Look, Ma, No Scrolling! Inbox Control.

Pretty much ever since I started using email, it's been my goal to keep my inbox so short that I can see everything in it without scrolling. I've finally succeeded in doing this -- and maintaining it! -- for a little over 3 months. I decided to share what's worked for me. If you are trying to control your inbox, maybe this will be helpful -- and, please, share what works for you!

Boiling it down, here is my method:

• I have two lists:
• Help Desk tickets - basically a to do list, items that typically take less than a day to complete.
• Projects - for projects that may have several phases or steps, often taking several days, weeks or even months.
• With nearly every email, I decide:
• Is this a help desk (to do list) request? If yes, forward it to the help desk and manage from there.
• Is this a project? If yes, put it in my projects list, prioritize and track from there.
• If it doesn't fit either of these categories:
• Can I delete it? If so, yeah! (I periodically go through and unsubscribe myself from scheduled messages I don't need.)
• Do I need to save the file someone sent, for future reference? If so, save the file under my Documents "library" or the P drive in the appropriate folder.
• Do I need to save the email contents for future reference? If so, save in an appropriate mail folder. 
• I have several "Quick steps" -- see screenshot below -- I set up to put items into my most-used folders with one click. It's safe to put messages into folders while you're waiting for someone else to respond - when they do, it'll come back into your mailbox.
• And I have the folders for my most active, or current, projects up near the top so I can quickly slide emails into those -- see screenshot below. (It's easy to rearrange folders in Outlook, just click and drag.)
• Some things I send to OneNote -- again, see screenshot. OneNote is a cool program that lets you create "notebooks" with pages and sections. In IT, we have a shared notebook for our "cheat sheets" and other documentation such as agreements and contracts. They're categorized into sections, but it's super easy to do a full text search for whatever you need to find. So cool that you can send stuff straight from your Inbox right into OneNote.
• Am I unsure? Not sure if I'll want it later, or maybe just plain reluctant to delete it? If so, put it in the "Miscellaneous" folder.
• Is it something I really, truly plan to complete today? If so, I might leave it in my inbox and take care of it by the end of the day, at which time I can delete or "folderize" it. But if it's still there the next day, I put it in one of the lists.

And that's what has been working for me. To keep my mailbox cleaner and smaller (and therefore quicker performing), I have also set up auto-archiving. If you want more details on how to set that up, or any other ways to use the features of your mailbox, let me know. (I'll add it to one of my lists! ;-))

When you're dealing with the madness of email, what methods work for you???

Criteria for Success

How will we know if we're choosing the right program for our purposes at Pivot?

Good question! We asked for input from many sources and then came up with the following "Top 10 Criteria for Sucess". What do you think??

Top 10 Considerations

1. Increase efficiency 
• Eliminate steps
• Reduce time to complete steps
• Eliminate duplication
• Automate processes such as approvals, communications, moving from one stage to the next
2. Cost of ownership 
• Constantly improving technology
• Potential that users will come in knowing how to use the technology
• Reliability and downtime
3. Cost of acquisition
4. Reduce errors and miscommunication
• One place to track and record critical project milestones
• One place to document all relevant communication 
• Ability to require vital information needed for successful completion
5. Ability to connect with Khameleon & possibly Salesforce.com
6. Cost of development
• Low or no cost to develop for mobile devices
• Ease of finding developers and consultants
• Availability of apps, add-ins
• How soon consultants or programmers are needed for customization work
7. Ease of search and organization
8. Improve our client-facing communications and documents (branding)
9. Ease of training for new and existing employees
10. Ease of customizing to our individual needs

We also listed several other considerations -- honorable mention, if you will.

Other Considerations

• Dashboards and reports – individual and management views 
• Provide one place for salespeople to get an overview of their projects
• Ability to create customer-facing portals
• Ability to get electronic signatures in the field
• Increase ease of doing business with our vendors
• Ability to easily store relevant emails or log notes pertaining to a project
• Enables work to be accomplished on mobile devices
• Allows relevant files to be attached and easily accessible from the projects within the program
• Help users envision the entire business process
• Excellence of customer service/tech support

New, new Dexter Replacement

So, it's been a while since I've written in this blog. I thought it would be a good way to inform everyone of a new initiative in IT.

