All posts by Art Gelwicks

Coaching

OneNote on Android – The Forgotten Version

Of all the platforms, why ignore the one best suited to your application?

Of the challenges with note taking applications is making sure they are supported and “feature equivalent” on multiple platforms and devices. Cloud based applications usually find this easier as everything is reaching out to one source for not only the data but the user experience. Application that work in native modes on platforms such as Android and iOS can suffer from a divergence between what is available in the cloud, on desktop, and on mobile. It is here where we arrive at OneNote on Android Tablets.

If there was ever an example of a forgotten version of an application this would be it. The mobile version on Android phones, while not perfect, functions adequately within the limitations of screen real estate and user interface. Unfortunately, the Android tablet version fails to take advantage of greater screen space and capabilities of the tablet world. This is a big swing and miss on their part.

The argument will be made, and undeniably so, the market share of Android tablets is small enough to not warrant a heavy attention or investment in the platform for the Microsoft development teams. If this is truly the case, this is some of the most misguided thinking around. After all, when you have a platform that could potentially be redefined by a single, powerful app why wouldn’t you try and make that sea change happen?

Samsung is the main player in the Android tablet space, and their stylus-enabled, attached keyboard devices are all but made to get the most from OneNote. What happens though? Efforts are put into Samsung Notes (an arguably superior handwriting app to OneNote) and then the notes are “synced” to OneNote for accessibility. A clumsy work-around to be sure.

A second common argument is that Microsoft doesn’t push in the Android tablet space because they want to encourage purchase of Surface devices as a “better experience.” From a corporate perspective that makes sense, but since there is no equitable cost-comparison / capability-equity between Surface and Android, this too falls flat. If Surface tablets were truly a viable alternative, they would have made their mark by now and we have yet to see that happen.

Microsoft needs to step up and make basic improvements to the tablet version of OneNote on Android. This forgotten segment of the ecosystem compels people to other tools and ultimately a departure from OneNote entirely. As one of the most versatile and longest living note-taking applications in the market, neglecting this segment is truly that…neglect.

Do you agree or disagree? Leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts on the Android / OneNote gap.

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Coaching

Sticky Notes in OneNote – Worth the effort?

There’s tons of sticky note apps out there. What makes OneNote’s version worth using?

If you use OneNote for Desktop there is a feature you’re likely overlooking. The Sticky Notes option in OneNote provides you an easy way to capture notes for later organization into your notebooks. Did you know that it works well when browsing the web to help you keep track of information?

Open OneNote for Desktop and click on the Sticky Notes button in the upper right. By default this should open as a floating window but you do have the option to dock the Sticky Notes to your desktop (which is the way I use it.) Now that it’s open, here come the really helpful parts.

First, open your browser and navigate to a website. If you have enabled the setting to Capture the Source in the Sticky Notes settings, when you create a new note the address of the page you are viewing will be attached to the sticky note you create.

Even more powerful, if you are viewing a web page click the Screenshot button in Sticky Notes to capture a screenshot of the current window and then add your comments to the destination note. It’s that easy to capture and keep your information on the fly when you’re working.

One caveat for Sticky Notes created this way. Notes that have a source attached will not display that source when the note is pulled up on an Android device (I’m not sure about iOS so I’d love a reply in the comments as to whether or not this is the case.)

When all is said and done, the ease at which Sticky Notes can be used for quick capture and retrieval makes it possible to eliminate one more extra app from the digital clutter of our daily lives.

Coaching

Hack for adding tasks to Notion

If you’re using Notion as a task manager, here’s a quick tip for entering new tasks. First, create views in your task list database that filters for things such as today’s date, tomorrow’s date, and specific categories. Next make sure you apply the relevant filter BEFORE you create the new task. This way, when you add the new task to the list, Notion will automatically apply the filtered properties to the new task.

For example, if I’m adding a task for today, I go to my Today’s Tasks view first. This is filtered for any task that has a due date of today. Now when I click on the new button from this view, any new tasks created will get today’s date assigned to them. I have a similar view for Tomorrow’s Tasks that makes short work of adding new tasks for tomorrow.

The added benefit of handing task creation this way? If I’m adding tasks to tomorrow, I can already see everything that is on my list for tomorrow to know if I’m overwhelming myself with work and should move something to another day.

Coaching

Four tips for better Zoom interviews

Over the past several days I’ve been doing several first-round interviews for potential development candidates. There are five tips I suggest when it comes to putting your best foot (or in this case, face) forward when participating in a video interview.

