Enjoy Office business intelligence - data such as people

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This post is brought to you by Steve Tullis group program manager of the Office business intelligence team.

This is the third introductory post from the Excel family - Office BI. If you have not read Jane's post about the Excel client, or Dan's post about the browser-based versions of Excel, I encourage you to do so, as they are great overviews and provide foundational information about how we decided in what to invest, and how those investments are manifest in the Excel products. In this post, I will share the business intelligence specific story which is designed to provide an end-to-end experience that both empowers end users to have a great conversations with their data, and enables IT to manage the risk inherent with empowered end users.

At the beginning of this product cycle, we started with a fairly simple statement - empower you to gain insights from your data with proven and familiar Microsoft products that make it easier to work smarter and faster - and feel we've not only met the intent of that statement, but, in doing so, have changed the end user BI game. Let me explain...

Often, the first step in analyzing and exploring data is the hardest: I have data... how do I connect to it? Explore it? Shape it? Format it? Create visualizations based on it? Great questions! The answer is Excel 2013 which has what Jane in her blog post called "more smarts built in" - Excel understands your data, and your context, and helps you improve your productivity by:

· Recognizing how you are shaping your data, and suggesting how to finish more quickly with Flash fill

· Enabling you to quickly and easily preview and apply conditional formatting, suggest and create charts, Pivot Tables, and tables using quick analysis

· Introducing a new way for you to easily navigate multidimensional and tabular data models, and create trend charts to analyze information over time - quick explore.

Essentially, we have removing much of the start-up friction you may have experienced in the past. A few keystrokes and clicks of the mouse to select the best recommended options - and you well are great on the way to gaining insights from your data. And you don't have to be a professional analyst to get these results.

I'd like to make a bold statement: you now have the only self service end user BI tool you need in Excel 2013. The foundation, we started by introducing new analysis capabilities such as as the timeline slicer, calculated OLAP fields, quick explore building on Excel, then extending existing capabilities such allowing slicers directly on Excel tables. Not satisfied with that, we integrated the xVelocity in-memory engine directly into Excel - which means the ability to create and manage larger, more complex data models, as well as new features such as pivot tables across multiple Excel tables. Still not satisfied, we integrated the Powerpivot add - in to enable more advanced users to directly manage the in-memory data model. Wait... there's more... we then integrated power view which allows you to create compelling data visualizations designed to be highly interactive - essentially, a new mechanism for beautiful, immersive, ad-hoc analysis and reporting, directly in Excel. Together, this means that when you install Excel, it is likely the only self service end user BI tool you need.

And here's another bold statement: all data is in Excel experience. You want your data, analysis and exploration when and where you need it Excel 2013 investments that support:

· End user tools beyond the desktop. We continue our BI related investments in browser-based Excel adding support for query tables, the field list / well to allow re-pivoting of your PivotTable and PivotCharts, etc. We therefore made sure new investments, such as timeline slicers, xVelocity integration, and power view integration are also supported via the browser.

· Sharing your analysis and insights. 2013 brings the next release of PerformancePoint services, further enabling your corporate dashboard and score card needs. Additionally, enhancements in Excel services allow easier embedding, so you can have your data in its most effective context.

· Easily consume other data. Excel interactive view, described in Dan's post, provides a one-click solution which automatically presents data in an interactive view complete with custom filters and charts, bringing the power of Excel to the Web. Learn more on ExcelMashup.com.

These investments take the power of Excel beyond the desktop - viewing, editing, analyzing, exploring, embedding, sharing and consuming enabled for the top browsers and devices on the market.

For end users, information workers, and BI professionals, this blog post has described amazing new capabilities and opportunities... for the IT professional, it has likely raised your stress level: you can just imagine a proliferation of spreadsheets containing corporate data in massive models; essentially less control over data and where and how users are leveraging that data.

This section is for you - the IT professional or the corporate compliance manager. We have introduced a new suite of capabilities:

· SpreadSheet compare, which allows you to compare any two versions of a spreadsheet to see what has changed.

· The inquire add - in which helps organizations automate inventory, risk management, analysis, auditing, and remediation for critical spreadsheets.

