functioning even if they're cut off from the U.S....Groove is very good in our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to support secure communications and work outside the firewall to team with folks that are part of a multinational coalition of partners."
-- Rick Morris, deputy chief battle commander, knowledge systems division of the Army CIO office
"Right now, the Corps is actively engaged with its day-to-day responsibilities, along with our added mission of supporting Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction. No matter how stretched we are, we must always remain at a high state of readiness so we can respond to any situation. Groove Virtual Office and Tomoye Simplify software are two tools for achieving our objective of leveraging our intellectual capital through collaboration, anywhere at anytime."
-- Wil Berrios, chief information officer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
HSIN, which the Department of Homeland Security rolled out in early 2004, is a collection of collaborative tools, including Groove Networks Inc.'s Workspace and Microsoft's SharePoint portal and workflow software, that works in real time over existing networks and the Internet. It's a "fairly ubiquitous way to send out alerts throughout the country. HSIN provides the ability for federal partners to reach out and touch local and state agencies."
-- Lee Holcomb, Chief Technology Officer for the Department of Homeland Security.
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22 November 2006
Format: A bunch of mini-presentation capsules
Review by Lynda Rowland
Topic 1: Short demonstration by Steve Schapel on SnagIt – a programme mostly used for video/text capture of a short duration, good for demonstrating a small series of actions with sound.
Topic 2: Short demo from Kirk …… on Excel – Formula auditing. Kirk used an example from www.lacher.com which shows the linked cells with visual arrows and boxes for correcting complicated formula errors.
Topic 3: A short demo from Mark Orange on Sharepoint 2007 mainly discussing policy rules.
Topic 4: An in depth overview by David Chamberlain of Excel 2007. David’s background is in accounting so his focus was on the improved capability and visual interfaces. David also discussed multi functions and demonstrated a range of new features.
Topic 5: A short demo from Jonathan on Powerpoint. Jonathan showed how easy it is to produce a professional slide show with standard features and the slide library.
Topic 6: Nathan Mercer showed off the new version of Speech Recognition in Windows Vista. A USB microphone and headset is advisable with a mute switch. No keyboard or mouse is necessary. This programme goes into sleep mode when not is use. This is loaded in Outlook and Word only but can be added to the other programmes in the Office suite. This is also able to be used to access the internet and has multiple languages. (This demo was lots of fun)
A big thank you from the group to Steve for organising and herding us into Microsoft once a month and thanks also to those who have sponsored these meeting during the year.
A video recording of the meeting is available here.
Thanks for sponsorship to:
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18 October 2006
Main Topic: An I.T. timeline - Rick Hook, Gen-i
Review by Steve Schapel
Rick painted a very big picture of the reality of the IT journey. Stimulating and disorientating :-) . I couldn't possibly hope summarise a presentation that put human immortality in the same sentence with Microsoft Word. Below is Rick's pre-meeting abstract:
"Microsoft Office 2007 and life as we know it today, tomorrow, and in the future (a.k.a. Public Records Act Compliance, Knowledge Network Services, and Ray Kurzweil’s Countdown to Singularity…).
Architect community protagonist (and sometimes antagonist) Rick Hook will review current and future trends of the Microsoft Office 2007 enteprise platform through some examples of next generation connected solutions to illustrate the business value that this technology offers to New Zealand .
For the last fifteen years Rick has been an IT architect designing and building integrated enterprise applications and Information Management solutions with Microsoft technologies. He has worked with a number of New Zealand government and corporate organisations to adopt and implement Microsoft based solutions and his current passion is exploring and understanding the next generation of technologies and information architectures as they converge.
In his current role as Gen-i's Microsoft Practice Manager, Rick is responsible for setting strategic direction and maintaining delivery expertise with Microsoft tools and technologies for the Gen-i technology professionals who deliver business solutions across New Zealand."
A PDF copy of Rick's presentation slides is available here.
A video Rick showed during the presentation is available here.
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20 September 2006
Main Topic: An Exploration of the Uses of VBA - Peter Grainger, AuthoDox Ltd
Review by Steve Schapel
Peter's presentation was a very nicely balanced overview of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).
- What is VBA?
