TechBytes

With the business world rapidly moving towards the digitization of documents, mobile scanning apps are becoming necessary for both work and personal use. However, in our day-to-day interactions, we encounter entities, such as the government or doctor’s office that require old-fashioned forms that are printed on paper.

Sometimes we are handed a business card from someone with important contact information we need to retain. Because not everything has moved to digital media, the most useful resolution is to quickly transform any paper you’re handed into digital data, which you can store and edit on your computers and mobile devices. Once stored, you have them practically forever if need be.

Think about the amount of physical information you encounter daily that you need to retain for your professional and personal life: spreadsheets, software information, receipts, financial records, old photographs your parents have, etc. If you need to capture that data or images for future use, having a scanner at your beck and call is an efficient way to operate.

The availability of a mobile scanning app that runs off your smartphone and uses your phone cam to snap the image can allow you to capture more information. This gives you the freedom to correctly analyze and pull out the important stuff for later.

Let’s look at some of the best mobile apps out there. Some of these scanning apps are free, while others are highly affordable. Try to match up your needs to the right app.

What Are The Best Free Mobile Scanning Apps?

Microsoft Office Lens for Android

Microsoft recently launched Office Lens for Android, a scanning app that lets you shoot photos of written materials like notepads, printed documents, and whiteboards, converting printed words in the image to editable text through OCR. Microsoft has other mobile scanning apps such as Evernote, but they’ve added some remarkable functions to this new app. The Office Lens gives you the ability to scan documents, cards, and whiteboards with your Android phone, making them more readable and editable. Best of all, it’s a free app!

Evernote Scannable for iPhone

If you are already an Evernote user, this app scans anything you put in front of it and sends it to your Evernote account, or another place that you designate. It has the capability to share the files with other people very easily, as well. Imagine you’re in a meeting with a number of team members or clients. You can use the app to scan a few files from the meeting, and Scannable will instinctively ask you if you want to share the images with the people in your meeting. If you have already listed the attendees in a meeting invite and you’ve granted Scannable access to your calendar, it will send them the data immediately. How’s that for convenience?

Adobe Scan for iPhone

If you already have a paid Adobe Document Cloud or Creative Cloud account and use it regularly, this app is a no-brainer. Sometimes you have a piece of paper that you need to get into digital form. The Adobe Scan app can not only produce a PDF using your smartphone camera, but it can also employ optical-character recognition (OCR) to the scanned image so that you can freely edit its text. For an app that automatically detects, captures, and converts printed text to digital form, Adobe Scan is a perfect app. But once again, you need a paid subscription to get all its impressive features.

What Are The Best Mobile Scanning Apps Under 5 Dollars?

Abbyy FineScanner

Abbyy has been in the scanning technology business for a very long time, and that gives them a leg up on the new and robust competition. Experts have been impressed with its use on older high-end desktop scanners. Its mobile scanning tool Abbyy FineScanner, is impressive as well. FineScanner does a terrific job of scanning any type of printed document. It’s very fast at snapping the photo image and also gives the user the option of color or black-and-white.

The one downside to the Abbyy FineScanner is its price disclosure. You can download a free version, but the free version doesn’t support the software’s best feature, its optical character recognition (OCR). For this feature, you need to pay either $4.99 a month or $19.99 for the year. If you sign up through the website, a free month of premium subscription is available.

Intsig CamScanner

This mobile scanning application has a unique feature that sets it apart from other apps under $5. The Instig CamScanner will separate the document acquisition process (take a picture of the image and turn it into text) from the document management process. If speed is important to you, this app is very fast at taking the image and converting it for you. Intsig CamScanner’s optical character recognition (OCR) is not as accurate as some of the other apps. If accuracy is crucial for you, Instig CamScanner might not be the right scan app for you to download.

TurboScan

TurboScan, a $4.99 app for Android and iOS, is an unpretentious app that precisely saves documents and images for you to edit elsewhere. It is not the fastest, nor does it have a processing niche like the other featured mobile scanning apps. What it does have is consistency in both its accuracy and quality at an affordable price.

Wrap Up

Technology is moving forward at a lightning fast pace. Be sure to check often for the latest and greatest scanning apps and you might be surprised at what some tech guru has come up with.