Avoid backlighting

Sometimes it’s difficult to get good lighting for a video call but it’s worth the effort. An overhead or strong backlight can make it difficult for you to be seen as well as reduce the quality of your image.

Choose audio quality over appearance

If you’re not sure about the quality of your audio when it comes to the microphone on your device, I recommend deferring and using a headset rather than risking not being heard. You may look a little like an air traffic controller, but clarity of the conversation is the most important consideration. To paraphrase, “it’s better to sound good than to look good.”

Avoid portrait phone camera angles

This may be just a pet peeve of mine but avoid using your phone in a portrait position if you’re calling into an interview. If the interviewer is using a laptop or other device, your video will come through looking like something off Tik Tok rather than providing the polish you’re hoping for on a video call.

Avoid clutter

If possible, avoid cluttered, busy backgrounds. Stick with something simple and clean; even a bare wall will suffice. The last thing you want to do is have visual distractions behind you taking away the interviewer’s focus. Also, while it may be attractive to stage your books and awards behind you, don’t think for a second people don’t recognize they are staged. We’ve all seen these types of “Room Rater” layouts and they aren’t necessary as part of the interviewing process.

Bonus – Practice

Interviewing over video call is not the easiest thing to do, but it is manageable and can be successful with a little time, practice and effort. Take advantage of the test call feature of most video calling applications to get comfortable with not only the tool, but how you present on the medium as well.

Tools

Five steps to putting SharePoint to work for your organization

Microsoft SharePoint has been a part of the business landscape since 2001 and organizations who have taken it to heart commonly have two experiences. One, they discover the benefits the collaborative platform can bring to your teams and projects or two, they roll the platform out to users, provide a minimum of training and no thought-leadership, and wonder why it isn’t successful. If you have SharePoint available in your organization (and if you’re using Teams or Microsoft 365 you do) here’s five ways for SharePoint to make the promised differences.

SharePoint is more than a file share

Commonly people will use SharePoint to create a file share for a team or their org and never explore beyond that. If you take the file share at face value, even this simple implementation can take advantage of the features of SharePoint to make your team more effective. Try adding columns for review dates, document owners, content tags, and more to help organize your files. Take those review dates and create Power Automate routines to monitor when documents are up for review or even when they can be archives from lack of access. Use saved views to provide quick access to different combinations of filters and groups to work only with the documents you need.

Stop using Excel as a database

Excel is a powerful calculation tool and can be used as a database to a degree, but you quickly hit the ceiling on capabilities and functionality when using it every day. SharePoint by its design is much more of a database structure than Excel when it comes to user interaction with the data, providing, updates, forms, and reporting. For example, you have a list of contracts in various stages of completion: some require follow ups, some require sign offs, and notifications must be sent to individuals to keep things in motion. Using SharePoint as your information center you can:

  • track the contracts and action dates
  • use Power Automate to send out automatic follow up reminders
  • run dashboards from Power BI to get an overall view of your contracts
  • create formatted displays for easy status updates

All of this can be accomplished within a matter of weeks rather than months when it comes to definition, design, and development. When it comes to being productive, it’s more than just producing more…it’s improving the overall quality of work.

Communications is the key to collaboration

In our new hybrid or remote work world, the information we used to share over boxes of donuts in poorly ventilated meeting rooms is outdated. People can work when they are at their peak energy and most productive. However, for this to be successful, we must keep our teams fully informed of what is going on and what is expected so they can work independently and successfully. (Honestly, if you’re not interested in helping your team work independently and successfully, are you really a leader at all?)

Using pages in SharePoint as knowledge repositories means not only does everyone have common access to the information they need to be successful, but also information can be tracked, revised, and distributed without the burdens of missing emails and ineffective meetings. Creating page templates in SharePoint and adding metadata to the pages provides:

  • continuity and consistency to the information
  • streamlines the production of added information
  • leverages the searchability of content in SharePoint to make the information visible

Even better, the created content is available through Microsoft Teams and through the SharePoint mobile app. No unique skills are needed to create content pages in SharePoint. As I so often say to inexperienced users and executives alike, if you can use Microsoft Word, you can create pages in SharePoint.

Think about specific purposes rather than intranet sites

SharePoint has for years been considered an intranet tool for organizations. In that area, it does excel but it is not limited to only that purpose. When you’re managing a project, process, or team, SharePoint provides the functionality necessary to keep things on schedule and accessible. Too many teams rely on file shares and Excel worksheets to keep their work in order when SharePoint has the capabilities out of the box.

