The Electric Wand

Tip o’ the Week #173 – LinkedIn Contacts in Outlook

2013-05-10T07:00:00Z

This week’s tip focuses on the power of LinkedIn. Some people use it as their system of managing customer and partner contacts. Some find new employment by schmoozing their network – some even use it as the launchpad for their next career.

Hands up who’s ever thought that a work colleague suddenly connecting with them, means that work colleague is a soon-to-be-ex one? Or been in the middle of a meeting and had a LinkedIn request from someone (external) who’s currently in the same room?

LinkedIn is undoubtedly a powerful business connection tool, and using it in Outlook makes it even more so. First step, if you haven’t done so already, is to enable the Social Connector. In the past, this was a separate addin to Outlook, but in 2010 was included (though you had to install each social network provider as a separate addin). Now in Outlook 2013, Facebook, LinkedIn and internal SharePoint services are all built in.

There was a recent issue with LinkedIn that could mean even if you had previously configured it to work with Outlook 2013, it may have broken – to check all is well, look at the bottom of the preview of an email (in the “People Pane”) from an external user who is in your LinkedIn network, and see if there is an error message, or if you’re seeing LinkedIn status messages. To ensure you have everything configured correctly, go into the View -> People Pane menu in Outlook, then click on Account Settings to ensure you have the correct username, password and options set.

Enter your own LinkedIn username & password, and if you also check the “by default, show photos…” option, then you’ll see the LinkedIn photo of any contact – external, or in fact internal too – within any emails etc that sit in Outlook.

An interesting point – if you look at any standard LinkedIn list of people, or of the individual profile of any one person, their photos are typically shown on the left side of any text. Since we mostly read text (in western cultures) from top left, and all the way down to the bottom right, this lends itself to preferring photos which are facing left-right, especially if placed on the left of the page; so it looks as if the individual is looking on approvingly of their own profile, rather than dismissively starting away from it. Thanks to Eileen Brown for pointing this out.

Try it as an experiment on Linkedin.com: look at all your own contacts, then open up a few who are facing left-> right and others facing right-> left, and see if you agree. Time to change your picture?

Anyway. LinkedIn contacts, once the Social Connector is configured, show up in a separate contacts group within Outlook’s People view – you can “Peek” by hovering the mouse over the People icon on the shortcut bar, and search details of contacts there, both those in your existing Outlook contacts list and those from LinkedIn. If you click on the People icon, you’ll see lists of Contacts that can be searched in or filtered as appropriate – so if your contacts in LinkedIn have allowed it, you can see email addresses and phone numbers within Outlook.

If you open up a LinkedIn contact and make a change – let’s say, added a mobile number that you’ve gleaned from their email – then Outlook will make that a copy of that contact in your own Contacts folder, and make the change there. Synchronisation of content from LinkedIn appears to be one-way – and if you get into creating custom fields and categories on LinkedIn itself, they might not synchronise at all. Best try a few experiments out before relying on information being available everywhere.

There are other ways of using, and benefitting from, LinkedIn integration – and we’ll explore some of these in a future Tip o’ the Week: how LinkedIn plugged in via your Microsoft Account can mean you can share info across Facebook, Twitter and other services, for example.

Careful though – It sometimes makes sense not to cross the streams of “work” and “life”. Like Monty Python said, “…don’t take out in public, or they’ll stick you in the dock, and you won’t come back.”

Tip o’ the Week #172 – Dreaming of Apps

2013-05-03T07:00:00Z

Clearly, the most obvious difference in Windows 8 compared to other operating systems (from inferior *NIX based desktops to fancy fondleslabs) is the Start Screen – the colourful, dynamic and interactive tile-based view of apps available to you with just a click, touch or swipe. It’s also the most controversial aspect of the OS, with a whole slew of “start screen replacements” available, and the environment garners more grumbling in online forums than anything else in Windows 8. There are rumours that the next generation of Windows will allow users to skip the Start Screen and go straight to the desktop. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Those of us with long memories will recall Windows XP being dismissed by some customers, disliking the green start button and colourful window surrounds, demanding ways of switching it all off and making the OS look like Windows 2000. Now the same people may be clinging on to XP, even as the clock ticks down to less than a year before support ends…

The apps that appear on your Start Screen will, of course, evolve as you use it, and we’d all like it that (even better versions of?) the best apps available on other platforms will also be made available for Windows 8. It may take time to really understand what works best on the platform, just like the best games on a console often come out late into its lifecycle, as developers learn how to exploit it best.

