ISG Blog

It has been good to see the increased use of Microsoft Teams around the territory, and one could say this has been one of the silver linings of our lockdown period. Microsoft Teams is a great tool for collaborating with each other particular when you are unable to be in the same location but even for sending quick messages to colleagues no matter where they are.  Video conferencing has also been used to a much greater extent in the last few months.

But much more than this, there are a number of useful applications within Teams that are often not used because many don't know about it.  Today we want to show you a simple tip that will help you be more effective and productive when using MS Teams.

The search bar in Teams can be used not only for searching through any chat, or collaboration thread for previous information, but it can also be used as a command line.  If you type "/" on the search field you are given the following list:

You choose whichever option you wish by simply typing the remainder of the command. For me the ones I find really helpful in this list include:

/org - which provides the line management for a specific person in our TSA directory

/dnd - quickly sets my status to 'Do Not Disturb' when I'm working on a project and don't want any interruptions, or find myself in a meeting doing a presentation and don't want my chat notifications popping up on screen

/chat - which saves me searching a previous conversation to add to it, I can just use this to quickly send a message to a specific person

Why not take the time to try some of these?  You may, like me, find this a really useful way of quickly finding or sending information.

So a little update for the territory...

The O365 migration is going well and all centres in the Central Divisional area have now been migrated.  iSG continue to work with Corps and Centres who are yet to be migrated confirming venues, dates and providing all the relevant information users need prior to attending the training we are providing.

From an iSG perspective, its great to meet so many of those who work day in and out of our "front lines" face to face.  We thank you for all you do in caring for people, transforming lives and reforming society.  And if we haven't seen you yet, we will soon! 

O365 is coming!!

This is not a April 1st joke.  Change is on the horizon!  

In June last year IHQ made the announcement that all TSA territories would be moving away from using IBM Notes (Lotus Notes) to Office 365 worldwide.  Since then iSG have been working hard in getting all the information we need up to date, systems in place, training the iSG staff ready for this change, and organising the documentation for the rollout and preparing for the territorial training that will be happening.

Over the next few weeks we will be getting in touch with the budget holders at all centres to confirm who works at the site, what machines are currently in use there and what licences are to be given to whom. It will be vital that we get the responses as promptly as possible so that the rollout goes without a hitch.

Over the coming weeks we will be posting further blogs to keep you informed of what will be happening.

Stay tuned...

Sometimes when you have a document (or a spreadsheet or presentation) you want to send it to people as a PDF. This is helpful because it means it is in a read-only format and typically has a smaller file size. Given the prevalence of PDF as a standard format for exchanging files many applications let you save or export the file as a PDF.

Microsoft Office does exactly this and without needing any extra software you can create a PDF file. Whether it is a document, spreadsheet, or presentation you can in a couple of quick clicks get yourself a PDF file. There are two ways to achieve this:

File Export: From the File menu click on the export option (in some versions of Office this option is called save & send. This will provide a couple of options for your file, one of which is PDF file. 

File Save: When you save a file in Microsoft Office you can choose the file format. This enables you to save in numerous formats (Office 97, plain text, etc). Simply select PDF then finish saving as per usual. NB: If you've already saved your file as a document then you will need to use the Save As option.

So is the Office upgrade from 2003 to the current version driving you insane because you can't find anything in the new look ribbon?  Then fear no more.  

The following three downloads will help you find the commands you can't find anymore.  Simply download and run.  Then you just need to do what you used to on 2003 that appears on the screen, and this little program will help you find where it now resides in the latest version.  It is based on 2007 but as far as commands go there isn't a lot of difference on this in 2010.

The three main Office programs used in our organisation are Word, Excel and Powerpoint.  The three downloads relate to these three programs.  Just click on the one you want, and run.  Or if you want you can just save it after download for later use.

 Microsoft Excel

 Microsoft Word

 Microsoft Powerpoint