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Nearly 29 percent of the 353 IT executives who were polled in Computerworld’s annual Forecast survey said they plan to increase IT staffing through next summer. (That’s up from 23% in the 2010 survey and 20% in the 2009 survey.) Here are the skills that the IT executives say they will be hiring for: - Programming and Application Development–61% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 44% in the 2010 survey. This covers the gamut from website development to upgrading internal systems and meeting the needs of mobile users.
- Project Management (but with a twist)– The twist is that they’re not going to just be looking for people who can oversee and monitor projects. They also want people who can identify users’ needs and translate them for the IT staffers-the increasingly popular business analysts.
- Help Desk/Technical Support–Mobile operating systems have added a new dimension to help desk and tech support.
- Networking-This demand is being fueled partially by virtualization and cloud computing projects. The survey also revealed that execs will be looking for people with VMware and Citrix experience.
- Business Intelligence-Computerworld interprets this uptick to a focus shift in many companies, from cost savings to investing in technology. That will be nice if it pans out that way.
- Data Center-Virtualization and the Cloud could also be behind the increased need for IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration.
- Web 2.0-Tech skills centered around social media will be in demand, with .Net, AJAX and PHP as key back-end skills, with HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript, among others, on the front end.
- Security-Although down from 32 percent in the 2010 survey, security stays a top concern of IT executives.
- Telecommunications-The survey indicates a demand for people with IP telephony skills, and for those familiar with Cisco IPCC call center systems.
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You’re about to graduate from college and enter the IT workforce. What do you really need to know? What fundamental skills should you have before you step foot into that first interview? Sure, you should know IP subnetting and the fundamentals of firewalling, switching, and routing. But what about the everyday tasks you’ll need to be able to do in your sleep? We’re talking math students having a firm grasp on differential equations but not simple math. Indycar drivers not knowing the rules of the road. Authors not knowing how to write dialog — real fundamental stuff. Let’s take a look at 10 "in your sleep” tasks that every new admin should know. 1: Domain a computerIf you know how to add a computer to a workgroup, you should know how to add a Windows computer to a domain. This is basic stuff that will cause a department head no end of frustration if the staff can’t do it. Along with this task, you should know how to cache credentials on a computer. (This can be especially important for a laptop.) 2: Troubleshoot printingPrinting can easily become the bane of your existence. Never a "set it and forget it” piece of your workday, printing is constantly causing problems. You’ll need to understand all the many ways there are to troubleshoot local and network printing, as well as how to remove printers from the Windows registry in case of a more serious issue on the desktop machine. 3: Boot into Safe ModeIt’s inevitable that some machines will become infected with a virus that will require the use of a tool like ComboFix. When this happens, you will need to boot that computer into Safe Mode. I would like to say that any person who does not know how to boot into Safe Mode has no business in the IT industry — but I’ve seen this quite a lot over the years. F8 is your friend. Get to know it. Make sure you know how to boot into Safe Mode With Networking so you can further troubleshoot a machine that simply won’t behave in regular mode. 4: Install an OSThis is another must-know on the list of admin skills. If you’ve managed to get through college (or your first gigs as an admin) without installing an operating system, something is definitely wrong. IT admins should know how to install Windows 7/8, Windows Server, Linux, and Mac — at a bare minimum. It would also behoove you to know how to set up a dual-boot machine. 5: Manage users in Active DirectoryFrom my perspective, managing users in Active Directory is a constant job — whether you’re adding, removing, editing, locking, unlocking, or just resetting passwords. You’ll need to know how to find your way around Active Directory and how to manage the AD users. If you can’t do this, you will be scrambling to get up to speed the second you wind up working on a network that takes advantage of Active Directory. 6: Reset a password on a serverThis isn’t always as simple as resetting an Active Directory password. There might be times when you need to change an admin password on a non-AD machine (and know how that change can affect things like Acronis backups and such). You should also know how to reset passwords on a Linux server/desktop as well as on a Mac desktop. 7: Create an Outlook profile/accountSometimes, there is no choice but to blow away an Outlook profile to resolve Outlook issues. When this happens, you have to know how to remove the corrupt profile and add another. And if you’re in a Windows-centric environment, you can be sure this task will fall into your lap sooner than later. 