 

Microsoft Workplace Analytics For Empowering The Time Management Of Teams

Microsoft Workplace Analytics is a relatively new tool from Microsoft that can give managers and company owners better insights into how their teams are working. It can be used to identify patterns that might be affecting productivity. It works to highlight those teams and employees who are doing a superior job, as well as those who are performing poorly. And, it works in the background so that workflows are unaffected and employees are not aware that performance is being measured.

The Corporate Strategy

Most corporate strategies aimed at developing growth and platforms to support sustainability consider time as a resource. Human resource management departments take account of resources such as time utilization as well. Today’s employers require more sophisticated time management systems to ensure that optimal production is recorded. This has led to organizations applying a variety of technical inputs to ensure that time management and employee engagement are integrated to ensure the highest productivity.

Critical Gap

The critical gap that exists between organizations and their sustainability objectives includes poor employee participation. Many employees come to work each day just to get a paycheck; they aren’t invested in the company or its long-term goals.

To fill this gap, technical tools such as Microsoft Workplace Analytics provide reliable solutions to organizations in the area of their time management needs. However, one of the most important questions is whether these technical inputs are correctly measured in terms of the impact to the business.

Additionally, it is also essential to identify whether competing products provide the same impact on a business. This is significant because one strategy cannot fit all the needs of an organization and therefore, some amendments are called for to sustain and develop the organization’s team management.

Today’s Business Challenges

The critical business challenge today is comprised of the choice of technical inputs that will best suit the business model. Various solutions and other tools available, whether at subscribed rates or for free, all work differently for any organization. The type of teams found in any company will differ in terms of their adaptability, making specific time management tools better for some and not-so-good for others. Microsoft Workplace Analytics solves many of these dilemmas due to its versatility.

Technical Solution

A great technical solution to organizations seeking time management and better team management, the Microsoft Workplace Analytics solution can empower teams of all shapes and sizes. The objective of the solution is to ensure that employees can get more done at the workplace each day while expending less effort. Also, with better time management, employees can achieve a better work/life balance. This can significantly increase job satisfaction. Through the utilization of shared space, shared interests develop into agreeable decisions limiting conflicts within the organization and manifesting collaboration among colleagues.

Competing Products

Competing products to the Microsoft Workplace analytics program include MyAnalytics, which is also known as Delve Analytics. The purpose of this tool is to keep a watchful eye on productivity. It can determine whether specific employees are working hard or hardly working.

Using the same concept as Microsoft Workplace Analytics, the purpose of these products is to limit internal conflicts, while making sure employees are being productive most of the time. However, some managers will not like a style of management that monitors employee activity so closely. Employees may feel that they’re being micro-managed. This can actually hurt instead of help productivity.

Solutions Adaptability

Microsoft Workplace Analytics should be used with willing teams and cooperative management. Once everyone is on board and working toward a common goal, it’s possible to achieve the desired analytics. This can help an organization to make changes where necessary in order to inspire growth and development for the organization. Of course, the outcome can depend significantly on the interaction between conflict management and employee engagement.

Impact on Team Performance

The impact of team management solutions includes increased productivity for the organization, limited conflicts for management, shared goals for the teams, and the sustainability of the whole unit. The technical inputs of time management play a major performance appraisal role that could threaten the retention level of employees.

Companies may benefit from further research in analyzing how well different types of teams can work with technical time management programs like Microsoft Workplace Analytics. In contemporary organizational strategies, the one-size-fits-all attitude concerning organizational decisions is no longer a valid managerial perspective.

Estimating Validity

To estimate validity, organizations require performance auditing. This ensures the corporations can link the effects of a time management program to the overall sustainability of the organization. By tracking the record of performances and number of conflicts, the usefulness of a time management tool can be estimated.

Identifying those departments and teams faced with multiple problems might be a task for a different sort of program. Therefore, irrespective of the advantages associated with the innovative solutions provided by time management programs, a better understanding of the teams and people involved is recommended.

Conclusion

The Microsoft Workplace Analytics suite offers many advantages to contemporary organizations who are searching for a more reliable way to measure employee teamwork. Under the right circumstances, it can provide a number of solid solutions to employee dissatisfaction, while improving workflows and productivity.

