Whether it's a personal challenge or a necessity, keeping productivity high is good for an individual’s career growth and overall self-worth. Unfortunately, staying on top of your game can be difficult. We thought we would give you three things to consider that will work to keep your productivity levels high.
If you feel like you have too many browser tabs open at any given time, then you'll be happy to know that you can sometimes save certain browser tabs as a standalone application on your device. This will give them their own icon and make accessing them much easier than constantly navigating to them through your web browser.
If you want your organization to be efficient, you must increase productivity. However, this is often easier said than done, as plenty of obstacles, communication challenges, and resource allocation issues can stymie even the most well-thought-out plans. Let’s look at how you can improve productivity for your business by considering these common issues.
One of the most important considerations that a business that relies on technology needs to make is how efficiently its technology works. Let’s discuss some ways to measure this benchmark and ensure that it is optimized to meet your business needs.
A screenshot can be a remarkably handy thing to have on hand, for both your own purposes and especially for the purposes of technology support. While there are many tools out there that can help you take effective screenshots, there is a modern solution available for all users of Windows 11. Let’s look at how you can use it!
If your business uses Google Apps, then there is a good chance that you have some sort of integration set up with other services. If you grant permissions to other applications or programs to access and use Google Drive, you should know that you have some power over these permissions, and it’s incredibly important that you understand what permissions you are granting.
How much does your business rely on technology to keep your organization running forward? As business technology becomes more complex, it’s becoming increasingly popular for organizations to have their own internal IT departments to manage and maintain it. Yet, small businesses don’t often have the necessary funds for such a feat. How can your company afford quality IT service? You can start by pursuing managed IT solutions from a managed service provider.
It’s a common enough frustration—just as you really need it, your mobile device’s battery is on its last legs. This is something that we all would like to avoid if we could. That’s why we wanted to take the time to share a few ways to prolong your device’s battery life just a bit longer.
First of all, your main office Wi-Fi cannot be used for guest access. The same network that your computers, tablets, laptops, and other equipment run on needs to be completely segregated from the rest of the traffic and secure. This might be pretty obvious for most healthcare professionals, especially those who have an understanding of HIPAA compliance, but it’s worth mentioning because it poses such a huge security risk (and breaks compliance).
You’ve got better things to do than organizing and prioritizing your emails manually. Granted, you’ll still need to respond to important emails, but most email clients have everything you need to set up a system that automatically parses and sorts emails based on a whole slew of different factors. It will take a little time, and likely a few rounds of adjustments to get your inbox to work the way you want it to, but we’re going to show you the tools that will help get you there.
It’s been said that knowledge is the best weapon. For the small and medium-sized business looking to navigate this situation, this couldn’t ring more true. To be able to make the best financial and operational decisions possible, SMBs are turning to data analysis, in real time. By being able to look at the data that is coming in and going out in real time, a decision maker can swiftly make educated decisions. This can help businesses stay afloat in times where they are at their most vulnerable.
Let’s not split hairs here: checking your email throughout the day can be a major waste of time. In order to avoid sinking time you could otherwise spend productively on reading (and re-reading) emails, there are a few habits you could develop.
As we’ve said, repeatedly checking your email throughout the day can very quickly become a waste of your time. To avoid this, schedule times throughout your day to commit to checking your email. Once your time is up, stop until your next scheduled time.
We’ve all also accumulated emails that we simply don’t need to read. As harsh as it may seem, archive these emails, or unsubscribe as they come in to keep your inbox clean based on the subject line or the sender.
Admittedly, not every email that comes in will be a waste of time. However, an overstuffed inbox can make it easy to miss something important. To avoid this issue, utilize folders to file your emails so that your inbox doesn’t become overfilled.
If you finish your other tasks, return to your inbox and review your messages in order of importance. If you happen to run out of time, stop your review until your next opportunity. As you review your emails, don’t be afraid to unsubscribe to emails that aren’t important to your tasks.
Filters and labels can help you to keep your emails more automatically organized. Your filters/labels should be relevant to their content. One can contain messages from a certain sender or pertain to a certain topic. As a result, you will be able to more easily keep your emails organized.
Rules like these can also keep you from having to deal with automatic replies, like out-of-office autoresponders and similar replies that you don’t need to receive.
What other emails have gotten in the way of your productivity? Let us know… we might cover them in a future blog! For more information, subscribe to our blog!
As with any applications on your device, you’ll have a variety of first and third-party applications that can be set as your default apps. Here are the steps to make this happen:
Changing your default video playback settings is also easy to do. From the Video playback option in the Apps section, you can enable streaming content at high dynamic range quality, process video for more enhanced quality, play back video in either a high or low resolution based on preference, and change how video is played based on battery life. You can pick from prioritizing video quality or battery life--whichever you prefer.
