How to Show Archive Folders in the Outlook Folder List

How to Insert a File Hyperlink in an Outlook Item

How to Rename a .pst File (Without Corrupting the File)

1. Finally a real product version – Usually Microsoft releases a new version of Windows or Office and expects everyone to pay to be beta testers. Office 2010 and Windows 7 for that matter have been a pleasant surprise in that they were actually workable without a service pack. Kuddos, Microsoft
2. The new social media interface rocks – Now at the bottom of your Outlook contact and email items you can see social media information such as Facebook or LinkedIn profile icons and updates. Its a nice touch especially for people in a sales function that want to keep up with the latest updates of their prospects and clients.
3. The Activities tab is visible on the Contact record General tab – I’ve had sales people complain about having to go to another tab to see emails, appointments and other linked items for contacts from the get go. I was very happy to see that Outlook included this information on the bottom of the main tab people use to view contact information.

What I hate!

1. Unfortunately, the Activities tab referenced in item 3 of what I love doesn’t seem to work for anything other than email. Tasks, appointments and journal entries don’t seem to show up even though they are supposed to – service pack issue?
2. The Activities tab no longer works for anything other than the main default Outlook folders. This is big time bad news for users that want to access information from archive folders or those that use public folders. So Outlook/Exchange is no longer a viable contact management solution for multiple users which is probably what Microsoft wanted so that they could push people to Microsoft CRM. Unfortunately, Microsoft CRM is major overkill for most outside sales people.

Some More Good News

I’m currently working with one of my development partners to create an add-in that will reproduce the old Activities linking in public folders so hopefully we will have a solution ready to sell next quarter.

So if you are dependent on the Activities tab functionality you might want to hold off on upgrading to Office 2010, but otherwise I think you will enjoy some of the other new features. Please let me know your thoughts regarding Outlook 2010 and stay tuned for a new Activities tab add-in announcement. In the meantime – happy selling!

Sale of Gulf Coast Welding

Yay – we sold my former client (owned by none other than my Mom) Gulf Coast Welding Corp..  The deal with the new owners from Viacap was inked earlier this week and we are very excited for everyone involved.  Best of luck to the folks at GCW Corp. and Viacap – the future looks bright!

New Focus for Advena Artemis

As many of you know Advena Artemis started as a software company with our Microsoft Outlook add-in product HuntressPro.  HuntressPro enhanced Outlook as a contact management and sales management tool so that users could manage sales activities in the same place that they manage most of their other business and personal activies e.g. sending and receiving emails, keeping their calendar, and managing their tasks in, etc.  We loved the Huntress solution, but we found that we were adding more value helping our clients create, organize and manage their sales and marketing  processes than as a software provider.  And as we’ve acknowledged from the beginning, one size CRM does not fit all so we’ve ended up spending as much time helping clients select and implement other software solutions effectively as we have implementing HuntressPro. 

Since we were struggling to provide superior support to clients both as a software company and as consultants, we’ve decided to focus on the area where we are adding the most value – consulting.  We’ve very excited about this change in focus and will be announcing some great sales and marketing service offerings soon (thanks to the great people at Design at Work Creative Services for helping us with our brochure)!  In the mean time, if you are a Huntress user, please do not feel abandoned – we are still available to help work through the transition and we will still be providing Outlook efficiency and effectiveness coaching as part of our service offering.

Collaboration

Arrow-Tips readers will know that I am a huge advocate of working with great external marketing and PR firms and there are some especially great ones right here in our home town of Houston that we love to collaborate with.  One such firm is BrandExtract who we began our first project with last Fall.  We’ve enjoyed working with the talented people at BrandExtract and look forward to more projects in the future.

So that’s the news for now.  Look for that new service flier soon and I know I still owe you a final post on posting KPIs as well as a couple of interview posts.  We’re also about to gear back up on our bi-weekly newsletters so send us an email if you would like to be added to that distribution list.  In the mean time, happy hunting!

One thing we often forget to take into consideration on our calendar is standard appointments that we have every day or every week.  Although you know that you have to pick up your dog from the groomer by 5 every Thursday, other people who use your calendar to coordinate meetings may not.  So a calendar best practice (whether you use Outlook or not) is to always block off time for those items so that others who have access to your calendar do not schedule over them.  Also, if we’re being honest, has Fido ever had to wait a little longer than usual because you got busy and accidentally booked an appointment with that prospect you’ve been stalking for 6 months over his pick up time? 