Microsoft is always looking for great ways to make your workflow easier. That’s why they continuously update their products. The July 2018 updates to Office 365 are especially unique and should prove to be very helpful to users.

Upgrades To The Ribbon

Microsoft introduced the ribbon in its Office 2007 software. It replaced those traditional menus and toolbars that users were so familiar with. Though the changes did cause somewhat of a stir in the community of users, soon everyone came to appreciate the ribbon. It went over so well that Microsoft continued to update the ribbon each year to include greater functionalities.

Today, no one can imagine Office 365 without the ribbon. With that said, the new updates for Office 365 July 2018 include larger graphical controls on the ribbon that are more visible and grouped in a logical manner. Ribbon functions are more accessible and easier to use. Microsoft’s goal with this update was to make it easier for users to collaborate and connect with others.

The ribbon is also more intuitive now. It puts those commands you’re currently using front and center so they’re available when you need them.

Now there’s only one row of buttons instead of two, which helps to keep the commands you use at the forefront of what you’re working on. This allows more space for your document content. If you’re a big fan of the old ribbon that had two rows of commands, you can easily restore that look with the toggle of a button. Restoring the classic view has been made simple.

The new simplified ribbon is scheduled to be released first in the web version of Word. It will be rolled out to a special group of Office insiders in July. Microsoft will take the feedback from these users, then adjust their updates before rolling out the new Office applications to all users.

Sharepoint Integration

Integration has always been a big thing for Office 365 applications. The Office team has gone one step further with new ways to embed Planner into SharePoint sites. Now the Office 365 productivity solutions that everyone loves are even easier to access. For instance, the SharePoint navigation bar gives all team members the ability to manage tasks directly from SharePoint. Outlook, Calendars, and Microsoft Teams are still available from most applications.

A new button on the SharePoint page allows users to add a plan from Planner. Designing a SharePoint page that has plan details is a breeze. Simply head over to the SharePoint page with the plan details, then click on the Edit button. Locate the area where you want your plan displayed, then click the Plus sign, and select the new Planner web part.

Microsoft Teams Updates

SharePoint integration for Microsoft Teams has been greatly simplified as well. Users can add files directly into the Teams interface right from SharePoint. They can also link an entire SharePoint document library in Microsoft Teams.

Teams have become a favorite meeting application with all the Microsoft apps accessible from the Teams interface. This app took a huge leap forward when Teams was recently updated to allow for links to an entire SharePoint document library. This offers fast, convenient ways to share the SharePoint document library with your whole team. Expect to see more exclusive updates to Microsoft Teams in the future, as it has now become an indispensable part of everyone’s workday. It’s revolutionizing the way people communicate.

New Chat Functions

The Team’s chat experience has been improved to add more flexibility to participants. For instance, if you are involved in a chat that is no longer relevant, you can easily duck out of the meeting. You can also hide a chat if you need to do so or mute a chat if you need to focus on some other task at the moment.

Sway for iOS

Microsoft announced its most extensive update in history on May 30th to Sway for iOS. Now users will find it easier than ever to create a Sway from beginning to end on their iPhone or iPad. Users can quickly toggle between Edit and Preview modes. Add and reorganize text and media in the Edit mode.

Preview lets you see your Sway as others will see it. You can also make easy and fast changes to your Design with the toggle of a button. Edit mode has been simplified to an all-white canvas where users can add photos and videos from the camera or take a new photo. Tap on an image to resize it or add a caption. Photo grouping has been simplified as well. Drag and drop one image onto another to create a new image group.

Sway on iOS allows for the addition of lists, bullets, links, blockquotes, and more with the single tap of a button. Once you have your Sway completed, it’s easy to share or you can invite friends to collaborate. The Sway app for iOS is available from the Apple Store and it’s more fun than ever to use.

Wrap Up

The Office 365 Updates for July 2018 all about ease and convenience. You can do more in less time. It’s well worth it to learn these easy new ways to use Office 365 so you can shave time off your workday and get more done each day.

If you own a small business that deals in offering services to the public, scheduling appointments is often part of your daily routine. You may find yourself playing phone tag so much that you sometimes lose focus on your clients. Being a small business, you may have to double up as the chief administrator and financial officer, as well as the inventory supervisor and janitor on some days.

