by Felicien | May 28, 2019 | Education
Today’s quick tech tip covers one of the basic functions in Microsoft Excel.
Watch the video below or click here.
Here’s how to copy cells in Microsoft Excel, plus one of the advanced copy and paste features available in the application.
Step 1: Select the Cell or Cells You Want to Copy
If you want to select a single cell, you simply need to click on it. If you want to select a range of cells—whether that’s a partial or full column or row, or a wider range—click and hold on one of the cells you want to copy and drag to the other end of the range.
You can also select an entire column or row in one click by placing your cursor outside the grid, on top of the letter or number corresponding to the column or row. Your cursor will change to a rightward or downward arrow. Click to select the entire column or row.
Step 2: Copy
To copy the selected cells, click the “Copy” button in the Clipboard section of the ribbon. In your default view, the Clipboard section is in the upper left. You can also use a keyboard shortcut to copy: press Ctrl + C on a PC or Command + C on a Mac.
Step 3: Select Destination and Paste
All that’s left is to click on the cell where you want the copied information to go and paste. If you’ve copied a single cell, simply click on the cell where the copied content needs to go. If you’ve copied a range of cells, you don’t have to select an identical range of cells to paste. Simply select the cell that’s in the upper left corner of your range.
To paste your content, click the “Paste” button in the Clipboard section of the ribbon, or use a keyboard shortcut. This time, the keyboard shortcuts are Ctrl + V (PC) or Command + V (Mac). Your content will appear in the new location, and you’re ready to move on to the next task.
A Few Notes
Now that we’ve covered the basics, here are a few warnings and advanced tips.
Formulas
If you copy a cell with a formula in it, Excel will automatically copy that formula to the destination. If this isn’t what you want, click the down arrow below the Paste button. Excel gives you a dozen or so special methods of pasting. If all you want is the raw number, no formula attached, then use “Paste Values” instead.
Overwriting Content
If you copy a range of cells, be aware that pasting that range will overwrite anything in the destination range. Make sure you have enough space there and won’t lose any important data.
by Felicien | May 28, 2019 | Education
In today’s tech tip, learn how to make the most out of your Microsoft Teams meetings by showing PowerPoint slides directly in the virtual meeting window.
Watch the video below, or click here.
Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration tool with a deep, rich feature set. One of the great features in Microsoft Teams is the ability to turn calendar appointments into virtual video or audio meetings directly in the app. We’ve covered how to do this before, but did you know you can show Microsoft PowerPoint slides right inside your Teams meeting? We’ll show you how in today’s tech tip.
Step 1: Launch or Join a Teams Meeting
To launch or join a meeting in Teams, click on the Meetings tab (on the desktop app, this is on the left side of the app). If your organization uses the Outlook calendar, Teams will pull that data into the Meetings tab. You should see a list of meetings here.
If you’re joining someone else’s meeting, you should see it in the list. Simply click “Join”. If you’re launching your own, click “Schedule a meeting” at the bottom of the column. Fill in the relevant details and pick a time. (It can be right now, if you need.)
Bonus tip: If you’re the one scheduling the meeting, make sure to invite the relevant teams or people. Use the Scheduling Assistant to see when your participants are free.
Step 2: Find and Click the Share Button
Once you’ve joined a Teams meeting (either as host or participant), you’ll see a set of buttons whenever you move the mouse. The video camera and microphone are fairly self-explanatory, but the button that comes next is a little less obvious. It looks like a rectangle with an up arrow in it. This is the Share button. Click it to bring up the Share menu.
You can share all sorts of things, but PowerPoints are what we’re after here. You’ll see a section with some suggested PowerPoints. Microsoft attempts to guess which OneDrive or SharePoint files you might want, but if it fails to suggest the right ones, you can always navigate yourself by clicking “Browse”. Click on the file you want, and it will launch into the Teams meeting.