Kevin Ashley wrote a great blog post about the developer opportunity for writing Windows 8 Apps – that now is the “Magic Moment” – the time to get established in the store, before it grows to the point where there are lots of apps all purportedly doing the same thing. Kevin’s point is well made because he’s an accomplished app developer – how many of us would still turn up for work if we were taking $30,000 a month in app revenue, I’m not sure.

If you hear anyone saying that they don’t plan to support Windows 8 with their app, and that all their efforts go into iOS or Android development, perhaps highlight Kevin’s blog post above. Maybe some of the top customers could focus their efforts on building their own great apps, and maybe less on taking down the apps that others build. Fingers crossed.

Start me Update

Previous ToWs have harped on about the importance of updating your installed Apps through the Store. We’re now seeing a whole slew of app updates to built-in apps, like the Bing Travel or Maps app. Mary Jo Foley writes about some of the updates, and anyone who’s been using Xbox Music across Windows 8 devices, Windows Phone and Xbox console, will enjoy the latest version of the Music app.

It can take a bit of digging to find out what each of the numerous updates actually does: Paul Thurrott (for example) has unearthed a few of the details.

ToW Update: Several eagle-eyed readers commented on the last Tip. Rather than following the process to wangle SkyDrive to replicate eWallet data, perhaps just take a look at Sky Wallet – a Windows Phone app with free desktop companion (if you buy the app – but then, it’s cheaper than eWallet anyway), and the developer’s apparently working on a Modern UI version too. Oh, and it just stores its data in SkyDrive to start with. I’ll get my coat.

Tip o' the Week #171 - eWallet on your phone

2013-04-19T07:00:00Z

One attribute of your phone is that it tends to be with you all the time, so it makes a great place to store information that you want to get access to when you’re out and about – the details of your car insurer, the password for your online banking site, your frequent flyer numbers etc. The long-established iLium Software has offered eWallet for years on a variety of Windows Mobile systems and PCs. There’s a Windows PC desktop version, and a Windows 8 Modern App version, as well as the various fruit and malware-ridden-Googly-device versions.

iLium’s current offering on Windows Phone isn’t very well organised – the main eWallet app (which is quite complex) is only on iOS and Android, but there’s also a simpler (though still very flexible and powerful) application called eWalletGO! The Windows Phone version isn’t quite as capable as some of the others, but it’s still a decent app and it’s so useful to be worth persevering with.

The model is simple – you can have a Windows PC (or Mac) version of the app, and a corresponding mobile version too. You create your single wallet (there’s no File menu or anything) and can backup and restore to/from online services DropBox and Google Docs.

So to get the wallet on your phone, you either create it in situ or else build it on your PC and perform a backup (to DropBox) and then restore it down to the phone – a faff, but one that can be done fairly quickly and since the wallet probably doesn’t change much once established, it’s not too hard.

If you buy the Windows PC version (well worth a few quid investment) and want to sync its data between machines, there’s a simpler way than using backup/restore to keep it up to date on multiple PCs… well, it’s simpler once you have it set up…

The eWalletGO! application stores its data in your user profile folder – after installing, just run the app for the first time and create a dummy wallet, press WindowsKey+R to get the Run dialog, then paste %userprofile%\appdata\Roaming\Ilium Software into the box and hit enter. You should see an eWalletGO folder….