Why book regular appointments on your calendar?  Here are 3 good reasons:

1. Communication – Whether you work for a multinational corporation or are self-employed, these days you are still likely to be on a mail server where other employees or your virtual assistant have access to your calendar.  You can mark items private, but still reserve time on your calendar if you don’t want colleagues knowing which nail salon you frequent for personal grooming or which school you send your kids to.
2. Commitment Reaffirmation – As stated earlier, I’ve made a commitment to my children to take off early on Friday afternoons and pick them up from school.  Seeing that appointment on my calendar every week helps make that commitment tangible.
3. You’re Only Human– We all get busy or suffer from occasional sleep deprivation induced forgetfulness.  Keeping your commitments on your calendar helps prevent scheduling oopses.

Still to come this week is the excerpt from my interview with James Bond of Apptix regarding email spam filtering and the final installment in my Using SharePoint to Communicate KPI Dashboards – Internal Marketing to Support Your KPI Goals.  Until then, happy hunting!

Methodical or Maverick?

While I have always found training sales teams in a group setting to be challenging at best and down right impossible at worst, I had quite a different experience with the Financial Controls group.  First of all, when I arrived to begin training, all the students were already quietly sitting in their places with their laptops running, pens and notebooks poised for jotting down tips so we could get started right on time.  We worked our way down the course agenda with minimal interruptions and in the end there were a few very focused and intelligent questions.  I found this group had an uncanny ability to process the information presented absorbing details as we went along and everyone seemed happy with the information they took away.  It was a bizarre experience.

Why bizarre you ask?  Well let me describe that same scenario with a group of sales people keeping in mind that I am in fact a sales person (yes, it takes one to know one).  For starters, I have yet to walk into a software training session for sales people that started on time – these folks are notoriously late for things like software training since they would rather face a dentists’ drill than a day couped up inside an office listening to an instructor.  Also, it is usually very difficult to follow a pre-defined agenda since sales people have a strong tendency towards ADHD.  And, I won’t even get into all the interruptions caused by cell phones and side conversations given that sales people tend to be gregarious and social (again, takes one to know one).

After a while, I stopped even trying to train sales people or executives and entrepreneurs (who also tend to be very ADHD like) in an instructor lead class.  While accountants, administrators and engineers tend to logically accept methodology that has been tried and proven to be effective (we’ll call these folks the “methodicals”), sales people and entrepreneurs tend to be “mavericks.” Mavericks like to do things their way and they relish their independence.  I’ve found that while methodicals are usually great in instructor lead seminars, it is much more effective to train mavericks in one-on-one coaching sessions that can be tailored specifically to their needs.

Benefits of Coaching for Mavericks

Since coaching is focused specifically on the student, the topic is guaranteed to be relevant and since it is one-on-one there are far less distractions.  I can take the time to ask my clients what issues are most difficult for them and then help them understand how to use Outlook to address those specific issues.  I also find, that for most people (even methodicals), an hour’s worth of new information regarding a product as diverse as Microsoft Outlook is about all they can easily digest in one sitting.  Instead of conducting all day training sessions, I’ve found that 2 to 4 one hour sessions each focused on a different Outlook folder (e.g. Contacts, Calendar, Inbox, Tasks, Journal) conducted on a weekly basis are much more effective.  This way the student gets an opportunity to digest and use what they have learned and then compile questions during the week for the next session.  Occasionally I will train both an executive assistant and the executive in joint sessions since these functions work so closely together and often in each other’s mailbox.

Cost Considerations

People some times ask about the cost effectiveness of one on one training versus instructor lead training.  In most cases, the people that ask that question are only thinking of the cost of the class or instructor/coach.  But what about the cost of the student?  If the student is paid a salary, then there is a cost associated with tying them up in all day training session.  If the student is an entrepreneur or sales person who is either billable or could be involved in business generation activities, there is an opportunity cost associated with tying up their time as well.  And once you take into consideration the greater value received from one on one training as opposed to generic instructor lead topics, the cost advantage shifts dramatically.

