Outlook 2010 Cool Wall

Cleanup that mailbox!

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Outlook 2010 top 11 cool things – #5 Mailbox cleanup

As a lawyer you will undoubtedly have an Inbox that is at times out of control. I’ve seen some fantastic examples, item counts that are nudging the 40,000 mark and mailbox sizes that run into tens of gigabytes!

So how to control? Well good filing habits and tools like Autonomy’s EMM FileSite addin help, but there is always the good old fashioned way. Delete!

In the backstage view of Outlook 2010 there’s a nice prominent button called Cleanup Tools and in here there’s a great feature that’s no longer hidden away, Mailbox cleanup.

From here you’ll get a nice dialogue where you can quickly see the size of your Mailbox and find those emails that you are happy to get rid of.  By searching for all those large emails from months ago.

I know these features have been in previous versions of Outlook, but I like in 2010 how they are brought to the surface in a more prominent place. Also it’s always good to keep on top of your Mailbox, a very large mailbox is a major cause of Outlook performance and stability problems!

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Outlook 2010 and booking meetings

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Outlook 2010 top 11 cool things – #4 Booking meetings

Staying on the calendar/meeting theme the next feature in Outlook 2010 I want to point out is the assistance you get to help find a suitable time slot for your meeting. If you’ve a dept. that is anything like mine, finding a suitable point in the day/week for all the people you want to pull together can be a bit of a challenge!

In Outlook 2010 there is a neat pane on the right hand side of your appointment that can help.

At the top is a calendar which colour codes each day indicating whether the day is goo/fair/poor for booking the meeting. Below at the bottom are suggested times, these are ordered from best to worst slots.

If you set up meeting rooms in Exchange 2010 you can also see available rooms in the middle section.

On receipt of the request that person will see another cool feature in Outlook 2010. A nice calendar preview allowing you to see immediately where the meeting fits into your schedule, saving you from having to jump across into your calendar to check before accepting or rejecting the meeting request.

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Outlook 2010 Cool Wall

Overlay mode in calendars

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Outlook 2010 top 11 cool things – #3 Overlay mode and Group calendars

First up group calendars. Yes I know they’ve been around for a while in Outlook, but I think they’re pretty cool and worth a mention before moving onto Overlay Mode.

Basically from the calendar ribbon I can select Calendar Groups->Create New. From here I can create a calendar group from a distribution list. This creates a group with links to all the peoples calendars that are in that distributiuon list. Best of all is that my list of calendars will stay up to date as people leave or are added to the distribution list!

Now the next cool feature of Outlook 2010, Overlay Mode. From my list of calendars I can select those I want to view. I then get a nice colour coded view of all our calendars.

I can then use the arrows to the left of the persons name in the “calendar tab” to overlay all the calendars into a single view. This is really helpful when trying to identify when you can fit in that meeting!

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Outlook 2010 Cool Wall

Quick Steps

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Outlook 2010 top 11 cool things – #2 Quick Steps

These are basically shortcuts that allow you to do common tasks quickly, they are available on the Home ribbon so they are available without having to click elsewhere. In the example below (which is the default) I can quickly fire off an email to my boss with one click or fire off an email to my team.

Creating new quick steps is easy and I can set up actions to do pretty much anything. So perhaps I wanted a quick step to tag an email with a category and then move it to a particular folder or maybe just something simple that I do time and time again that I want available on the Home ribbon.

quicksteps-1

Finally today an extra feature as it works quite like a Quick Step.

Just to the left of the quick steps is a nice feature allowing you to reply to the recipients of an email with a meeting request. Pretty handy when, for example, you need to pull a quick meeting together with your project team.

quicksteps-2

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Outlook 2010 Cool Wall

Conversation views

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Outlook 2010 top 11 cool things – #1 Conversation views

One of my favourite features of Outlook 2010 is the Conversation view.

conversationview-1

Basically it’s a way to group all your emails in a thread regardless of which folder those emails are in.

So in the example above from my Inbox, the first two emails are unfiled. Then Outlook has pulled all the other emails in the thread together from sub-folders. Thus allowing me to see the whole conversation in one place.

When first expanding the thread Outlook will only show those most recent, I can then click expand again to see all the emails. These settings are configurable on the View ribbon -> conversation settings.

Another couple of new features that are related are worth mentioning at this point:

conversationview-2

Clean Up will remove superfluous messages from the thread and Ignore will remove any future messages from the thread. I’m not entirely sure about the latter one though!

One word of warning for those using WorkSite 8.5 SP2 u4 or less, there is a small problem with conversation views if you use the apply to ALL folders. Things work fine though if you just apply to folders one by one. Autonomy are aware of this and it is scheduled to be fixed.

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General IT

Back to blogging

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OK not really a post as such, but just a quick update in case you were thinking this blog had been left to gather dust!

The last few weeks at work have been pretty hectic as we are working on a programme that will introduce Windows 7 and Office 2010 across our firm. The thought of blogging about Legal IT after a world of pain caused by it was not an option (poor pun intended!)