How Presenting Works
Now that you’ve launched your PowerPoint presentation, be sure to understand how presenting works. You can toggle through your slides as you move through your presentation, just like you would in an in-person meeting. If you’re not the presenter, you can even toggle backward or forward through the slide deck without disturbing the presenter. This is handy if you need to move back to a previous slide and copy down information (or see what’s coming up if you need to time a restroom break!).
Sharing PowerPoints within Teams is a great way to keep up engagement in virtual meetings. Use this tip in your next Teams meeting and increase the value to all participants.
by Felicien | May 28, 2019 | Education
Whether you are starting out or ready to upgrade, there is a lot to consider when you’re shopping for a retail POS. These topics will help accelerate your research.
In a retail business, the selection of your point of sale software and hardware is a crucial one. You need to know that your selected vendor is trusted, reliable and will be there for you — and that the POS solution will be easy to use and fully compliant with all applicable laws. With so many different point of sale systems on the market, how can you be sure you’re making the right choice for your business? There are some key considerations that you will want to keep in mind as you’re researching the various solutions such as your projected growth rate, the level of support that you can expect to receive and how the system will integrate with your current marketing or customer relationship management solutions. It’s crucial that you take the time to fully understand your options before signing a contract because a poor selection could have a ripple effect on your organization. Here’s what you need to know when you’re shopping for a retail POS system.
Review Your Budget and System Needs
There are some systems with some pretty hefty bells and whistles, but is that what you really need for your business? Just as with any technology solution, you want to “right-size” your requirements to be sure you’re considering systems that will meet your needs both now and in the future without a lot of pricey functionality that will not be used in your stores. Even if you’re just starting out in a rented space, what are your plans for expansion in the future? While that extra-fancy reporting software may be great for larger businesses, is it truly providing you with the value for the additional cost? Force yourself to justify each addition to the scope — but don’t scale back on basic requirements for your business.
Proactive Support During Onboarding is Imperative
It is all too easy to make an uninformed decision during the initial configuration of your POS system that could severely limit the way you are able to leverage the platform for your business in the future. When you’re considering a new POS system, be sure you are meeting the team that will physically do the onboarding, initial setup and training — and you need to be fully comfortable that they understand your current (and future!) business model and needs. Once your system is fully configured and operational, it can be much more difficult to change settings that are core to the utilization of the platform. While some changes are relatively straightforward (adding a new product or updating a price) others could require a significant investment in consultant time, testing and training before you can trust that the changes have been made correctly.
Aggressively Limit System Complexity
The word “aggressive” can have some pretty negative connotations in business, but it’s truly needed in this instance. Everyone from your staff to vendor sales teams will be pitching you on the relative value of additional functionality. Unless you are able to tie this directly back to a quantifiable business gain, resist the temptation to add complexity to your system. When you start with a system that is simple yet scalable, your ROI will be recognized sooner and you may even reduce employee frustration with the new system. Change is difficult for people, so anything that you can do to ease the transition will help soothe the nerves of unsettled staff members. When possible, consider a longer-term roadmap of development and ensure that your selected system will fulfill the future needs of your business as it grows.
Consider Integrations Possibilities
While it’s impossible to know what types of integrations you may want in the future, there are a few basics that you’ll want to consider such as how well your new POS system will work with your customer relationship management (CRM) software. Your customers are an integral part of your business, and capturing their purchases and needs allows you to serve them more effectively in the future. Other potential integrations include with your cloud storage solution, shipping management systems, inventory, communications and more. As you’re building the infrastructure to support your POS system, it’s important to review whether your telecommunications platforms and internet bandwidth are up for the challenge.
Robust Batched or Real-Time Reporting
Do you want to receive automatic reports about your business on a regular basis? Are you interested in configuring the reports that you receive, or are you happy with what comes out of the box? When you need new reports, will you have to engage consultants, or will you be able to do some simple report changes internally? Consider gathering copies of any current reports that you’re using or taking the time to detail the types of reporting you’ll need in the future before you begin your search. That way, you can share these details with the sales teams for your potential POS systems to determine the level of reporting that will be possible in the various systems.
