I upgraded to Windows Desktop Search 3.0 Beta a while back and continue to have some problems:

For some reason it's indexing my SD card (I have a Toshiba M200 tablet) and I can't make it stop.

It isn't indexing my Contacts or Calendar in Outlook.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled (with a few problems doing so) and it still isn't working right.  I'm eagerly awaiting an update...

I'm going to have to upgrade our SBS 2003 server one of these days.

I've been using my Motorola Q now for less than a week and am blown away (even without the Direct Push email that R2 promises).  I never thought I'd like the Smartphone over good old Windows Mobile Phone Edition, but what a job Microsoft has done! I remember this thing being talked about in development in about 2000.  It occurs to me that it was code-named Stinger, and is it ever.

The perfect marriage of Windows and Telephone UI. 

Much has been written about business process analysis.  There are articles about Use Cases, Sequence Diagrams, and more.  It's my opinion that most small businesses can avoid this level of complexity when they're trying to understand their business processes, and can instead focus on understanding the roles and responsibilities of people as a start.

One tool that I like to use is a high level diagram that correlates responsibilities with individual people (or small teams), and can then be used to deconstruct the responsibilities to tasks and process flows.  I call it a responsibility diagram.  If you work in a small business, you likely have many jobs to do-- understanding these jobs is a great place to begin.  Here's an example from a small business that sells sewing project kits online:

Admittedly, this is a bit of a hybrid of several UML diagrams, but what it's really designed to do is get a small business owner (decision maker) thinking about the high level processes and lead them into decomposing them into more manageable workflows.  Once we've got this diagram, we can rename the person to a role, in this case, a suitable role name might be "Order Taker".  This will help to separate the tasks from a person, and may make it easier to identify responsibilities that should more naturally fall on other people.  In this example, why wouldn't the Inventory Adjustment be done by Kelly.

I call the rectangular box the responsibility boundary, and once the responsibility changes, the flow would be illustrated in another box.  Similarities to Use Case Diagrams and Sequence Diagrams are obvious to the initiated, but to the business owner, it's still a simple diagram that portrays the work their people do in an easy to understand way.

In Part 3, we'll talk about what happens when a responsibility crosses boundaries to another role.

Our city (and province) finds itself in a unique situation.  The local economy is booming thanks to high global oil prices, and the proximity of the Fort McMurray oil-sands, one of the largest oil deposits in the world.

Property values are up, retail sales are up, unemployment is way down, people from coast to coast are coming here to find work. Unfortunately, this leaves many small businesses scrambling to find staff.  It seems that everywhere you look in the city, you'll see a "Now Hiring" or "Help Wanted" sign.  In fact, the MacDonald's restaurants have taken to posting their pay rates on those portable roadside signs, and they're pretty competitive.  Our business is no stranger to this--- we're recruiting aggressively, advertising in numerous mediums.

One thing that a small business can do to be more efficient with what staff they do have is something the big guys have been doing for a while now--- Business Process Analysis.  Understanding what your company does and how it does it, and then documenting it in detail is the first step to improving efficiencies.

This series of posts will highlight some simple techniques that a small business can use to analyze, understand, and improve its business processes.  Please stay tuned.

On October 16th, Bell will begin selling the Q.  The great news is that it's shipping with MSFP (Messaging and Security Feature Pack).  This is an important component that allows the devices to receive direct push email, as well as to be wiped remotely in case they're lost (see my message from yesterday).

This phone will level the playing field for small businesses, allowing them to have enterprise "blackberry like" service on the powerful Windows Mobile platform.  For example, imagine the same device being used for a custom designed field application that allows remote data collection, reference, and collaboration.  Check out the sample application "TaskVision" to understand what I mean.  It's a task management application that uses web services to allow various types of smart clients (a Windows Mobile app included) to authenticate and synchronize remotely.  I suspect with some work, it could be designed to allow "push" distribution as well.

So, it happened.  I'm usually pretty careful, but yesterday, I lost my iMate KJam.

I left it on a seat in the Vancouver airport departure lounge (Gate A3) while I went to the bathroom.  Within about 5 minutes, I realized I left it and rushed back, but it was gone.  According to some other passengers, a guy picked it up and walked away.