Anyway the pain has dulled somewhat, so from tomorrow I’ll start a top 11 cool things in Outlook 2010 (it was going to be 10, but I didn’t know which of my 11 to cull!)

If you want to pass these on then use this link that will display all the posts collated together (it’ll dynamically pull in new ones as I put them up).

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General Legal IT

Another breakfast with BigHand

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Last week I attended one of the Bighand regional roadshows, held again at Gordons LLP in Leeds (I so wish other Legal IT vendors would do these local visits, why should the customer travel down to London all the time?).

I came away thinking there wasn’t much new in the latest releases. But then I guess that’s what a good piece of software should do, tweak a little but don’t add so many features that you ruin the core thing your software does well.

But there were a few new “tweaks”, some of which I’ve highlighted below. The information here is from my notes rather than any official press release, so if you like the look of a feature you may want to check with Bighand rather than trust my note taking! (For info, the notes were taken using the excellent OneNote app on the new Windows Phone 7, which auto syncs with the OneNote webapp via Microsoft’s SkyDrive. I’m drafted this blog post using said webapp on my PC and am finishing off using OneNote in Office 2010 – all integrated beautifully!).

New in v4 of Bighand.

Profiling

Profiling is available in v4. Similar to how a DMS (Document Management System) profiles documents you can do with your dictations. This then builds up title (saving the lawyer typing up a random title). This profile information can be populated from other systems e.g. Client matter information from the practice management systems. This profile information is then available in the BlackBerry client also.

Practice builder

An additional product that allows for a “drill down” interface as the starting point to get into your dictation. You select your client, “drill down” to the relevant matter and then start the dictation. It’s all about trying to make it easier to build a title without need to type it all in.

At the moment an xml file is used to populate the profile and “drrill down” information. But they say they are looking at a SQL connector in later releases.

Workflows

These have been expanded to allow multi-step workflows. For example, before a dictation is routed through to the secretary it could go through speech recognition and then a proofing step. It makes more use of the “attach file” functionality, allowing a much more complex (and useful?) workflow to be built. There are plans to look at hooking in 3rd party steps, although an SDK for the workflow is not yet on roadmap so it’s early days in the thinking.

Bookmarks

A small but pretty neat addition is allowing the adding of bookmarks at points in the dictation. So a fee earner could, for example, add a bookmark to ask their secretary to check a name as they’re dictating. Or a secretary could add things to clarify with the fee earner. This bookmark information is displayed in the application as each bookmark is passed when playing the dictation. It could be very useful in conjunction with the new multi step workflows.

Send anywhere

This function allows you to send a dictation to any secretary or department without the need to add a specific workflow to do it. It can still be configured to how you want.

There is also the ability to easily set dictation to confidential without need to set up specific options for this. This goes straight to the assistants folder. If a co-ordinator can see that particular workflow they would only see an item titled “confidential dictation”, but they would not be able to open it.

 

Improvements in speech recognition

The average processing time that Bighand see for 10min dictation on standard specification server is about 6mins (although there was feedback from the room that a firm using speech recognition was seeing processing that was a lot quicker – and they were just running on high power desktop. They were seeing a 30min dictation being processed in 2mins).

Other information Bighand gave was:

  • They fed back that they now have about 1000 customers using speech recognition now.
  • You can spread speech recognition across multiple servers for improved performance, but it does require its own server.
  • Typically it takes about 20-30mins of dictations to get it to learn your voice. There is an addin to Word where corrections are applied, which are then fed back to the system.
  • Works with a number of non English languages. Those mentioned were: German, Dutch, French, Spanish. There is a Legal dictionary available in some.
  • It was mentioned that it requires good training on how to dictate. Requires consistency in volume, consistency in how you dictate etc otherwise get worse recognition rates.

Pre-learning tool

They showed a new addition to speech recognition, the pre-learning tool. This can look at last 7 days of your dictations. You can then play these and paste the doc you produced from the dictation into this tool. This then trains the speech recognition from previous work to your voice. Benefits here are that it would allow a secretary to feed the pre-learning tool on behalf of the fee earner.

Mobility

Main news here was that an Android client is now available. And in the BlackBerry application there are extra functions in email. Allows you to jump from an email straight to dictate, then when you send the dictation it includes the email from where you triggered the dictation.

iManage integration

There is now a bighand dictation option available on right click of folder within Desksite/Filesite. This then populates the profile in bighand and knows where to create document. It attaches an nrl link to the dictation.  Basically uses the SDK that is available to use. Extra licence through for the SDK.

There was also mention of an addition of client side speech recognition for v4.1, I didn’t take too many notes on this as I see the server side solution as a much better option. Although for small firms the cost benefit of a server-less solution may be better.

 

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General IT, General Legal IT

What happens when a Baby Boomer lawyer meets a Generation Y client?

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A recent experience of trying to hire a car over the “royal wedding weekend” got me thinking about how important good electronic communication is with clients.

I was after a large mini-van or mini-bus for the Bank Holiday Monday and for one reason or another didn’t start looking until the Saturday. The first two companies I tried were the big national car hire chains, I started on their websites and for both it was clear that on the day I required the car they were closed at my local branch. Annoying for me, but at least I knew where I stood.