Most of you know that we've been planning to move out of Lotus Notes, a big part of which is building a replacement for Dexter. Last year, and some months even before that, I was working on building processes within Salesforce.com for this purpose. Some of you attended the preview I gave of that system, and some of you even did some testing -- which I very much appreciated.

However, as much as I love Salesforce.com and admire all its capabilities and potential, it is an expensive option for us. The licensing that would be required for all Pivot employees is a big cost, and we decided to look around for less expensive options.

That's where M-Files comes in!

M-Files is a document management program. It's not the same kind of program as Lotus Notes, or Salesforce.com or Khameleon or other database-type programs, but it is still a database and has similarities. One of the main features of M-Files is its use of metadata. Metadata might be a new word to you, but it's a powerful thing!

So what is metadata? Sometimes people call it "data about data," which is not a great way to define it, but might be helpful. Specifically when we're talking about files that we store, it might be called descriptions or attributes of the files. When you go into Windows Explorer and look at files (see screenshot), you see some metadata about the files - the date they were created, date modified, type of file, size and so on.

With M-Files, we can ADD metadata to the files, and then use that additional metadata to categorize, sort and so on. We won't have to figure out which folder to put things in and how exactly to name things -- instead people will be prompted to fill in fields asking for things such as the account (company) this file is associated with, the particular project, the order, the name of the contact, etc., etc., however we configure it. And then we can all search for, sort by and find things by these various pieces of ... metadata.

If that's still confusing, just be patient. As we roll out the system it'll all make sense.

Beyond the metadata feature, M-Files also has workflows and approvals. So we'll be able to move our paperless files through paperless processes -- send to your manager for approval, send to your support team for work they do, and so on.

This is just a brief overview. We'll keep you in the loop as more develops. Feel free to ask me questions, give suggestions, or voice your concerns. All input and feedback is appreciated.

Pivot Technology Survey - #5 of 6 - IT Department

Sample Comments 

• I really appreciate the streamlined vision of moving everything towards the Salesforce direction...the ability to communicate in one forum with the entire company has been a huge factor in getting to know Pivot and our processes, etc. 
• It's a good team and they are available during office hours and even non-office hours if there's an emergency, which lives up to my expectations. 
• I find that the help I get is to have me go to a website for instructions for something simple that I am requesting and it would be nice if the answer or instructions could be answered as part of the Help desk. A lot of times I don't have time to read that stuff and just want help from my desk to change settings on my computer. For a 1-2 minute solution it is sometimes frustrating to have to do a help desk ticket and then have to wait for that to go through. If it is just for tracking then I understand but sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

IT Action Steps

• Using technology to be present anywhere. 
• Providing the most efficient support. 
• Will create IT strategy that aligns with our business goals. 
• Will provide clear vision and direction (with management buy-in).

Moving to the cloud, including Salesforce.com

For many of you, this move to the cloud that you may be hearing about, and Salesforce.com, are still pretty much an unknown. Everyone in the company is in Salesforce's Chatter so you can receive company news and announcements, and our sales team uses Salesforce.com for forecasting, but man others have never even been in Salesforce.com.

As you probably know, we are working toward replacing Dexter, and most or all of what we do in Lotus Notes, with Salesforce.com. The development process has been taking a long time, but please be patient. We're finally getting close and you'll start hearing more about it, and getting training in it.

What is the cloud and why move to it?

"The cloud" in the technology world means a program that you use by just going to a website and logging in. There's no software to install on your computer, no server in the company's server room that IT needs to maintain. It's all accessed, designed, managed, everything...by going to a web site and logging in.

One big reason we want to move to the cloud is so that we can work from anywhere, on any device. The world is going mobile and we need to, too. Our customers are going mobile as well as us, and we need to make sure we can provide ourselves, our customers and our vendors what they need in order to do business from anywhere on any device -- cell phone, iPad, PC, Mac, netbook, whatever it might be.

