JotSpot (cool wiki-based collaborative work application suite)
+ Google (cool, influential, though beginning to look scary super-company)
= Microsoft Office killer??

The default setup in Outlook 2003 has a Navigation pane that runs along the left side of the screen. It contains a button for each type of Outlook folder:
-Mail
-Calendar
-Contacts
-Tasks
You’ll notice that as you click on those buttons, you get different context-specific options. For example, clicking on the Contacts button gives you various viewing options, including a formatted phone list–kinda nice.
Below those four buttons is another button containing the following icons:
-Notes
-Folder List
-Shortcuts
-Configure (represented by the cryptic “>>” icon)

If you’d like to make Outlook look more like the old Outlook, then the Configure button is your key:
- Click the “>>” icon and select “Show fewer buttons”
- Repeat the above step 3 more times to remove the 4 buttons.

Lastly, to get the full folder view found in the old Outlook, click on the “Folder List” icon at the bottom of the navigation pane.

Zingerman’s Creamery new Cinnamon Gelato tasting notes:
“Starts very sweet, nice long finish, with a little bit of heat at the end - nice mouth feel, no granularity.”
- IT Dept

Sunday. A historic house is planned to be moved down 5th, right by our building and we’ve been informed the power will go out for a ’short duration’ between 7am to 10pm. We were unable to verify whether that included the Deli or just ATS and we have no way to learn whether it will happen or at what time. Sort of inconvenient.

So we’ve scheduled all IT people across the 15 hours to be here when (if) the power goes down. I’ve made a checklist of machines to shutdown and issues to look for. Joe has 7 to 10, Elph 10 to 1, Brian 1 to 4, Craig 4 to 7, and Billie 7 to 10.

Update Monday, Oct 30:

The house did not move on Sunday, but we got some stuff moved around in the office. According to the AANews it is scheduled for this coming Sunday again. We still don’t know if the power outage will affect the Deli or not but are trying to find out. This Sunday Brian is on duty for the IT7 holiday project, along with Billie, until 5 pm.

Update Tuesday, Oct 31:

The Deli is not part of the planned power outage. Just the ATS. That’s a huge relief.

No, not a halloween party. I received a call from Allen at 4 pm on Saturday saying the power was down at Mail Order and judging from the signals out at the intersection it was an entire area outage. I was at home getting ready for a halloween party - popped open my laptop, verified no connectivity to Mail Order and so I packed my bag and headed out.

I made it to Mail Order by 4:20 or so and stumbled into the office section to the plaintive bleeping of the UPS boxes. I blindly stumbled to the door to the dotcom office, answering calls from people in the bookings office as to who I was, and brushed up against some warm body on the way. Once in the server room I got one monitor on for light and found all the machines had run out of juice except for two. One I was able to shutdown easily through the kvm monitor on the left but the other was on the right and the UPS driving the monitor had died. I ran to the car, grabbed my camping head lamp out of the glove box and a minimag flashlight. Getting the monitor and kvm switched over to a UPS with juice left I was able to shutdown gracefully the last machine. Craig called and I updated him on the situation.

Word from Kathi was that DTE estimated power back by 11 pm. We closed up the building and I headed over to Creamery and Bakehouse to imform them that internet and mail were down. I called Ron and he offered to call some other partners and let them know. All were very understanding about the outage. Though Grace surprisingly heard about the planned outage at Detroit St for Sunday for the first time. Don’t know how that happened. I called Joe, since he lives nearby and brought him up to speed and he offered to come in if needed.

I headed home to eat and think about further actions. Maybe rent a generator and get the internet connection back up? I gathered some extension cords and more flashlights and headed to Deli where I picked up some UPS 1000 boxes and the tool bags and talked to Grace. They did not have a strong need for internet connection that night so I scrapped the generator idea but instead decided to take advantage of the power outage to rearrange all the servers and their UPS boxes.