8: Run chkdskHardware goes bad. Disks wind up with errors. At some point, you’re going to run into an issue that requires a disk be checked — and you won’t be able to do it using a fancy GUI tool. You need to know how to force a chkdsk at boot as well as be able to have the command automatically repair errors (so you don’t have to be present during the reboot/check). 9: Schedule a Windows Server backupThere are a number of reasons why you need to know how to schedule a Windows Server Backup. Even if you use third-party software for backup solutions, you will still need to take advantage of the only tool that can reliably flush an Exchange log (without having to resort to circular logging). Know how to schedule the Windows Server Backup and how to run one immediately. 10: Clear space on a C driveWhen the C drive fills up, bad things happen. If this is on a server, really bad things can hap
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Recently, I heard someone at a technology conference say that as Americans, we enjoy ubiquitous Internet connectivity. Although that statement might be true for some, I find that there are a lot of times when I have to do without Internet access. I live in a rural part of the south, and some days it seems as if my Internet connection goes down every time that the wind blows. I also travel almost constantly, and I’ve discovered that although most airports (and some airlines) provide Wi-Fi, there are still some places where you simply can’t get online. This article lists 10 ways of staying productive when you just can’t seem to connect to the Internet. Keep in mind that most of the items on the list are geared toward specific situations. For example, some are appropriate only for unscheduled outages, while others will work only if you plan ahead. 1: Use Windows offline foldersWhen I’m traveling, I can’t always depend on being able to access the files on the servers at my office. That being the case, I take advantage of the Windows offline files feature. It allows you to mark folders on network drives as available for offline use. The contents of the folders are then cached to the laptop’s hard drive. This way, I can always access my files, regardless of whether I am connected to my network. 2: Print what you’ll needEarlier this year, a friend wrote a book and the publisher asked me if I would help out with the technical editing. Unfortunately, there was a really tight turn-around time, and I had to fly to London the next day. My first instinct was to copy the manuscript to my laptop so that I could review the book while I was on the plane, but I knew that my laptop battery would never hold out long enough to get the job done. Since I knew I was going to be offline and without AC power for the duration of the flight — and since I really needed to get the review done — I printed a copy of the manuscript and worked from paper. Granted, it wasn’t the most elegant solution to the problem, but it worked and I met my deadline. 3: Find another way to get onlineThere are some situations when you just can’t get online. For instance, if you’re at 35,000 feet and the airline doesn’t offer Wi-Fi, you’re pretty much stuck. However, if you’re at home or at the office and the Internet goes down, the most sensible solution might be to find another connection. When my Internet service goes down and I have a lot to get done, I usually end up working from my cell phone or finding a coffee shop that offers Wi-Fi. 4: Take care of other neglected tasksI’m not always in the middle of a critical, deadline-driven project when my Internet service drops offline. So it doesn’t always make sense to pack up all of my stuff and go heading off to the nearest coffee shop. If I’m not super busy, I often try to use the outage as an excuse to get some neglected chores taken care of. For example, I might clean my desk or work on my latest travel expense report. 5: Take the Internet offline with youA few months ago, I was asked to write an article that compared a hand full of competing products. I was traveling at the time, and I knew that I couldn’t depend on having reliable Internet service. I had worked with the products enough that I knew what I wanted to say. But I needed some basic information off the vendor’s Web sites, such as pricing and system requirements. Thankfully, Internet Explorer can make Web page contents available offline. I simply cached the pages I needed before I left home so that I had them at my disposal while I was on the go. 6: Answer emailsAnother thing I do when I have no Internet access is answer email messages. While this might seem counterintuitive, it actually works well. Microsoft Outlook caches Exchange Server mailboxes in an .OST file. This means that Outlook can display your email messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar, even if it can’t connect to Exchange. This caching makes it possible to reply to email messages even without Internet connectivity. Of course, your replies are not actually sent until a connection to the mail server can be established. 7: Have an impromptu staff meetingIf you work in an office environment and your Internet service goes offline, one way to remain productive is to have an impromptu IT staff meeting. The outage may give you time to brainstorm, catch up on the status of various projects, and discuss issues that might ordinarily have been neglected. 8: Return phone callsAt the end of the day, I usually have a number of phone calls to return. And because my phone system is not based on VoIP, I can use the time that would otherwise have been wasted during an Internet outage to work through my call backlog. 9: Catch up on your readingSometimes, the unavailability of Internet service can be a blessing. The lack of connectivity gives you the opportunity to do things yo