IT Availability

We try to make sure that someone from IT is available at all times during office hours. It does not  necessarily mean someone will be sitting at their desk in your office, but available to remote in where needed and able to come physically to the office if needed.

After hours, access and availability is more limited. We are not like some high tech companies that have to be available 24x7. Fortunately for us on the IT team, Pivot enables us to maintain a healthy balance of work and life, as they try to do for all the employees. We understand, though, that there may be some kind of emergency or time crunch that has to be addressed off hours and we do our utmost to accommodate that.

Immediate help or answers

You can see in the final sample comment that people sometimes feel frustrated when they're asked to read instructions and take care of some issues on their own. When a task is something unique that you will never have to do again, we in IT usually do that for you. 

For example, if Java has to be uninstalled and reinstalled so that Khameleon works correctly, we don't send you instructions on how to do that. We remote in or go to your computer and do it for you. But when there are tasks that it is reasonable for you to know how to do without IT assistance, we do ask that you learn how to do that -- and that means taking some time to read instructions. Even if it's a 1 or 2 minute thing, if it's something that will occur over and over not just for you but for others, you can see how that would multiply the time we would have to expend. We try to be reasonable, it's a give & take thing.

IT Vision

We're working on an IT Strategic Plan that lines up with Pivot's corporate goals. We'll be talking more about that as the plan is developed.

Next up: Final installment - Summary

Pivot Technology Survey - #4 of 6 - IT Training

Sample Comments

• Most of my IT training did not come from IT team members 
• Provide training on Word and Excel 
• More training sessions with follow ups would be helpful. If I have to miss a session due to a client deadline/ presentation it would be helpful to have another session available at a later date. 
• I would like to see more training automatically happening for new hires. 

IT Action Steps

• Depending on application, it is appropriate and expected that manager does the training. 
• Basic knowledge of MS Office is expected, advanced training by manager or outsourced. 
• Live training typically provided for new roll outs. Increasing use of recordings for follow up or missed users. 
• Automatic training and more support for new hires being implemented.

Training Not Applicable

The first thing you might notice about the chart for the IT Training section is there are several large white columns. White is for "Not Applicable." So that reveals a lot about where we're at in regards to training! There isn't very much of it right now. What are we doing about that, you ask?

IT Orientation

IT -- along with HR, Sales Operations and Tech Services -- has been working with a training consultant to create a new orientation training plan. We're excited about what we're coming up with. So far we have a new outline that we'll go through with new hires on either their first or second day of working at Pivot, some exercises/practice to do during that first session, and a "treasure hunt" as the final "test" of the new hires' understanding of the basic IT-related things they need to know.

We have the first draft of this new plan complete and we tried it out on 3 new hires just this week. It went pretty well, but we'll be tweaking it to involve more hands-on learning. And we haven't finalized the treasure hunt yet, hoping to complete that within the next week or two. We're planning on distributing the treasure hunt to everyone -- so you all can see if you are able to accomplish all the tasks we'll soon be making sure new hires can. Kind of like "are you smarter than a 6th grader," only it's "are you smarter than a new hire".

Should've Had a V8 Moment
As I reviewed the survey results, I had a "should've had a V8" moment -- you know the commercial where you hit yourself on the forehead because you should have thought of something so obvious? When I saw the big numbers in the Not Applicable column and the comments where some people said they had not ever had any training from IT, I realized that we were missing giving people even their basic IT orientation because we were waiting for the managers to ask us to schedule it -- but often the managers didn't know that. So, of course if they didn't know to ask, and we were waiting for them to ask...no wonder we missed people. Now we've added IT orientation to our new hire checklist, and we'll take the initiative to schedule the training with the managers.

Application Training
Most of our applications are specialized programs with training provided by others outside of IT. 2020, the makers of Cap, provide online recorded and instructor-led training. People who use AutoCAD typically have received the training they need from schools they've attended. Z-Axis training is provided by MyUniversity, Herman Miller's online training program.

