Coleman Technologies Blog

There are a lot of tools used to manage projects. Regardless of what platform your company uses, there are some simple, common sense practices your team can use to enhance its project management proficiency. Here are five:

Tip #1: Hash Out Details Before You Start

Sometimes getting a project off the ground is harder than actually completing it. Depending on the number of stakeholders involved, many projects may find it difficult to get off the ground. Ensuring that the project is viable, has the support it needs to come to fruition, and has the resources in place to be most efficiently implemented are important before a minute of work is done on the project.

You will want to identify what workers will be responsible for what work, while also doing your best to come up with a timeline for the project that will not waste resources.

Tip #2: Choose One Project Manager

Today, there are a lot of collaborative interfaces out there that make managing a project much, much easier. As a result, sometimes a project won’t have a single project lead, it will be carried out with a team approach. You may get through a project or two like this before it becomes painfully evident that there needs to be someone to run point on the project.

The role of project leader will cultivate positive team dynamics and act as a mentor to the rest of the team. Also, you just need one throat to choke when things aren’t done on time.

Tip #3: Define Specific Milestones

For any project, there will be benchmarks it will have to be met. As a project begins, defining the metrics that will have to be met will give any project team a good idea what the expectations are at the end of each phase of a project. By frequently checking in on the status of deliverables, the project manager can ensure that all elements of the product are aligned with what customers will invest in.

Tip #4: Manage Risk

Managing risk is important in any business endeavor. There will be times when, in the course of the phases of a project, where one will go horribly wrong and will put the entire project’s success at risk. One of the best ways to identify and manage risk is by keeping the lines of communication open. Most project management software provides options to communicate, whether they be integrated through an existing system, or if they are localized as a part of the software.

Tip #5: Evaluation

Through success (or failure), lessons can be learned from any project. By reviewing and scrutinizing every aspect of the project, you will get some fuel on how to improve your project management moving forward. Identifying what went right, what went wrong, and how they make up the final result. One way to ensure that a project was a complete success is to determine its return on investment (ROI). Often, project managers will provide a planned ROI to stakeholders at the beginning. By comparing the two after the end of the project, you can establish whether it had the value you were planning for.

At Coleman Technologies, our technicians thrive on project management. Whether it is running cable, building, testing, and deploying hardware, or simple proactive maintenance, we have an answer for all of your business’ computer problems. Call us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

Leverage Authentication Measures

One of the first steps to securing your network against threats is to create strong authentication procedures. Most of the devices with permission to access your network will already have an authentication system in place, based on a password. If the passwords used are strong enough, this can actually mitigate most threats - but you still have to worry about the ones that this doesn’t discourage. Leveraging something called multi-factor, or two-factor, authentication can help minimize the chance of something slipping past your security.

Two-factor authentication works in a relatively straightforward way. As with most login systems, a username and password are entered - but instead of being granted access, the user is asked for another credential. This is usually a randomly-generated code that a specialized authentication app will generate. Mobile devices are popular to use with 2FA, as their convenient nature makes them more likely to be available when needed. In order for a user to leverage their mobile device, the 2FA system administrator has to authorize it.

Tip: Make sure that you don’t let your password best practices slip, even if leveraging 2FA. Your passwords still need to be sufficiently complex. If you are one of those who find remembering different passwords difficult, consider using a password management system in conjunction with your 2FA. 

Protecting Your Business’ Computing Environment

Whether you use a Local Area Network or a Wide Area Network, the security practices that you need to deploy are fairly predictable. Once you’ve seen to your authentication needs, you need to combine three approaches to security into one all-encompassing strategy: your software-based security, your physical security measures, and your security awareness and best practice training.

Software-Based Security

There are many examples of how software can help keep your business’ network secure. From firewalls to content filtering to antivirus to spam detection, each of these tools protect your business data from a different kind of threat. You may even want to consider adding encryption to your email solution to make it a lot less likely that the contents of your messages will be intercepted.

Tip: If you aren’t sure which solutions are the right ones to implement, think about how your data moves about your business. The more insight you have into how your data operates, the more effectively you will be able to plan its protections.

Physical Security Measures

Somewhat ironically, we seem to have become so focused on our digital security that it can sometimes seem like we forget that there are very real reasons to protect our physical locations and infrastructure, as well. Consider the damage a bitter ex-employee could do in moments, should they manage to get into your server room. It has become fashionable to leverage biometric authorization measures to protect your server room - and there’s a lot to be said about a good, old-fashioned surveillance system, complete with alarms and cameras (as well as some updates to make this system considerably less old-fashioned).

Tip: Bring in a consulting professional to help you determine your physical security needs. Not only does this save you time by eliminating work you would otherwise have to do for yourself, it ensures that your system will be designed by an experienced professional that knows what will work best in different situations.