- Inside Microsoft Office - a quick look at "Getting Started"
- Beyond macros - developing applications
- VBA and MS Word
- VBA and MS Project
He started by putting VBA in a historical perspective, tracing its evolution to the powerful programming language that it is today.
We were then taken for a quick look around the VB Editor window, with some examples of code, before moving on to a closer look at a couple of AuthoDox's Word document projects. These provided a superb demonstration of what can be achieved by VBA, including a customised user interface for form completion and data validation.
Ben Thompson, also from AuthoDox, rounded off the session with a sweet demonstration of controlling a chart in Project.
This was an excellent meeting, that held something of interest for all attending, from those who had not used VBA before, right through to the professional developers.
Peter Grainger is the co-founder and director of AuthoDox Limited, a Wellington software company specialising in Microsoft Office development.
A video recording of this presentation is available at http://www.dot.net.nz/Default.aspx?tabid=76.
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16 August 2006
Main Topic: Various Aspects of Printing and Imaging - Tony King, Microsoft MVP
Secondary Topic: An Example of an Access Application - Steve Schapel, Microsoft MVP
Review by JoAnn Eggers, Consultant, LANWorx Ltd
Steve Schapel began the evening with a demonstration of a Microsoft Access application. This example was an application designed for ANZ Nature Tours – an inbound tour operator.
Steve demonstrated the use of Office automation to integrate the application with other Office applications. One example was revenue information which was generated as an Excel chart and then could be converted to a jpg. Another example was using various tour options to create an itinerary which could be outputted to Word and to PDF format and then emailed to travel agents.
Steve outlined future possibilities which included integration into SharePoint and allowing the travel agents to create their own bookings. The demonstration outlined what Microsoft Access is capable of, particularly when combined with other Office tools.
Tony King who is an MVP in Printing and Imaging then gave a presentation giving us the benefit of his years of experience in the area. This very usefully covered the whole range of issues around printing and scanning in an easily understandable way.
He began with a discussion of the differences between laser and inkjet printers and how the quality of the paper used can affect the printout and the printer itself. He advised that when buying printers and scanners to select the one that was most appropriate for the highest demand use. He also advised to ensure that the scanners and printers used for a particular task were appropriate. No use using a high resolution scanner and a low resolution printer.
He then listed the seven areas which affect the total cost of imaging (printing and scanning) that should be taken into account when creating a strategy around imaging.
1 Hardware - this is the initial hardware costs around buying the new equipment
2 Software – this includes installation, customisations and upgrade
3 Consumables
4 Network Management and admin
5 Infrastructure – costs of floor space for the printer(s) and storage of consumerables.
6 Operational – 10% of employee costs are imaging related (document assembly, downtime etc)
7 Maintenance and support – this includes servicing and helpdesk calls (average cost $35 per call)
Tony continued with a discussion of the pros and cons of compatible inks and toners. He concluded by stating that the relationship between scanners, printers, inks, toners, paper is getting more and more complex and the customers more demanding.
“If imaging was simple, I would be doing something else”
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19 July 2006
Productivity with Microsoft Outlook - Chris MacIntosh, Priority Management Ltd
Review by Steve Schapel
A change of venue for tonight's meeting, to the P4 Learning Centre, Gilmer Terrace, and yet another opportunity for the members to test their mettle by braving the cold and damp. Our thanks to the P4 group, and in particular to Priority Management, for sponsoring this meeting in their training room, and for the supply of refreshments.
I'm afraid I am not able to give a full review of the presentation by Chris MacIntosh. I can certainly say that everyone present was absorbed in the session, and all seemed to learn a lot from what Chris had to say. Without going into details, the focus was on not just using bits and pieces of Outlook, not just seeing it as an email client, or whatever, but instead looking at it as a productivity tool. So Chris was able to share tips and techniques for more effective integration of the various components of Outlook, and with a particular focus on managing time by managing Tasks. He spoke of the time savings that can be achieved by learning to use Outlook efficiently.
All in all, an enjoyable and successful event. A video recording is available at http://www.dot.net.nz/Default.aspx?tabid=76.
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21 June 2006
Topic 1: Overview of Windows SharePoint Services - Ian Morrish, Microsoft Solutions Specialist
Topic 2: Word 2007 and Excel 2007 - Anne Taylor, Product Manager, Microsoft Office System
Review by Harry, Enthusiastic Office User
Being a very cold and wet Wednesday night it was a very good turn out, with Steve anxious that they had ordered enough Pizza, and hoping he’d not have to squeeze in any more chairs.
