Tony Dye

CITRT & Events

For all things Church IT related, check out CITRT.org

Events Ahead:

• May 15, 2008: Church IT Podcast
• June 12, 2008: Central IL Church IT Roundtable
• Way ahead - Oct 8-11, 2008: Fall 2008 Church IT Roundtable, Charleston SC

Set Out of Office Reply after you've left for a trip using OWA (Outlook Web Access)

(Originally posted on 5/2/2008 at Perimeter, by Jim LaBarr)

Using OWA to Set Your Out of Office Assistant

What if you forget to set your Out of Office Assistant before leaving Perimeter?

Occasionally Helpdesk receives a request to set someone's Out of Office Reply, because they forgot to do it before leaving. But due to privacy considerations, the IT Department will not go into your account. Now there is a way for you to set your reply message from any computer that has an Internet connection.

Background on Out of Office Assistant

The Out of Office Assistant makes it easy to setup an automatic reply message. People who send mail to your account while the message is turned on will receive an email reply with whatever text you have written. The message is dispatched only once to each email address that sends mail to your account.

To Setup an "Out of Office" message using OWA:

1. To launch OWA, go to http://mail.perimeter.org and enter your usual Username and Password.
2. Click on the Options icon or the word Options at the bottom of the Folder List at the left. The Options icon looks like a sheet of paper.
3. Click on the radio button next to I'm currently out of the office,
4. Type the text of your message in the box titled AutoReply only once to each sender with the following text:. Include your name in the message.
5. Click the Save and Close icon at the top.
6. After you're done, click on Log Off.

Can-O-Airing in Action

From the earlier post: "needs to be re-seated and can-o-aired."  It's later now, and here's "the kid" in action:

It's important to understand: if you can't do the job yourself with one Can-O-Air, bring in help.

Sometimes, even TWO aren't enough.

Left to Right: Brandon Huff, Richard Dolan, Danny Ybarra.   Oh yeah, the operation was a success.

How & Why to turn on the BCC field for email messages

(Jim originally posted this tip on April 1, 2008. No fooling!)

How & Why to turn on the BCC field for email messages (Blind Carbon Copy)

The reason to use Bcc is to keep other people's email addresses private, and to keep them from falling into the hands of spammers.

Use the Bcc Blind Carbon Copy Field in Email Messages

How to turn on the Bcc field

• To begin, create a New Message.
• Click on the Options Tab at the top of the message.
• Click on the Show Bcc icon.

The Bcc field will remain available on all new messages, as well as Forwards or Replies, unless you repeat these steps to turn it off.

Before Bcc is turned on. Notice the Options Tab is the third one.

After turning on the Bcc field. Notice the Show Bcc icon on Ribbon for the Options Tab.

Technical Terms

Brandon Huff (internally known as "the kid") is part of our Viant team.  Brandon doesn't blog, nor is he on LinkedIn, but those are issues for another day.  Today he noticed a hardware error light on one of our ESX servers.  He's suggesting that during after-hours maintenance, a card needs to be re-seated and can-o-aired.

Does your team use such highly technical terms as "can-o-aired?"

How To Read A Book

I love reading.  Trisha and I have talked, half-seriously, about taking a vacation where we just go "somewhere" with a bunch of books and spend days catching up on our reading list.  I'm fairly regularly re-prioritizing my "what I'll read next" list, and always adding new things to it.  (you'd think I'd know better!)

As much as I love reading, I'm not all that good at remembering what I've read.  Now that's a problem!  So, I'm setting out to learn to read better and improve my comprehension and retention.  How can I do that?  By reading a book, of course!

How To Read A Book (revised), by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren, is my new reference for reading.  This is not necessarily and easy book, and ironically, it's not yet one of my favorite books.  The concept, over-simplified, is that reading a book takes planning, and effort, and even note-taking.  The authors are in favor of things I like to do: underlining, circling, notes in margins, etc.  (Not a good idea for library books)  I'm not sure they say this directly, but using post-it notes and pages fits the concept as well.

Just to give an idea of what the authors expect, here's the list of rules for the first stage of analytical reading (from p95):

1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter
2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity
3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole
4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve

That might sound a bit dry.  This is NOT a boring book.  It is a challenging book.  So, if my goal is to improve my comprehension and retention, how do I know if I've succeeded?

The Juggling FMer

As seen at the Fall roundtable 2007 in Kansas City.  Thanks to Clif Guy and Church of the Resurrection, and especially to Dick Cooper, the juggler himself!

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The "famous" Juggling Facilities Manager

Video 1 What is Facilities Management?

Video 2 Metaphors using sharp objects, plus "The Howling FMer"

(special thanks to Richard Dolan for the DVD to .MOV conversion work)

Office 2007 Training Handouts

Jim LaBarr has made several Office 2007 training handouts available on our download site.  If they're potentially useful for you, grab them and do with as you please (other than selling and such).  If you make good improvements, would you share them back?