Sync application data between PCs using SkyDrive

Now, if you want to sync this to SkyDrive, simply carry out the following…

install the SkyDrive desktop application (here, if you haven’t got it already) and copy the eWalletGO folder above into the SkyDrive folder that is Synced to your PC (by default, %userprofile%\SkyDrive). Once it’s copied, we need to fool the eWalletGO app into thinking it’s accessing its own folder, and instead redirect it to SkyDrive.
Let’s say that you’ve dropped the eWalletGO folder into the root of your SkyDrive folder… (ie %userprofile%\SkyDrive\eWalletGO), now go back to %userprofile%\appdata\Roaming\Ilium Software and delete the eWalletGO folder
Fire up a command prompt with administrative privileges (press WindowsKey, simply type cmd, then CTRL+SHIFT+Enter) and then click on Yes to approve the use of admin privileges
Now we need to create a symbolic link – it’s basically a special folder within the Windows file system which redirects from one place to another – ie if an app thinks it’s accessing c:\foo\whatever, then “whatever” could be a symbolic link to c:\foo\bar.

So, when you have your admin cmd prompt up and running, copy this following command to the clipboard and paste it into your command window …
mklink /D "%userprofile%\appdata\roaming\ilium software\eWalletGO" %userprofile%\skydrive\ewalletgo
(modify the \skydrive\ewalletgo as appropriate to point to your real location of your eWallet folder if it’s not in the root of your SkyDrive storage… and put quotes (“) around that section if your location has any spaces in it)

Now, if you fire up the ewalletGO app and make a change, then exit, you should see the ewalletgo.wlt file in your SkyDrive location has been updated – proof that not only do you have an automatic backup of the important data, but that if you repeat the exercise above on PC #2 (apart from the first step that copies the eWalletGO folder into SkyDrive, since it’s already there), you have an automatic replica of your data onto multiple machines, even though the application doesn’t realise it.

This technique can potentially be applied to any application that doesn’t realise it can replicate its data to the cloud – or in the case of eWalletGO, that it can copy data to the cloud, but just does it to the wrong cloud.

Tip o’ the Week #168 – Loving some Windows Phone 8 tips

2013-04-12T06:17:42Z

At a recent “Love It” internal event hosted in Microsoft UK’s Reading campus, a whole series of tips and tricks were shared amongst other Microsofties. Did you know, for example, that with an application called ZipApp (www.zipapp.co.uk – check it out), you can build a Windows 8 app in a few minutes without writing any code?

DPE’er Andy Robb said, “Yesterday I helped a couple of people create a dummy app for their customer complete with logo, draft content, a couple of social feeds, in about 30 mins... Customer walks in, sees their app on the Start menu, has a play on a touch device and they 'get it' better than any pitch deck could do.“ … BOOM!

Phone gurus Jon Lickiss and Natasha Joseph presented a great session on Windows Phone, with a slew of great tips and apps that they recommend – they’ve promised to write up the session so we may feature it here in future. In the meantime, here are 3 of the tips to get cracking:

Here Maps

Nokia has released mapping software available to any Windows Phone 8 user, which they called Here Maps. The great thing about Here Maps is that you can download the content offline, so they can be used on the tube (say) or when abroad, without racking up career-ending roaming charges.

The downloaded maps data is shared between Here Maps and Here Drive, the new name for the sat nav software that’s free (in beta) for any Windows Phone 8, as well as Nokia Lumias. If you’re on a non-Nokia device, Here Drive only allows access to the maps where the phone’s SIM is registered, but if you’ve a Lumia then you can use maps all over the world,, still get turn/turn navigation.

Here Maps also has a feature analogous to Bing Maps’ own capability to show details of what’s inside buildings – like shopping centres. Here’s a pic of the Oracle centre in Reading, as seen by Here Maps…

Where are you…?

If you’re arranging to meet up and want to tell your friends your current 10-20, you could text them a description – or try this neat function that was new in WP8. Go into the Messaging (ie text) app, start a new text message, then tap on the paperclip icon normally used to attach something – select “my location” to insert a Bing Maps link to your current whereabouts. See here.