Security Awareness and Best Practice Training

Would you be surprised to hear that your employees are likely your biggest vulnerability? Of all of the pieces that make up your network security, the people who use your technology are the leading cause of security issues. With the number of ways that your business could be attacked, your staff needs to be educated on how to identify them and avoid them.

Tip: Both businesses and individuals have experienced difficulties with phishing and it adversely affecting them, so it makes sense to begin your training there. Not only is it a common issue, it is conceptually very simple to grasp, so it is a good starting point before moving on to increasingly complex concerns. The more your staff knows about how they can resist attacks, the more likely they’ll be able to do so if the needs arises.

Remote Solutions Via the Cloud

Modern organizations need to contend with potential threats to their network infrastructures, as businesses always have in some form. The difference is that issues can now come in on the mobile devices owned by their staff, and company resources can be routinely accessed from outside the business’ area network.

This has helped contribute greatly to the growth of cloud computing technologies - although the relative cost savings don’t hurt either. Using the cloud, your staff can access their work data and applications from a remote location, while the resources stored in the cloud are kept secure by the platform’s baked-in security and privacy.

Mobile devices have also been a disruptor to business-as-usual, which means that businesses need to plan on leveraging them if they don’t want them becoming a distraction. Designing a Bring Your Own Device policy and enforcing it through mobile device management solutions is an effective and secure way of reaching a compromise and minimizing the time wasted by mobile devices in the workplace.

Tip: Remember that cloud services are inherently scalable, so you don’t need to worry about overreaching your capabilities. However, you also don’t want to waste capital that doesn’t need to be spent. Auditing your resources is an effective way to identify and eliminate redundant costs leeching from your budget.

Network security can be complicated, but it is an absolutely crucial element to your technology strategy if you want to have any success. Coleman Technologies can help take care of the technical side of things for you, and help teach better habits to your staff. To learn more, keep reading our tips, and reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Shake to Minimize

Sometimes when you are working in any Windows platform, you will have too many windows open and you just want everything out of your face except the thing you are currently viewing. Well in Windows 10 there is a cool little feature you can use to make that happen very quickly. Just take your mouse (or your finger if you have a touchscreen) and click-and-hold the title bar of the app you are working in and shake it back and forth. This will minimize all other open applications. To get them back, simply repeat the action.

Choose Folders on Start Menu

The start menu is extremely useful in Windows 10, but sometimes it can get cluttered. To choose which folders you want to see on your Start Menu go to Settings > Personalization > Start then click on the “Choose which folders appear on Start” link at the bottom of the screen. From there you can toggle the folders you want to see in your Start menu. 

Find the Original Control Panel

The settings options in Windows 10 are far and away easier to use, but if you are one of those people that likes working with tools they know, the old Control Panel is still available in Windows 10 as it is still the go-to option for customizing advanced options. The easiest way to access the control panel is by clicking on the Cortana icon on the taskbar and typing in “control panel”. It will give you immediate access to all user settings. 

Selectively Sync Folders with OneDrive

One of the best parts of using Windows 10 is the integration with OneDrive cloud storage. Windows 10’s OneDrive integration provides users a lot of flexibility. To sync folders with data stored in OneDrive, make sure OneDrive is running and right-click on the OneDrive icon in the notification area. Select Settings and then navigate to the Account tab. Under the Account tab you will see the option to “Choose folders”. Click on choose folders and you will see a list of the folders you have in OneDrive, select the ones that you would like access to through Windows 10 and select OK. Now you have access to this data through your File Explorer in Windows 10.

Customize Your Application Notifications

Having too many notifications is one of the most frustrating parts of modern technology. To keep from being bogged down with too many notifications, you can customize which notifications you see in Windows 10. To do so, click on Start > Settings > System > Notifications & action. Once there all you have to do is scroll down and select the notifications you want on, and which ones would be better served not notifying you.

Windows 10 has hundreds of options for any user to customize their experience. Check back next week when we provide some more advanced tips on how to best experience the OS.

Using the Taskbar to Highlight Folders

If you’re like most users today, a large amount of the work you are responsible for only requires you to access certain areas of the company’s storage, which can quickly make navigating there a frustrating inconvenience. Fortunately, there is a Taskbar feature that can streamline this process considerably.

You can add direct links to folders (and their contents) to the Taskbar.

Here’s how it’s done:

• Right-click any unused space in the Taskbar to open a menu of options
• Hover over Toolbars and select New toolbar…
• Find your desired folder in the directory that appears, select it, and click Select Folder

That folder should now appear in your Taskbar, with a list of its contents quickly and easily accessible to you.

Using the Taskbar to Quickly Access Websites

If your responsibilities more frequently require you to be on the Internet, you might find it useful to have a quick-access URL field in your Taskbar, enabling you to skip the step where you have to open a browser before beginning to navigate to a site.