Flexible Payment Processing
Have you considered all the ways that your team can accept payments, and does your POS system need to allow for tipping, printing or emailing receipts? An emailed receipt is a great way to continue a conversation with customers that started in your store. Customers want their receipt, so they are likely to give you an active email address for that reason. With proper opt-out procedures and messaging, you’ll then be able to communicate with these individuals in the future.
Finding the ideal POS system for your business may take some time, but doing the upfront work of research and to define your requirements will allow you to make a solid decision for a system that will serve you well in the future. Your POS system is a key element of your business operations, and finding a solution that is flexible, includes adequate reporting capabilities and can integrate well with other business systems will have your revenue humming!
by Felicien | May 28, 2019 | Education
Learn about the importance of CTOs and CMOs uniting their efforts to create optimal outcomes for their companies. You can make business better by uniting.
Considering the vital importance of digital touch points—including mobile and Web interactions—for the success of most businesses, there has never been a time where it was more necessary for CMOs and CTOs to unite. But what about the way things have been done for so many decades, with CMOs and CTOs occupying very different areas of the organization? Well, the times are changing, and it is up to business leaders to change along with them. It’s that or risk being left behind by the competition.
CMOs and CTOs Must Unite
Technology is the through-line that connects every aspect of today’s businesses, especially when it comes to management and the creation of content. Data is the foundation for all decisions in the modern business environment, which comes from the core technologies utilized by every organization. Leveraging technologies allow businesses to create content that is extremely personalized and therefore fulfills the needs of the target audience in ways that were not previously possible. According to Adobe, it is this highly personalized content, along with tech like AI, machine learning and more, that have become required in the modern world of business.
Powerful tools like the ones mentioned here are only fully utilized by combining the skills and knowledge of the CTO and CMO. The need for tech expertise is obvious since all of the most potent tools in marketing today are enriched or enabled by the latest technology innovations. But the need for marketing expertise is just as important to connect with the customer. Without a human touch and an understanding of what makes people trust a business, technology can only accomplish so much.
How Can CMOs and CTOs Combine Their Efforts?
Let’s explore some of the ways that CMOs and CTOs can work towards a united front when approaching company objectives:
Be equally accountable for the outcomes you are seeking for the company.
The CTO and CMO used to operate in individual silos that rarely overlapped. In those days it was understandable to treat the outcomes you were seeking as your own and to avoid taking on responsibility for the outcomes of other departments—especially departments that seemed to have so little to do with your own. But today it is more important than ever to share the responsibility for achieving company objectives. After all, you are in the same boat overall, and you want to make sure that boat experiences smooth sailing for the benefit of all parties.
Instead of saying, “That’s not my responsibility,” try discussing with your other stakeholders how you can contribute towards success. You may be surprised at the answers you get, and at how easily you can provide support.
Recognize the areas that you can help when developing the content management strategy for your business.
While you both need to be responsible for the outcomes sought by your company, you are only going to be most effective if you are certain where your strengths lie. For CMOs, you should be focused on utilizing your resources and expertise to manage communications, brand messaging and overall content strategies. The CMO understands the consumer better than the CTO and understands the way the consumer behaves. It only makes sense for the CMO to look to things like brand messaging and content strategy because of this knowledge.
In contrast, the CTO is best equipped to take control of analytics, delivery, and insights for the consumer. The CTO and the team underneath the CTO have the skills and reach necessary to yield the most effective results in these data-driven areas.
Learn to think like the other team from time to time.
While you definitely want to lean into your strengths, you still need to have a knack for clear communication and predicting what your peers will need in the business. In other words, you need to learn to think like a CMO or CTO, even if you are not one. No one will expect you to take over the other person’s position, of course. But the better you can get into the headspace of the other manager the better equipped you will be to cross-pollinate and predict the needs of others.