Before making any changes to your computer, we recommend speaking with the technology professionals at Coleman Technologies. This prevents you from making any changes to hardware or software settings that could cause frustrations for you and your staff. To learn more about the services we provide, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.
Those familiar with the online version of Gmail will find all of this quite familiar, as Smart Compose has been predicting their next words for some time now. It will seem newer to those more familiar with the Gmail application in macOS and Windows, as it hasn’t been available there until now.
The first thing you’ll have to have in order to use Smart Compose is an active Google account, with the latest version of the Gmail application installed on your chosen device. As you type, Smart Compose will present its predictive text suggestions that a user can either accept, or just keep typing to ignore. While this form of machine learning is pretty basic, it does demonstrate how a device can “learn” how a user is most likely to use it - in this case, what word is likely to come next in the user’s sentence.
Of course, some users may find these suggestions inconvenient or distracting. That’s totally fair, and means that these users should deactivate the Smart Compose feature. Access the Gmail app’s menu by pressing the hamburger icon at the top left. You should see your Settings from there. You will be asked to choose from the accounts that have access to your device. Once you’ve selected the appropriate account, look under General settings to find Smart Compose. Use the toggle switch to activate it or deactivate it as you please.
While Smart Compose may not be quite as impressive as the artificial intelligence that appears in feature films, it has one major advantage over them: it can actually be used to benefit your business. For other ways that you can give your business operations a boost through technology solutions and tips, subscribe to our blog! You can also reach out to us directly by calling (604) 513-9428.
Google.com
There are few resources out there that are as valuable as Google’s website. Even the act of “googling” something has become a verb. Granted, “googling” a query might not yield the results the user is expecting, which can lead to frustration. By effectively using search commands, you can make any Google search more accurate, saving time better spent actually using the plethora of knowledge you have at your fingertips.
Tip #1: Use the Tabs
Google has built-in search functionality for images, videos, news, and so much more. There are tabs for images, news, videos, maps, shopping, books, flights, and finance. You can use each of these to narrow down the results you get when you make a specific query.
#2: Use Quotes
Even if you type in what you’re looking for, Google will sometimes misconstrue what you’re looking for as something else. If you’re looking for a specific phrase, you can use quotes around it to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Example: “happy days”
The results will be the term or phrase exactly as it’s typed.
#3: Use a Hyphen to Exclude Words
Think of the hyphen as the “minus” sign of Google searches. If you have a word that you’d rather omit from a search, place a hyphen in front of it.
Example: scale -weight
By removing the topic of one of the homonyms from the equation, you will get more targeted and accurate results.
#4: Use a Colon to Search Specific Sites
If you know that what you’re searching for is found on a specific website, you can limit the search to that site with a colon.
Example: Virtualization site:azure.microsoft.com
In the above example, you can also use a specific keyword to include it in your search.
#5: Search Locally
Google can determine your location, giving you a lot of power to find local businesses, restaurants, institutions, you name it. Just type it into Google.
Example: Laundromats nearby.
Just make sure you have your location services on if mobile. Otherwise, the search engine will use your Internet connection’s IP address to figure out what’s close to you.
What are some of your favorite ways to use Google? Let us know in the comments.
We’re here to help your organization make better use of its wireless connection.
The Router
Your router will determine the general range of your wireless network, as well as its security. Depending on your business’ specific needs, a router can be a tricky investment. You have to consider several aspects, including how much range you need and what kind of options are available for it. Here are some of the variables you’ll need to consider:
Once you’ve determined which router you’re going with, you can set it up in a place that is most effective for your purposes. If you want your router to broadcast a signal through your entire office, you’ll need to test it out and see how the location works. Try to find a nice central location. If the router doesn’t work as intended in specific parts of the office, you might need to include a Wi-Fi repeater to get the range you’re looking for.
The Repeater
If your signal isn’t extending as far as you’d like, a repeater (or extender) can be used to extend the wireless signal to reach a larger area. This way, the signal will reach any area you need it to reach. A Wi-Fi repeater contains two wireless routers. One of them picks up the wireless signal coming off of your network’s central router, while the other picks up the signal and transmits it in much the same way as your network’s central router. Thankfully, the wireless repeater only needs to be in a location within the broadcasting range of the central router. Just plug it into an average outlet and you’re good to go.
Security
Security is another important part of your business’ wireless network that requires you to think about it during the setup phase. The router doesn’t necessarily have to be hard to set up, though. First, make sure you have WPA2 encryption turned on. Some models don’t default to this and instead use the ineffective Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP) encryption that can be broken through easily enough. With WPA2, you’ll be much more secure.