• Again, access your Taskbar options by right-clicking in any unused space
• Again, hover over Toolbars, this time selecting Address

A URL field will have appeared in your Taskbar. Typing a URL into it and pressing Enter will open that website in your default browser.

Would you like to learn more about what the Taskbar can do? Let us know in the comments!

The first considerations you need to make are fairly straightforward.

Cost

You really do get what you pay for. Rather than settling for a cheaper system with plans of replacing it later, make sure you select a system that can be upgraded and expanded (yes, there is a difference). That way, you can avoid doubling your costs by eliminating the need to procure more than one system. It also helps to seek out a vendor that can supply all the needs your business has - like additional hardware for your POS, or enhanced software to power it - to simplify your processes.

Integration and Implementation

As mentioned before, your POS system should have the ability to grow as your needs of it do. For instance, while you may want to implement customer pagers at some point, it is probably wiser to focus on the essentials - like receipt printers and cash drawers. However, you will also want to make sure that your POS system has the capability to be upgraded to incorporate more advanced features as your business grows.

Tracking

Although this isn’t too far off from integration, you may want your POS to integrate with your inventory system, your quoting system, your CRM software, or any other business app on your network. Depending on your needs, you might even want your security cameras to pull a feed from your POS system to record purchases.

Support

Let’s face facts… you don’t want to find your POS system experiencing technical difficulties without anyone available to help you resolve them. Whether its complications with the software itself or a hardware issue, you need to be sure that support is always available to you.

When running a business, it is crucial that you have the technology to properly take payments. Coleman Technologies can help ensure that you are prepared to do business with reliable solutions. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to get started.

Leverage Automation

Answer me this: would you rather pay your staff to accomplish their responsibilities, or pay the same amount to have them work just as hard but only accomplish half as much?

That’s what I thought.

Automated solutions and processes can make your business far more efficient than it would be otherwise, simply because it makes it so your staff doesn’t have to take care of rote responsibilities and can instead focus on capital-generating endeavors. As a result, you can streamline how your dollars are spent, making more for a relatively small investment.

Ditch the Landline

Let’s face facts… all technology follows the same trajectory: it starts as an invention, is innovated upon, becomes the established norm, and is eventually phased out by the next invention. Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone is almost 150 years old - suggesting that it is high time for the next innovation to step into the fold.

In a large way, it already has, with Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP leverages your business’ Internet connection to place calls, meaning you no longer have to pay the telephone company for service. Furthermore, it is far easier (and cheaper) to expand a VoIP solution, making it an even better option for a growing business.

Invest Wisely

When selecting a solution, there’s a lot to be said about seeking out a bargain. However, you need to lean more towards frugality, and less towards being miserly. A solution that you may have gotten for a considerable discount, but ultimately costs you three times its worth in maintenance and repairs can barely be called a solution at all. Furthermore, cheaper devices are often cheaper because the manufacturers skimped on key aspects, like performance, security, and durability. The same can often be said of emerging technologies - it is better to be late jumping on the bandwagon than it is to be in the front row when the whole thing crashes.

Coleman Technologies is here to guide you as you outfit your business with the technology solutions it needs for success. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to talk to our seasoned professionals.

When we say digital signage, what we mean is having digital displays in your office. You may have seen them out and about in other locations, such as fast food restaurants using monitors as menu boards. In essence, digital signage solutions give your business the opportunity to broadcast content to screens around your office for a variety of reasons, and they are great opportunities to make your workplace a more dynamic experience as a whole.

Showcase Important Information or Statistics

Sometimes you need your employees to see announcements, but you want to make the information known in a more public location. Otherwise, you can use it to display statistics, like the number of sales or a countdown to a certain date or time. Either way, digital signage can be used to keep your staff informed.

Digital signage is also helpful for navigating the office. You can have signs indicating where important locations, like a conference room or bathroom, are located. 

Display Upcoming Dates and Events

All businesses have deadlines of some sort, and digital signage is a perfect way to broadcast it to your entire office… or at least the locations where digital signage is used. It’s an easy, supplemental way of drawing attention to certain times, dates, or events that are arriving in the future. 

Monitor Goals More Effectively

Digital signage can help your organization keep its employees accountable through the display of goals and key performance indicators. You might even be able to foster some healthy competition between your organization’s employees, as their performance will be displayed in an easy-to-understand format.

Does your business need assistance with setting up or acquiring resources for digital signage? Coleman Technologies can equip you with all the assets you need to make effective use of digital signage. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Properly Managing Your Email Like a Professional

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.

Impose Rules on Your Email Habits

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.

Managing Important Emails

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 Time is Left, Return to Your Inbox

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.

