Expense Reports That Don't Suck!

"We do expense reports that don't suck" is the motto of Expensify, a new electronic (cloud based!) expense report system that Pivot will be using soon. Paul Nadeau has already done the set-up, now he's working on the training and roll-out plan.

Expensify is super cool. Really. It makes doing your expense reports pretty much a point and click process. You log in, connect your credit card and bank account (if applicable), see a list of all the transactions, then put check marks beside the entries that should go into your expense report.

As for receipts (who doesn't hate trying to keep track of those??!), in many cases the transactions contain an electronic receipt with all the necessary information. So in those cases you don't even have to worry about the paper receipt. If you do need to include a paper receipt, you can send it to Expensify in a couple ways - one of which is to just take a picture of it and send it from your phone.

Paul (with the help of Connie Chung) has tied in our GL accounts, and Expensify attempts to categorize your expenses based on what it can tell from the transaction. Which means you're often saved the step of trying to figure out what account to put your transaction under.

And -- not surprisingly -- Expensify is mobile, too. There's an app for every kind of mobile device. And when you use the app, when you take a picture of the receipt, the app will do the work for you.

Watch for more details from Paul. Soon, we'll all be doing expense reports that don't suck!

Too Many Emails!

I hear it quite often: "I get hundreds of emails every day! I can't keep up." Can you relate? Here are some ways to reduce the clutter.

Step 1 - Your Chatter Emails
I've been heartened to see that more and more people are posting things to Chatter rather than sending an email to the Everyone or Sales or Design group. This is one way to lessen emails. Do you get too many emails from Chatter? Here's what to do (below). Set all your Chatter notices in one place - right now - once!

• In Salesforce, click on your name near the top right, then Setup
• Go to My Chatter Settings > Chatter Email Settings

By default you get one daily digest email listing everything related to you in Chatter -- whatever group you're in, whoever you're following, and so on. So theoretically you don't need any more than that one. It has everything. Now, there may be exceptions to that. Maybe, for example, you'd like to get notified immediately if someone posts an update to something important to you. You decide. AND you set the default for all future groups you're in.

• Scroll down to the Groups section.
• In Set default frequency for groups I join: you can set the frequency of emails for any future groups you're added to. Remember: You'll get one a day that includes all Chatter related to you, so you would be safe to set this default to "Never."
• In the table below, indicate the frequency by group. Again, you could theoretically set them all to "Never" because you'll get everything in the personal daily digest.
• Save!

And there you go! One fell swoop and you've reduced your emails significantly. Now the only other thing is to be sure to post things in Chatter groups rather than send group emails!

Step 2 - Stop & Ask Yourself: Who Needs to Read This Right Now?

Often, the majority of our emails are messages we're being included on, as an fyi. Do your co-workers a favor, and hopefully they'll do the same: Really think before you include names on the cc or bcc line, even the to line. Who needs to see this message right away? Could you make one fyi message that reports a bunch of things to your manager or team member at the end of the day instead of copying them multiple times throughout the day? Or start a list to cover with them at your next meeting?

Step 3 - Rules

You can create mail rules to move messages directly to folders, or even delete immediately. Right click on a message you'd like to make a rule for and scroll down to "Rules." If you need detailed instructions, do a search for "mail rules" in Outlook help (click on the little blue question mark in the top right to get to Help). If you receive newsletters or regular, repeated emails that you'd just as soon have in a folder you check periodically, mail rules can be a great way to reduce what hits your Inbox.

Step 4 - The Future - Project Cloud

There will be new ways to work when we start using Project Cloud ("Dexter in the Cloud" -- Salesforce). We'll have lists of things that are pending -- such as "my pending requests for Khameleon Quotes" or "my pending requests for labor quotes" or "my forms waiting for approval" and so on. I think we'll find we don't need the email requests every time -- we'll just get in the habit of living in those lists.

We may also use Chatter in a new way in Project Cloud. You know in ServiceNet how you have a tab for discussions? Well, in Salesforce you can use Chatter on any object and have "discussions" there.

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Hope these ideas make sense and help. What about your ideas? How do you handle the email blizzard??

Proof That Murphy's Law is Just Plain Evil

1. Weeks ago I turned off the automatic agent to send out birthday notices because we had a new shared company calendar in Outlook.
2. Therefore I took out the task in my termination checklist to un-check "send birthday notice" on employees' Lotus Notes person documents. (We have to keep them in the system to make sure we don't miss any mail, but by un-checking this field, the agent would skip them.) No need - right? - since I had turned off the agent anyway.
3. This morning the birthday notice went out. (Why?? The agent was turned off! Maybe something changed when our server died this weekend??)
4. And - here's the part that's just plain evil - the one notice that mistakenly was sent was for an employee who's no longer working here. (What's up with that? If it had to mistakenly fire, why not send one for an employee who's still employed?) Really?!

Look, it's MacGyver! No, wait, it's Paul!

"Braver Than Most...Smarter Than the Rest"  

If you are of a certain age, you've heard of the t.v. show MacGyver, and perhaps even used the term "MacGyvered." I thought of that show yesterday when Paul told me how he'd made a literal band-aid repair to a laptop.

Wikipedia describes MacGyver as "a resourceful agent...able to solve complex problems with everyday materials he finds at hand, along with his ever-present duct tape and Swiss Army knife." Paul's been known to use duct tape as well, but in this particular case he used a band-aid. We sometimes talk of fixes being "just a band aid," but in this case, that was a good thing!