Microsoft Bookings: empowering clients to handle the appointments part

Microsoft has a solution – Microsoft Bookings – designed to alleviate the burden of booking appointments. Microsoft Bookings is a new online and mobile scheduling tool that is available with the premium subscriptions of Office 365. It provides your business with a unique web page where customers can schedule appointments themselves. First, the customer selects the service they want, chooses a day and time based on the availability you’ve provided, then enters their contact information and proceeds to book the appointment.

First things first: set up your Microsoft Bookings portal

The first step is to sign up for an Office 365 plan that includes the Microsoft Bookings service. Once you do this, the Bookings portal is turned on by default. It’s available as a tile in the MS app launcher. If you check the app launcher page and do not see “Bookings” listed there, then you may not have the right plan.

Bookings are available with an Office 365 Business Premium subscription, as well as for customers with the Office 365 A3 and A5 subscriptions. However, enterprise customers with Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 subscriptions can now turn it on and set it up for their clients.

To turn on the Bookings app for Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 subscriptions, simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Login to the administrator portal

To configure Microsoft Bookings, start by logging in to the admin center of your subscription by clicking on the Admin icon and entering your administrator username and password. This gives you the admin rights to acquire new services from Office 365.

Step 2: Adding Bookings to your Office 365 Enterprise subscription

Once you’re logged on, select the Billing tab and navigate to the Purchase Services option under it. You should be able to see a whole selection of options that include a Business App (free) with a Buy Now button that shows up when you hover over it. Click on this button to add the app to your subscription free of charge.

You will then have the option to add the amount corresponding to the licenses that you want. Ensure that this amount matches the total number of users in your organization (preferably). You will want to enable this service for these users during setup.

When this is complete and you have assigned licences to the users that you want the service enabled for, the users will now see the Bookings app as a new addition to the multiple apps on Office 365.

Moving onto setup

To set up the Microsoft Bookings site for your small business, click on the Bookings icon to open the Microsoft Bookings app. This action should open the welcome screen on the Microsoft Bookings website.

Tap the “Get it now” button to begin the setup process. This should lead you to a new window where you can enter your new Bookings calendar name and add it by clicking the “Add a booking calendar” tab.

You will then see a new window that requests more information about your business. This is where you enter your business name and type (from a predefined list). Ensure that the name you provide is unique since it is what will be used as the email address from which meeting notifications are sent.

When you’re done, select the “Continue” button and give it a moment to build the site. Your new Microsoft Bookings site eventually appears, ready for customizing.

Click on the different options to add more details about your business, staff, and services. Take your time to explore the various settings, one by one to ensure that you customize everything correctly. Of course, you can go back and tweak things if you need to.

At the end, you’ll have a Home Page from which you can monitor Bookings, add activities, modify the services you offer, manage your staff by adding, removing, and/or setting them up in terms of, say, working hours and days of the week – with respective color codes for each staff member.

Wrap-up

With Microsoft Bookings, you can spend far less time scheduling appointments with your customers and instead concentrate more on actually serving them. The tool simplifies how customers schedule and manage appointments. It takes care of the appointment-booking side of your business management so you can focus on the service side.

This tool was built for small businesses that depend on scheduling appointments with customers. It’s great for companies such as an auto mechanic shop, insurance agent, accounting office, a dog groomer, hair stylist, a dentist’s office, and many more. Now customers can set up their own appointments and do it at their convenience. This frees up your staff for other tasks. Microsoft Bookings boosts customer satisfaction, plus it reduces the number of missed appointments.

A foolproof guide for increasing efficiency in Excel

Excel often gets a bad rap. It is misunderstood as the groan-inducing, spreadsheet monster with tricky-to-navigate features. However, the truth about Excel lies in the user’s commitment to making the most out of the feature-rich platform. If we put aside Excel’s tedious reputation, creating step-by-step guides for mastering Excel efficiency really is a no-brainer.

The Marvelous Macro: How Macros Make Your Life Easier

What better place to start than by creating a macro in Excel. Creating a macro is hands-down the best possible way for users to automate repetitive tasks and get tedious work done more efficiently. Can you think of something that you or one of your team members does repeatedly in Excel? Whether it’s data entry or calculations, creating a macro can help streamline team processes and seriously boost productivity.

