Software on Much Ado About IT

Rules for working with dates and times

Julian Knight — Sat, 07 Mar 2020 15:35:49 +0000

Dates and times are incredibly complex. They can be different in different countries, languages. They are often inconsistent and have weird edge-cases. These are some basic rules I apply when working with dates and times.

when handling dates and timestamps, here are the foundation rules that I work to:

Always use ISO date format where possible (YYYY-MM-DD)

So that there can be no ambiguity and so that date strings will naturally sort
Always work in UTC (Aka Zulu time or GMT) except when displaying to the user

To avoid weird errors, especially with timezone and daylight savings transitions. It also makes date/time calculations a LOT easier.
When needing a string format for timestamps, always use ISO format

e.g. 2020-03-07T15:27:46.123Z

These are always unambiguous and easily machine parsed.
When specifying decimal seconds in a timestamp, avoid more than 3 decimal places

The parsing tool used in node-red-contrib-moment to parse input dates in different formats cannot cope with more than 3dp and may return strange dates, a problem that I reported in May 2019 but hasn’t been resolved.

It should also be noted that I’m not sure that MomentJS can cope with more than 9dp.

Also worth noting that JavaScript’s Date native object only supports up to 3dp anyway and will turn anything beyond that into zero’s.

References

parseFormat function issue for >3dp seconds resolution

The worst thing about this issue is that it can result in an incorrect date being returned but does not give a warning.

OneNote Missing Features

Julian Knight — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:31:45 +0000

Microsoft have announced the deprecation of the desktop version of OneNote. They claim that the Windows Store version is as good or better. But it really isn't! Here I try to list the missing features. I will update this post as things change.

Office 2019 (due for release late 2018) will no longer contain a desktop version of OneNote. Microsoft are telling everyone to move over to the Windows Store version (AKA “OneNote for Windows 10”), also seen in this blog post by William Devereux.

Microsoft claim that OneNote for Windows 10 is the only one now getting development other than fixes & that it is already “better” than the desktop version in “many” areas.

OneNote 2016 (the full desktop version) will continue to be available separately but will stop receiving any updates in 2020.

You can also keep track of what has been updated in OneNote for Windows 10 in the What’s New post.

However, there is a LOT missing from OneNote for Windows 10 - I’ve compiled this list in order to track what is missing and whether anything is done about it.

The marketing post by Microsoft “What’s the difference between OneNote and OneNote 2016?” gives Microsoft’s official view on which is best.

I’ve tried to be accurate but if you see anything wrong or anything missing, please leave a comment below.

Tell Microsoft what you want!

If you want Microsoft to fix some of these missing features:

Vote or raise feedback on the OneNote UserVoice site
Contact them directly if you are an enterprise customer. You should have access to a Technical Account Manager at least, possibly also an industry sector technical lead, and industry sector account manager.
Join the OneNote Group on LinkedIn
Try the UserVoice suggestions site
Take to Twitter, copy in @msonenote and William Devereux (@MasterDevwi)
Use the Give Feedback link and/or give feedback via Windows 10
Leave a review on the Windows store.

They do generally listen. They don’t always do what you want of course!

