The way people use Microsoft Word largely hasn’t changed much since the product initially launched. However, since Office 2003, Microsoft Office application and Word in particular have become more integrated with other applications and the cloud.
If your usage of Microsoft Word largely hasn’t changed much in the past few years even though you and/or your employer are upgrading to Office 2010 then there are some underutilized features you might be missing but could benefit your work.
The Productivity Phase is where organizations start to see a Return on Investment from the Rollout and Capture & Discovery Phases. Now that the launch of SharePoint My Sites and other social tools is complete and user training has occurred, the Productivity Phase is where user engagement and self-sufficiency begins. The value of social tools really takes off during this phase as the business processes and communications take flight on their new channels.
After the completion of the Rollout Phase, the project enters the Connection and Discovery Phase where My Site and social computing expand from the core user base further out into the corporate enterprise.
The Connection & Discovery Phase is marked by further adoption of social computing and the new tools that My Sites offer end users and business groups.
In this post, I am going to explore the Connection & Discovery Phase including its goals, metrics, and change activities.
In a new series of articles, I am going to explain a Social Computing Deployment Process. As the roll out of SharePoint My Sites and social computing tools progresses, a certain maturity needs to happen for the business and end user community to realize the benefits of social computing within the enterprise. This Social Computing Deployment Process includes the following phases:
In this article, I will walk you through a potential rollout phase for moving an organization to a more social SharePoint.
I am happy to be seeing news pop up again about an impending release of Microsoft Office for iOS. Whether it is part of the ongoing rumors or not, I think as a technical writer, iOS user, and somebody who writes about tablet and smartphone topics that it is a real prudent move for Microsoft.
The release of OneNote for iOS and Lync for iOS shows that Microsoft gets iOS and mobile user experience when it comes to porting their apps to iOS. Office 2010 WebApps is another mature offering outside Microsoft’s traditional PC desktop comfort zone. While there is a growing list of capable Office productivity apps like iWork, DocsToGo, and CloudOn for iOS, companies can ill afford the issues that can sometimes arise when you send documents between mobile device and PC especially if an external customer is involved in the transaction. What mobile workers who require an Office suite on their iPad require is a seamless experience when interacting with documents, presentation decks, and spreadsheets.
Here is my (partial) wish list for a Microsoft Office for iOS release:
A marketing consultant friend of mine recently posed a challenge to me, how would I build a modular proposal template using Word 2010? The users of the template would be a sales team – all with varying MS Word skills – and the company has an evolving brand and ever-growing product line up. The client was also using Office 2010 and I was looking forward to getting a Word 2010 client project under my belt.
His client also was trying to get away from too much cutting and pasting across proposals and had an eye for more standardization in their proposal process. A master document approach never became part of the equation nor did too much inserting kung fu. Master Documents are an urban myth in the Microsoft World and anyway I like to keep things simple and easy to use especially if I am handing a document or template off to non-writers.
One of the most useful – yet potentially embarrassing –features of Microsoft Word is Track Changes. Using the Track Changes feature lets you electronically markup your Word documents with edits, additions, and revisions. Think of it as an electronic red pen so to speak.
The potential embarrassment of the feature comes in when you don’t accept the Track Changes. Comments, edits, and revisions not fit for public consumption can leak out. Even if none of the comments are critical it is just plain sloppy to have a recipient open up a document that still contains markups.
Here is the advice I give people about using track changes:
Security and Privacy for Microsoft Office 2010 Users by Mitch Tulloch is a book I’ve been trying to find for years. Throughout my time as a technical writer, I’ve bumped into some minor to major security and privacy issues related to the development and distribution of Microsoft Office documents including some that caused a measure of embarrassment to people. By extension of my work as a technical writer, I’ve had to give both formal and one-on-one training about some of the topics in this book and can tell you it is easy to say it’s just Microsoft Office until something you don’t want to leak out gets out in one of your documents. read more
One of the hidden gems of Office 2010 is that it now includes OneNote 2010 – the latest release of Microsoft’s simple yet elegant note taking application. Formerly, you had to purchase OneNote separately making it a special software request inside many corporations and not standard issue. Now that it comes with all versions of Office 2010, my first hope is that it helps slay the useless tradition of taking meeting minutes, but before that comes collaborating with OneNote.
OneNote can serve as an effective backchannel for collaborative note taking, whiteboard session captures, and capturing the myriad of bits and bytes that comes with running a technology project.
Now that you have notebooks teeming with notes and data it’s time to settle in with OneNote as part of your daily workflow. In Getting Started with OneNote 2010: Part 3, we’ll take a look at how to search through your notebooks for information and how to get information out of OneNote 2010 into other applications and to other project team members.
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