Disqus - Latest Comments for AdamV

Re: Speaking: Spend at least 1/3 of the time practicing the talk

AdamV — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 05:36:26 -0000

Great article, and good tip for a way to focus on the storytelling aspect rather than the slide deck. I also find that a lot of people do spend time practising what they will say on each slide (after spending hours crafting super shiny looking slides), but not on delivering the complete thing.

The bit that gets forgotten is to practice the segues from one slide to another, the bits that are not in the slide deck (those little white gaps between thumbnails on screen).

For sequences which are part of the same "idea" this is easier to manage, but when shifting gears or moving to the next topic, you need to know how you relate / compare / contrast / introduce the next slide. The only way for your talk to appear as one whole is to practice right through from start to finish, and doing that early in the design process seems to be a great way to start.

Re: Why “saving money” and “ROI” are probably the wrong way to sell your product

AdamV — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:16:27 -0000

Another issue with selling on the basis of cost savings is that they won't materialise for a while, if at all - you would still have 15 developers on staff, paid the same salary as before, even if they are producing more (or better) output, which may be even harder to measure.
Your customers have two options - realise the savings by cutting staff (or possibly overtime, which is even better than normal savings as it costs more per hour, and is harder to control and predict than salary), or don't save more, just deliver more, better, faster.
Depending on who you are talking to during your sales cycle, some people will get concerned about the idea that they can save 150 hours a month (say, with my 15 developers) if they might be the one who gets canned to realise these otherwise mythical savings.
Slightly different if development is being outsourced or using short term contractors when it is easier to turn saved time into saved money at the end of their contract.

Re: Do You Want To View Only the Webpage Content That Was Delivered Securely?

AdamV — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:08:20 -0000

Not sure if you can fix this by adding the site that the insecure content is coming from to your trusted sites too (I think if you only have your CRM site in there it won't work, or it may just be that it fails if they are not in the same domain).
Of course, a much better and more secure solution would be to ensure that any custom pages used are also delivered securely using SSL, then you never have the problem.

Re: How to Create Automatic Follow-up Activities in CRM 2011

AdamV — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:35:46 -0000

A useful technique and one I have used in the past with a few variations, thanks for sharing!

Instead of or as well as a picklist for the activity type, I have sometimes used a "follow up with..." picklist with choices such as "Phone tomorrow", "Phone 3 days", "Task next week". This can be quicker to use than putting an explicit due date, and just uses logic in the workflow to figure out the right combination. It is great for rapid turnaround in environments such as outbound sales calls - person is out? follow up with a call tomorrow or three days time, say, and close this one (rather than change due date, as I may be measured on my call volumes). A combination of this plus a due date can give full flexibility (eg you agree to call tomorrow at an explicit time rather than just now+24 hours).

Follow up notes field is a good idea, and I would strongly caution against the alternative: "Another option is use the OOB description field. This would allow the
user to keep a running track of notes associated with the activity."
Users can quickly end up with huge long narratives that show every part of every conversation ever. "in the beginning there was a call..."
This is not only unwieldy, but can hit the field length limit and end up truncated.

In fact, I normally do it the opposite way round - I have a field called "previous notes" which is a copy of the description of the preceding activity, and is shown read-only on the following activity (I would also hide it if empty using a script on the form). User does not have to explicitly choose to type in description and / or follow up (or copy and paste). Every activity then shows the details of the last interaction and the user adds details of the current one in description.

As a bonus, create relationships between the relevant activities so you can actually have a link back to the previous record shown to enable the user to backtrack through the conversation if they do need to get at older notes.

Re: Use JavaScript in Dynamics CRM to Set the Value in Read-Only Field on a Form

AdamV — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:45:08 -0000

I agree with Jan, simply using the setSubmitMode for the field which needs to be saved regardless of being read-only has always seemed a good solution.

