Social Software in the Enterprise

Niall Cook just started writing a book about social software in the enterprise. He also set up a blog to document the process. This has the potential of becoming a very inetersting read for office/corporate productivity addicts (I will be following it).

Beside writing about an interesting topic, Niall made a very smart move by using social software (Blog, Wiki, Bookmarking) to write a book about…Social software. Come to think of it, this is a smart move for every aspiring author. Two thumbs up Niall, and good luck.

Another silly spreadsheet movie

If you liked the previous spreadsheet movies post, you’ll like this new movie from Smartsheet.

Office 2.0 - That was the word I was looking for

It seems that while I was rambling about online collaboration and Excel as a design and programming tool. Some guys have already called the concept - Office 2.0. Rod Boothby’s blog is an excellent place to start reading about Office 2.0 despite the fact that every so often he gets overly excited about Web 2.0 and Office 2.0.

Zune is not a funny name

Shahar from the Excel Services development team at Microsoft is a bit upset about how the Israeli media “abused” the selected name of Microsoft’s new MP3 Player - Zune.

Well Shahar, this is for you…

I will give you a F-ing break. Zune sounds close enough to Zi-Yoon (The F-Word) to be funny to some people. I guess that is why the media in Israel (and elsewhere) picked it up. I personally agree with you that it’s not that funny…it’s more insulting. There are enough Israelis working in Redmond to have tipped the Zune marketing guys that it is an inappropriate (not to mention offending) word. In my opinion it’s not the “amaturish” Israeli media that dropped the ball here, it’s the guys in the Zune marketing department. Think about how the market would have reacted if Microsoft tried to sell a product called “F* You” even if it was spelled “feouk”.

Creative Commons Adobe Acrobat Plugin

The Creative Commons are one of the most important organizations/ideas in the internet today. I won’t try to explain what they are about since they do a much better job.

In any case, I am happy to announce that we have just released a Plugin that helps define and view CC licenses in Adobe Acrobat

I will be happy to hear your thoughts about it

Purchase-order tracking system based on Excel 2007: current process and requirements

Current process

In a previous post, I said that we would be developing a new purchase-order tracking system in Excel 2007. I started by interviewing the customers. I sat down with Inbal, our “accounting department,” and this is what she said …

“Today, we have a licenses management solution [Nick named Hendrix]. Every purchase is entered into Hendrix, and the customer then receives an automated e-mail from Hendrix with his payment code and download and activation instructions.”

“When a purchase order arrives, it is entered into the system, so that a license will be issued to the customer. I also manage an Excel sheet with a list of POs to track.”

Here is a sample of the Excel sheet that Inbal uses:

Purchase Order Tracking Sheet

“Purchase orders are not paid immediately; they usually have net or net+30 payment terms. it’s my job to see that all the payment orders are eventually paid,” Inbal added.

“So, every week, I single out the POs that have not been paid, and according to how late the payment is, I either send an e-mail or mail, or I call the customer. When a purchase order is paid, I update the tracking sheet to reflect that, this way I know not to bother the customer.”

Users’ requirements

I then asked her what she would like to the tracking system to do.

“I need to be able to define contact details for both customer and end user,” Inbal said. “This is because sometimes (especially with POs), the customer’s accounting department is ordering the software for their users. So I need to send the download and activation instructions to the user and work with the accounting department on payment issues. In any case, the customer has to be notified about the delivery of the software as well as the user.

“I want to be able to define the due date for each PO (net, net+30, etc.).”

“I want to get a weekly report of all the purchase orders that should have already been paid. If possible, I want to get it by e-mail.”

“When closing an order, I need a place to enter the payment date and some sort of transaction ID (check number, bank transfer ID, etc.).”

And that was it.

If you have any ideas on how to make this system better, please, pretty please … add them as a comment to this post.

Purchase-order tracking application with Excel 2007: kickoff

The company I work for, Cogniview, offers customers various ways to purchase its products. A customer can use PayPal to purchase online, send a fax order, or send a purchase order by fax or e-mail.