Don’t Be Afraid to Leverage Filters and Labels

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!

Study after study has been performed over the years about the impact of workplace wellness programs, producing various results. Some have indicated health improvements and cost savings, while others haven’t. However, the studies that were performed in the past had a high rate of issues. Whether there was no comparison group, or the chance of personal bias influencing signups, these studies simply didn’t provide reliable data.

Now, however, researchers from the University of Chicago and Harvard have conducted a large-scale study that meets the requirements that such a study is usually beholden to.

The BJ’s Wholesale Club Experiment

This experiment began by selecting 20 of the big-box retailer’s outlet centers to offer an employee wellness program. 140 additional BJ’s locations did not offer any such program. Across the 160 clubs involved, there were almost 33,000 workers employed.

Participants filled out a health risk questionnaire, took health classes, and had basic medical tests performed. After 18 months, their progress was evaluated...and that’s where things got interesting.

Despite the workers who were participating in this program reporting healthier behaviors than they once exhibited, almost all other factors were left unchanged. Blood sugar levels, job performance and attendance, and employer health care spending all were unaffected.

Why This Might Be

There’s a good chance that the results of this study were skewed by the incentives offered to participants. Participants were given gift cards for attending wellness courses, for a total incentive of about $250. According to founder and CEO of Bravo Wellness, Jim Pshock, this may just not have been enough. According to Pshock, any amount less than $400 is only going to be enough to incentivize people to do what they were already going to do anyways. As Pshock put it: “It’s simply too small to get them to do things they weren’t already excited about.”

Another study, published in 2018 by the University of Illinois, essentially debunked the idea of the workplace wellness program, concluding that it neither reduced costs or impacted behaviors - although this study also found that participants of wellness programs were those who were already healthy and motivated. This potentially suggests that the true benefit of these programs isn’t to make their existing workforce healthier, but to attract and retain healthier employees.

There are other potential contributing factors as well. A recent survey indicated that 84 percent of employees saw their wellness programs as “one-size-fits-all,” a concept that doesn’t really work will all of the various factors that contribute to health. Eighty percent of respondents to that same survey claimed that more personalization would contribute to their participation in wellness programs.

Why You Want to Adopt a Workplace Wellness Initiative

Admittedly, we’ve provided a mixed defense for these kinds of activities, but it cannot be denied that anything you can do to promote the health of your employees will only benefit your business - healthy employees tend not to call in sick, after all.

There are other benefits to these programs as well:

• Reduced Stress - The stress management benefits of healthier behaviors have been well documented. By adopting these healthier behaviors, you and your staff can reduce the stress that comes from the office and approach the source issues more effectively.
  
  
• Community Building - As the boss, you want your entire team to work as, well, a team. Unfortunately, if certain departments don’t work together much, this kind of relationship can be hard to develop. However, many activities that would fall under a workplace wellness initiative can help cross departmental lines, drawing your team closer together.
  
  
• Better Moods - Wellness programs allow employees to try out new activities, which can not only add to their wellbeing, but can also keep them engaged and productive. Plus, studies have indicated that employees who participate in these programs were generally happier with their work situation.

What have you done to cultivate a more health-conscious workplace? Share your strategies in the comments!

To begin, let’s figure out exactly what a data warehouse is.

Understanding the Data Warehouse

A Data Warehouse isn’t to be confused with a Data Center, where you might store your server infrastructure. It is a system for analyzing and reporting on large amounts of data. It helps you predict trends and get a full picture of what’s going on with your business.

In order to understand the purpose of a data warehouse, it helps to look to warehouses in the real world. In short, it’s a place to store stuff.

While this may seem simplistic, it is key to the other functions of a data warehouse. By storing all of a business’ data in a central location, that data can all be referenced against each other - regardless of the original source. This means that you can use this data to generate better analytics than you may have gotten otherwise, simply because you are less limited by the data you have access to.

Selecting a Data Warehouse

Of course, not all data warehouses are the same, and the different types offer different utilities. You also have to consider if the data warehouse itself is sufficient. Let’s go over some of the considerations you will have to make during your deliberations.

What kind of data do you need to store?

For our purposes, data can be split into two types: structured and unstructured.

• Structured data is data that can easily be organized into a spreadsheet. If your data fits the bill, a relational database would likely be a good fit for your needs.
• Unstructured data (or semi-structured data) is data that is presented in less-uniform formats, like geographical data, emails, books, and the like. If you have a lot of this kind of data, you may want to consider utilizing a data lake over a data warehouse.

How immediate does your data need to be?

Your intended use of your data warehouse will have the largest impact on this consideration. Are you looking for business insights, or are you more focused on real-time analytics? If you are looking to find out more about your business, having more data available will give you better answers. If you are using the data warehouse to fuel a predictive analytics platform, you will need less data, as tracking trends can be done with a simple Relational Database Management System (RDMS) and won’t necessarily benefit from access to all of the data your organization stores.