Missing Features

Revision History
- ~~No page versions view~~ Finally found this hidden under the RMB menu in the page list. Very poor UX though, to be fair, this option is in the same place in ON 2016. It’s just that isn’t the only place, it is also on the Ribbon.
- No recent edits view
- ~~No recycle bin view - to allow recovery of accidentally deleted items~~ Yes, this is present, just well hidden again. RMB over the notebook in the notebook list - which is probably normally hidden for you as it ends up taking up too much horizontal space.
UI/General Usability
- ~~No Insert Date/Time/Date & Time~~ You can, in fact, insert date and time. But don’t bother looking for something simple if you aren’t using a keyboard, it is only available via a keyboard shortcut. Insert Date = Alt+Shift+D, Insert Time = Alt+Shift+T, Insert Date & Time = Alt+Shift+F. Really not very helpful for mobile/tablet users!
- No symbol insert (Coming soon)
- No page templates - no way to create a boilerplate template - e.g. for meetings
- No custom ribbon or quick access toolbar - giving quick access to tools relevant to users workflows
- No way to change paste option after pasting
- No quick way to flip between notebooks without taking up half the screen. You have to click back to get to the list then select. On desktop, you can quickly switch between notebooks using a pop-over. The only alternative is perhaps to create separate tiles pinned to the start menu and then have multiple notebooks open at the same time.
- Inefficient use of screen space - all navigation is forced to the left-hand side of the screen. On desktop, notebooks can be in a drop-down and tabs go across the top, this is a lot more efficient.
- No way to change paragraph and line spacing - I find that the default text layout has too little white-space, especially between paragraphs. This makes large blocks of text difficult to read unless you manually include empty lines - which, in turn is not helpful if you later paste into other tools.
- No “Record Video” feature
- No control over audio recording quality
- No internal control over audio recording device selection - can only use the Windows default
- Uncertain whether recognise text in recordings is available or working
- No ability to move navigation sidebars to other side
- No floating new page button for note list so no way to create a new page in a chosen location without using the mouse/long-touch - which also changes the page
- ~~No way to turn off or correct auto capitalisation~~ - immensely annoying when using OneNote for keeping technical notes (e.g. Programming). UPDATE: OK, not quite true, you can turn it on/off in settings but you can’t turn it off temporarily - for a single instance - like you can in the desktop. (thanks to Albin, see the comments)
- Fewer size options for drawing pens
- Only limited example equations for insert
- Even less ability to automate than before
- ~~No way to set the language for text~~ - you have to change the input keyboard to the language you want before typing, a terrible experience for multi-lingual use. UPDATE: Also not quite true, you can select some text and right/long click then you get an option to change it. (again, thanks to Albin)
- No way to translate text (Coming soon)
Integration
- No integration with Outlook or other Office applications - you can only integrate with Outlook.com or O365 so if you have a different Exchange email service as your default, there is no integration.
- No Outlook task integration - I know some people use this extensively so that they get reminders in Outlook for expiring task dates
- Why does meeting integration to outlook.com/O365 require me to log in again? I’m already logged in.
- No integration with Office(?)
- No office autocorrect.
- No grammar checks
- No access to custom spell-check dictionaries
- No Thesaurus
- No docked note taking with linked notes
- No Very limited addins/extensions - not even from the Office Store
  
  Albin points out in the comments that this is not quite true. There is a version of the GEM addin for ON UWP. It is US$18 which may be too steep for some but it does add one or two useful things such as inserting a horizontal line and coloured code syntax. Mostly seems to make up for some of the issues listed here though. Uses a Windows menu overlay.
- No “Insert Excel Spreadsheet” or “Insert (Visio) Diagram”. UPDATE: According to Albin, this is coming in a future release.
- No way to access notebooks on local or network drives
- No way to export notes - e.g. to a .one file - even the Surface Hub lets you do this.
- No way to share just a page or a section, only the whole notebook
Tags
- No custom “tags” (on roadmap?)
- No text style tags
- No “Find Tags” feature
- No “Create Summary” feature, allowing tagged paragraphs from different pages/notebooks to be pulled together on a single page.
Search
- Much more limited search view - no visibility of “recent” ~~nor of the difference between search terms in titles vs page~~
  
  So it seems that the search results do differentiate between results in the title from the body. You wouldn’t be able to know this without reading the help though since the difference is that a search term found in a title is highlighted in bold+purple. Hmm, very intuitive - not.
- No pop-over - results limited to same width as current sidebar so a lot less usable unless you change the width - which you then want to change back afterwards
- No control over searching AV for words - can it even be done?
- You cannot search closed notebooks - I suppose this is because it now only supports OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online for storage.
- No search and replace. To be fair, this is a failing of ON 2016 as well.
Tables
- No convert to excel for tables
- No way to include/exclude heading row for table sort
- No way to create a table with a specified number of rows/columns (by number)
- No way to hide the borders of a table (Coming soon)
Security
- No notebook local backups
- No control over cache file location
- ~~No page password protection~~ Eventually found this under the RMB menu for a section. Poor discoverability.

Other Issues

Drag and drop from Outlook is SLOW, have to keep the mouse over OneNote with the LMB pressed for an appreciable amount of time

What do we get that is “Better”?

May start faster on many systems.
Insert an image from your PC’s webcam - use the intelligence of MS Lens to improve document and whiteboard captures.
More colours for the pens - pen colours may be retained when converting to text.
A ruler.
Marginally better touch/pen handling.
Dictation.
Stickers(!)
Pin to start - you can pin Notebooks, Sections and Pages to the start menu. You can also have a transparent start menu entry. Note that “recent” entries in the jump list don’t work properly on the UWP version and not at all on the desktop version.
Uses system “share” capability to more easily share notes to other apps and share info from other apps to OneNote.
Built-in accessibility checker - be kinder to colleagues with accessibility issues.
Use the Immersive Reader for focused reading and improved comprehension.
Some simple equations can be charted or “solved”. You aren’t always given an option to chart however - such as for the desktop app’s example “A=πr^2” equation. Make sure you use “x” and “y” as variables to get round this limitation.
Use the pen to take a note even if the PC is locked.
Use the Edge browser to ink over a web page and save to OneNote.
Use Cortana to add a note.
“Better” sync engine is “coming soon” - though honestly, we may have to take MS’s word for that at the moment. The current sync engine seems to be the best one MS have in my view. However, it does start to struggle on mobile devices if your notebook gets too large, especially with embedded files.