Screen grab

A quick and simple way to capture the screen of a Windows Phone. To snap the contents of the phone screen, press the Windows logo on the bottom of the phone then quickly press the power/standby button. It may take a little practice to get the timing right, but once you’ve figured it out, you’ll see the results in the Screenshots folder within the Photos app.

To get them to your PC for further use, it’s probably easiest to just go into the folder, view the picture then Share it via email or NFC, if your new PC supports it…

Tip o�� the Week #165 – Take the tour

2013-03-29T08:00:00Z

When was the last time you actually read the manual? Or actually skimmed over the Terms & Conditions you’re agreeing to when clicking on a button somewhere? Sometimes, attempts to make things easy aren’t exactly riveting.

Now and again, though, it’s worth assuming the role of true n00b: you might learn something. That’s right, gents. R.T.F.M.

In this case, try taking the tour in the New Office applications – select New from the File menu on Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and you’ll see a selection of tips to get the most out of the new apps.

The Excel tour is particularly snazzy. The first tip is pretty cool – it’s all about the awesome Flash Fill function, which can spot common patterns in the data you’re dealing with… like the first names or surnames in a list of email addresses.

The tours finish up with Getting Started sites for Excel, Word and PowerPoint… try out the in-app tours, and have a look through these sites and you might even figure out some new tricks.

Tip o’ the Week #164 – Work Anywhere with Windows 8

2013-03-22T08:01:00Z

Recruiter Nick Papé recommended this week’s topic. Escalation Engineer with spare time on his hands Ben Phillips wrote a cracking Windows 8 app to inspire Nick, and UC overlord Steve Tassell had this to say about it:

“The app is another step in the consortium providing practical advice and guidance which our growing community so dearly crave. This is also an important vehicle in helping us promote the second annual Anywhere Working week which is running again from 18^th-22^nd March. There are many activities planned for the week but, I want to highlight to you the roadshows running all week. We are planning an ambitious tour of the country taking our Office hub experience nationally. In Partnership with local authorities, we are providing a networking opportunity, technology experience and Ignite-style sessions from businesses and experts already working flexibly. You can find more details and means to register here.“

Of course, Nick and Steve are both very keen to stress the possibilities of remote working using Lync – every “snow day” is another day to celebrate and sell the technology benefits, in other words. Well, news reached us of a looming collaboration between Skype and Lync, and the promise of some groovy new Lync 2013 mobile clients, due in the coming months.

Tip o’ the Week #161 – Windows Phone 8 “Portico”

2013-03-21T05:58:53Z

Attention, Windows Phone 8 owners… you may not have spotted it, but there’s a pretty decent update already available – code-named “Portico”. (Aside: If you visit certain Italian cities – like Bologna – you’ll see porticos as the things that provide the apparent multitude of graffiti artists shelter from the sun/rain/Carabinieri).

“Portico” is not a wholesale new version, but rather a bunch of fixes and/or additions to the platform. You may be notified of the availability of the update, but if you poke the phone to check (via settings | system | phone update -> check for updates) then you’ll know for sure.

EE rolled out the update to both Nokia 920s and HTC 8Xs, so everyone who got their phone through Microsoft UK should be able to get Portico (which updates to OS version 8.0.10211.204, as seen in settings | system | about).

Can’t take the call, reply by text

Thanks to Richard Watson for pointing out one of Portico’s coolest features, the “text reply” function – and it’s enabled by default. When someone on another mobile phone calls, you can choose to text back an automatic response from one of 4 pre-defined messages (“I’m on the phone, please leave a message” / “Sorry I can’t take your call, please try again later” / “I’m not available, please call someone else” / “Stop calling me, I’ll report you to the Police” etc). Great for when your boss calls and you want to respond “I’m on the phone, please try again at the end of the working day, about 9pm”).

Tip o’ the Week #167 – Flash! Ah-Aaah!