First up was Ian with an overview of the SharePoint beta. A live running view of this can be found at http://www.wssdemo.com. Ian demonstrated the true simplicity of the product by running the entire session from within SharePoint without the aid of a PowerPoint. The key power of the tool is the way that it can replace your usual LAN share where you usually shove documents never to be seen again or struggle to get approval or reviews undertaken by mass emailing them as attachments and having to deal with all the comments and feedback yourself. If you’ve ever waded through directory after directory trying to find a document or don’t know if you should file your documents by Customer or by Year or Month in Year then SharePoint is a tool that will revolutionise your Office environment. In addition to having a repository for documents, SharePoint also has a Wiki, Blog, Shared Calendar, List Manager, Surveys, and a host of other features. Ian showed how he could quickly setup a site, create documents with attributes such as Draft/Published, build a quick workflow process, and then create filters and custom views of the repository, all within the space of the timeslot for the demo. With a dedicated Business Analyst and a good working knowledge of your company’s document habits, SharePoint will soon be saving you hundreds of hours, as well as providing the collaboration that all good office environments need.
Following Pizzas, Anne ran through a number of the key features of Word 2007 and Excel 2007 to show how a non-technical user can gain significant productivity undertaking many of the common tasks in Word. Highlighting the powerful ribbon features for Headers/Footers, Tables, Images, and the new SmartArt, a dull text document was quickly brought to life. With the remaining time Anne showed the quick formatting, conditional formatting and Pivot features in the new Excel.
The warmed-up audience bounced numerous questions off both speakers who demonstrated their in-depth expertise by their comprehensive and quick answers. The highlight of Anne’s session was the box of Office 2007 Beta CDs left for the eager WOUG mem bers to take home and try out all the awesome features themselves. Such was the inspiration of the new version of Word, I had a go at writing up the session.
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24 May 2006
Topic 1: Overview of InfoPath - Ryan Duguid, Microsoft Technical Specialist
Topic 2: Where does Access fit in - Steve Schapel, Microsoft Access MVP
Review by Ben Thomson, Office Solutions Developer, AuthoDox Ltd
Being a part of the Microsoft Partner Program and a subscriber to Microsoft’s Action Pack I am presented with a large range of Microsoft products. So much in fact, that some products I pick up, look at, and then put back down without ever installing. InfoPath unfortunately was one of these products.
Even though the pizza never turned up, Microsoft Technical Specialist (try saying that after a couple of drinks) Ryan Duguid put on a great presentation from covering the basics of MS InfoPath right through to the design and distribution of InfoPath forms.
The presentation began with the rundown on what InfoPath actually is but I’m going to start with a couple of examples of just to get the ball rolling. When thinking about forms, think expense reports, time cards, employee surveys, insurance forms, travel requests, asset tracking forms, and status reports etc. Microsoft Office InfoPath is an application for creating electronic forms that people can use to gather, share, and reuse XML based information.
These forms can have a large number of customisable controls and fields on them making it straightforward to quickly enter information. This data can of course then be collated and stored. Being part of the MS Office system the data is easily integrated into other products such as Excel, Access, and SharePoint.
Currently, to fill in forms you must have InfoPath installed or the forms must be distributed within SharePoint’s web interface. With InfoPath 2007 on the horizon this will become more flexible.
The amount of control that can go on the forms is vast. Data validation and conditional formatting is easily set.
I could go on but basically InfoPath is a fast way to build rich forms which are easy to publish.
For some more information, check out the Microsoft site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/FX010857921033.aspx
For the second part of the night, Steve Schapel, resident WOUG kingpin and Access extraordinaire took over and got the discussion of where Access fits in to the scheme of things underway. Access is a well developed product within the MS Office framework. Despite this, it can often be a misunderstood product in terms of what it's actually capable of and where it fits into the scheme of things.