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Recently, I heard someone at a technology conference say that as Americans, we enjoy ubiquitous Internet connectivity. Although that statement might be true for some, I find that there are a lot of times when I have to do without Internet access. I live in a rural part of the south, and some days it seems as if my Internet connection goes down every time that the wind blows. I also travel almost constantly, and I’ve discovered that although most airports (and some airlines) provide Wi-Fi, there are still some places where you simply can’t get online. This article lists 10 ways of staying productive when you just can’t seem to connect to the Internet. Keep in mind that most of the items on the list are geared toward specific situations. For example, some are appropriate only for unscheduled outages, while others will work only if you plan ahead. 1: Use Windows offline foldersWhen I’m traveling, I can’t always depend on being able to access the files on the servers at my office. That being the case, I take advantage of the Windows offline files feature. It allows you to mark folders on network drives as available for offline use. The contents of the folders are then cached to the laptop’s hard drive. This way, I can always access my files, regardless of whether I am connected to my network. 2: Print what you’ll needEarlier this year, a friend wrote a book and the publisher asked me if I would help out with the technical editing. Unfortunately, there was a really tight turn-around time, and I had to fly to London the next day. My first instinct was to copy the manuscript to my laptop so that I could review the book while I was on the plane, but I knew that my laptop battery would never hold out long enough to get the job done. Since I knew I was going to be offline and without AC power for the duration of the flight — and since I really needed to get the review done — I printed a copy of the manuscript and worked from paper. Granted, it wasn’t the most elegant solution to the problem, but it worked and I met my deadline. 3: Find another way to get onlineThere are some situations when you just can’t get online. For instance, if you’re at 35,000 feet and the airline doesn’t offer Wi-Fi, you’re pretty much stuck. However, if you’re at home or at the office and the Internet goes down, the most sensible solution might be to find another connection. When my Internet service goes down and I have a lot to get done, I usually end up working from my cell phone or finding a coffee shop that offers Wi-Fi. 4: Take care of other neglected tasksI’m not always in the middle of a critical, deadline-driven project when my Internet service drops offline. So it doesn’t always make sense to pack up all of my stuff and go heading off to the nearest coffee shop. If I’m not super busy, I often try to use the outage as an excuse to get some neglected chores taken care of. For example, I might clean my desk or work on my latest travel expense report. 5: Take the Internet offline with youA few months ago, I was asked to write an article that compared a hand full of competing products. I was traveling at the time, and I knew that I couldn’t depend on having reliable Internet service. I had worked with the products enough that I knew what I wanted to say. But I needed some basic information off the vendor’s Web sites, such as pricing and system requirements. Thankfully, Internet Explorer can make Web page contents available offline. I simply cached the pages I needed before I left home so that I had them at my disposal while I was on the go. 6: Answer emailsAnother thing I do when I have no Internet access is answer email messages. While this might seem counterintuitive, it actually works well. Microsoft Outlook caches Exchange Server mailboxes in an .OST file. This means that Outlook can display your email messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar, even if it can’t connect to Exchange. This caching makes it possible to reply to email messages even without Internet connectivity. Of course, your replies are not actually sent until a connection to the mail server can be established. 7: Have an impromptu staff meetingIf you work in an office environment and your Internet service goes offline, one way to remain productive is to have an impromptu IT staff meeting. The outage may give you time to brainstorm, catch up on the status of various projects, and discuss issues that might ordinarily have been neglected. 8: Return phone callsAt the end of the day, I usually have a number of phone calls to return. And because my phone system is not based on VoIP, I can use the time that would otherwise have been wasted during an Internet outage to work through my call backlog. 9: Catch up on your readingSometimes, the unavailability of Internet service can be a blessing. The lack of connectivity gives you the opportunity to do things yo
