Tag Archives: outlook

Revisiting Visitors and Residents

I was in our Bristol office for an in-person workshop. I was attending a community manager training understanding behaviours workshop in Bristol. The workshop was led by Dave White. The focus was on digital practice and involved looking at visitors and residents and mapping your online activities.

I have done this workshop before quite a few times, and have even delivered a version of it as part of the Digital Leaders Programme and at the ALT Conference. So it was very familiar territory for me.

Despite having participated before in these kinds of workshops, I still threw myself into the process.

It was interesting to map my internet activity, as my online behaviours have changed quite a bit over the last few years (and even over the last few months).

One of the interesting observations as I reflect on the map, is what is missing. I use Google to search everyday, and I think that has become so normalised in my behaviour that I didn’t even consider putting it in. Having said that I am using search in Google Maps a lot more these days and that is something I didn’t use to to (and it is on the map).

I also reflected that Wikipedia is not there either, and this is a site I use on a regular basis for both finding out stuff and checking information, but I also use it to read about stuff that I find interesting, sometimes going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of articles.

WordPress, a tool I use all the time for blogging was also missing in action.

On previous maps I did, Twitter was huge bubble or square on the map, today X is over on the left side of the map. Whereas before I would consider my behaviour to be resident in Twitter, these days it is a place I visit rarely and stopped engaging with the site last month. My replacements of Bluesky and Threads are there, but from a personal social perspective Facebook has become more dominant.

After using Flickr album at ALT-C in September, I have been thinking about re-engaging with the service and paying the subscription. ALT-C was also where Discord became my conference tool of choice, I think though that my use of that will decline over the next few months.

Another service, which I use to use a lot, Google Docs, is now a much smaller part of my digital footprint. I certainly don’t use it like I did a few years ago. Maybe that is the nature of the work I am doing, but I think also the use of Office 365 at work has changed how I collaborate on shared documents.

The work stuff is there, Outlook, Teams, (what was Yammer) and Dovetail. Though I personally use JIRA and Confluence, the rest of the people I work with don’t. I think what is interesting for me is how Outlook is a place I visit, but don’t necessarily use as a key communication or engagement tool, that’s where Teams comes into play.

Overall I did enjoy doing the mapping exercise and then reflecting on my practice.

A few more of my favourite things…

Five years ago or so I gave a presentation at an RSC South West event about my favourite iPad apps, ones I used on a regular basis for my work. Back then the iPad was still relatively new and shiny but there were still lots of apps available.

Today there are even more apps, the iPad is more powerful and we have a stylus (pencil). I have also changed jobs (a few times) so my work needs are different to back then. Another aspect is my default phone is the iPhone 6s Plus, the bigger screen makes a real difference to how I use the phone and I use it more like a mini iPad than just a phone.

So I thought I would talk about some of my favourite apps that I now use. Going through the list I am surprised by how many apps are apps that access cloud based systems. I have also found that I now less likely to try out new apps and that this blog post may get me thinking differently, trying out some new apps and revitalising my App of the Week series of blog posts, of which the last one was Prisma back in 2016… which is the only one in the last five years. A lot of apps have come and gone in those five years and there are lots of new apps too. Many of the apps I have reviewed have also changed quite dramtically, so I might re-review those apps too.

However here are some of my favourite apps that I use regularly now.

Outlook

Though you can add an Exchange account to the default Mail App on iOS, I much prefer to keep things separate and use the Outlook App. It is a little limited compared to the desktop app and desktop browser experience, but for answering e-mails quickly and checking my calendar it is a nice app.

Paper by 53

I really like using this app for sketch noting, combined with the Apple Pencil I can create pictures of the presentations I have been to, and looking back I can reflect on what impact they had and what they did to make me think. I’ve said before that I do sketch notes for myself, but it would appear that other people quite like them.

Keynote: Bonnie Stewart – The new norm(al): Confronting what open means for higher education

iPlayer Radio

For the iPhone, this is a great app for playing back radio shows you’ve missed and discovering new stuff too. I was saddened to hear that the BBC are going to get kill it. Why?

iPlayer Radio

Snapseed

When it comes to editing images for posting to Flickr, Instagram or the Twitter, then I have a real fondness for Snapseed which has an amazing array of settings, filters and processes for manipulating and enhancing your images.

Snapeeded Tram

Confluence and Jira

In my work I use Jira and Confluence quite a bit and therefore find the iOS apps for these two services useful to quick referencing and checking, less to actually use the services which I prefer to use a browser on a desktop for. Having said that I dislike how I am regularly locked out of the apps and it is a bit of a faff to add the password to get back in.

Slack

So do you use Slack? I find the iOS version of Slack just as good as the desktop app. It’s easy to find conversations you’re involved with, or to browse through a channel stream. Calls can be a little more complicated, but I like how I can connect to a Slack call on the iPhone, but then contribute to the channel using the iPad or the desktop at the same time.

Slack

So there are a few of my favourite apps, what are you using on your iPad or iPhone?

Just checking the e-mail…

iOS e-mail

What’s the first thing you do in the morning? What’s the first thing you do when you sit down at your desk at work? I suspect you are probably checking your e-mail? It wouldn’t surprise me that you leave your e-mail client (like Outlook) open all the time and respond as those little pop-ups appear on your screen. So how often do you check your e-mail?

Actually I would think that if you are reading this blog, having seen the link on social media, that your answers to those questions would differ from the norms of the behaviour of most people in the workplace.

For many people e-mail is their work. Usually the first activity when arriving at work (after making a coffee of course) is checking the e-mail. Then throughout the working day the e-mail is checked and checked again. Productive activity is interrupted by those lovely notifications popping up. Mobile devices like the iPhone suddenly make e-mail even more accessibly, those red numbers going up and up and make it essential the e-mail is checked again, even when travelling, at home and at weekends. Work is e-mail and e-mail is work.

I find it interesting how often we default to e-mail as the main communication tool, to the point where it replaces other forms of communication or discussion. People also often use e-mail for various activities that really e-mail wasn’t designed for.

Continue reading Just checking the e-mail…

Please do not send 17MB Word attachments…

As per usual when I am out of the office for a while I get the usual “Your mailbox is over its size limit” as I do send and receive a large amount of e-mail (even more so when I am out of the office as it is my main form of communication).

Please do not send 17MB Word attachments…

Now it’s very difficult to archive from a remote location, so I do go through and trim a few e-mails and download and then delete large attachments.

However was very surprised to see literally one day after doing this he “Your mailbox is over its size limit” message again, I checked I hadn’t received any new BIG e-mails for a while, so I thought I know I suspect that an all staff e-mail with a large attachment had been sent round.

And boy was I right!

Somone (who shall remain nameless as this is a public blog) had sent for sending to all staff an e-mail with a single Word document as an attachment.

This Word document was a single page document, with some pictures on it.

This Word document in terms of file size was large, nay huge, nay really really BIG!

It was 17MB, that’s right seventeen MB!

17MB for a single page document!

Obviously the person who had created the document had taken some photographs with a digital camera and inserted them into the word document, resized them so they fit on the page, but not resized them in terms of file size!

17MB for a single page document!

Now with other a thousand staff, that means the mail server was choked with 20GB from a single e-mail!

I suspect I was not the only one who received the “Your mailbox is over its size limit” e-mail this weekend and I suspect that there will be a lot of people who will be very annoyed and will just delete the Word document without opening or downloading it.

Really that file should have never been sent, posted as a link perhaps (but would you download a 17MB Word document).

I did go ahead and print it as a PDF and got it down to 300KB without trying which is still large, but so much better than 17MB.

Maybe next time a simple text e-mail would have sufficed.