I moved onto some smaller local businesses, the next two had nice large adverts in the local business pages and indicated they provided the type of vehicle I was after. Both had prominent website urls on their adverts. So I visited the sites and got their contact details. As they had email addresses or web based contact forms I used these (although a Generation X’er myself I do seem to favour a lot of the communication forms of Generation Y!).

These companies then failed. Not only did they not respond to my email, they never acknowledged them at all. I know they received them as I ended up calling them by phone and they clearly knew of my query. Also they didn’t have the vehicles available either so a simple “Sorry no vehicles available email” would have taken 30 seconds!

The remaining local company I tried looked a bit more hopeful and they had online booking!

The order was taken and an automated confirmation received. I was wary though with it being a bank holiday so I emailed them to check they booking, after no reply in 24 hours I called by phone and got no reply. But the automated phone message gave no indication of the company being closed for the bank holiday, so although doubtful I had no reason to believe my car wouldn’t be their waiting for me.

Guess what though, it was closed! Worse still was the fact that a week later I have had no reply either email or phone from this company apologising for their error or even just acknowledging it!

Unbelievably a lot of companies seem to recognise some need to have a website and an email address but then treat them as a second class communication form over phone and face-to-face. Trouble is for them, unlike the boomer generation, the Y generation favours the electronic. Given the volume of email coming into law firms, it’s clear that a lot of lawyers get this and are comfortable with electronic communications. But there are a still some older lawyers who don’t and are quite happy to dictate emails for their secretary.

Regardless of which camp you’re in we still need to remind ourselves to acknowledge those emails. If we can deal with it immediately, do it and then get the email out of the inbox. If it can’t be dealt with quickly, acknowledge the receipt, add a task to deal with it later and get the email out of the inbox. As someone who has 90+ emails in their inbox at the end of today still, I know it’s easier said than done. Also clearly not all emails are from clients and need this kind of attention. But hopefully it’s obvious that we should try to avoid being the law firm that mirrors those firms above. At best your clients will be annoyed, at worst they’ll go somewhere else next time!

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General Legal IT, Outlook 2010 series

Tikit and UKDEG Word Excellence Day

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This coming Monday Tikit and UKDEG (UK Document Excellence Group) are holding another Word Excellence Day in London.

The event is covering how the legal industry and firms are planning the move to Office 2010 and Windows 7 and what challenges and issues could arise in that migration journey. There are speakers and panel members from firms such as Allen & Overy, Ashurst, DLA Piper, Lewis Silkin, Linklaters, SNR Denton and Veale Wasbrough Vizards and Neil Cameron, CEO of Neil Cameron Consulting Group, will be chair for the day.

I will be speaking in the morning on our plans for Office 2010 and Windows 7 and then joining a panel of other firms who are running Office 2010 projects to discuss our planning experience with questions on the issues of configuration and customisation of Word.

If you will be attending then I hope to speak to some of you then. For those that can’t attend, Tikit have been publicising a twitter hashtag for the event (#WEDMay11) so hopefully there will be plenty of people on this stream in virtual attendence also.

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General Legal IT

A Legal IT take on the Microsoft Skype news

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You can’t have failed to hear the big news today, Microsoft’s $8.5bn purchase of Skype. I’ve read a fair few tweets this afternoon about how it’s a bad deal. That they’re playing catch-up with Google and Apple, they paid over the odds etc

But I think it’s a great deal for Microsoft and also for lawyers.

We all know Skype is huge in the consumer market, in Europe I’d say Google nor Apple have anything like the consumer share that Skype has. Microsoft today suddenly became the market leader in the consumer market place.

But that’s not why I think it’s great deal.

In legal I know of plenty of lawyers who also use it for business. Keeping in touch with clients and colleagues on international deals is made an awful lot cheaper when using Skype rather than traditional land lines. 

The key here is how Microsoft leverage the consumer dominance and usage in business into model that makes money. For that look to Lync. All of a sudden Microsoft have the ability to break the proprietary nature of Skype and enable the ability to federate all those customers into corporate Lync environments. Lawyers will be able to use Lync and all the benefits of a unified communications platform within their firms, but now also communicate to their clients who are using Skype. When a firm is evaluating which platform to go for and their clients all use Skype anyway, there is a compelling argument to go with the corporate platform that will work with Skype.

Then there is the Windows Phone 7 platform. Late to the party but a great OS that is getting better. The combination of the “Mango” release, the deal with Nokia and now Skype will give this platform a huge boost for both consumer and business. The integration that’s there already with Sharepoint, Office and  Exchange together with Skype linked to your corporate unified communications platform (instant messaging, voicemail, phone etc) could make Windows Phone 7 devices a good option for a corporate device.

As I said at the start of the year, IM and unified communications platforms are a big thing for legal. Great for bringing cross border teams together, great for keeping in touch with clients and great for bringing costs down. I think the Skype deal may put Lync in the corporate driving seat.

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