Forcing a save on changing a field might have undesired effects (ie the user can't cancel their other changes by abandoning the form) quite apart from the interruption to the user's flow in filling in the form while they wait for it to reload.

Re: Chart concept - a variation on the Venn diagram

AdamV — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:00:54 -0000

You can make this look a bit slicker and less like a lazy shortcut using rounded-corner rectangles for the large ones and a rectangle with only two round corners for the inner one (radius adjusted to match the others). Still not much more effort.
In PowerPoint 2010 there are "real" Venn tools to do union, intersect and so on to help create these overlapping shapes from anything - circles, stars, 'hand-drawn' looking shapes. definitely a bonus when you want shapes of widely varying sizes to represent different populations (maybe tech savvy is much larger than creative, and even smaller than both is a group of good presenters, and you want the overlap of all three as a sweet spot in the middle).
PPT team wrote about this here: http://blogs.msdn.com/power...

Re: How to scale an image to full-size in PowerPoint

AdamV — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:33:51 -0000

These kind of full-bleed images can be really powerful when used well. Great article on tidying up existing images on slides.
I've posted some tips on getting them right in the first place ie when inserting the original image, as well as thoughts about whether to add captions and titles.
http://wp.me/p2I5L-48

Re: Excel instead of PowerPoint as your presentation tool

AdamV — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:10:18 -0000

Works well for some contexts.
I've used it to show and explain the changes made to a spreadsheet model, having a series of tabs containing the original through to the final version, so formatting and positional changes could be seen one at a time and rationale for them explained.
Likewise I use Visio to present from so I can build up a diagram such as a flowchart or a schematic bit by bit rather than all at once - I copy the finished page, delete some bits, copy that, repeat until blank. Add a heading and off we go!

To kill gridlines in 2007 / 2010 go to View ribbon > untick "Gridlines"
Full screen mode is on the same ribbon (Esc to get out of it).

Useful to know shortcuts for navigation too when working in this way: CTRL + Page Up / Down goes to the previous / next sheet. ALT + Page Up/Down scrolls across a whole screen of columns.

To align shapes to the grid you are best off going to the Page Layout Ribbon, then Align > Snap to grid. That way the first shape is also aligned. Note that this setting does not align a new chart which you insert, but will align it when you resize (only the edges you actually move though, the opposite sides stay put).

You can align any shape on the fly without this setting by holding ALT while you drag a corner. I use this a lot when doing very small microcharts (although I will need it a lot less with the new in-cell sparklines features in 2010).

You may want to put charts on their own page - by default 2007 and 2010 put them on the worksheet. Right click > move chart > new sheet (or through Ribbon: Chart\Design > Move chart). Don't forget to give your sheets useful names to help you navigate to where you want to go.

Re: 9th Annual SysAdmin Day

AdamV — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:54:18 -0000

We just need to do more to promote it as much as possible! Also, the press always seem to tell everyone about it *on the day* which gives people no time to buy lovely gifts.
I've posted a calendar file so people can make sure they get a reminder this year - and every year!
http://veroblog.wordpress.c...

Re: Windows Live Writer – API Open (not really) – I Want To Download Existing Posts

AdamV — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:35:37 -0000

You *can* download old posts into Live Writer, I did this for a similar exercise as you to add a load of WP tags, and also to go back to old posts and fix some broken links etc.
If you go to File > Open, or the Open button on the toolbar, or the "More" button in the right hand pane under "Recently Posted" you get the general open dialogue.
Under the options for Drafts and Recently Posted you should have a third option with the name of your blog(s) on it.
Click this and it will download headings and a short extract from your existing posts, most recent first.
It only pulls down a few (I think 20 or 25) by default, but you can easily change this to show more using the dropdown box at the top of the dialogue - I have mine set at 100 and it remembers this for the next session.
This does not depend on .wpost files (good job since I only started using WLW after several months of blogging through the WP browser interface). It also does not generate .wpost files unless and until you download a particular article.

I hope this helps you to go build that tag cloud!