· The audit and control management (ACM) server which discovers, analyzes and manages critical spreadsheets and ships as part of SharePoint Server

These capabilities are designed to help end users, risk and managers, and IT professionals manage compliance your risk and compliance needs.

Wow. Seems like a lot. And the info above is just the introduction - future blog posts will provide additional details and examples. But, ultimately, have we changed the end user BI game? I think so. Try it, and I think you'll agree.

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The new People Hub in Outlook 2013

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Ever wonder what's going on with the person you haven't spoken to in a while?  Want to find out what's new with someone before sending them an email or giving them a call? If you do, Office 2013 is the product for you.

Office 2013 brings all the people you care about in one place. You can view contacts from multiple email accounts, and updates from social networks, including Facebook and LinkedIn. Office 2013 makes it easy for you to get things done with people.

If you are like most people, you have contact information spread across multiple different sources. For example, Wendy is a Facebook friend, a LinkedIn connection, and I have her personal mobile number saved in Outlook. In Office, I can see all of Wendy's data from these various sources in one place:

 Office 2013 Contact Card

To see a person's Facebook and LinkedIn data inside Office, you just have to connect Outlook to these social networks. You can do so very easily by going to File > Account Settings > Social Network Accounts. Type in your username and password for Facebook and LinkedIn, and Office will present contact data, pictures, recent activity, birthday etc. from these sources.

Office 2013 respects user's privacy settings on Facebook and LinkedIn. Office will only display your data from Facebook and LinkedIn if your privacy settings allow other's to view these data.

Here's what Wendy's "What's New" tab looks like:

"What's New" tab in Office 2013 Contact Card

This Contact Card can be shown by hovering, clicking, or double clicking, on a person anywhere in Office, including, but not limited to comments in Word, contacts in Lync, and email recipients in Outlook etc.

The People view, seen by clicking the People button in Outlook 2013 has also been refreshed. This clean, new UI makes it easy to quickly view a person's contact information (from all the different sources) in the Preview Pane. You can also easily communicate with your contacts by just one click, right from the Preview Pane.

Outlook 2013 People Hub

You can pin someone to your Favorites for easy access. That means you can pin people like commenters on your Word documents, Lync buddies, or PowerPoint authors to your Favorites. Later on, all you will need to do to see their contact information is hover on People as shown below:

 Outlook 2013 Favorites

The unified People Search is accessible from the People Peek (right above the Favorites section), and from the ribbon. It helps you find people from across all of your contacts; for example, your company's address book, people you frequently email, and supporting IM providers like Lync.

If you actively manage your contacts to keep their information up to date, you will love the new inline edit feature in Outlook 2013. Just hit the Edit button on the Contact Card, and start typing. For example, this powerful feature makes it easier than ever to add a field such as a second home phone number.

Office 2013 Contact Card edit experience

Try out these new, cool people centric features in Outlook today. Let us know in the comments section what you think!

--Rubaiyat Khan, Program Manager, Office People-Centric Experiences

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“It’s a nightmare for old people”

The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

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Helping people around the world with our technology

Our friends over at Microsoft Citizenship have numerous programs running worldwide designed to help create social and economic opportunities for people and businesses (such as nonprofit organizations) through the use of Microsoft technologies. To help tell stories of success and impact from these programs, they have created the Local Impact Map (LIM). LIM is an interactive map of the world that lets you pick choose different regions to see stories.

This week the LIM has been updated with several updates and improvements. When the LIM was first launched 2 years ago, it featured only 200 stories. But with 1,400 stories as of today, they had to make changes to the LIM that improves the organization of all those stories. The new LIM uses Bing Maps where little dots are used representing regions where you can discover stories. For example with the United States, dots represent the states. For other countries, dots represent regions within those countries. They even got things down to a specific region like Silicon Valley where a lot of activities take place through our programs.

So why am I blogging about this here? Well, as I mentioned above – these programs from Microsoft Citizenship use our technologies to help people around the world. That of course includes Windows! I thought I would share a few stories with you that serve as good examples of just how we’re helping people:

Helping Teleton Serve the Children of Mexico

Teleton is the largest private children’s rehabilitation system in the world serving over 113,000 children with disabilities in Mexico. When Teleton hosted their annual 24 hour telethon to raise funds for their network, Microsoft made a contribution of US 8.9 million U.S. dollars to the organization and Windows outfitted a number of the centers with Windows 7!

