The rain and gloom of late February and most of March appears to be blowing away. Instead Autumn has appeared early with gusts of leaves covering everything. Something similar to our sales cycle!
We are going to be developing a social media plan after a workshop run by the Call Centre HUB. This was inspirational and gave clear guidelines on how to make this interaction effective. We will need to work it consistently - something we've not done to date. For Judith, it is a new focus and a learning curve.
Are these skills something you would like to develop for either your company or yourself? If so, have you considered finding out about your local Toastmasters' chapters? A company can even charter its own in-house group. Toastmasters' training is highly interactive, interesting and stimulating. It is a non-threatening way to achieve both leadership and communication skills at a relatively low cost.
Judith joined Transformer Toastmasters in June 2012 to hone her skills. She completed her Competent Communicator course last November and is now working on her Competent Leader and Advanced Communicator. What has she achieved in doing this?
An ability to think on her feet when being interviewed; more effective listening skills and a greater retention of information delivered by others in meetings. Also a greater empathy with other speakers' problems, all in all a real and ongoing growth experience.
With the high levels of computer equipment theft at present, here is a solution which enables you to track and trace. This defeats the thieves and protects your assets.
Please contact Judith or Willy for quotes
Last time we mentioned how you can make your e-mails look more professional by adding a signature. However, the Signatures feature can be used for more than just your standard signature. You can create signatures for all sorts of purposes, perhaps corresponding to the various roles you play: One for business, another one for personal e-mails, a third for your spouse and/or lover, one for writing to newspapers, another when e-mailing as chairman of the PTA or Toastmasters, and so on.
To use any of these, in Outlook 2010 or 2013, create a new e-mail or a reply. On the Message ribbon (the default), click the Signature button. This will pull down a list of all the signatures in your Outlook. Click on one, and it will replace the existing signature.
There are two specials running in this period:
Discounts to upgrade all Autodesk products to the current version, except for LT. This quarter's discount is 30% of the current upgrade cost. The 2008 legacy products are no longer upgradable. Thereafter all products will not be upgradable from 1 February 2015.
Product Design Suite Special
The message here is "Improve documentation and visualisation to win more deals and rise to the next level of professionalism"
Customers purchasing a Product Design Suite Standard will receive a free Inventor. If you purchase Product Design Suite Premium or Ultimate, then Inventor Professional will be given for free. In both cases the subscription on the Inventor give always will be optional. We would advise that you take it.
Please contact Judith or Willy for quotes
From 1 February 2015, upgrades of Autodesk products will no longer be available and all products will have to be brought new.
So keeping your subscriptions up to date now gives real value to your Autodesk product users. They include the following
For more information go to https://360.autodesk.com/landing and https://www.autodesk.com/subscription/overview.
Spending a fortune on pool chemicals? Why not abandon them and convert your pool to an eco-friendly one? By making one third of the pool an area for water plants both floating and growing in containers/boggy areas in the pool, you can have a sparkling pool which is user friendly not just for you but for insects and aquatic fauna as well. Cutting out the chemicals saves money as well.
We are looking at the "Data" tab on Excel 2010's Ribbon, now moving to the "Outline" group. The "Subtotal" button is used to summarise data. Excel uses the groups of data you select, automatically calculates subtotals and grand total values, inserts and labels the rows, and outlines the list for you.
A year ago we looked at the functions "Sort" and "Filter". As with those functions, a list must be organised with a single row of headings at the top of each column of data, with the data underneath in a contiguous block. We refer to this as Excel's "Database Format".
In order to have subtotals, you need some data to total. For example, consider the following:
| Year | Region | Sales |
| 2011 | Gauteng | R129,123 |
| 2011 | Limpopo | R36,018 |
| 2012 | Gauteng | R154,690 |
| 2012 | Limpopo | R63,004 |
| 2013 | Gauteng | R159,286 |
| 2013 | Limpopo | R91,785 |
It might be useful to have totals for both regions for each year. The items to be totalled must be in rows that are adjacent to each other, so sort your list using Data > Sort before you use subtotals. In this case, sort by year.
To create subtotals, click in the block of data. Go to the Data ribbon
and, in the Outline group, select the Subtotal option. In the
Subtotals dialog box (shown below left) first select the At each change
in option. This specifies
the column that contains the groups you want subtotals for ("Year", in this
case). The choice Use function
calculates the subtotal using the function you select. E.g. Sum; Count, Average,
Max, etc. ("Sum" in this case). Add subtotal to specifies the column(s) in which you want the subtotal to
appear ("Sales").
Click OK. The data will appear as shown on the right of the illustration above: New rows are inserted for each subtotal. To the left of the column containing the row numbers, new columns appear representing the grouping of the rows. The "minus" buttons allow you to collapse each level of grouping.
To remove the subtotals, again click the Data ribbon's Subtotal button. This time, in the dialog box, click the button, Remove All.
In the next issue, we will look at grouping, ungrouping, and subtotals in more detail.
Computius Say:
Guide to
Computer Terms:
"Microsecond" -- The time it takes for your State-of-the-art-computer
to become obsolete.
All the Best from the team!
Judith and Rick
Members, Communication in Action cc trading as Software Africa
"Empowering African Business with custom PC programs, databases, and templates using Microsoft technologies"
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