Monique's laptop keyboard, and also Jesse's, were acting very strangely. Here's Jesse's description: "About 50% of the time I press "e" on the keyboard I get "poiurewq". I also get "\;lkjfdsa" when I press on other letters I get "\; lkjfdsa". When I press "c" it activates the microphone and takes me to the previous browser page." How weird is that? Jesse, displaying some detective finesse of his own, sent us a link to a tech forum where others wrote about a "tape kit" you could order from Lenovo (the maker of our laptops).

The issue was this: The ribbon connecting the laptop keyboard to the laptop itself had a hole worn into it from rubbing against a sharp piece of metal protruding from the laptop frame, causing the keys to short out. The "tape kit" fix was a piece of adhesive material with some padding which you place over the sharp metal, preventing it from creating the hole.

Paul ordered the tape kit, but that would take 2-3 days to get here, so on Friday he went up to San Francisco, opened up Monique's laptop, and put a band-aid over the sharp metal. Who needs an official tape kit when you're MacGyver? Paul just snipped a band aid to size and -- voila! -- problem solved. He "MacGyvered" that thing!

There you go, "smarter than the rest," indeed

What's Going on With "Dexter in the Cloud"?

First, I need a better name. It's not going to be called "Dexter in the cloud." But for now that name makes the idea fairly easy to understand.

There may be a few of you who don't know about Dexter in the cloud so I'll quickly explain. Basically, I'll be moving the functionality of Dexter -- the processes we perform there -- out of Lotus Notes into the "cloud" -- the internet, specifically into Salesforce.com.

Most of you know that my effort in this direction has been going on a long time. If you look back in this blog you'll see where I wrote about working with ServiceMax, an app inside of Salesforce.com, to bring Dexter to the cloud. Well, after getting us to the point where we were pretty much ready to start beta testing, I took a step back and decided that using ServiceMax was not the right way to go. I had thought that it was about 80% of what we needed out of the box, but it actually turned out to be more like maybe 20%. Just not a good fit, nor a good way for us to spend our resources.

So, it was back to the drawing board. I didn't lose all the work I'd done last year, but a significant amount for sure. I hate that it's caused this long delay but I really feel like this was the right decision. Better to get it right at the beginning.

I've been working with a consultant to recreate Dexter in the cloud. By the end of next week I believe I'll be ready to show some key users a demo of Phase 1 -- creating a project through to requesting work from a sub-contractor labor company. Phase 1 will not include scheduling and dispatch from Tech Services. While I'm working on designing that Tech Services piece, we can test the initial processes.

Watch for more details as time goes on. This is a huge project and a big change for us, but it brings with it all kinds of potential.

*sigh* do I HAVE to do a help desk ticket?

 “…or -- *sigh* -- do I HAVE to do a help desk ticket?” 

Seems like it used to be easier, didn’t it? Usually when you got stuck you could just call or find someone in IT to help you right then and there.

Things have changed. We now (after WR and Pivot became one) have over twice the number of employees and twice the number of locations to support, with less of us in the combined IT team. We can’t always – can’t even usually – drop everything for every request.

But if you are in a crisis, if you can’t do your job, if you have a deadline crunching down on you and you need IT, we’re here.

Here are some improvements we’ve implemented recently. If you have more ideas, let us know!

• Email to “Help Desk.” We’ve already made it easier for you to submit your request to the Help Desk system. Just shoot an email to “Help Desk” and it’ll create a ticket. You may have missed this announcement in the Everyone Chatter group. 

• Shorter wait times. Especially for the first several months after the acquisition, there were tickets that sat for weeks, even months. That was bad. But give us a chance to show you how much better it is now. Quick responses to the tickets are now a part of our performance measurements. If we can’t close your ticket right away, we’ll update you at minimum once/week so you know why.

• Satisfaction Survey. Whenever we close a ticket, the “ticket is closed” email contains a link to a satisfaction survey. We want your feedback! Fill in the survey! It just takes a minute.

We’ll keep trying to get better and we appreciate all the support and encouragement you give us.

Knowledge - Communicate & Collaborate

Knowledge in the cloud!

I am just beginning the set up of Knowledge, another module within Salesforce.com. I'm excited about this as another way of communicating and collaborating within Salesforce -- connecting with information all in one place.

Knowledge gives us a place to create "articles." I think of these articles as similar to many of the reference documents we currently have in our Home Pages in Lotus Notes.

Currently we have a home page for Technology, Design, Sales, Marketing, Green, and so on. We can get the same functionality -- and more -- with Knowledge. We'll be able to create articles categorized by various topics, including links and attachments as we do now. In addition, we'll be able to connect to other information within Salesforce and use various means to communicate.

For example, someone might post a question in Chatter -- maybe something like, "What do you do when this & that happens in Autocad?" For the answer, someone might say, "Take a look at this article," and include a link to the related article in Knowledge.

Knowledge can be a self-serve type of thing where you go in and do a search for whatever information you're trying to find. It can also be a way to have answers suggested to you. Companies can use it for their customer service employees so that as they answer calls and begin a "case" for a particular problem, Knowledge will suggest various articles that may give them the answers they need to solve the problem.

To begin with, I will be working to set things up so we have the active, up-to-date reference documents we need as we leave Lotus Notes and no longer have the home pages. Beyond that, I hope to engage you to build more knowledge. Designers, for example, have a lot of knowledge "living in various brains." :) One designer may know the best way to do something, or perhaps one designer has called support and been given a great tip. With Knowledge, we'll be able to have people submit what they've learned or know, have it reviewed by an expert, and then published for all.

Looking forward to sharing the knowledge!