Basically, a macro lets you record an action or series of actions that can then be run repeatedly as needed. The creation of a macro is essentially a duplication of some specific set of mouse clicks and keystrokes, which gets recorded and saved to help you work smarter not harder. The best part about macros? They’re completely customizable. Once you’ve created your macro, you can make tweaks and edits to ensure they work just the way you want them to.

Productivity Game Changer: Working Smarter Not Harder with Excel

When you think about it, this is a game-changer that’s super easy to implement. Consider this. Perhaps one of your team members creates daily, weekly or monthly reports for managers, customers or other staff members. The creation of these reports, on a repetitive basis, can be extremely tedious when done manually each time. This results in long completion times and a huge decline in morale for your tied-up workers.

Creating an Excel macro for projects like these helps keep your team moving forward while still staying on top of boring, yet mission-critical reports. An Excel macro can be tailored to help workers format names, color-coded report data, and customize formatting and presentation. The macro can then be run and applied to any selected cells, meaning monotonous tasks really do become as easy as the click-of-a-mouse.

How to Create a Macro in Excel – A Fool-Proof Guide

Alright, ready to cut to the chase? How exactly can you and your team start taking advantage of the Excel macro feature in hopes of improving productivity, efficiency, and morale? Check out the fool-proof step-by-step guide below.

Creating a Macro in Excel

Initial Steps

Before you record a macro, you must ensure the Developer tab is visible on the ribbon. As a default, Excel keeps the Developer tab hidden. In order to get it front and center, complete the following steps:

• Go to Excel > Preferences > Ribbon & Toolbar
• Under the Main Tabs list, select the Customize the Ribbon
• Then, select the check box beside Developer and then click

Record Your Macro

You’re now ready to record your series of actions to create your macro. With your desired keystrokes and mouse-clicks in mind, follow these steps to record your macro:

• Under the Developer tab, select Record Macro.
• If you wish, enter a name for the macro in the Macro Name
• Enter a shortcut key in the Shortcut Key
• Enter a description in the Description
• Select OK to start recording.
• Carefully perform the series of actions you wish to automate.
• Once you’ve finished the sequential actions, select the Developer tab from the Code group and select Stop Recording.

Fine Tuning Your Macro

In order to make the most out of your creation, be sure to check out the different ways you can customize and edit your macro. To edit a recorded macro, follow these steps:

• Under the Developer tab, click
• Select the name of the macro you wish to customize and choose
• This will open the Visual Basic Editor. Here, you can witness how your recorded actions play out as macro code.
• This is where the creativity comes in. Experiment with your code, then close the editor to run your macro again. Tweak and customize as much as you wish until the macro is running just as you envisioned.

Back to Basics: Reaping the Productivity Benefits Already Built into Your Infrastructure

It’s that simple! Suddenly, your team members have a more streamlined and efficient way of completing even the most tedious of Excel tasks. This means increased productivity, a boost in morale and a more efficient team overall. By keeping your team moving and productive, you keep your team occupied and happy, which can only have positive impacts on your day-to-day operations and ultimately, on your bottom line.

In an increasingly crowded marketplace of digital productivity solutions, it can become easy to get lost in the shuffle and postpone the mastering of your operational pains. However, when professionals remember to get back to basics, a world of difference can be discovered.

Excel has been on the scene for decades and Microsoft is working all the time to optimize features and prioritize user experience.

By paying attention to what your existing digital infrastructure can do for your business, professionals can save time, money, and frustration. Good leaders understand the trials their employees endure each day. Any organization can make solid improvements without subscribing to new or trending efficiency solutions.

IT experts know that helping professionals make better use of their existing infrastructure is a core part of the managed-service mission. Professionals don’t need all the very latest tools and gadgets to help their team navigate technology more productively. They simply need to learn how to maximize those tools they’re already using.

With a humble and level-headed approach, a strategic IT partner will be committed to helping every client make better use of what they have and become the masters of their own tech infrastructure.

If you’re looking to get a better handle on the tech resources your team uses daily, don’t hesitate to reach out to a team of IT experts for advice and consultation. One phone call can put your company on the path to revamping your existing infrastructure and mastering operational needs.