I went for a walk last weekend. A very long walk. As I sit here aching from the hills I climbed I look back on that walk and I think about what I achieved: Exercise – As well as a virtual commute around the local park for 30 mins every morning, I like to feel Read More
Managing Teams – Movers and Leavers
Whenever someone leaves an organisation or changes roles, the permissions of their user account should be checked to ensure that No Teams are left without an owner (every Team should really have two owners) Their access to Teams they no longer need access to is revoked. There are many ways to do this but most Read More
How to respond to meeting requests
I organise a fair number of meetings and I am invited to a lot more meetings. I do have a Power Automate Flow in place to automatically respond based on whether I am available and whether there is an agenda (Link), however, most other people do not. This post is intended to help people understand Read More
Configuration Settings for Sharing in Microsoft 365
The ability to share content rather than send copies of content is one of the main benefits of Office 365. There are many settings that need to be configured this ability and they are distributed through multiple interfaces. This article documents the settings and their locations. It is fair to say that these settings would Read More
Daily and Weekly Ceremonies for Productivity
I have been speaking at conferences on the benefits of daily and weekly ceremonies to help with building habits to increase productivity. I did blog about this very briefly a while back but this blog is expanding on the purpose and benefit of the ceremonies that I use to manage my tasks and my time. Read More
Create a To Do Task from a Teams Message
Oh, how I have been waiting for this! As I successfully get more communications in Teams, unfortunately I pick up more tasks from Teams messages. But as Planner morphs to Tasks, I see more of my To Do tasks in Teams so yet again, I have less reasons to leave Teams. Now to the issue Read More
Looking Forward to Ignite 2020
First up, let’s get the disappointment out of the way: I’m really disappointed that I can’t meet up with people and network at Ignite. The benefits of speaking to attendees, vendors and Microsoft staff are immeasurable at the in person event. Also, it is far easier to avoid the inevitable distractions of work when you Read More
Automating Responses to Meeting Invites
A while back I was involved in a discussion about the need for agendas when accepting meeting invites. The general consensus was that agendas are required to allow the attendees to be able to understand whether they can commit to the expected time commitments and, if there is a conflict, effectively prioritise meetings. See my Read More
My Meeting Manifesto
My Invite to You I will expect you to attend my meeting if: I provide you with the knowledge you need to make the meeting a success, which includes: What preparation do you need to complete to contribute to the meeting? What do I expect from you during the meeting? What do I expect from Read More
Ceremonies for productive work
At CPS (www.cps.co.uk, @CPS_Solutions), we have been extremely lucky to have been able to adjust our ways of working to accommodate the restrictions that have resulted from the Covid 19 pandemic. As a consultancy with staff located all over England, we have worked and collaborated remotely for many years and so for most staff it Read More