Category: Collaboration

Planning My Tech Updates for 2021

12/21/2020

My home office has gone through significant changes from where it started in 2005. Back then, we had a small business server for file and printer sharing and our email server. The risk of downtime and the cost of upgrading resulted in our move to Office 365 for email in 2009. We still maintained our files on network-attached storage with cloud-based back. In 2018 we moved our files to SharePoint online, which has been working great for us the past two years.

Updates in 2020

Microsoft Teams has proven to be invaluable to us this year. To ensure we have the best online meeting experience, we upgraded our mics to the Blue yeti and upgraded our webcams to 1080p.

Updates Planned for 2021

As part of our annual IT review, I am now looking at what upgrades we need to consider for 2021. Our system worked well through 2020, with only one significant issue. Our PC purchased for the conference room and used for online meetings, webinars, and recording was dramatically underpowered. The following is a summary of each substantial section of our review.

Software

Our accounting practice will continue to move clients, where applicable, to cloud accounting. The online solutions meet the needs of our clients and simplify operations for both our clients and us.

Our write-up and tax software are working well, and with the data stored on SharePoint, we do not see a need to move to cloud solutions for either.

Our office runs on Microsoft 365, providing us with Microsoft Office Pro Plus, file sharing and storage, Microsoft Teams, calendar sharing, email, and an online booking site for clients. We have selected the Microsoft 365 E3 subscription to provide improved security, including data loss prevention and restricted access.

With the combination of retention policies in SharePoint and Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, we can operate as a paperless office.

The team at K2E Canada Inc. moved to LastPass for Teams, providing us with improved passwords and easy sharing to common sites the team uses.

The result is no changes are planned for software in 2021.

Firewall and Wi-Fi

We have been using a PFsense firewall for several years; its advanced configuration options are an excellent fit for our office.

A couple of years ago, we migrated our guest wireless system to Nest Wi-Fi. The advantage of this system is the easy setup and configuration with the power of a mesh network. Performance is excellent and a great match to our cable internet connection. With most of our devices not Wi-Fi 6 compatible, there is no need to upgrade.

Hardware

Scanners

We are using Canon ImageFormula scanners and will continue with them for the next couple of years.

Laptops

With its docking station, detachable keyboard, and digital pen, the Surface Pro is our standard laptop.

My Surface Pro 4 has worked well for the past five years, but it will be upgraded in 2021. The need for additional ram and a new processor is evident when compared to the performance of my partner’s Surface Pro 7. The replacement will be the new Surface Pro 8, expected to be released in the first quarter of 2021. The upgrade will be an i7 with 16GB of Ram and 256GB SSD.

Desktops

Our office desktop computers are a mix of Dell and custom builds. These computers are a mix of different generations of i5 and i7 processors with a minimum of 8GB of ram.

The conference room desktop, an i5 with 8GB of ram, has been moved to a workstation and replaced with a seven-year-old custom build. Despite the processor’s age, an i7 4th generation, the system works well because it has 32Gb of ram.

With new desktop processors being released in the first half of 2021, we will wait to upgrade this old machine. The upgrade will be either the 11th generation i7 or a Ryzen 5000 series with a minimum of 18GB of ram, reusing the existing SSD, and a dedicated video card such as the Radeon Pro WX 4100.

Summary

Our IT setup has taken a long time to mature to the point we are at now. The goal has always been to keep the design as straightforward as possible while maintaining high availability, security, and remote access. With just a couple of hardware updates, we should be in good shape for 2021.

Ward Blatch, CPA CA

The Best Ways to Collaborate with Office Documents

11/7/2020

Collaboration is more important today than it ever has been. With many team members working remotely, it can be challenging, to say the least, to share documents so that all interested parties can access, edit, and comment on them. Fortunately, the evolution of Microsoft Office includes features that can streamline, simplify, and enhance collaboration. Read on, and in this article, you will learn the best ways to collaborate with Office documents.

The Need to Collaborate

Before addressing the issue of “how,” let us explore “why.” Stated differently, why is collaboration so important? And why are yesterday’s methods inadequate in today’s environment?

Even before the pandemic-driven work-from-home (WFH) environment, the need to collaborate was significant. Consider, for example, the ubiquitous Excel workbook that many organizations use for at least a portion of their budgeting processes. Multiple users typically need to interact with that workbook, entering data, and generating reports. Typically, “collaboration” in this case involved emailing the workbook to all interested parties or using Excel’s Shared Workbook feature.

Other everyday collaboration needs include circulating a Word document among team members for editing and “wordsmithing.” Yet, Word does not offer a “Shared Document” feature, similar to Excel’s “Shared Workbook” feature. Therefore, “collaboration” with Word documents almost always meant emailing copies of the file to all interested parties.

Similarly, you might need to involve other team members in creating and editing a PowerPoint presentation. Unfortunately, like Word, PowerPoint does not offer a “Shared Presentation” feature; again, collaboration almost always involved emailing documents.