How are the costs structured?

Different data warehouse solutions are priced based on different factors, usually combining the storage used, the size of the warehouse, the number of queries that are run, or the time spent leveraging the solution. Your particular use case will likely influence which solution is most cost-effective for you, whether frequent utilization makes a lower compute cost preferable or a high volume of data makes lower storage costs the logical choice.

Does it work with the tools you use?

Finally, you need to be sure that the solution you are considering is compatible with your business’ other solutions - otherwise, you won’t get the full value from your data warehouse (or create more work for yourself).

Coleman Technologies can help your business manage its technology needs. To learn more about how we can optimize your business processes, call (604) 513-9428.

Don’t worry… we don’t expect you to try and work while you’re running as fast as you can. What we mean by “sprinting” is that you commit to focused, intensive work for a period of time, followed by a shorter period of rest.

The Science Behind Sprinting

The human body has certain capabilities, and is subject to certain limits. The way we are designed, we are meant to spend our time either spending or accumulating energy. These cycles are known as ultradian rhythms. Using our brains counts against this energy.

As a result, our focus is limited to somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes. Research indicates that, in order to perform well again after that, you need to take a 20-to-30 minute break so your brain can recover.

A sprinting methodology fits this pattern to a ‘T.’ By narrowing your focus to a single one of your tasks and blocking out distractions, you are better able to commit yourself to your goal. Once you hit the end of your sprint, you spend your recovery time refocusing yourself and preparing for your next foray into intense productivity.

Various authors and researchers have provided anecdotal evidence as to the efficacy of this approach:

• While writing The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance, Tony Schwartz used 90-minute blocks of time to break up his day, only writing for a daily total of four and a half hours. Six months later, his book was finished.
• In 1993, performance researcher Anders Ericsson discovered via a study that the most skilled young violinists all followed a similar practice schedule: three 90-minute sessions of morning practice, with breaks in between.
• In his book, Schwartz tells the story of how Leonardo Da Vinci would put down his paints while working on The Last Supper and daydream for hours at a time. When he was questioned about it, Da Vinci is said to have replied, “The greatest geniuses accomplish more when they work less.”

Why and How to Leverage Sprinting

One of sprinting’s biggest benefits is something that many people are very familiar with: the feeling of being in “the zone.” It’s that time when you are fully committed to your task at hand, and are enjoying yourself as you apply yourself. Psychologists refer to this as “flow.”

One psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has committed his career to studying flow. As he said in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he wrote:

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.”

To make flow happen, sprinting once again fits quite well. Incorporating these patterns into your daily routine will help you to work more productively and ultimately, be more successful in your work.

What methods have you used to boost your productivity? Share some in the comments!

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:

• Click the Windows icon at the bottom left-hand side of the taskbar.
• Click on the gear icon to open up your Settings.
• Select Apps.
• In the left-hand column, click on Default Apps.
• In the right-hand side of the Default Apps screen, you can see the various types of files that will be opened by specific apps.

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.

New Gestures
The latest version of Android OS contains a built-in new gesture navigation system, but it might not be turned on automatically. To turn this on, go to Settings > System > Gestures. Then you must tap on Swipe on Home Button and press the on-screen toggle switch. You will see the change propagate almost immediately--the three-icon setup will change to a singular pill-shaped icon.

Navigation isn’t much different from the other builds, either. Tap the pill icon to bring back the homescreen and long press it to bring up your Google Assistant. You can then swipe up twice or long-swipe from the home icon to bring up your app drawer.

Another change that needed to occur is that Android 9.0 Pie removes the dedicated button for recent applications. Users now need to singular short swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open up a carousel gallery that shows all recently opened apps. You can then navigate by swiping between apps or using the home icon to swipe fast-left or right to move through the apps more quickly. To clear the apps, swipe up on the specific app window. To clear all of the apps, just scroll all the way to the left and tap the Clear All button to exit out of all running applications.

Android 9.0 Pie actually tries to predict what you’re likely to need next. These commands are within the apps. If you find it useful, you can drag these suggestions, found at the top of your app drawer, onto the screen. You can then find the shortcuts offered by each app by long-pressing the specific application’s icon. This includes opening an application in split-screen mode, a considerable improvement from Android 8.0 Oreo.

Device Notes
One extremely useful feature for smartphone users is the ability to open your device using a fingerprint scanner, but an even better one is when you can use the scanner on devices that don’t feature an in-display fingerprint reader to keep your screen from turning off.

The alarm clock in Android 9.0 provides some additional functionality. When your notification panel is open (swipe down from the top), you only need to tap on the clock in the system tray to open your clock app and manage the alarms.