You can see that one of the comments said they would like IT to provide training on Excel and Word. Pivot's philosophy is that people will come to work for us with the basic knowledge they'll need in the Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel and Power Point). If people do not have that basic knowledge, or if they would like more advanced training, we provide them with resources available online, and also they can work out with their managers whether it would be appropriate for them to go to some third party training.

Other IT Training
Besides orientation, IT provides training in some programs such as, currently, Lotus Notes (Dexter), and Salesforce.com. In those cases the employees learn how Pivot uses these programs in ways unique to our company. Typically, we provide that training 1 to 2 weeks after orientation, after the employees have had a chance to learn more about Pivot's processes and how we do business. Like with the orientation training, we have plans to create improved methods for this training.

When you miss it
One thing that often happens when we provide training is a significant number of people either do not sign up for the training, or they do sign up but something urgent takes priority and they have to drop off. Finding the time to go to training is a challenge for all of us -- we're all so busy!

To address that challenge, we've been creating videos that people can watch whenever it fits their schedules. With roll-outs of new processes or programs we typically have 2-3 "live" training sessions, and then we ask people who couldn't make those sessions to watch the video. We're trying to build more and more of this video library as an efficient way to both give and receive training.

We also received an excellent suggestion from one of our managers that, for the live sessions, we coordinate with the managers and see where we are able to time the training to fit in with other departmental meetings that people will already be together to attend. That makes a lot of sense and we'll definitely be doing that. Hopefully this will increase the ability for everyone to attend whatever training is provided.

Next up: IT Department

Pivot Technology Survey - #3 of 6 - Help Desk Experience

Results
Answer Options		Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor	Unacceptable
Initial Response Time		36	36	10	6	1
Ticket Resolution Time		29	33	14	7	5
Expertise and Knowledge provided		39	29	12	7	1
Experience Overall		33	36	11	8	1

Sample Comments

• Anne Pham is the one who usually helps me out with IT issues and she is always very helpful and responsive. 
• I like the help desk system - response time is excellent. 
• The Help desk experience is less than ideal. There are often times when folks need immediate help that they put in a help desk ticket for because that is what they have been told but and don't want to go to IT and ask for help even though they cannot move forward with their work. 

IT Action Steps

• Need to clarify service level expectations. 
• Better document help tickets for analysis (of trends, training gaps, issues, etc.) 
• Already implemented weekly team review of issues and update of tickets to better communicate with users.
• IT Concierge Experiment

Details

Yes, Anne Pham is a rock star! We received multiple comments telling us how quick and responsive Anne is and we couldn't agree more. We're so glad she's on our team. And we appreciate several other positive comments about the help desk and good experiences people have had with it.

But as you can see, our results were not all stellar, and there are even some Unacceptables here. We don't want any of those. The third sample comment is a good one to note. Every time we tell or remind people about using the help desk, we always tell them that if there is an emergency, or if they are unable to continue to work or are truly stuck, we expect them to call or contact us directly.

Clarify Expectations

We're not trying to make your life difficult. We understand that there are times when you cannot wait for a response to a help desk email. We don't want to be the reason that you are unable to work. All we're trying to do is use our resources -- people and time -- wisely. In the same way that you request workers from Tech Services or other providers, and they use a system to track and prioritize those requests, that's what we're doing with the Help Desk system. And on your side we're making it as easy as writing an email.

There's a balancing act on both sides. You as users can understand that we in IT are not always constantly available to instantly respond to every request. Like you, we have lots of projects and other work we are being held accountable to complete. And we understand you need help when you need help. We both try to make good judgment calls as to the urgency and priority of each request.

Analyze Help Desk Data

Another reason for using the help desk system is so we can use that data to determine company needs. For example, we realized we were getting multiple help desk requests from new hires in No Cal. From that we determined that our checklist for new computers was incomplete, meaning the new hires had to request several things that should have been done before they got their new computer, and we updated the checklist accordingly. 

We want to mine the help desk data even more, and look for training needs and other gaps that may be revealed. Therefore, you'll probably notice that we are sometimes creating a ticket on your behalf after the fact. That will help us to get more complete data to analyze.