We have had an unusual amount of purchase orders lately. Everybody is happy when a PO comes in, but our accounting department started complaining that tracking those purchase orders is becoming difficult.

We had a meeting in which we agreed that some sort of purchase tracking system should be created. I persuaded everyone that it would take a tenth of the time to write it in Excel 2007 then in C++ (the language of choice for our programmers). So I have been awarded the pleasure of writing it myself.

In the coming week or so, I will share with you the process of designing this system and implementing it–successfully, I hope.

I will also make the Excel application available to anyone who’s interested.

The World’s Funniest Spreadsheet Movies

For those of you who think that spreadsheets are boring and that spreadsheet professionals are sad people who cry themselves to sleep, I give you the world’s funniest spreadsheet movies.

1. Watch out, heroin addicts, here comes the spreadsheet . . .

2. We took a poll on which of the characters in this movie people sympathize with (see the surprising results after the movie) . . .

Although this is obviously a Mac vs. Microsoft commercial, most of the men who watched the commercial sympathized with the Microsoft dude. The really surprising result came from the ladies. They liked the Mac guy.

3. This woman found a strange outlet for her obsessive-compulsive disorder . . .

4. I (and the rest of the guys in the office) thought the Apple dude was really annoying in this commercial . . .

Apparently, so did the guys who wrote this comic.

5. Spreadsheets are barely mentioned in this movie, but it’s way cool!

Now, don’t you wish you were a spreadsheet dude?

Online office and collaboration news

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch published two posts dealing with online office suites. The first article is about Google’s combining its word processing and spreadsheet offering. The second article is about Zoho, a player in online office suites. For those of you who are as interested as I am in online collaboration (and especially in spreadsheet collaboration), these articles are well worth reading.

For some time now, I wanted to check out these services (Zoho and Google spreadsheets). I hope that I can soon devote a little time to them and update you on what I discovered.

Collaboration scenario: planning the budget

Earlier, we discussed a scenario for offline spreadsheet collaboration. In this post, I will explore a very similar process: budget planning, and how it can be made easier by offline spreadsheet collaboration.

Today, budget planning in some companies is performed in the following manner:

The company secretary distributes an Excel budget template to the department heads.
Each department head fills in his budget requirements for the upcoming year and sends it back to the secretary.
Secretary combines the departmental budget sheets and creates a draft of the yearly budget for the company. The draft is then used in discussions about the budget.

This can be transformed into a very streamlined spreadsheet collaboration scenario:

Secretary logs in to a collaboration-enabled, Web-enabled budget planning spreadsheet (CEWEBPS).
Secretary updates list of department heads and activates CEWEBPS.
CEWEBPS sends an e-mail to each department head requesting him to log on to CEWEBPS and fill in the budget required for his department.
CEWEBPS nags those department heads who do not comply with the original e-mail and keeps reminding them (gently but firmly) of their obligations until they fill in their budget requirements.
CEWEBPS sends daily updates to the secretary.

Besides demonstrating another way in which offline spreadsheet collaboration can be utilized in the corporation, this collaboration process introduces a couple of new requirements from the collaboration-enabled spreadsheet: access control and the possibility of in-house installation.

In this scenario, the information (i.e., the budget) is extremely sensitive. It should not be exposed to people outside the company under any circumstances, and even inside the company it should be shared on a need-to-know basis. Thus, to support spreadsheet collaboration offline, a product must support access control and be installed on the company’s infrastructure.

Social Software in the Enterprise

Another silly spreadsheet movie

Office 2.0 - That was the word I was looking for

Zune is not a funny name

Creative Commons Adobe Acrobat Plugin

Purchase-order tracking system based on Excel 2007: current process and requirements

Purchase-order tracking application with Excel 2007: kickoff

The World’s Funniest Spreadsheet Movies

Online office and collaboration news

Collaboration scenario: planning the budget

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