Not only does thinking like the other allow you to communicate and help each other better, but it also tends to lead to the kind of game-changing ideas that revolutionize the way your organization functions. The CMO can better understand and utilize the power of the tech available, while the CTO can become more aware of how marketing outcomes are achieved and the kind of information that could be most beneficial for marketing efforts can be better understood.
Open up lines of communication and foster their growth.
As with any new relationship, the first few conversations are often the hardest to get through. Typically, opening up the line of communication is a big effort, and keeping it open is not the easiest thing to do. But it is worth the effort. Realize that you both can greatly benefit from each other’s knowledge and that working together is the key to realizing the full potential of your business.
by Felicien | May 27, 2019 | Education
Multi-factor authentication is a polarizing topic in business and technical channels. While business users are often quite fussy when asked to establish a secondary method of accessing their secure accounts and data, technology professionals realize that this bare-minimum authentication may be all that stands between business systems and some very bad actors. Reconciling the technical challenges of implementing 2FA (two-factor authentication) or MFA (multi-factor authentication) may seem like a struggle IT teams aren’t winning — but the fight is still a crucial one. Here’s what you need to know about how MFA can potentially remove bad actors from the equation in your business.
What is Multi-Factor Authentication?
Business users (and ordinary humans in general) are notorious for creating passwords that are extremely easy to unravel. As machine learning systems become increasingly sophisticated, it’s not surprising that passwords no longer pose enough of a deterrent for a dedicated cybercriminal. A simple password is like the virtual handshake that allows an individual user to access their shared resources and business systems. Passwords are generally easy for business users: they can be quickly reset as long as you have access to a primary email account and you can theoretically use the same password in a variety of different places, which certainly makes it easier on your memory! Unfortunately, everything that makes passwords convenient for business users also makes it easier for hackers to infiltrate your systems. Multi-factor authentication includes a range of strategies that technology professionals can leverage to create an additional layer of security between bad actors and crucial business data.
Additional authentification options include:
SMS text-based messages to a stored mobile number
Biometrics, such as facial recognition or fingerprints
Hard and soft tokens
These systems can be configured to ask for an additional method of authentication only when the access attempt appears to be high-risk — such as requests that come from an unrecognized device or originated in a region that is known for presenting cybersecurity threats.
How Multi-Factor Authentication Helps Reduce Access for Cybercriminals
Cloud-based applications are considered by some to be key targets for an attack since the storage of information is not onsite behind a firewall, but “out there” where theoretically accounts could be more easily compromised. Implementing multi-factor authentication in this situation allows legitimate users to quickly access their accounts and information while adding that crucial layer of security. This is especially important when you have privileged access accounts — those users who have admin privileges or whose login allows them to tunnel deeper into your infrastructure. Creating a strong identity governance solution and implementing it across all corners of your business can help ensure that the individual accessing the information is vetted and verified before allowing them egress. While bad actors can hack a password, it would be much more difficult for them to copy a fingerprint or gain access to a randomly-generated number that was delivered to your personal mobile phone. While SIM hijacking does occur (when hackers access a specific phone remotely), a more robust form of two-factor authentication is helping businesses such as social media platforms reduce the potential of hacked accounts.
81% of Hacks Involved Stolen Passwords
Let that fact sink in for just a moment: according to Verizon’s recent Data Breach Investigations Report in 2017, 81% of breaches leveraged stolen or weak passwords to allow cybercriminals unauthorized access to business information. Creating the rules that will convince users to update them on a regular basis is a solid first step in reducing this threat, but it will not be nearly enough to stem the tide of destruction and loss caused by poor password hygiene. The Verizon report also showed that nearly 3/4 of breaches are financially motivated, while only a small percentage (21%) were related to cyberespionage.
With this type of additional data in hand, it is hoped that organizations will be able to pitch the value of multi-factor authentication to overcome any concerns by business users as well as the cost differential involved in implementing these advanced security measures. Without multi-factor authentication in place, your business is simply one weak or default password away from providing bad actors with easy access to your sensitive business information.