I called Craig and updated him as to my plan and he offered to join me later. Once at Mail Order I ran an extension cord from my Prius (and AC converter) to the server room and plugged in a lamp to see by. Craig arrived and we got down to business with a goal of each server having it’s own UPS, the big important ones on 1000s and the others on 700s. We also rearranged machines to get the new web servers on the shelf. Once done with the heavy lifting and power cord juggling we shifted our attention to the network equipment rack and straightened that out. It took a little over two hours but felt great to have it done. Craig left and as I was packing up my tools the power came back on (at about 9:45).

Checking all the machines I found them all to be in good shape except the two, arguably, most important ones. The mail server and web server. The web server wasn’t accessing it’s database server and mail wouldn’t load services. As I worked on those Billie stopped by for a bit to check in and provide moral support. After working on the mail server for at least an hour I finally called Craig to come in and help. I also called Tom and filled him in and learned that the web server was now working, though the database server was not providing a console. Good enough - focus turned to the mail server and with Craig on that I took a break and grabbed some food. Eventually Craig was able to determine what the problem was with the mail server and brought it around to his way of thinking. We checked a few more things then closed up. Made it home by 1am.

In Outlook 2003 the default setup has a Reading Pane (also known as a preview window) on the right side of the screen. This is a change from older versions of Outlook that had the pane on the bottom of the screen. Microsoft felt the new way made it easier to read the message being previewed.

Your opinion may differ, in fact, you may want to turn off the Reading Pane altogether. Although it saves opening a message to read, you may find that it does slow down moving from message to message.

Under the View menu is an option titled Reading Pane. Sliding out on that choice reveals Right, Bottom, and Off as choices. Select your favorite. Try each one!

As a bonus round: Some folks like the brief summary in blue beneath each email. To turn this on, in View menu, just below Reading Pane, is an option for Autopreview. Select and witness the beauty of blue text. Select again to turn it off.

Any questions? See our web site: http://zsn-it.com/, email IT, or call cx 0325.

Using the Deli’s Halloween Spooky Cookie Kit, the IT department created some designer snacks! And now the winners…

Most Creative Design award goes to Brian’s Stonehenge Cookie!

Most Consumer-Friendly Cookie award goes to Billie’s Classic Cookie!

Most Effective Use of Resources award goes to Elph’s Smiley Cookie!

Most Inspired award goes to Craig’s Have-and-Have-Not Cookie!

Yummiest Design award goes to Joe’s Looked-So-Good-I-Ate-It Cookie!

Congratulations everyone!

http://www.yepthat.com/

Looks pretty cool.

Also organizes scanned documents.

We love that the ZCob is using our online Helpdesk System to directly file service requests and trouble tickets. But what about the wide array of requests that come in by person or by phone? Enter: Talk > Type > Ticket. Your Zing Geeks type up those requests and enter them into our online Helpdesk System

Why is this better?

-All technical support problems (and answers!) are documented. This will enable us to see trends and let us refer to old tickets to help solve recurring issues.

-It helps us better communicate with each other. All members of the IT staff can contribute their solutions to issues that otherwise would not have been on their radar.

-It gives us a more accurate measure of our workload. By logging all issues, we have a clearer picture of the technical health of the organization and the productivity of our department. This will improve our resolution efficiency.

-Having the issues that we face in the Helpdesk System allows us to better measure the scope of our work for each of the businesses over time.

The IT department has a working project board that rocks in so many ways…

1. Every project that each of us is involved in is listed with a half sheet of paper showing percent complete and due date and other standard stuff but also includes compelling reasons, next action step, and extra mile. These sheets are tacked up in columns for each person in our office where everyone can see them.
2. The compelling reasons help us and others understand what the big picture is for the project.
3. The Next Action Step keeps us focused on moving ahead - we use a post-it so we can constantly keep the forms up-to-date with the very next thing that needs to happen.
4. The extra-mile is highlighted and has to be filled out before the project is complete!
5. We review the entire board every week to stay in touch with what everyone is doing.
6. The whole thing is on paper instead of computer - out of the box radical thinking for the IT Dept! And it works great! Quick and easy access to the information for not just us but anyone who walks into the office.
7. We love it so much we would be happy to train others in building their own.