Better Communication

Beyond the whole idea of using a help desk system, the most important thing is that we keep on top of it -- that we respond quickly, and resolve your issues quickly and correctly. To that end we have already started reviewing all the tickets every week, and requiring there be an update on every ticket at least once per week.

The IT Concierge Experiment

We are also working on an "IT Concierge Experiment." As you know, Anne is going on maternity leave soon. While she is gone we are going to hire a contractor, Jason Overholser, who worked previously at Workplace Resources. With Jason, are going to change our help desk process somewhat and see if it improves things.

We are going to have him be the main person all tickets are assigned to. He will triage the requests and escalate any that he is unable to cover. We will be incentivizing him to keep the number of open tickets low (to quickly close tickets) and to document all tickets so we get complete data. We're looking forward to trying this out and seeing how it goes.

Next up: Training

Pivot Technology Survey - #2 of 6 - Your Technology Tools

Results
Tool		Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor	Unacceptable
Hardware		25	42	17	7	0
Software		30	51	8	1	0
Network Response Time		27	42	13	2	0
Internet Response Time		22	41	17	6	0

Sample Comments 

"The Lenovo T420 laptop that replaced my old laptop is so much better and responsive and doesn't overheat and freeze so I'm very grateful for that."

"For Designers a good deal of productivity is lost due to what appear to be hardware issues. The specific incidents are addressed but not the root cause of the problems. Given that our clients are expecting quick turnarounds, I feel that we need to make sure that we have the right computers for our Designers to be as productive as possible."

IT Action Steps 

• Moving designers to 64 bit computing now that CAP supports it. 
• Working on increase of internet bandwidth to accommodate usage. 
• Moving towards Cloud Computing to minimize software complications.

Details
So in this second section we asked for your in put on hardware, software, network response time and internet response time. The results are below. The color scheme is:

• Excellent - Orange
• Good - Green
• Fair - Light Blue
• Poor - Gray
• Unacceptable - Red
• N/A - White

The more orange and green, the better; light blue is kinda neutral, and the less gray and red the better - especially red.

You can see in the results that we got a pretty good amount of green and orange here, which is a good thing. I was surprised, though, that we got any "poor" ratings at all in hardware. We just gave pretty much everyone in the company a new computer within the past 1-2 years (if that's not true for you, you should be on the list to get one very soon -- let us know if we've missed you).

Hardware
So why after such a recent hardware refresh are there some poor ratings? The responders didn't write very much in the comments specifically about hardware, but there was some indication of difficulties with computers not being able to handle all the various programs we have to use to do our jobs.

Some designers, specifically, may be struggling with not having enough memory even though they have the newest, highest powered computers of all of us in the company. This, unfortunately, was because Cap was not compatible with 64-bit until recently, so we had to roll out computers capable of 64-bit but only configured for 32-bit. When we started the hardware refresh, 2020 (Cap's creators) weren't even giving an estimate as to when they'd be 64-bit compatible so we had to move forward.

This means we now need to go back and re-do many designers' computers with 64-bit. Now that we've gotten everyone else on new hardware, we'll be doing that. And as we hire new designers we already are giving them 64-bit computers. We will be looking, too, at the feasibility of adding even more memory while we are at it. We'll keep you posted on that.

Bandwidth
In some offices more than others, we are stretching the limits of our bandwidth -- our "pipeline" to the web. This affects performance of nearly all our programs. We are in the process of getting a quote to increase our bandwidth, then we'll be able to determine the cost benefit and make a plan. The process of changing this connection is a big one in more than just expense -- it would require downtime at all offices and might also require some new hardware. We're pursuing this diligently and will keep you posted.

Software / Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a big part of our future (and already part of our current environment). Working "in the cloud" means there's no software installed, there's no server somewhere in the building -- so no hardware --; all you do is go to a web page and log in.

With no software installed, there are no conflicts caused by the various software programs "bumping heads." With no hardware, IT is no longer maintaining it -- doing upgrades, purchasing newer hardware, and so on. It gives IT the chance to be more involved in designing ways that we can all work smarter. And it also gives all of us the ability to work from any device - iphone, ipad, laptop, android, netbook, whatever.

Next up: Help Desk Experience.