Next, you want to name your wireless network to something that can help you identify it, as well as assign a complex password to defend it. This ensures that only those who need the network for work will be logging onto it, and that they will know which network belongs to your organization if multiple are available. Once you’ve finished with this task, you want to enable the router’s firewall. Doing this provides an additional layer of protection against potential threats.
One more thing: be sure to change the admin’s password on the actual router, as most default passwords can simply be looked up online.
For more information on how to optimize the use you get out of your business’ wireless connection, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.
There are lots of options for changing your display settings. To access these settings, click on the Start menu and select the gear icon for Settings. The first option on the Settings screen is System, where the first option is Display, so you’ll have no problem checking it out. Here are some of the options:
Change Your Screen’s Brightness
With this option, you can change--get this--your screen’s brightness! This is critical if you want your device’s battery to stay under control. There is a slider that you can use to adjust the screen’s brightness. Underneath this, you’ll see another option to turn on the Night Light. This makes the device’s screen turn to warmer colors to make it easier on the eyes at night. You can even schedule the night light to turn on at a specific time.
Scale and Layout
Under this option, you can change the default size of text and applications, among other things. There are several dropdowns under this heading that give you dynamic control over several aspects of your display, including the display’s resolution and the screen orientation.
Multiple Displays
One of the best ways you can get the most out of your monitors is by using more of them. If you have multiple monitors connected to your device, your settings will give you options for what to do with them. You can connect to them wirelessly, detect connected devices, and so much more. Just click on the links in your settings to learn more about what you can do, or reach out to us to learn more about what the settings mean.
Before you change any settings for your devices, if you have any questions about what they mean or why, consult professionals at Coleman Technologies who know what they are doing. It’s better than making a change and not knowing how to change it back.
Overall, changing up your display can be great for both your device’s battery and your productivity. For more great tips and tricks about how you can get the most out of your monitors and displays, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.
Google Drive
Google Docs
Google Sheets
Google Slides
By using these shortcuts, you should be able to get more out of your Google services. There are far too many shortcuts to include here, so for the complete list, you’ll need to be in Drive, Docs, Sheets, or Slides. Once you’re in, just use Ctrl + / to pull up the list of keyboard shortcuts for the Google app you’re using.
Do you have any tips and tricks to share? Let us know in the comments.
Be Prepared to Lose Power
Electricity is perhaps the most important part of using technology in the workplace, as without it, the devices that empower your business’ operations just won’t function. In some cases, you might suddenly lose power, leading to data loss and other disaster scenarios that could strike your business down if you’re not prepared for them. With progress grinding to a halt, downtime will ensue, creating a considerable loss for your business.
Even if you’re not losing power, an excessive amount of it can create a surge, damaging the infrastructure itself and harming the individual components that make it up. It’s ultimately in your best interest to take measures against these events, as you made an investment that needs a substantial return. Surge protectors can be helpful to prevent excessive power from crippling these important machines, but in some cases, you’ll want a more powerful solution. An uninterruptible power supply, or UPS device, can help your servers, workstations, and other important technology shut down properly in the event of a power outage or surge, giving you the ability to minimize damage done.
Maintain a Steady Internet Connection
The Internet is an invaluable tool that can help your business succeed, and the Internet plays a larger role in its functionality than it ever has before. A lack of Internet ultimately becomes downtime for many organizations, as they depend on the Internet for various services and communications. More often than not, there’s nothing you can do about a lack of Internet if it comes from your service provider. To keep this kind of downtime from sinking operations, many businesses have implemented backup Internet connections, just in case they ever have to use it. This comes with a downside--you’ll have to maintain that connection--but it will likely be worth the investment if you ever need it.
Place Boundaries on Your Staff
Even the best employees are known to make mistakes from time-to-time. While you can trust them for the most part, nobody is perfect, nor should you expect them to be. Some might even try to implement their own solutions with the intention of making their jobs easier and more efficient. This is called shadow IT, and it can be dangerous. You have no way of knowing whether it’s putting your business at risk. You can implement measures to ensure that your employees aren’t downloading unauthorized applications through the use of administrator and user privileges. If you limit what your users can do with their machines, then you have less to worry about.
Coleman Technologies can help your business ensure managing IT doesn’t become a hassle. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.
Coleman Technologies has been serving the British Columbia area since 1999, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses. Our experience has allowed us to build and develop the infrastructure needed to keep our prices affordable and our clients up and running.
20178 96 Avenue, C400
Langley, British Columbia V1M 0B2
Mon to Fri 7:00am to 5:00pm