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Recently, I heard someone at a technology conference say that as Americans, we enjoy ubiquitous Internet connectivity. Although that statement might be true for some, I find that there are a lot of times when I have to do without Internet access. I live in a rural part of the south, and some days it seems as if my Internet connection goes down every time that the wind blows. I also travel almost constantly, and I’ve discovered that although most airports (and some airlines) provide Wi-Fi, there are still some places where you simply can’t get online. This article lists 10 ways of staying productive when you just can’t seem to connect to the Internet. Keep in mind that most of the items on the list are geared toward specific situations. For example, some are appropriate only for unscheduled outages, while others will work only if you plan ahead. 1: Use Windows offline foldersWhen I’m traveling, I can’t always depend on being able to access the files on the servers at my office. That being the case, I take advantage of the Windows offline files feature. It allows you to mark folders on network drives as available for offline use. The contents of the folders are then cached to the laptop’s hard drive. This way, I can always access my files, regardless of whether I am connected to my network. 2: Print what you’ll needEarlier this year, a friend wrote a book and the publisher asked me if I would help out with the technical editing. Unfortunately, there was a really tight turn-around time, and I had to fly to London the next day. My first instinct was to copy the manuscript to my laptop so that I could review the book while I was on the plane, but I knew that my laptop battery would never hold out long enough to get the job done. Since I knew I was going to be offline and without AC power for the duration of the flight — and since I really needed to get the review done — I printed a copy of the manuscript and worked from paper. Granted, it wasn’t the most elegant solution to the problem, but it worked and I met my deadline. 3: Find another way to get onlineThere are some situations when you just can’t get online. For instance, if you’re at 35,000 feet and the airline doesn’t offer Wi-Fi, you’re pretty much stuck. However, if you’re at home or at the office and the Internet goes down, the most sensible solution might be to find another connection. When my Internet service goes down and I have a lot to get done, I usually end up working from my cell phone or finding a coffee shop that offers Wi-Fi. 4: Take care of other neglected tasksI’m not always in the middle of a critical, deadline-driven project when my Internet service drops offline. So it doesn’t always make sense to pack up all of my stuff and go heading off to the nearest coffee shop. If I’m not super busy, I often try to use the outage as an excuse to get some neglected chores taken care of. For example, I might clean my desk or work on my latest travel expense report. 5: Take the Internet offline with youA few months ago, I was asked to write an article that compared a hand full of competing products. I was traveling at the time, and I knew that I couldn’t depend on having reliable Internet service. I had worked with the products enough that I knew what I wanted to say. But I needed some basic information off the vendor’s Web sites, such as pricing and system requirements. Thankfully, Internet Explorer can make Web page contents available offline. I simply cached the pages I needed before I left home so that I had them at my disposal while I was on the go. 6: Answer emailsAnother thing I do when I have no Internet access is answer email messages. While this might seem counterintuitive, it actually works well. Microsoft Outlook caches Exchange Server mailboxes in an .OST file. This means that Outlook can display your email messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar, even if it can’t connect to Exchange. This caching makes it possible to reply to email messages even without Internet connectivity. Of course, your replies are not actually sent until a connection to the mail server can be established. 7: Have an impromptu staff meetingIf you work in an office environment and your Internet service goes offline, one way to remain productive is to have an impromptu IT staff meeting. The outage may give you time to brainstorm, catch up on the status of various projects, and discuss issues that might ordinarily have been neglected. 8: Return phone callsAt the end of the day, I usually have a number of phone calls to return. And because my phone system is not based on VoIP, I can use the time that would otherwise have been wasted during an Internet outage to work through my call backlog. 9: Catch up on your readingSometimes, the unavailability of Internet service can be a blessing. The lack of connectivity gives you the opportunity to do things yo
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People are often afraid to hire entry level developers because they
are relatively expensive to hire and it can take months before their
productivity is high enough to justify hiring them. In addition, their
lack of experience makes it hard to evaluate their abilities before you
take them on. At the same time, bringing aboard entry level developers
can make for a good long term investment in your company if you are
willing to mentor them. Look for these 10 qualities in an entry level
programmer to have the best chance of success.
