June 2009 - Posts

• Hot Keys and Short Cuts

  I have this fancy mouse at work and sometimes I feel as if it wasn't a good investment. It is a wireless mouse with a whole slew of different buttons, but after the first few weeks, I found out that I really don't use it that much. Why? It's because I'm a keyboard shortcut fanatic. I would say that 50%-75% of the time, I'm navigating around Windows with my keyboard. I use my mouse to select things I can't get to with my keyboard, or to select text that will take me more than around 20 keystrokes to get to. Now I'm sure most of us procrastinators know the common windows shortcut keys. Windows Key+D will minimize all windows and show your desktop. Alt+f4 will close your current open window. Alt-Tab will switch to the next window. Here are some of the shortcuts that I use the most in Maximizer. This list is by no means exhaustive, they are just the ones I use the most. If you have any other shortcuts, by all means, post it to the comments section. Some of the shortcuts are also dependant on which module you are in. Alt+f, f - Preferences Alt+f, d - Administrator Alt+f, p, o - Note report Alt+e, m - Make list current Alt+v, f - favourites lists Alt+v, u - column setups Alt+s, f - All fields search Alt+s, b - All phone number search Alt+s, e - Retrieve contacts Alt+s, t - Retrieve opportunities Alt+a, m - Schedule a meeting Alt+a, n - Write a note Ctrl+0 - Opportunity window Ctrl+1 - Address Book Window Ctrl+h - Customer service window Ctrl+6 - Hotlist task window Ctrl+7 - Calendar window You can also create your own buttons and macros. See the user's manual for more information. All of the menu options have pneumonics. Hit the alt key to see the pneumonic for the menu.  When you drill down into the menu, the pneumonics will be displayed for the function. And as an added bonus, here are some of my favourite windows shortcuts: Windows Key + r - Run command. The run command is THE most common thing I use day to day.  After pulling up the run command, you can launch some of the most common applications. Here are some examples: maxwin - Maximizer winword - Microsoft word excel - Microsoft Excel outlook - Microsoft Outlook Notepad - notepad pbrush - paint brush iexplore - internet explorer And some windows functions: control - control panel control admintools - Administrative tools services.msc - Windows services appwiz.cpl - Add/Remove programs urfckbtds3   Posted Jun 26 2009, 02:13 PM by wleung with no comments Filed under: calendar, hotlist, shortcut, Hotkeys

• Finding Time in My Busy Schedule

  I am a busy guy. Between work, sports, friends, and planning a wedding, I barely have enough time for myself. Don't get me wrong, I like doing all those things (well, some more than others), so I'm always trying to pencil things in or squeeze the most out of my days. One thing I find that helps me personally is logging personal appointments and tasks into Maximizer. If you flag something as "personal appointment" when creating an appointment, it'll show up as "private appointment" if others are viewing your calendar. This helps me keep track of big things I have to do. So the other day, a friend wanted to watch the second Transformers movie with him. It's out on the 24th. But I had a feeling that I might have something to do that day. So I go ahead and create an appointment in Maximizer. When creating an appointment, rather than just typing a time into the Start time field, I click on the ellipes (...) and the "Find Free Time" dialog appears. So I scroll to the 24th to see if I can find 8 or 9 consecutive hours (because obviously we have to watch the first one again before we watch the second one). Turns out I'm busy that day, but the next day, I'm free. So in summary, clicking on the ellipses when creating an appointment will bring up the "Find Free Time" dialog box. Any non-highlighted box means that that slot is free. Dragging your mouse over multiple consecutive fields will highlight them and clicking OK will book that time for your meeting or whatever you are planning to do.  There is a Find Time button on the Add Hotlist Task dialog too.  It works the same way. This function is big for me because I do book everything in Maximizer. Obviously, if I didn't, then my entire calendar would appear to be free. So it's important for me to always keep things in my calendar, even though it is a bit of a pain sometimes. It is too bad that we don't make a plug-in that will tap into your mind and figure out when you are free or not without entering it into Maximizer. That would be huge. Check Maximizer CRM version 60, tentatively due out in the year 2110. Posted Jun 12 2009, 03:21 PM by wleung with no comments Filed under: calendar, Schedule, Free time, hotlist

• The Outlook Toolbar: Making a (not so) spiritual connection with Outlook

  You never really notice your dependence on things. For example, one day I left my iPhone at home. For the whole day, I had no access to e-mail, music, or a cell phone. It was actually very relaxing. All I was missing was a couple beers and a beach. But the entire day, I was constantly thinking of things to check or maps to draw and I couldn't do it. Maybe I do that kind of stuff so often now that I don't notice it, until, of course, it's gone. At work, I have a fixation with my Outlook window. Have a look at my work setup below. I would say my computer looks like this more often than not during the day.  Notice how I have Outlook dedicated to one screen. For me, Outlook always needs to be on and visible. I NEED to see my emails coming in and I NEED to answer emails quickly. It's one of (the many) habits I picked up from working in the real world. With my dependence on Outlook and my inherited dependence on Maximizer, I was really happy to learn that there is an Outlook Toolbar allows you to do a couple of important things in Maximizer, from Outlook. There is a different toolbar for the mail, new email message, contacts, and contacts information windows. In this blog, I'm just going to talk about the one I use the most, the one in the mail window. The mail window is the one with the Inbox and other incoming email folders. Let's take a look at some of the options that are available to you on the outlook toolbar.  Save Sender as contact in Maximizer This option allows you to create a Maximizer Address book entry from an Outlook email message. The entry is created from the sender's information. Create CS Case This will bring up a dialog that will let you create a customer service case. The customer service case can be created for an entry that already exists in Maximizer, or you can also choose to create a new Address Book entry and a new customer service case. Save email to contact in Maximizer You can save an email message in Outlook to the documents window of one or more Address Book entries. View Contact in Maximizer If you have synchronized the contact from Outlook to Maximizer or the contact was created using the Save Sender as Contact in Maximizer button, then when you hit this button, it will retrieve the contact in Maximizer. Otherwise, if the contact was created outside of Outlook and not synchronized, then Maximizer will try to find the entry in the database using the email address.   Posted Jun 04 2009, 04:24 PM by wleung with no comments Filed under: Outlook, Integration