Category Archives: Productivity

#Lync presenter annoyances, I mean crash course in good Lync meeting management

Posted on by
12

When in a meeting there are a few things that really annoys me, and those are really easy to fix, but the stress of leading a meeting, presenting and talking at the same time as holding a meeting is not easy and I know I have failed on some of these things to.

But here they are, as well as the remediation

Asking, Do you see my screen? Can you hear me? Can you see me? During the presentation, when its right there in front of your eyes.

As a presenter you can just open the “Participants Window” by clicking on this icon in your Lync meeting –> image

image

 

By doing that you will see all participants and you will also se what modalities of the meeting they are connected to.

    1. Grey means that they are not connected and don’t see or hear you.
      Turquois (not shown in the picture) means that you are presenting
      Blue means that they are connected and should be able to see and hear you.

Credits of this tip goes to: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jenstr/archive/2013/04/22/please-let-me-know-when-you-can-see-this.aspx

People talking during the presentation, without realizing that EVERYONE can hear them

Well this one is super simple. Again under the “Participants Window” click it and select Action and then “Mute audience” and when you later open up for questions, unmute the Audience. This will enable to just focus on your presentation and not have to find the one person that has that baby screaming or sitting at a Starbucks near a school at their lunch break.

image

By the way, if you present a PowerPoint that has a media file in it, when that slide plays, EVERYONE is muted, that means even the presenters, so after that video is done playing, you need to unmute yourself.

Bonus tips, Plug in, be early

And as a bonus, if you are the presenter, be early, like 10-15 minutes early, and plug in your computer, that means a wired connection (if possible) and power.

Also make sure to chose the correct audio/video device and upload your presentation in advance. Create your polls and then sit back close your eyes and relax for the rest of the 5 minutes before you start. If presenting, you should always distress before presenting something and it will feel a lot better.

I’m taking a stand against email

Posted on by
5

Today I got a 150+ emails, most of them was not important, some bonus mails wanting me to book a hotel, some Exchange UM system emails, some spam, some spam that I signed up for, and about 50 “real email”. And the sad thing is that MOST of these 50 emails could have been IMs and then resolved faster.

So about one third of my email I received today was just making me loose focus. I like to practice mailbox zero so I have rules for most of my task, so that I know what to do with them.

image

But I still have to press one of those buttons for every email I receive, even if its not important.

From now on I will try to use the built in “focus tool” in windows 8 a bit more, it can be found in the settings charm and if you then press “Notifications” you will have the option of turning them off.

image

This means, if you want to reach me, please use LYNC

image

A new favorite tool, RescueTime #Productivity

Posted on by
Reply

Ok this might be a bit of topic but I have just found a new favorite tool: RescueTime
That help me manage my time, or at least I know now what I spend my time doing.
And I even get alerted if I spend to much time on Facebook or wherever. Well if you are in to productivity or work in front of a computer I strongly recommend this to everyone!

imageimage

Check it out here

Technet wiki: #Lync user tips, tricks and tweaks for better productivity

Posted on by
Reply

Inspired by Ståle Hansen (Wiki: Lync Server 2010 Features and How to Configure Them) and the blog series on productivity by Matt Landis and Myself I wanted to create this wiki collection of productivity tips on how to work smarter with Lync 2010 for the end users of Lync. (u know those other people that actually work with the stuff we plays with all days… ;)
Please fill in with your blog posts, videos, links and whatever else you find useful in your daily life working with Lync 2010.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10976.lync-user-tips-tricks-and-tweaks-for-better-productivity.aspx

Privacy tips: Use presentation mode when you don’t want someone to see the content of an IM in the toast. #Lync

Posted on by
5

This is one more reason why you should use presentation mode in Windows 7 when doing a presentation (or when a customer is sitting next to you).

The first part to why you should use it can be found here: http://www.ultimate-communications.com/2012/01/productivity-tips-use-presentation-mode-when-you-dont-want-to-be-disturbed/

So, How do you enable it?

Just hit start and type “presentation” and hit enter. That should open up the Adjust settings before giving a presentation app.

image

EDIT: Pat Richard gave a great comment: If you do a lot of presentations, you can create a shortcut to “C:\Windows\System32\PresentationSettings.exe” which will bring up the dialog box at the click of a button.

In the Presentation Settings just mark the “I am currently giving a presentation” box and hit OK. And it might be a good idea to switch background to a nice company logo instead of that Diablo 3 pic that you have now.

image

This will result in the toast that pops up are a little more discreet.

And as you can see below it just says “Tommy Clarke is inviting you to a conversation.”

image

If we turn off the presentation mode, it would have shoved this instead.

image

Well that’s not an IM I want in front of 250 people Winking smile