1: Good attitude
All employees should have a good attitude, but it is even more
important for entry level employees. They have a lot to learn, and the
wrong attitude will keep them from learning what they need to. Another
factor to consider is that the ROI on entry level developers is already
poor; their salaries are much higher than entry level employees in other
careers, and it can take months for them to meaningfully contribute to
the bottom line. When someone is a "long term investment” in the future
of the company, it is really important that they not make someone regret
having them around long term.
2: Computer experience
While it is true that the typical programmer does not need to spend
much time in server rooms or inside the guts of PCs, it is also true
that the more general and advanced computer experience they have, the
better able they are to understand how to fix problems with their code.
For example, I’ve spent a lot of my career as a systems administrator,
and I am constantly finding myself using tools and skills I learned
while working with servers to find and fix bugs in code. The more
computing experience an entry level developer can bring to the table,
the better.
3: Work ethic
What takes an experienced developer a few hours may take an entry
level developer a week. Clearly, it is critical that entry level
programmers be willing to put in the time. I am not saying that they
should be expected to work 60 hours a week and fire ‘em if they can’t!
But what I am saying is that there needs to be the attitude of
"I’m not happy until this task is done right,” and if that means paying
some dues, some dues need to be paid.
4: Ability to learn
Because entry level developers lag so far behind experienced
developers, they must be able to get their knowledge levels up quickly.
To make this worse, inexperienced developers can often cause friction on
the entire team, between the errors that need to be fixed and the help
that the rest of the team needs to provide. The longer an entry level
programmer takes to learn the job, the longer it takes for the company
to start seeing its investment pay off.
5: Educational history
Not every developer goes to college, and not every college makes good
developers. But educational history can provide an important
understanding of what someone’s capabilities and interest are. A person
with a science or math degree from a respected institution is likely to
have strong logic skills, for example.
6: Previous job experience
Even if someone is new to software development, it does not mean that
they are new to the workforce. Previous job history can tell you a lot
about who they are. I did not major in computer science, but I worked a
number of programming jobs and other computer jobs during college. On
the other hand, I saw people with CS degrees who were flipping burgers
in school. I really liked working with computers, and that’s why I was
working with them even when I did not need to be. Today, I look for the
same thing in entry level programmers.
For "second chancers” (people who are making a major career shift),
the previous job experience can be useful to know about. There are a lot
of other jobs out there that hone the raw skills that go into a good
developer, and it gives these folks a big leg up when they start writing
code.
7: Lack of preconceived notions
The development industry is filled with dogma. And so long as that
dogma is well founded, there is nothing wrong with it. Sadly, too many
entry level developers parrot something a professor or online pundit has
said, without fully understanding the reason or context. Or worse, they
are stuck on an idea that isn’t very good to begin with. Good entry
level programmers will respect the opinions of their teachers and
mentors but be willing to hear new ideas and approaches to problems.
8: Passion for programming
It is pretty easy to separate those who went into development for a
paycheck from those who went into it because they were interested in it.
Finding the folks with a real desire to be in this industry is
critical, because when the chips are down, things like "work ethic” and
"good attitude” depend heavily on the desire to learn and grow in the
industry. And again, entry level programmers are a long term commitment.
If they’re just chasing a paycheck, you can bet that as soon as the job
you have given them sweetens their resume, they will be headed to
greener pastures.
9: Ability to ask questions
One of the most important things for an entry level developer to do
is to ask questions. When someone lets the fear of sounding foolish get
in the way of asking questions, it makes for a rocky relationship. A
good entry level developer is willing to ask questions because it is
better to spend a few minutes having a discussion than to lose two days
trying to track an answer down.
10: Soft skills
In many software development shops, the programmers are little more
than machines following a blueprint someone else made to crank out code.
But most places need programmers to do more than sit at a desk grinding
away. In my experience, soft skills, like written and oral
communications and the ability to work with others, are much harder to
teach than technical skills. If someone lacks these skills, it will be
hard to have the risk you take in hiring them pay off in the long run. |
Here’s a quick how-to guide on how you can track email to it’s originating location
by figuring out the email’s IP address and looking it up. I have found
this to be quite useful on many occasions for verification purposes
since I receive lots of emails daily due to my blog. Tracking the IP
address of anemail sendor does require looking at some technical details, so be ready to dig your heels in!
There are basically two steps involved in the process of tracking an email: find the IP address in the email header section and then look up the location of the IP address.