Steve provided some interesting examples which give light to the subject of where Access fits in. A collection of some examples of “Real World Access” applications is being assembled at http://accesstips.datamanagementsolutions.biz/apps.htm
19 April 2006
An update on the Tablet PC and Office – Craig Pringle, Tablet PC MVP
Review by Ann Everett, Technology Learning Co-ordinator, Simpson Grierson
For those of us not lucky enough to have a Tablet PC, the next-best-thing is taking a vicarious interest in how it integrates with the Office applications we already use, what tablet-specific applications have been developed, and what enhancements are planned for future releases. That is why Craig Pringle's presentation was of particular interest. His well-structured and illustrated presentation underscored why those of us that have them love them, and those of us who don't now want them even more.
In Office 2003, the primary benefit is to be able to write, draw or sign where previously we would have either had to type or fuss with hard copies. As in XP the tablet PC comes into its own for filling out forms and applications – and/or signing them – in Word and Excel. My favourite enhancement in 2003 is the ability to draw or write the content of an email message – which is transmitted as a gif image! The major development with 2003 though is in Infopath. The fields in forms and applications developed through Infopath can be tablet-aware, enabling the data written to be captured and used in SharePoint, xml or submitted to Web Services. As you would expect, the fields can be programmed to accept data in predetermined formats only.
Enhancements in Office 2007 include some pen-friendly features such as "the ribbon", which has particular attraction to tablet users. Where Powerpoint 2003 accommodated some navigation tools, Powerpoint 2007 enables you to use ink on slides. OneNote enables you to maximise the space for writing on, and recognises handwriting so that content, being searchable, doesn't need to be transcribed for future reference.
Other software developers are making contributions now too. For example "Ink Gestures" – an add-on for Word – lets you use proof-reading mark-ups to edit text on the fly! This particular developer is turning his attention to Internet Explorer now so that'll be a space to watch!
Craig also demo'd a couple of other third-party applications for tablet users. One was ActiveWords, billed as a productivity application for desktop PCs which, more than autotext or autocorrect on steroids, enables users to open a file or even another application with an assigned keystroke. Mind Manager mind-mapping software while an obvious fave for those of us who like to work with visual concepts and diagrams (which I suspect is most tablet users) also integrates with Word or Powerpoint by exporting the data in a structured way (eg. using outline numbering or creating slides from sub-topics respectively) taking its cues from the mind-map.
We are indebted to Craig for a logical, thoughtful and comprehensive presentation on the current and future state of the Tablet PC. More information on this, or the hot topics for tablet users, check out Craig's blog: www.pringle.net.nz.
The slides used for this presentation are here: http://www.pringle.net.nz/blog/PermaLink,guid,09a3cfa4-427c-421a-af98-f6454d52b101.aspx
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15 March 2006
The New Office User Experience - Ryan Duguid, Microsoft Technical Specialist
Review by Garry Robertson, Consultant, Synergy International Limited
There was a good turnout for the inaugural meeting of the Wellington Office User Group to hear Ryan Duguid, Microsoft Technical Specialist, talk about the upcoming release of 2007 Office. The new release of Office will have a completely redesigned user interface and Ryan’s presentation covered the reasons for changing the UI, the rationale behind the components, and gave a sneak preview of the new Office System with many demos.
The session began with a review of the UI of Microsoft Word from version 1.0 to the current Word 2003. This was very interesting - especially to those of us who have worked with Office products since the very early days. The point made during this review was that the Office products have grown so much in features and complexity over the years that users are finding it increasingly difficult to discover how to access those features.
The new UI is being introduced to address that issue and is centered around the concept of a "ribbon" toolbar. The ribbon is a rich, dynamic, context-sensitive toolbar which sits at the top of the screen. The toolbar contents change according to the task the user is performing. For example, when editing a table, the toolbar displays table related functions, whereas when editing text, the toolbar will show functions specific to text formatting. This behaviour is designed to expose the user to much more functionality than they would normally see without delving deep into the menu system.
Other new features include live preview of changes before they are made, "galleries" of formatting styles, and mini-bars (small toolbars which appear near the cursor to carry out common tasks). A large new "Office" button in the top left corner of the window provides access to document-level tasks such as open, save, print, etc. Printing directly to PDF format will be a feature and the use of XML as a native document storage format is also new.
On the initial release of 2007 Office, the new UI will be featured in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, andAccess. For more details and pictures of the new UI, visit http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/.