Drawbacks to Traditional Collaboration Methods

If email is the primary tool for collaboration, at least two adverse outcomes can occur. First, multiple copies of the same file immediately appear. As numerous users edit these copies, they no longer contain the same data. This practice, of course, leads to inconsistency in reports. Alternatively, Excel’s Shared Workbook feature generally mandates storing the workbook on a server that all parties can access. Of course, in a WFH environment, this requirement is not always satisfied easily.

Further, using the Shared Workbook feature imposes limitations on available functionality. Additionally, as pointed out above, neither Word nor PowerPoint offers a “Shared Document” feature. And finally, Microsoft has indicated that they will remove the Shared Workbook feature from Excel in future releases. As demonstrated, legacy versions of Microsoft Office applications present challenges when collaborating with others, both inside and outside our organizations.

Sharing Office Documents

Beginning with the 2010 release of Microsoft Office, improvements to collaboration techniques started to appear. At that time, Microsoft added the ability to share an Office document with internal and external users. This process relies on sending an invitation to the other users. It also requires you to store the file you wish to share in Microsoft’s Cloud-based OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online.

During the ensuing ten years, this process has improved significantly. It now provides detailed options for controlling who can access the document and what they can do with it once accessed. As shown in Figure 1, you can initiate the process of sharing your Cloud-stored documents by clicking Share near the upper right corner of the document’s window. You can read more about this process by clicking here to access an article on this feature published by Microsoft.

Figure 1 - Sharing An Excel Document With Other Users

Adding Comments and Notes to Documents

Another relatively new enhancement that facilitates collaboration is the ability to add Comments to Word and PowerPoint documents. Regarding Excel documents, you can add Comments and Notes.

Comments facilitate adding feedback to a document, such as suggestions to make it more usable to the intended audience. For Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, you can add Comments by clicking the Comment button near the window’s upper right corner. You can also add Comments using a right-click of your mouse. Once you add a Comment, other users can reply to it, facilitating a “threaded conversation” within the document, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 - Examples Of "Threaded" Comments In Word

As mentioned above, you can also add Notes to an Excel document. A Note is a means of documenting the contents of a cell. Typical uses of Notes include references to source documents, citations, and other forms of documentation that explain where the cell’s data originated. You can add a Note by right-clicking on a cell and choosing New Note. You can also add a Note by selecting Notes from the Review tab of Excel’s Ribbon.

Using Teams to Collaborate

At its core, Microsoft Teams is a communication and collaboration tool. Therefore, as you might expect, collaborating on documents occurs with ease when using Teams. Should you choose to save an Excel, Word, or PowerPoint document in Teams, multiple people can access and edit the file simultaneously, as shown in Figure 3. Of course, this functionality requires team members to possess appropriate security rights for the Team and Channel. If that is the case, no additional actions are necessary to collaborate on a document, making this perhaps the easiest way to facilitate collaboration in organizations of all sizes.

Figure 3 - Collaborating On A Document In Teams

Summary

The need for collaboration tools and techniques is not a new one. But the need for improved collaboration options on Microsoft Office documents is magnified in WFH and decentralized environments. Fortunately, Office now offers some outstanding features for sharing and collaborating with others, both inside and outside our organizations. So, instead of legacy tools and workarounds, take advantage of features such as sharing files, adding notes and comments to documents, and Teams. These are the best ways to collaborate with Office documents!

Authors

Ward Blatch
Ward provides consulting and training services as the Managing Director of K2E Canada Inc. He joined K2E Canada in 2005 and is responsible for the Canadian operations of this international consulting group, which provides professional development technology education for accountants across Canada and the US. Ward lives in rural Nova Scotia and can be reached at ward@k2e.ca.

Tommy Stephens
Tommy is one of the shareholders in K2 Enterprises, affiliating with the Firm in 2003 and joining as a shareholder in 2017. At K2, Tommy focuses on creating and delivering content and is responsible for many of the Firm's management and marketing functions. Tommy resides in the metro Atlanta area. You may reach him at tommy@k2e.com.

Randy Johnson
Randy is a nationally recognized educator, consultant, and writer with over 40 years experience in Strategic Technology Planning, Accounting Software Selection, Paperless, Systems and Network Integration, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning, Business Development and Management, Process Engineering and outsourced managed services. Randy can be reached at randy@k2e.com

Bernie Smith
Bernie coaches businesses to develop meaningful KPIs and present their management information in the clearest possible way to support good decision making. As the owner of Made to Measure KPIs, he has worked with major organisations including HSBC, Airbus, UBS, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Lloyds and many more.

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Planning My Tech Updates for 2021

Updates in 2020

Updates Planned for 2021

Software

Firewall and Wi-Fi

Hardware

Scanners

Laptops

Desktops

Summary

Ward Blatch, CPA CA

The Best Ways to Collaborate with Office Documents

The Need to Collaborate

Sharing Office Documents

Adding Comments and Notes to Documents

Using Teams to Collaborate

Summary

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