Finding the IP address of an email sender in GMail, Yahoo Mail, and Outlook
Let’s go ahead and take a look at how you would do this for Google, Yahoo and Outlook since those are the most popular email clients.
Google’s Gmail
1. Log into your account and open the email in question.
2. Click on the down arrow that’s to the right of the Reply link. Choose Show Original from the list.
Now here’s the technical part that I was telling you about earlier! You need to look for the lines of text that start with "Received: from". It might be easier to simply press Cntrl + F
and perform a search for that phase. You’ll notice that there are
several Received From’s in the message header. This is because the
message header contains the IP addresses of all of servers involved in
routing that email to you.
To find the first computer that originally sent the email, you’ll have to find the Received From that’s farthest DOWN. As you can see from the above image, the first one is from a computer called "aseem” with the IP address 72.204.154.191. Then it was routed to my ISP’s server at eastrmmtao104.cox.net and so on and so forth till it got to your email server.
The computer aseem is my personal home computer and
that’s my public IP address for my house! I’ll go through Yahoo and
Outlook before talking about tracking the location of that IP address.
Yahoo Mail Beta
1. Log into your account and open the email (if you’re using Yahoo
Mail Beta with the new preview interface, make sure you double-click on
the email so that it opens in a new tab)
2. At the top right, you’ll see there is a drop-down option where Standard Header is selected by default.
3. Click on it and choose Full Header.
Again, you’ll see the same information as before, just in a different window:
Microsoft Outlook
1. Open the email in Outlook by double-clicking on it
2. Go to View at the top menu (the menu options for the email, not the main Outlook window) and choose Options.
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During the hiring process, employers generally look for job
seekers with good communication and technical skills, but now there’s
another skill many are searching for. In the IT, engineering, healthcare
and repair industries, recruiters are hunting for candidates with
robotics skills.
Over 6,000 online job ads listed robotics as part of the job description in May 2012 according to wantedanalytics.com. This number is up 29% since May 2011.
So what does this mean for jobseekers in these industries? I spoke to Bill Peppler, managing partner of national staffing firm Kavaliro, about the ever-evolving IT skill sets employers are seeking.
1. What are you seeing as the hottest jobs in IT? and, by
"hottest,” do you mean the jobs that are in most need of candidates, or
jobs that are cool and that IT pros are competing for?
According to a CareerBuilder Talent Compensation Report provided to
Kavaliro a survey of 1000 .NET Developers and employers across the
country revealed an average annual salary of $85,863, with top salaries
reaching well into the six-figure range. Yet despite the lofty
compensationthat is on the table, employers continue to report of
difficulties in hiringand retaining top .NET Developer talent in the
midst of unprecedented demand for their services. Much of that demand is
driven by the explosion of web-based services and applications, as
more and more business is conducted via computer systems.
We all know that much has changed about the way we do business over
the past decade. Increasingly, we find ourselves becoming more
dependent on computer systems as a means of exchanging data, as older,
morecumbersome technologies continue to be phased out. One area that has
seen explosive growth in recent years is web-based services, generally
defined as the collective technology for transmitting and accessing
data over the Internet.
Enhancing existing systems or implementing new web-based services
(both internal and external) can lead to greater efficiency,
simplification of use, and ultimately, increased revenue. As companies
rush to integrate these web services through new applications, the role
of the .NETDeveloper has never been more important. As the builders of
the Framework upon which a majority of these web services and
applications are based, their services have never been in greater
demand. This demand is reflected in theglut of open developer positions
on job boards throughout the country, and the increasing wage rates
for seasoned developers.
2. What are the best industries for the area of information technology?
The hottest areas continue to be areas related to software services.
Any product that helps reduce costs or helps increase revenue and
profit to a company’s bottom line is in high demand.
3. You mention a rise in robotics skills? Why do you think that is? What can IT pros do to gain expertise in the area of robotics?
Although impermanent, the increase in robotics-related careers could
be a result of the economy picking up. Previously, companies outsourced
many of these jobs. Today, businesses are straying away from that route
due to increased salaries overseas, and turning to US workers to fill
the void.