What do you think about Android 9.0? What are your favorite features? Let us know in the comments.

Before we get started, we want to make sure that you know to consult with your IT department or provider before you go to make any of these changes. That way, they will be able to undo any mistakes you or your employees might make during the following processes.

Customizing Word’s Rules to Meet Your Preferences

It’s likely that there are some things that you regularly type into Microsoft Word that it may not agree with. Your company’s name might not exactly jive with the grammatical rules that the rest of the language should subscribe to, for instance, or you may prefer to stylize certain terms or phrases differently. Word isn’t going to like this, and is going to try to let you know that a mistake has been made. Of course, it might also just change the word you typed to what it is “supposed” to be.

These corrections can be a pain to repeatedly make, and there’s always the chance that one will be missed. Fortunately, Word offers you the opportunity to “teach” it new rules via a fairly simple process.

To access these rules, select File, and from there, Options. A new window should pop up with a Proofing option in the list. That page looks like this:

Adjusting AutoCorrect

Here, you can alter a variety of proofing options, including your AutoCorrect Options. Clicking that button will present you with another window.

This window allows you to set your AutoCorrect rules, identify any exceptions you might want to make, and review how misspelled text can be automatically revised.

Establishing Grammar Rules

Returning to the Proofing List window, you also have other options that allow you to adjust Word’s corrections. For instance, clicking the Settings... button under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word provides another window. From here, you can control which grammar rules Word will flag or ignore in your copy.

Stop Worrying About Word Changing What You Write

By implementing these changes, you can prevent small annoyances from interrupting you as you work with Microsoft Word. This way, you can accomplish more without having to worry about dealing with automatic corrections again.

For more tips on how to best leverage your solutions to save you valuable time and money, subscribe to our blog!

What is Bandwidth?
In its most basic form, bandwidth is how quickly you can download content from the Internet. Bandwidth is measured in megabits per second, or Mbps. The more bandwidth you have, the faster downloads will run. Some high-speed connections can be measured in Gigabits per second.

How Exactly Does Bandwidth Translate to Download Speed?
If you’re trying to calculate your projected download speed, keep in mind that there are eight bits for every byte. This means that if you’re trying to download eight megabytes of data on a one Mbps connection, it will take about one minute. A 512 megabyte file, on the other hand, would take just over a hour to download on the same connection.

Estimating Your Business’ Needs
In order to reach an appropriate estimate for your business’ bandwidth, you’ll need to use a little math. Take the estimated traffic that you expect each of your processes to take up, as well as the number of users that are engaged in this process. You’ll want to assume that this is during peak operations; otherwise you might not have enough during an important operational period. You can generally rely on the following speeds for bandwidth estimation:

• 100Kbps and below: Low-end, single-line VoIP phones and e-fax machines. Some more basic computers have processes that use less than 100Kbps, but in the business world, you probably aren’t using them.
• 100-500Kbps: More computers and laptops fall into this range, as they are more likely to be the ones streaming, downloading, emailing, and browsing than other less intensive devices.
• 500Kbps-2.0Mbps: Cloud solutions and standard definition video conferencing take up about this much bandwidth. This is the general range for Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, Customer Relationship Management platforms, and Point of Sale devices.
• 2.0Mbps and more: High-definition conferencing solutions, remote access, heavy cloud access, and other resource-intensive tasks fall under this category.

If you keep peak activities at the top of your mind, use them to add up what your staff will need to stay on task and ahead of schedule. For example, let’s say you have ten users, including yourself. You might be using 450Kbps for correspondence, while six of your employees are using a CRM solution at 2.0Mbps each. The last three are using high-definition video conferencing software for 2.5Mbps each. Add all this up and you can expect to use about 20Mbps at heaviest use, but you want to go a little beyond this to 25Mbps, just to be safe.

What are other tips that you might want us to share? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Sure - if you want to limit how you can leverage it to your business’ advantage. Here, we’ve assembled a few features that you can use to make YouTube a better resource for your business.

First Up: YouTube’s Keyboard Shortcuts

Whether you’re using YouTube as a research tool or presenting your findings in a meeting, effectively using its built-in shortcuts can make your use of the website much more productive (and, let’s face it, more impressive).

If you’re doing research, jumping back to the beginning of a video will be super handy - and is possible, by pressing the 0 (zero) key. You can also use your arrow keys to fast forward or rewind the video in five-second increments (or ten-second increments, if you hold the Ctrl key at the same time).

If you’re using YouTube as a part of a presentation, you can quickly pause and resume the video by pressing either the spacebar, or the K key. If your audience can’t quite hear what you’re presenting, you can adjust the volume using the up and down arrow keys. The M key will mute the video, and unmute it when you’re ready to hear the video again.

