Webcoda Blog

How many software products do you use everyday and how well do you know those products?

Being in IT I probably use more than most but accordingly I would be expected to understand these tools better than most.

If we take the attitude that most features are built into a product for a reason then it is safe to assume that we could probably improve our productivity or processes by doing a little study of those hidden capabilities.

Start small – get a list of keyboard shortcuts for software you use all the time.

I use Firefox all the time and here is the list of short cuts - http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts – I have just looked at it for the first time.

Here are a few shortcuts that I never knew existed

The last one here is one I have always wanted and never knew was possible. 1 min research for a lifetime of knowledge.

Imagine if you just spent a minute learning something new about the tools you use very day.

My only tip is to limit that time to a minute. There is always something to learn and our poor little brains can only handle so much.

It’s almost free because you need to be using the premier edition of Google Apps which is $50 per user per year- http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

If you use Google Apps Premier, Outlook 2003 or 2007 and have an iPhone and would like to sync your email, contacts and calendar then this article is for you. The rest of you will just have to imagine what it would be like.

Just to be clear here when I say Sync, I mean true 2 way sync. If I delete a contact on my phone I want that contact deleted in my Gmail and in my Outlook. Same if I delete from Outlook or Gmail.

Google is the hub. We sync iPhone to Google and Outlook to Google.

Syncing iPhone to Google

Overview here

Email

You probably already have email set up – Instructions here. This works fine and there is nothing to change.

Calendar and Contacts

Although there are third party tools out there such as Neuvasync and Soocial which are pretty good, they didn’t seem to offer anything that Google wasn’t offering out of the box.

To configure iPhone Cal and Contacts follow these instructions. - http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

The only extra thing worth noting is that if you have multiple calendars or share calendars with other people in Google,

(i.e I can see my wife's google calendar and she can see mine.) you can choose which calendars to sync on the iPhone by following instructions here -

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=139206&ctx=sibling

 

If you are not sharing calendars then you are missing a great feature of gmail.

 

Syncing Outlook to Google

Google has just released Apps Sync for Outlook.

All the info you need is here

Note that this will set up a new Outlook profile for you. The old profile will remain intact.

My biggest gripe is that I can’t see my shared calendars in Outlook. I hope they change this.

Second biggest is that filters in gmail don’t affect Outlook. So you have to set up rules in Outlook if you want mail to go into specific folders.

The problem with this of course is that if you change your pc you lose your rules and will need to migrate them manually.

 

Tips

Make sure you have everything backed up before you sync anything. The iPhone deletes all your contacts when you set up a new sync account.

What I did was get all my contacts on Gmail first and back gmail contacts up. This is your master list.

You can back up your contacts to gmail by using iTunes – Instructions here

The Google Apps sync lets you import your contacts/calendar from your old profile. When you do your first sync they will be copied up to gmail.

You will most likely end up with duplicates (we did). Fortunately gmail has merge function. I couldn’t see a way around this.

When you update an event on your iPhone it can take up to an hr to display in Gmail so be patient.

Issues

I did have some issues with this. The worst being that my Outlook mail stopped syncing and I had to reset up another profile and re-download all my mail again. It’s worked properly for a couple of days now so I’ll update if something more happens.