The attraction to robots lies in their increase of product quality
and productivity, while decreasing manufacturing costs. The demand is
felt most in the pharmaceutical, medical, food, aerospace and
electronics industries as a result of new applications. The most sought
after skills include a firm grasp of electronic, mechanical and
hydraulic systems, the aptitude to execute tasks with mechanical
accuracy, as well as, the application of mathematical formulas to
robotic systems and projects. In addition to normal job skills, i.e.
theability to work well with related industry professionals and prime
organizational skills.
You do, however, need a degree to work in the field, so for those seeking to start a new career, schooling/training is required. |
How to Use Google Calendar as a Project Management Tool
Google Calendar is great for managing appointments,
but that's not all it can do. The sharing, searchability, timeline view,
and other features make Google Calendar a simple but powerful project
management tool. Andrea Vascellari, digital marketing consultant and CEO of itive.net, shares how you can use Google Calendar for your team and with your clients.
Do you need a great tool to better manage your team, timelines,
deadlines, relevant project's data for you and for your clients? Here's
how Google Calendar can help you out.
 Create a calendar for each project
– To preserve client privacy I temporarily changed the title of each
calendar you see in this first screenshot. The syntax though remains the
same, ‘year' (11=2011, 10=2010, etc.) and then the ‘name of the
project'. Using a proper syntax helps you to keep your calendar in order
and makes them easier to browse/search.
Sharing – Share the calendar with the members of
your team involved in the project. You can even share calendars with
clients if they express the need to monitor the stream of activities and
project deadlines. I've been in this situation a couple of times.
Timeline – By placing the tasks on the calendar
you'll automatically turn each calendar into a detailed project's
timeline. I found the ‘agenda' view particularly valuable because it
gives a clear overview of the upcoming deadlines you have set.
Manage client access – Like I said above when I was
talking about ‘sharing', sometimes you can plan to give (or the clients
want to have) access to the calendar/timeline. A problem I faced is that
in complex projects you might want to create two versions of the
calendar. One for the team with the technical details they need/want to
edit during the project development, and a second one for the client
with all its relevant information (periodic results, deadlines, key
data, meetings, etc.). On larger projects you can create dedicated
calendars for multiple teams, too.
Problem solving – With every project comes a good
number of problems, roadblocks or issues. Often these issues are spotted
by members of the team while they are taking care of their tasks. What
can be done? The member of the team that is facing the problem writes it
in the calendar as an ‘all day' entry adding his/her name next to it.
Other members of the team, that can/know how to solve the issue, take
care of it or write on the entry tips on how to solve it. Once the
problem is solved the entry will be marked as FIXED. If at the end of
the day the problem is still not fixed, it can be moved (click &
drag) to the next day or to a different date. I know that at first this
might not sound easy or natural but I can guarantee you that, once you
get into it, it will help you working faster and better with your team.
It's like an open and on-going problem solving channel. Of course, the
internal organization of how and who takes care of solving problems can
change from company to company and team to team. You can really take
this to the next level by enabling your team to add the ‘mobile'
component to it (check the links I shared at the end of this post to
learn how to sync these features with your iPhone).
Hashtags # – I mentioned the use of hashtags for
internal data management in a couple of other posts but I'll bring it
back in this one, too. Google calendar is searchable (I'll never get
tired to remind it!). This is very important because it turns our
calendar into a database. Using hashtags in our calendar's entries helps
us in searching and tracking specific items over time. Use a unique
hashtag for each project you work on. The tags are the same I use with
my team in tweets and shared content (photos, video, etc.). Result?
Whenever I search for a hashtag I'll get a complete list of the
performed tasks with relative date and time. Here's where things get
interesting, go on reading the next point…
Export data (PDF) – Every calendar, search results
or specific layouts (day, week, month, 4 days, agenda) are printable and
therefore exportable in PDF format. This is really handy when you need a
summary of the work you've done (you can get it by searching for a
specific hashtag related to a project) or for the list of future tasks
of your project (printing/PDF the ‘agenda' layout is what works at best
for me). Believe it or not there might still be occasions in which
people will ask you for a PDF version of the data. It happened to me
with external teams and clients (especially government and public
organizations, they often still need something to print out on paper.
Well yes they could access it online but… you go and figure that out).