Let’s take the example of managing a business process. There’s no reason you couldn’t set up a dedicated SharePoint site for tracking the steps of the process, related documentation, and providing updates to interested team members. We’ve had the idea for so long that everything needs to go into one site we lose the benefits of dedicated use sites.

Teams is not a replacement for SharePoint

Microsoft Teams has taken the workplace by storm over the past few years and in many cases, SharePoint has suffered because of it. Users tend to forget, or they never know, that SharePoint powers Teams when it comes to files, lists, and more. Creating pages in SharePoint to share information through Teams is an effective use of the Add Tabs feature, while also leveraging all the editor functions of SharePoint that Teams does not have.

Putting SharePoint to use

The key step in putting SharePoint to use in your organization is to take time planning what you want to accomplish with someone familiar with the configuration capabilities of the platform. It isn’t often development is needed if you work through your requirements and apply out of the box features to your needs. If you do need to do development work or make more powerful functionality available you can leverage Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, all of which can take SharePoint to a higher level.

Often SharePoint can meet your needs through configuration and administration. Rather than wasting time planning custom development efforts immediately when working on collaboration solutions, give SharePoint a second look.

Strategy, Tools, Update

Choosing a task manager? How about a free worksheet to help you decide?

Choosing which tools you want to use when it comes to improving your productive quality of work can be a challenge. Not only do you need to figure out the tools, you need to understand what you want from them in the first place. This is why we’ve created our “30 Questions to Choose the Right Task Manager for You” worksheet.

By answering the questions in the worksheet and then using your answers to guide your decision making, you’ll avoid focusing on tools with features you don’t need while ensuring the ones you evaluate have the features you do. This worksheet doesn’t recommend specific tools as they are changing all the time, but rather provides you evergreen questions you can revisit as your needs evolve.

The worksheet is free for registered site members and is part of a new collection of guides and worksheets we’re making available for members. Click on the Log In link if you’re already a member or to create an account. Then you’ll be able to download the PDF and get started.

30 Questions to Choose the Right Task Manager

Tools

Does wearable tech make you more productive?

For years now the idea of wearable technology, be it watch, ring, glasses, or some other combination has been touted as not only the road to better health but improved productivity as well. I’ve been a wearable tech guy for as long as I’ve been able to get ahold of said tech and want to share some observations if you’re planning to make the leap. This week on Cross Platform we’ll discuss the benefits and challenges of wearable tech so let’s start exploring some of the facets here.

What is the right form factor?

Form factor is a key part of wearable tech because if you won’t wear it consistently, it won’t do any good for you. Smartwatches are the most common design we’ll find today, but among them there is a wide variety in design.  I’m including fitness trackers in this mix as well since many provide productivity features beyond step and heart rate tracking.

When it comes to finding the right form factor, make sure whatever device you’re investigating comes with a good return policy.  There’s nothing worse than investing in a device for hundreds of dollars to find it doesn’t quite fit right under your favorite shirt or feels uncomfortable on your wrist. Take a couple of days to get used to the device as part of your life before you decide if you’re going to give it a longer trial.

Battery life can be a showstopper.

If you invest in a piece of wearable tech and it can’t make it through a full day of your activity, as I’ve encountered with devices in the past, it’s not worth the money.  Even the latest versions will often struggle with running for a full day with all their features enabled (and you paid for those so why wouldn’t you want them turned on) decreasing their value eventually.  Currently I wear a Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 and need to charge it daily.  Fortunately charging only takes about 30-45 minutes and I can do it during idle activity times (such as writing this post.)

I’ve been asked why I don’t charge the watch overnight and it’s a simple answer…that’s one of the main times I use the watch.  I use the sleep tracking feature every day (I’ll talk about that more later) so having it sitting on the charger while I sleep defeats the purpose.  Purchasing multiple chargers or charging my watch off my phone (thank you Samsung) has made the times I’ve been unable to deliberately charge more manageable, but every watch face I use has a power indicator just to be safe.

What do you need the device to do?

Over at ProductivityCast we’re in the thick of recording a series about productivity terminology and the importance of definition.  Reaping the benefits of wearable tech is equally dependent on you defining your objectives for the device, especially what you don’t expect from it as much as what you do. Many devices now support apps like a smartphone, and this turns out to be asking wearable tech to do things it’s just not good at and ruining the experience.