So, all my data is backed up, and any sensitive information is protected, and there WAS a sticker on it with my home phone number and such, but nobody has phoned me. 

Lessons?

1) Use the new features of Windows Mobile and Exchange to allow your phone to be remotely wiped.

2) Always put some form of contact information on your devices (just in case someone with some integrity finds it.

3) Always back up your data, or better yet, don't store "one-off" data on your phone... ActiveSync allows you to store documents in a folder on your PC that's synchronized to your device.

4) Have a plan, and keep the information in your wallet or purse.  That is, I should have had a list of steps I needed to take, like commencing a remote wipe, as well as the phone number for my carrier's customer support line and phone numbers of key contacts that I have stored in my phone and nowhere else.

5) Try to have a backup phone at home somewhere that you can reactivate quickly in an emergency.  My carrier doesn't have a very good "Lost or Stolen" program.

6) Prepare yourself emotionally.  I loved my KJam.  It was imported (I bought it at MEDC in 2006), so replacing it will be next to impossible in the short term.

7) If you see a situation like this unfold (like the passengers that saw the guy pick it up), intevene... ask the guy where he's going and make him turn it in to someone in authority (in this case, the gate agent).

8) If it's possible, have it surgically attached.

Cheers

Vancouver is a great city, especially if you want to think.  I left Edmonton this afternoon to go visit my brother for Thanksgiving in Whistler.  My flight got in a little too late to drive up the Sea to Sky Highway, so I'm spending the night in the Westin Bayshore.  My room is amazing... rather, the view is amazing.  I overlook Coal Harbor, with Stanley Park in the foreground and Grouse Mountain in the background (and Whistler is somewhere beyond that).

There's something kind of mystical about these mountains. I lived in them about 20 years ago. If you head about an hour north of Vancouver, something about them brings you in touch with nature. You find yourself breathing a little better and relaxing a little easier.

Anyway, it's a perfect vantage point to do a little thinking about business and technical stuff with a clear head.  Very refreshing.

I think Outlook 2007 is terrific.  There are some great new features and for the most part, you can tell that the developers put tons of effort into usability.  But I do have one complaint...

When I expand the Folder List, I would expect that I could drag one of the folders from my mail store to the little "shortcut bar" on the left (I don't know what it's really called, so I indicate it in the picture here).  My expectation based on some other functionality in Windows and Office and such is that it'd create a shortcut.  It doesn't.

Hmmm... this looks new... I've been waiting for this for a while.  This is an add-in that allows you to synchronize your business contacts and a subset of your communication history to your Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC.  Though it's beta, it might be worth a look.

 I haven't had the time to confirm what magic makes this work, but I've got SharePoint and Adobe playing well with each other.  I'm using SharePoint 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional. I can now:

1. check out a PDF file
2. Edit it in Acrobat (by choosing "Edit in Adobe Acrobat" from the drop down menu in the document library)
3. Save it (back to the document library)
4. check it back in

This is all just like the way it works in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

First, begin following the directions in KB article 837849, then when you're at step 2b, add the following text inside Mapping XML element: 

EditText="Adobe Acrobat" OpenControl="SharePoint.OpenDocuments"

so that the entire element looks like this:

<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="NameofIconFile.gif" EditText="Notepad" OpenControl="SharePoint.OpenDocuments"/>

Small business people can drown in paper. We see it here in our office. Every day, we get paper from all directions and we're never sure what do do with some of it. Seems like the day after you throw something away or shred it, you find you needed it.

 Solutions to scan to PDF have existed for some time, but Fujitsu has done a great job of making it affordable for small businesses.The ScanSnap S500 sells for less than $500 bucks Canadian, and has terrific output. It's as easy as pushing one button and a text searchable ("OCR-ed") PDF document gets saved into a folder of your choice.

Weaknesses? At first glance, there's little control over this thing programmatically, or beyond the out-of-the-box "ScanSnap Organizer". For example, on our Small Business Server network, our SBS server has network fax enabled. Wouldn't it be nice if this thing could be used to scan directly to this service without having to open up the document and "Print to Fax"?

Furthermore, with Windows SharePoint Services, and a PDF iFilter installed, these searchable documents can live in a document library whose contents can be indexed... that piece of paper can now be found by anyone in the company using SharePoint search. It would sure be nice if this thing had support for WSS out of the box...