What makes Google Calendar a great tool is its simplicity. I'm sure
there are many other ways it can be used to help with project
management. In this post I shared my tips & suggestions, what about
yours? |
Takeaway: HTML5
offers new tags and attributes that provide more power, efficiency, and
flexibility for your Web development. Here are 10 tags you’ll want to
check out.
HTML5 brings a host of new elements and
attributes to allow developers to make their documents more easily
understood by other systems (especially search engines!), display data
more uniquely, and take on some of the load that has required complex
JavaScript or browser plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight to handle.
Here are 10 new items in HTML5 that will make it easier for you to write
your Web sites.
1: <video> and <audio>
One of the biggest uses for Flash, Silverlight, and similar
technologies is to get a multimedia item to play. With HTML5 supporting
the new video and audio controls, those technologies are now relegated
to being used for fallback status. The browser can now natively display
the controls, and the content can be manipulated through JavaScript.
Don’t let the codec confusion scare you away. You can specify multiple
sources for content, so you can make sure that your multimedia will play
regardless of what codecs the user’s browser supports.
2: <input> type attributes
The venerable <input> element now has a number of new values
for the type attribute, and browsers do some pretty slick things
depending on its value. For example, set type to "datetime” and browsers
can show calendar/clock controls to pick the right time, a trick that
used to require JavaScript. There is a wide variety of type attributes,
and learning them (and the additional attributes that go with some of
them) will eliminate the need for a lot of JavaScript work.
3: <canvas>
The <canvas> tag gives HTML a bitmapped surface to work with,
much like what you would use with GDI+ or the .NET Image object. While
<canvas> isn’t perfect (layers need to be replicated by using
multiple canvas objects stacked on top of each other, for example), it
is a great way to build charts and graphs, which have been a traditional
weak spot in HTML, as well as custom graphics. And that is just a
start!
4: <header> and <footer>
The <header> and <footer> tags are two of the new
semantic tags available. These two tags do not get you anything above
and beyond <div> for the actual display. But they will reap
long-term rewards for your search engine efforts, since the search
engines will be able to tell the difference between "content” and things
that are important to the user but that aren’t the actual content.
5: <article> and <section>
The <article> and <section> tags are two more semantic
tags that will boost your search engine visibility. Articles can be
composed of multiple sections, and a section can have multiple articles.
Confusing? Not really. An article represents a full block of content,
and a section is a piece of a bigger whole. For example, if you are
looking at a blog, the front page might have a section for the listing
of all the posts, and each post would be an article with a section for
the actual post and another for comments.
6: <output>
The new <output> tag is unique, in that it expects its content
to be generated dynamically with JavaScript. It has a value attribute,
which can be manipulated through the DOM with JavaScript to change what
is displayed on the screen. This is much more convenient than the
current ways of doing things.
7: <details>
It seems like every Web site needs to have an expanding/collapsing
block of text. While this is easy enough to do with JavaScript or
server-side code, the <details> tag makes it even easier. It does
exactly what we’ve all been doing for years now: makes a simple block
that expands and collapses the content when the header is clicked. The
<details> tag does not have widespread support yet, but it will
soon.
8: <figure> and <figcaption>
<figure> is a container for content (typically images, but it
can be anything), and <figcaption> (which gets put inside the
<figure> tag) provides a caption or subtitle for the contents of
the <figure> tag. For example, you could have four images
representing charts of sales growth within a <figure> tag, and a
<figcaption> with text like "Year-to-year sales growth, 1989 -
1993.” The images would be shown next to each other with the text
running below all four.
9: <progress>and <meter>
<progress> and <meter> are similar. You use
<progress> for a task or a "measure how complete something is”
scenario. It also has an indeterminate mode for something that has an
unknown duration (like searching a database). The <meter> tag is
for gauges and measurements of value (thermometers, quantity used,
etc.). While they may look alike on the screen in many cases, they do
have different semantic meanings.
10: <datalist>
The <datalist> tag acts like a combo box, where the system
provides a pre-made list of suggestions, but users are free to type in
their own input as well. There are tons of possible uses for this, such
as a search box pre-populated with items based on the user’s history.
This is another one of those things that currently requires a bunch of
JavaScript (or JavaScript libraries) to handle but that can be done
natively with HTML5. |
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