The most common things for wearables are health tracking, which can have a significant impact on your quality of work, scheduling (reminders and such), and notifications for messaging and events.  If these fit your needs, then you’re right in the wearable sweet spot.  When you start asking wearables to manage your task lists, track your hours, or manage your email, you’re pushing the outer limits of what wearables can do well.  It’s possible, but you do need to keep your expectations reasonable.

It’s better to feel good than to look good

Health tracking is one of the core feature sets of all wearables and I find this has the greatest impact on my quality of work. While I may be able to respond to a text message from my watch, or see the next thing on my calendar, tracking things such as sleep quality, activity levels, and body composition help me make decisions that have a long-term impact. Only through this frequent monitoring and review have I come to terms with what my health choices make when it comes to my mindset and energy levels.

The tip of the iceberg

These features are only the beginning of what you can do with a wearable.  Electronic payments, music controls, navigation, and even phone calls are just a sample of what I’ve used my watch for in the past week.  What it all comes down to is this…a wearable is an extension of your existing productivity platform, not the center of it.  A wearable should be effective and efficient when you need it and invisible when you don’t. After all, if you were ok with something being omni-present in everything you do, you’d just use your phone, wouldn’t you?

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60 Second Productivity, Techniques

OneNote Tip for Expanding Text

If you use both OneNote on the desktop and OneNote on mobile (iOS or Android) you may have encountered the problem I see all the time:  changing between a mouse and touch interface.  Here’s the situation. If I create a list of links on the desktop in a OneNote page they’ll work fine until I go to access that page on my mobile device.  It’s at that point I find the lines are two close together and difficult to select.  Now I could zoom in on mobile, and I could also increase the font if I wanted something more permanent, but there’s a third option.

Try this next time you have a list you know you’re going to interact with both on desktop and mobile.  Select the list on your desktop and go to Home > Paragraph Alignment > Paragraph Spacing Options.  Set the spacing option for after each paragraph to a minimum of 6 pixels and then click Ok.

The list will be reformatted to include a six pixel gap between the lines.  Even more effective is to do this at the beginning when  you create the list so the gaps are added automatically each time you press Enter.

By doing this you’ll give yourself a way to have neat, organized lists that work both on your desktop as well as on mobile.

If you found this article helpful, please click on the Like button to help us bring you more of the content you’re interested in.  Also, why not subscribe by email in the sidebar to have new articles and information delivered right to your inbox? Thanks for reading and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Coaching

Using OneNote as an Offline Reader

One of the things I use OneNote most frequently for is to gather articles for reading and reference.  Reading content on the web has been tackled by apps like Pocket and Instapaper, but I wanted to the ability to keep everything in one place integrated with my other notes. Most applications don’t allow this dual-functionality. However my primary note taking tool does, and here’s how I put it to use.

Web Clipping is Key

For this solution to work, you’ll need the OneNote Web Clipper. Once it’s installed in your browser (this is for desktop…on mobile the steps are different) you can then log into your OneNote instance and enable the extension. From here it’s a simple enough matter to start capturing web content into OneNote.

Go Browsing

When you find a web article you want to keep and read offline, click on the Web Clipper and select the Article option from the choices. You could use the full page, bookmark, or region options, but only the Article option captures the text in an easier to read format.  You then designate in what notebook and which section you want to save the article and click on Clip.

One of the features I frequently take advantage of is the option to add notes when capturing rather than having to wait until after you capture the content. At the top of the web clipper you can enter text that is saved when you save the article.  It’s a great way to annotate your information especially when you’re capturing multiple articles in a row.

Another of my favorite features is highlighting when clipping.  In the Web Clipper after selecting the Article option, go to the top of the clipper and click on the highlighter icon.  You can now highlight text in the clipped article before it is saved and the highlighting will be passed along when the article is saved.  I use this frequently because it gives me a chance to identify why I saved an article as well as key points of interest.

This isn’t a perfect tool by any stretch.  Some pages are a struggle for the clipper to simplify, even to the degree there are certain pages it won’t even touch with the Article option. If you’re able to find a page to save (normally text articles work best) you can then use all the features of OneNote to extend your experience: creating hyperlinks, highlighting, searching, comments, handwritten notes, etc.

Is this better than other apps?

There are definitely nice features in the dedicated apps, but if you’re looking to cut down the number of apps you’re using and keep your content centrally accessible, I’d recommend looking into the OneNote Web Clipper as an excellent way to streamline your platform.