Keep in mind when determining whether instructor lead or one-one coaching  is best for you that the terms “methodicals” and “mavericks” are generalizations – after all, I was trained and worked as an engineer for many years before becoming a sales person and I find CFOs that started off as accountants can sometimes be more maverick like as well.  If you have some feed back regarding your Outlook coaching or training experiences, please leave us a comment or if you are interested in one-on-one Microsoft Outlook coaching, please feel free to contact me.  In the mean time, happy hunting!

First of all, we created a special document folder to house the Dashboard spreadsheet itself, but most of the data feeding that spreadsheet comes from other places on SharePoint.  GCW uses several SharePoint lists to house data and we thought about pulling data directly from those lists, but in the end eliminated that solution because it would require programming.  We actually used the same reasoning for going with an Excel spreadsheet to summarize the data rather than just pull data directly into a shared web part.  If you have access to SharePoint development resources in your organization, you might want to take that programmatic route or you can post a project on Scriptlance, Elance, or Guru and use external development resources.  If you want to keep things simple, using spreadsheets stored on SharePoint and linked together works just fine.

Inspection Logs

For safety inspection data, we used simple inspection log spreadsheets stored in folders called “Daily Shop Inspections” and “Weekly Pop Safety Inspections” (see thumbnail below).  Five days worth of data (one work week) is input into each workbook on its own worksheet and we maintain a form in a Forms folder that is downloaded and updated each week then saved into the Daily Shop Inspections folder.  We use a naming convention for each workbook so that when we’re updating the links in the Dashboard spreadsheet, we don’t have to actually go to the Daily Shop Inspection folder to get the file name.  Instead we can just do a global replace for the workbook file reference.

The Production Schedule

On-time shipment data used in the Dashboard spreadsheet is pulled from the GCW Production Schedule spreadsheet housed in the Shared Documents area of SharePoint.  This document is the most frequently used reference for day to day operations since it keeps the management team abreast of everything from man hours used to due dates and delays.  GCW maintains the Production Schedule in quarterly files with a fresh worksheet for each week.  That way snapshots for how well GCW is staying under estimated man hours per job as well as man hour backlogs are captured on a weekly basis.  Maintaining these snapshots also means that Dashboard spreadsheet links to the data in the Production Schedule must be updated weekly as well, but this exercise can be done easily with the global replacement feature in Microsoft Excel. 

Payroll Spreadsheet

Indirect man hours are calculated within the GCW Payroll Microsoft Excel workbook where man hours logged to each job are recorded on a daily basis and housed in weekly worksheets within an annual workbook document.  Hidden rows perform calculations that are then referenced in the Dashboard spreadsheet. Again, a global update is required each week since a new payroll worksheet is created each week.  It is very important that we copy the exact worksheet format (using the Worksheet Move or Copy command as opposed to cutting and pasting) so that all hidden columns and rows are captured and remain in the same location and can therefore be referenced in the Dashboard worksheet without having to completely recreate the links each week.

Quotation Log

Pipleine information is taken from the Quotation Log Microsoft Excel workbook also stored in the Shared Documents portion of SharePoint.  We used both projected revenues and closed business to calculate the Pipeline KPI for the current year which are housed on two separate worksheets within the Quotation Log workbook.

Manual Updates

Average Labor Cost Per Hour and NDT Pass Rate are both derived from external system data (GCW Proprietary Accounting Software which does not export to Excel and GCW Quality Database) and therefore must be entered each month manually into the Dashboard spreadsheet.  Fortunately this data only consists of a few figures (5 total for both metrics) so it does not take long to key in at all.  NCRs are also input manually based on NCR log entries i.e. it is assumed that all jobs were accepted by the customer once they have been shipped if there are no entries in the NCR log.  However, if an entry is made in the NCR log, alerts have been set up on SharePoint to alert team members responsible for updating the Dashboard Workbook so that NCR failures can be recorded manually.  Alerts are set up to come directly to each employees Outlook Mailbox so they are easily spotted (see thumbnail below).