The new ones are:

• 2007 Office Reference
• 2007 Word Mail Merge
• 2007 Excel Introduction Summary
• 2007 Excel Pivot Table
• Shelby Mail Merge

What is it?

While in Montgomery, we visited Old Alabama Town.  During part of the tour of the buildings surrounding Lucas Tavern, we ran into this little device.

It is without a doubt the best one of these I've ever seen.  And, of course, I have no idea whatsoever what it is.

A bit later we discovered the hospitality of the community as they'd created something just for us.  How'd they know my name? :-)

Your Commonly used Office 2007 icons

(originally posted at Perimeter by Jim LaBarr, 3/4/2008)

Your Commonly used Office 2007 icons should be visible at all times, with no need for multiple clicks

If you can't see the Print Preview icon, the Close icon, or other commands / icons that you use frequently, follow the directions below. By putting these icons on the Quick Access Toolbar, they are visible all the time. That way you won't have to click on the Office Button, or click on another Tab, to get to the commands you need.

There are multiple ways to add icons. The Toolbar must be customized separately for each one of the Office programs. Citrix/ProNet users may find that the icons disappear.

Before customizing - 3 icons After customizing - 9 icons. Click on the triangle (pull down).

Method 1 - Here is the fastest way to add several of the old File Menu commands or Toolbar commands.

• At the right end of the Quick Access Toolbar, click on the down arrow. (When you hover over this triangle, the Tip says Customize the Quick Access Toolbar.)
• Click in front of one of the icons that you want to add or delete.
• Repeat this process for each of the visible commands that you want to add or delete. At a minimum, you will want to add New, Open, Close, Quick Print, and Print Preview.

Method 2 - Another way to add a command.

• Find that command in the Ribbon.
• Right click on the command.
• Choose "Add to Quick Access Toolbar."

Method 3 - The most flexible way to add icons in Microsoft Word

• At the right end of the Quick Access Toolbar, click on the down arrow.
• Click on More Commands. (Or click on the Office Button, Word Options, Customize.)
• Choose Popular or one of the other lists at the left.
• Highlight the command that you want to Add or Delete.
• If desired, use the arrows to change the sequence of the icons.

Delete icons from the Quick Access Toolbar

Just right click on that icon, and then choose Delete.

Put the Quick Access Toolbar underneath the Ribbon, where it is closer to your document:

Right click on the Quick Access Toolbar, then choose Show Below the Ribbon.

Do You Know Anything About...

We're giving some serious consideration to some data management products.  I'm looking for any comments, good or bad, about any of them.  I'm wary of stepping into anything that no other church/ministry has used before, and at the same time, I realize this is some new territory.  Can you help me out?

• BakBone NetVault.  Alternative: why not stay with BackupExec?
• C2C Archive One.  Alternative: The Barracuda Message Archiver
• Moonwalk.  Alternatives: Arkivio, CaminoSoft, Enigma Data , SevenTen, probably others, all of whom I know even less about
• Data Domain.  Alternatives: ExaGrid, SanMelody, and probably plenty of others.  (Permabit added 5/9/2008)

If you have any horror stories, I'd sure rather hear them now.

Tornado Damage

As you may remember, downtown Atlanta had a tornado on March 14th.  Driving back from Montgomery, May 4th (7 weeks later), here's the quick snap of a couple of the buildings.  Note: trying to take pictures while driving, in traffic, is not a good thing to do.

The tall, round building, the Westin Peachtree Plaza, is normally a nice silver cylendar.

Rainbow

I'm sure some of you will instantly know what this is.  It has all the basic colors of the rainbow, and then a few more.  Hopefully the size reference is helpful.  (I'm sure there's a good way to take a better picture of this, but I couldn't find it!  This is from a scanner)

Here's what more of it looks like:

And finally, here's another look, from a camera shot.  That's a stack of 3x5 cards holding it down.

Nope, there's not much mystery here, especially if you've been following the posts of the last few days. 

What happened to old Office 2003 Commands - Here's how to find them

(originally posted 3/3/2008 at Perimeter by Jim LaBarr)

Even though Perimeter has been using Office 2007 for over 6 months, there are still times when I look for a command and can't find it on the new Ribbon. This happens most often with seldom used features. In case this also happens to you, follow the directions below.

Here is a quick way to get to an "interactive cross reference" for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and portions of Outlook. This Web site allows you to click on the old command or icon, and then the screen shows you where to find it in the 2007 program.

To get to the guide:

• Click on the Help icon for that program. The Help icon is a blue circle with a question mark, at the top right of the program window.
• Click on the Getting Help section.
• Click on Interactive: __ 2003 to __ 2007 command reference guide where __ is the program you are using.
• Click on the Start button.
• Point to the 2003 feature. Click on the 2003 feature.

More Fiber Pictures

Richard (with a new domain name!) took some more pictures, including details of the splicing operation.