Starting From a Specific Point in the Video

Speaking of using YouTube as a part of your presentation, you may not always want a video to start from the very beginning. YouTube gives you a few options to do so - the easiest being grabbing the altered link to your desired time directly from YouTube.

Let’s look at this video about phishing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfnA7UmlZkE

There’s a lot of information in this video. What if you want to focus on one specific aspect, like how phishing can be spotted? This video doesn’t dive into this aspect until just about the one-minute mark. YouTube offers a function that eliminates the need of fast-forwarding to this point. Under the Share option, the menu that appears offers a Start at option. You can select the precise time that you want your video to start. The link that appears will begin your video at the moment you have selected (unless a pesky ad gets in the way):

https://youtu.be/jfnA7UmlZkE?t=63

Search Filters to Improve Your Results

If you’re having trouble finding the right content on YouTube, there are filters that you can whittle down your results by - making it more likely that you will find more videos that fit what you are looking for. You can seek out videos that were uploaded during a specific time frame, that fall within a certain duration, and seek out specific channels, playlists, and other media types - among other filters.

YouTube can be one of the greatest resources available today... as long as you can find and share the information you need. For more ways that technology can improve your business and its processes, subscribe to our blog!

Method One: Clarify Roles

One of the first things that you should do is to ensure that everyone knows exactly what their role is with no misunderstandings. This will assist in establishing processes in which certain team members have a clear sense of what they are responsible for, and how that ties into the larger goal.

There are a few direct benefits that this transparency with your team can bring. First, you can give your team ample feedback into their performance and assign them new challenges and objectives to accomplish. Secondly, you can empower your team members to approach these objectives - all benefitting the same end goal - in their own way. By giving them this power over their own process, you encourage them to take ownership over their work and the end result.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather produce something good if my name was going to be associated with it, if my contributions could be traced back to me.

Method Two: Praise the Team

One of the biggest obstacles to true teamwork is the ego. To avoid creating interpersonal tensions amongst your team through your praise, try praising the team as a unit. While giving one member of your team the spotlight can easily make the other members more jealous than anything else, focusing that spotlight on the team as a whole will help to improve the collaborative efforts of the team. You can always praise that team member in a one-on-one conversation.

There is one caveat to this: while you shouldn’t single out a team member in public, you should make sure that all work done within the team remains transparent. This visibility will help to discourage team members from slacking off and piggybacking on their coworkers, keeping everyone accountable for their share of the work.

Method Three: Encourage Staff Socialization

In order for your workforce to act as a team, they will need to see themselves as a team. This can be accomplished in a few ways.

The real key is to ensure that your staff is frequently spending time as a group.

In an operational sense, team meetings can be invaluable, so long as they also remain productive. Not only can these meetings provide your team with valuable facetime with one another, you can focus on your business’ strategy by analyzing your staff’s status reports side-by-side.

On the more casual side of things, there are a few ways that you can draw your employees closer together. Social activities can help to build camaraderie and friendly relationships. While it might seem corny, ice breakers can be a good way to get your team to open up to one another and, well, break the ice between coworkers. Otherwise, lunches or an after-work meetup for happy hour can help your team see each other as something other than just coworkers, but as friends. Even if nobody finds their “best friend forever”, your team will at least know each other better, allowing them to work together more effectively.

Method Four: Leverage Technology

Finally, if your team is going to act like a team, they’re going to need the tools that enable them to do so. This is what makes collaboration solutions so critical to the modern business. With the right solutions, your team can work cooperatively regardless of where they are, sharing and editing files together.

Of course, not every team member will need to see the same documents, based on their role, which is where the capability to assign network and file access permissions come into play. With these permissions, you can ensure that each team member can locate and access the files they need to be productive and contribute to the greater goals of the group.

Coleman Technologies can help you implement these technologies to support your other team-building endeavors - as well as the success of your business as a whole. To learn what else we have to offer, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar can be found at the top left of the window, with default options like Save, Undo, and Redo. It’s pretty easy to spot, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons that adjusting it to your preferences can be so helpful.

Making these changes is fairly simple. Your first step is to access the Quick Access Toolbar’s options. Under File. select Options, and in the window that appears, click Quick Access Toolbar in the sidebar menu. It should look like this...

From here, you can see that the typical Save, Undo, and Redo options are in the Quick Access Toolbar - which is all well and good, but you can easily use keyboard shortcuts to accomplish the same things.

You might find a different assortment of tools more handy to keep in your Quick Access Toolbar. Altering them is simple enough from this menu, all you have to do is select the item and click the appropriate button, Add>> or <<Remove. The list on the left defaults to Popular Commands, but there are plenty of options to choose from, based on your needs. For now, we’ll stick to Popular Commands.