Updates

2018-07-31:

Updated the “better” list following the comment from @DragosStefan. Also added further entries to that list based on the Microsoft blog posts.
Cross referenced to MS Power User blog post.

2018-07-26:

Many thanks to Albin LABELLE who has provided some really useful updates. Do check out his OneNote blog, especially his Closing the Gap post, he is keeping an eye on changes there. He also has some great OneNote tweets.
Twitter link from OneNote Central

A long-time fan of the desktop version of #OneNote for Windows, IT pro Julian Knight is taking a closer look at where the current feature set of the OneNote for #Windows10 app stands compared to his favorite version. https://t.co/b0FUEQq4LA
by @knightnet pic.twitter.com/1GvNEAux8O
— MSEdu Central Marjolein Hoekstra (@MSEduCentral) July 26, 2018
Twitter question from @msonenote

What could we do to make it better? We're always open to feedback. 🙂
— Microsoft OneNote (@msonenote) July 26, 2018

2018-07-21:

Many thanks to Kjell for the comments via Disqus. I’ve updated the entries for the Recycle Bin and Insert date/time.

2018-07-19:

Updated the list after publishing today when I went through some other posts and through the OneNote for Windows UserVoice site
Blog post by William Devereux, OneNote product manager, who has been kindly communicating with me and the OneNote LinkedIn Group. Detailing some new updates (actual update on his Twitter feed).

Hey OneNote fans! We just released a new update on Windows 10 (version 16.0.10325.20049) with a number of features based directly on your feedback. As always these features are rolling out, so if you don't see one of them yet then check back soon. Here's what's new for everyone:
— William Devereux (@MasterDevwi) July 18, 2018

Office 365 Autosave

Julian Knight — Tue, 08 May 2018 10:20:16 +0000

I am sure that whoever in Microsoft came up with the idea of an autosave flag, they thought it was a great idea. And indeed it is. **However**, when they made it default to _on_, they made a logistical nightmare for the majority of users. This post discusses why and what you could do about it.

With autosave on by default, every shared document that you open in Word, Excel or PowerPoint is subject to the whims of the Office client software. This means that it is all too easy to accidentally make a change that is then autosaved changing a shared document, throwing out version control processes, possibly approvals, etc. To say nothing of annoying other colleagues with random changes.

When the “feature” was introduced at the start of 2017, Microsoft gave no way to change the default from on to off. By the middle of the year, however, they introduced a set of registry settings.

Somewhat inevitably for a poorly thought through feature, they compounded the issues by making these registry flags permanently disable autosave instead of allowing a change to default to off. :sigh:

Well, for what it’s worth, here are the registry codes you need to permanently disable autosave in the three client applications:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

You can save the above code to a text file ending in .reg. Then right-click on the file in Windows File Explorer and chose the merge option to turn off autosave.

If you want to undo the change, set the values to 0 instead of 1.

Macro to open a web URL from Outlook

Julian Knight — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 10:31:45 +0000

Many of us spend most of our work time in a few applications such as Outlook (email) and a web browser. This example macro for Microsoft Outlook will let you add a button to the Outlook Ribbon that will open a specific website URL.

To use this macro:

Open the VBA Editor window (ctrl-F11)
Double-click on Project1 > Microsoft Outlook Objects > ThisOutlookSession in the Project pane (top-left)
Paste the code below
Customise the Ribbon
Add a new Group (you can’t add your own entries to the standard groups)
Add the openGoogle macro (or whatever you’ve added), rename and change the icon if desired

Note: This version will only work for the 64-bit version of Microsoft Outlook. To use on the 32-bit version, remove the word PtrSafe.

Option Explicit

Private Declare PtrSafe Function ShellExecute _
 Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" ( _
 ByVal hWnd As Long, _
 ByVal Operation As String, _
 ByVal Filename As String, _
 Optional ByVal Parameters As String, _
 Optional ByVal Directory As String, _
 Optional ByVal WindowStyle As Long = vbMinimizedFocus _
 ) As Long

' WARINING: THIS MUST ONLY BE GIVEN SAFE URLs!
' DO NOT USE WITH DIRECT USER INPUT
Private Sub openUrl(url As String)
 Dim lSuccess As Long
 lSuccess = ShellExecute(0, "Open", url)
End Sub

Public Sub openGoogle()
 openUrl "https://google.com"
End Sub

DSC vs. GPO vs. SCCM vs. MDM (Intune)

Julian Knight — Sat, 18 Jun 2016 17:42:13 +0000

Microsoft Windows administrators now have a number of ways for managing their estates.