Boys & Girls Clubs Offer Camps on Technology and Leadership

In North Carolina, the Boys and Girls Club of America worked with Microsoft to host Technology Camps to help boost the skills of 11th graders who were looking to study in the IT field. Microsoft donated 100 copies of Windows 7 and Microsoft Office which were installed on laptops given to students.

Upgrading Family Support Centers

Nestwarme is an organization that provides technology support for families with disabled and chronically ill children. In order to streamline its employee and volunteer communication without raising overhead costs, the organization needed an upgrade in technology – and Microsoft helped!

These are just a few of many stories featured on the Local Impact Map highlighting how Microsoft made an impact with our programs to help people and businesses out. I am extremely proud of our company’s ongoing commitment to helping people around the world! For more information on the new Local Impact Map, I suggest reading this blog post from Jean-Philippe Courtois, President of Microsoft International.

One more thing…

The new LIM includes a new “Snapshot” feature. By clicking the little camera icon at the top right of the site, you can take a snapshot of your favorite stories. A URL is then created that you can share out to anyone you want who can then see your collection of snapshots of your favorite stories from the LIM. Click here to see the collection of stories I mention above from the LIM.

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Keep it clean, people: organize your slide presentation in sections (video)

In PowerPoint 2010 films, much like you would use folder, to your files organize organise the new sections feature. You can assign named areas to track groups of slides and colleagues to delete, when you work together owned areas. If you start with a blank slate, you can even sections to outline the topics in the presentation.

Check out this video to see how it works:

If you are looking for more info about sections, click on the following links:

--Erik Jensen

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Read receipts, and the people who need them

If the work in the perfect e-Mail message to write that, it's nice to know that someone has you all, receive and read it. Outlook has a feature that, that can help, but it is not a one-way street: the receiver must be prepared, cross it with you.

I like it this way to think about: If you order a meal in a restaurant, you know that the Chief has received your "message", because your food arrives a short time later (provided you the chef by annoyed too many proposals not yet). When it comes to e-Mail, but not things so black and white. How can you be sure that someone has received and actually read your message? To put it bluntly, you can know just for them, so that you... but you can do it. Can know you it is for the recipient to inventory if they have read (or even receive) your note, but it really decide to them is whether or not know.

Oh, people play games...

First let's find out how to set up message tracking. Because if you do not first, you can use it.

You have sent a very important message to people. They may be a teacher who wants to know that your pupils and students their homework got you by to them e-Mail. Or perhaps you take a survey in your company and want to make sure that everyone received and read ask the e-Mail to respond to the survey. In Outlook, you can set up a message so that each recipient has the option, you informed that they have: (1) the message received and read (2) the message.

You can be notified on a particular message, or you can it set up so that you be notified of all messages. Find out more in a minute.

You have now done all that you can do. But just because you have taken these steps does not mean that there is a 100% is sure thing, you know, if your recipient read your message. And why is that? I'll say it again: because it up to the recipient to let you know... is or not. See, while you have read about setting up message tracking, to change automatic response to read receiptsread. Your recipients have the option to send a read receipt whenever this is required, to never send, or, on a case by case basis, decide whether a send.

I therefore recommend news important to tracking only single. If people get a number of tracked messages, they are more likely to get irritated and just say the hell with it and never send a receipt.

Now that you know how to set up a read receipt, there are a few other things you can do to try to, keep track of things:

Now, for what I mean about read receipts? Can the component you are set up so that the recipient knows it request one, but it is up to you to decide whether she want to know, that she know, that you want to know whether you got your message.

And perhaps want to know it not. Perhaps you two have on some mind game sick little to go. I have no idea; still I care. My only part in this is learn about your options and then set you free, and are the most professional e-Mail senders can, that you be.

Crabby Office Lady of searches of the week: students: buy a PC and get a free XBox

Must not to help you find out the different channels you have tried? Answers Microsoft , the answers to your nagging problem can have.

Office partner

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