Let’s assume you use Word to put a lot of data into context, so you use a lot of lists and tables… and it needs to be spelled correctly. You can easily change your Quick Access Toolbar to meet these preferences.

Once you’ve done so, just click OK and your changes will be saved. You can always revert to the default settings by using the Reset option as well.

Customizing the Ribbon

The Ribbon in Word is where you find your options like Home, Insert, and the rest. Depending on your usage, you may not have much of a need for some of these options. Let’s assume that you don’t have any purpose for the Mailings tab, or the Draw tab, for that matter.

Again accessing File and Options, this time we’re looking for Customize Ribbon, which looks like this:

Just as we did with the Quick Access Toolbar above, you can adjust what is displayed in the Ribbon. Since we’ve established that - in this example - we have no purpose for either the Mailings or Draw tabs, we can uncheck them to remove them from the Ribbon display.

Customizing the Status Bar

At the very bottom of the window is the Status Bar, which can be altered to provide other valuable information based on what you have prioritized. Doing so is very simple: just right-click on the Status Bar, and select (or deselect) the options.

There you have it- three ways to customize Microsoft Word to better suit your purposes. For more technology tips, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

What Does Restarting the Computer Do?
You might think of restarting the computer as something that cuts down on productivity, but this is far from the truth. While it stops you from working in the interim, it’s beneficial in the long run to routinely restart your computer for periodic updates and general upkeep. Have you ever tried to run a machine all the time without giving it a break every now and then? When you do this, it’s more likely that the device will be run into the ground. Your devices will run much better if you restart them every now and then to ensure that they aren’t being overworked.

What Use Is There for Your Task Manager?
You can imagine the look on someone’s face when their computer freezes up and it can’t run properly. Well, once upon a time, someone had the brilliant idea to include a task manager in a computer’ operating system to ensure that you can identify the problematic application (if there is one) and end its tasks without having to restart the computer. Overall, it’s a way to see how your computer’s resources are being allocated, as well as how to end troublesome tasks without restarting the computer.

Why Must Passwords Be Changed?
While some might argue that passwords should only be reset when they are discovered, this in-turn highlights why passwords should be reset frequently. Sometimes passwords will be stolen without the user knowing about it until they are being used against them, but other times, they will be stolen and sold on the black market to the highest bidder. It’s up to the user to make sure any passwords potentially stolen are changed before they can be used against your organization. The best way to protect against this from happening is to assume they will be stolen and change them periodically.

How Do Drivers Affect Your Work?
Drivers can be considered pieces of software that make your device compatible with a variety of external devices. You might have noticed that drivers must be installed on your device in order to use that USB mouse or wireless keyboard. These drivers must be kept up to date so that compatibility with devices doesn’t interfere with your work, and that security vulnerabilities are not presented to nefarious folks who want access to your systems and data.

Do you have any tips that you’d like to share with us? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog.

Let’s face it, if your business operates anything like most do, you have far too many of these processes for anyone to reasonably remember. This means that making sure that your processes are both comprehensively recorded and accessible for your employees to reference is a crucial facet to your productivity.

Fortunately, doing so is relatively simple, as long as you go about it properly.

Step One: Identify What You’re Documenting
The important thing to remember about creating documentation is that, unless the task itself is incredibly granular, making the documentation too specific isn’t going to help anyone. On the flip side, any documentation that is too vague isn’t likely to provide anyone with the value that it should.

You need to store your documentation in a centralized place that all employees can access. It helps even more if there is a system in place to allow you to search the contents of each document, sort them in various ways, and highlight changes and edits made to processes. In other words, utilizing a document management system or a knowledge center of some kind will go a long way in preserving the functionality of your processes. There are plenty of tools and applications out there for this, and we can help you choose the best one for your situation based on your specific needs.

Step Two: DIARI (Do It And Record It)
This step will form the basic shape of your documentation, as it will create a step-by-step guide to completing the task as a whole. You’ll need to go through a run-through of the process you’re trying to document, recording every step you take.

Don’t be shy about including details, either. For instance, if your process will require the same questions to be asked each time it is put into action, include the list of questions in your documentation. If someone is supposed to be contacted specifically, identify them in your documentation and provide their contact information.

From here, you should have a pretty good handle on how the process typically goes down… and the insights to make it even better.

Step Three: Refine, Repeat, Revise
When you were running through your process, were there any steps that would have made more sense to do earlier so you could be better prepared for a later responsibility? Try rearranging the steps in your documentation and trying it again. Did it work better, or worse? Take these observations into account and act accordingly.

Really, once you commit the time to doing it properly, creating invaluable and useful documentation isn’t that difficult of a process. You can even bring multimedia into it, if it’s a good fit, using tools like Steps Recorder on Windows.

For more handy IT tips, make sure you subscribe to our blog!