No doubt there is an easier way to record much of this information in SharePoint.  If you know some of them, please share them with us in a comment.  Still to come this week, excerpts from my interview with James Bond (yes, that is his real name) of Apptix regarding the MX Logic spam filter used in their hosted exchange services.  In the mean time, happy hunting!

From Hunter:

While I was studying at the University of Texas, my Career Planning professor suggested I create a web portfolio in order to better market myself in the future. After researching several flash websites I discovered Wix.com. I was impressed with how easy-to-use Wix turned out to be, and by the site’s flexibility regarding what kind of information I was able to share. I incorporated samples of my writing [see Highlights button] , my resume [see Resume button] and a brief autobiography [see Biography button] with just a few clicks of the mouse!

Just recently, I learned that I have been accepted into the MBA program at the University of Houston! Now that I have narrowed down my career path, I plan on updating my Wix page and focusing it in a more corporate-friendly direction. Given that Wix provides its subscribers the ability to present themselves in a professional manner, yet also gives users a chance to express themselves in memorable ways for potential employers or even friends, I hope to take full advantage of the services Wix provides as I step into the business world.

If you are in the market for a public relations or marketing intern, I highly recommend you contact Hunter.  Be on the look out later this week for more posts in our Using SharePoint to Communicate KPI Dashboards series and some excerpts from my interview with Apptix (hosted Outlook Exchange provider) Vice President of Product and Software Development James Bond.  In the mean time, happy hunting!

Genealogy may be a hobby rather than my job, but it’s still important to maximize “me-time”. Keeping track of any correspondence with the world-wide community of genealogists and not losing sight of numerous threads of research are both tasks that Outlook can assist with.

As well as researching my own ancestry, I am undertaking a one-place-study of the village of Wing in Buckinghamshire, England. Through my website I get enquiries and emails from others who also have ancestors in that village. All these emails go into their own Outlook folder automatically thanks to Outlook’s email rules. A copy of my replies also go automatically into this folder – all this correspondence is therefore in one place and easy to find. Any correspondence that comes in the form of comments posted to my companion blog is automatically emailed to me and filed away as well.

Each of my fellow genealogists gets their own Contact card, created by dragging their email onto the Contacts folder. Alternative or old email addresses for them are also added into Email 2 and Email 3 fields.  The Activities feature of the card can then automatically search out all emails to and from that particular genealogist. If they have a website, blog, or a family tree uploaded to one of the many genealogy websites, I add the website link.

In each card’s Address field I add as much detail as I have – each county in England has their own records office and archives, so knowing that someone you’ve helped in the past happens to live in the county in which you might want a look-up is very handy! The Notes field I use to record which of the various families in Wing they are descended from, along with any particular assistance they have provided and any background information they’ve mentioned that might be useful. The search feature within Contacts can then be used to locate any of these details.

Using the Tasks feature of Outlook is relatively new to me, but it’s certainly much less stressful than endlessly snoozing those pesky reminders on optimistic Calendar appointments I’d made with myself! Promised to look into a particular family or issue for someone? Create a task. Only gotten part way transcribing a will and have to put it down? Create a task. Have a great idea for a new page for the website? Create a task (with a date months in the future as I know I won’t get to it for quite a while!). Many genealogical websites extend their databases frequently so revisiting periodically to look for your families is important – I’ve created some regenerating tasks to check them on a regular basis, making a note of any particular tips relevant to their search engine or reminders about what I’m hoping to find.

This means when I do get time to work on genealogy there’s a handy list of the various things I’d been meaning to do, and an easy way to find who might be able to help me with it. How does Outlook help you with your pastimes?

Alex Coles is an enthusiastic amateur genealogist from Auckland, New Zealand, researching her ancestors from England and Wales. Her website is Wing One Place Study and another of her ancestral places is honoured in her Twitter name @wychwoodnz.

#5 Tracking MS Office Document Time

Did you know that once you turn journaling on in Microsoft Outlook, every time you edit an MS Office document, Outlook will create a journal entry linking to it and tracking how much time you spend with it open?  I love this feature especially if I’ve forgotten to create a journal entry for billable time I’ve spent working on a client document.