2013-03-15T08:00:00Z

Some big news for Windows 8 IE10 users this week (especially those using “Immersive IE”, aka modern/~~Metro~~ IE): the way the browser handles Flash websites has changed. More details, here. In a nutshell, the Flash player which is built into IE10 has changed its default from not allowing Flash sites unless specifically allowed, to allowing Flash unless specifically disallowed. Pretty big change, then.

The Flash player in IE10 is updated by Microsoft, so you won’t get plagued with unwanted browser toolbars – (does anyone actually want the Ask toolbar?) – and updates will be rolled out more or less automatically to everyone.

Amongst other updates, a new Surface RT firmware has also appeared, alongside IE10 and Office updates. If you have a Surface device, make sure you run the check for updates. More than once, to ensure you’re all tickety-boo.

It’s been a busy few weeks for Internet Explorer – Windows 7 users now get to enjoy it if they choose to.

Trivia: did you know that the actor who played Ming the Merciless (pictured) also played chess with Death in the Seventh Seal, and was the priest in the Exorcist?

Tip o' the Week #159 - Avoiding breakers on the side

2013-02-15T08:00:00Z

What’s that you say? A Breaker on the Side? Well, Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, no self-respecting furry-dice-toter would be without their Chicken Box in their Roller Skate. The radio was channel-based, and though the users could agree to move a conversation onto a specific channel, there was always the possibility that someone else could either come in and crash the conversation, or they might be on that channel already.
Which was often interesting.

This week’s Tip comes after a day of being on both sides of the modern, Lync-based equivalent – that of having a conference call which has unintended participants. This often happens because the organiser of the call is using the same conference ID for multiple Lync meetings – by default, when using the Outlook addin to create an online meeting (or to add Lync meeting details to an existing appointment), the user’s default Conference ID is used to create that meeting. And that can lead to unexpected and potentially embarrassing behaviour.

It’s possible when you’ve finished a conference, that new people will start to join for the next one, and previous attendees will still be online (they may have hung up the audio piece, but if they haven’t closed their Lync window and they haven’t been booted out specifically, they’ll still appear as attendees). Worse, if there was material – such as slides – being presented in the conference, it could still be available to the newly joined people. Another scenario is that if a call is over-running, and new attendees for the next one scheduled join straight into the tail end of the previous call. They’ll probably be all, “Hello? Hello?” when they come online, and of course they’ll hear the dregs of the previous meeting as it wraps up. Bad enough in an internal meeting, but terrible in a customer or partner one.

In order to make sure this doesn’t happen, when you create a new appointment and make it a Lync Meeting, check out the Lync Meeting Options on the ribbon – the default will probably be to use your dedicated meeting space, but you might want to create a new space… with its own conference ID, and its own settings regarding whether people get to wait in the lobby, who’s a presenter etc.

Thanks to Chris Parkes for suggesting this timely tip.
Now, 10-10, see you again.

Tip o' the Week #158 - blah blah Phone blah

2013-02-08T08:00:00Z

If you need a reminder on what’s new with Windows Phone 8, or you’ve just picked up your white Lumia 920, check out ToW # 156.

One of the slickest updates to Windows Phone 8 is the deeper integration of voice recognition than in WP7. The previous generation phone allowed you to issue commands via voice, especially useful for making calls or starting apps – but Windows Phone 8 includes the ability to dictate emails, and there’s a whole speech SDK for developers to build great apps on. Check out Fil Alleva’s blog post, sampling 30-odd apps.

Robert Deupree Jr’s excellent “Photo Tip of the Day” Microsoft-internal blog highlights just how easy it is to use speech. Brilliantly simple.

You can even hold your phone to your ear, so it sounds like you’re talking to someone else, rather than doing an Apprentice-style Shouting At Your Palm exercise.

There’s more detail about the ways to use speech in Windows Phone 8 on WPCentral.

And if you’re interested in building some more apps, then you could start here.