#4 The Activities Tab

Each time I meet with a contact or talk with them on the phone, I record my the interaction in a journal entry.  One of the great things about using journal entries for meeting notes as opposed to the contact Notes field, is that I don’t have to scroll through a gazillion lines of text to find the meeting I’m looking for.  Instead, I can just look it up easily on the Contact Activities tab (see thumbnail below) and double click to open the entry.  It’s also easy to forward one journal entry to colleagues or vendors if I need their input on a particular discussion.

#3 Calculating Time per Sale

Another great thing about using Outlook journal entries is they allow you to record how much time you spend on a given activity.  Sometime when I want to get a better feel for how I’m spending my time, I open a journal entry at the beginning of each activity during the day (such as making a phone call to a prospect) and click the start timer button.  When I either pause the timer or save the entry, Outlook calculates a duration for me.  I find this especially helpful with client sales teams when trying to determine how much time is involved in a sale.  We simply group the journal entries by Company in a custom Outlook view, cut and paste them into Excel and then it is just a matter of summing the duration fields. You might be surprised by the results.

#2 Activity Reports

Another great way to get a feel for how I’m spending my time is to take a look at the “by type” view.  Personally, I like to see this view in table form, so I created a custom table view that shows activities for the week which I call “Weekly Activity Report.”  This view shows how many meetings, phone calls, emails, etc. that you have completed for the week in addition to which contact they were with and what company the contact is from (see thumbnail below).  Several of my client sales teams use this report to help stay on track with contacts per week goals.

#1 Forecasting

One of the most common reports that I help client sales teams generate is their forecasting report.  I use a customized journal entry to capture information about sales opportuninties such as projected revenue, projected close date, type of opportunity, etc. and then I’m able to see opportunities grouped in the Outlook Journal by projected close month (see thumbnail below).  These items can easily be copied and pasted into Excel to provide per month pipeline values (which is exactly what the HuntressPro forecasting module will do for you).

It’s no wonder more people don’t know about the Outlook Journal.  For one thing, it doesn’t even make the regular quick reference bar unless you know where to look for it and put it there.  But hopefully this post has given you enough reason to find it.  If you have a favorite use for the Outlook Journal folder, please do share in the Comments area.

 First upload your Excel generated web page into a document folder on SharePoint.  Hint: if you are publishing a chart, make sure to adjust the size of the chart in Excel before you publish it to whatever size it will need to be in the SharePoint web part.  In the left thumbnail below, I’ve created a folder just to hold documents that will be referenced in SharePoint web parts.   Now, click on the file name and you should be redirected to the file contents (see right thumbnail below).  Copy the address listed your browser to reference a few steps later.

Now navigate back to the page where you would like to insert your SharePoitn web part.  In the example thumbnail below, I’m placing the new sharepoint on the home page of my SharePoint site.  In the upper right hand portion of your site screen click the “Site Actions” button and then select “Edit Page” from the drop down menu (see left thumbnail below).  Your SharePoint site should now be displayed in “edit mode”.  Now, click on the ‘add a web part ” button at the top of the column where you would like to display your web page (see right thumbnail below). 

The “Add web parts” window will now open (see left thumbnail below).  Scroll down to the “All web parts” group and check the “Page viewer web part” box.  Then click the Add button the lower right hand corner of the window.  A new web part will now appear on your SharePoint page (see right thumbnail below).  Click the “open the tool pane” text (see arrow on right thumbnail below).

A tool pane will now open on the right for your page viewer web part (see left thumbnail below).  Right below the “Link” label in the “To specify a link, type a URL or path field, paste the URL that you copied earlier when you viewed your web page from where it was saved on SharePoint.  When you click the “test link” text, a window should open with your web page.  You may need to adjust the size of your web part to fit your chart or table inside.  To adjust the size of the web part, expand the “Appearance” category in the web part tool pane and then adjust the height and width pixes accordingly.  Make sure to select the “yes” radio button for height or width and you can experiment with different sizes by clicking the Apply button on the bottom right hand corner of your tools pane. 

Keep in mind that your column width will automatically expand when you exit the tool pane since it is taking up some of the width on the SharePoint screen.  When you are finished adjusting the height and width of your SharePoint part, click the OK button on the web part tool pane and then the Exit Edit Mode button on the upper right hand portion of your SharePoint page.  Your chart should now be displayed on your SharePoint page (see thumbnail below).