Group Policy (GPO)

Allows very fine-grained control over every aspect of Windows. Primarily aimed at Windows desktops. Requires Active Directory (AD) and very careful configuration. Requires well trained specialist staff to get it right.
System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

Allows central control over software delivery. Also requires AD. Configuration of delivery packages can be complex and very careful change control is required. Software delivery via SCCM can also be intrusive to users. Requires well trained specialist staff to get it right.
Desired State Configuration (DSC)

Though extended by Microsoft this is actually part of a wider open standard “Open Management Infrastructure” and so applies to other platforms as well including Linux. Mainly aimed at server configurations. Falls into the DevOps camp as it defines server configurations in purely text format and so can be put under source control easily. DSC is typically dynamic and enforces the correct configuration (normally every 15 minutes) which greatly helps ensure secure configurations.
Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Primarily aimed at mobile devices, this style of configuration is increasingly applicable to Windows Desktops with the advent of Windows 10. Microsoft InTune is leading the way with other MDM vendors following on. Not everything on the desktop can yet be controlled this way, even with W10 but many key settings and controls are already available. A much simpler method for enforcing desktop settings than the other methods, it allows fewer administrators and much less specialist knowledge.

The article from FoxDeploy covers the first three of those and lays out the purpose of each. Well worth a read.

What is missing is the 4th method which uses Mobile Device Management tooling. The leading contender for this is Microsoft InTune. However, InTune is really only focussed on Windows 10 (desktop and mobile), it has limited control in other Operating Systems.

Servers only ever exist in a given state. If they deviate or we make changes, we refactor and redeploy. DSC drives it all and the machine will be up and running on a new OS, with data migrated in a matter of minutes.

For all practical purposes, the first true large scale management tool we had for Windows systems in the modern era was Group Policy, or GPO as it is commonly truncated.

Comparatively, SCCM and MDT allow us to we import an image from a Windows install disk and then run dozens of individual steps which are customized based on the target machines platform, model, office location and other factors. The sky is the limit.

Curated from DSC vs. GPO vs. SCCM, the case for each. – FoxDeploy.com

Update 2018-05-04 - Intune and Autopilot

It should be noted that Intune is now much more capable than when this was originally written.

Intune now has mobile device management that easily rivals any of the other MDM tools across all platforms. It is also well able to manage Apple OS X as far as Apple actually allow remote management of this type (they provide only a restricted set of API’s unlike Windows).

It should now be possible to manage and configure Windows desktops (at least Windows 10) just using Intune via the Cloud without any input from the other tools.

Intune coupled with Microsoft Autopilot provides a massively powerful and attractive set of tools for the deployment and configuration of Windows 10 based devices.

Autopilot lets you ship devices straight from the manufacturer to the end user with no build needed. The user only requires a broadband Internet connection. Devices are unboxed by the user and connected to the Internet. The user logs in with their cloud identity. Intune “knows” which organisation the device belongs to and begins configuration. The whole process takes about 10 minutes to give a device that can browse the Internet and 1 to 2 hours at most before all local client applications are installed and configured (in the background) depending on the complexity of your configuration.

Mosquitto MQTT Server on a Raspberry Pi

Julian Knight — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 23:10:53 +0000

To access an MQTT broker direct from the browser, you need websockets support. On a Raspberry Pi, this used to require a custom build from source. That is no longer required. You can now install direct from the mosquitto.org repository and add a simple config change. This article explains the details.

MQTT is a messaging protocol for the “Internet of Things” (IoT). It allows devices to communicate easily with minimal overheads. The Raspberry Pi of course makes an excellent low cost platform for managing IoT. Not only is it cheap to buy, it is also cheap to keep running.

To use MQTT, you need a “broker” which is simply a service running in the background. Mosquitto is one of the more popular brokers, partly because it is pretty small and therefore ideal for running on a Pi.

If you want to use MQTT from the browser however, you also need the broker to support something called “websockets” since browsers cannot directly talk using the MQTT protocol. In the past, Mosquitto didn’t have websockets compiled in by default and compiling your own version on a Pi is painful to say the least.

Thankfully, this is no longer a problem since the authors of Mosquitto now provide a repository containing ARM versions which work fine on the Pi. See mosquitto.org for the details.

Once installed from the repository, you will need to add a suitable configuration since websockets are not part of the default configuration.

To turn it on, you should add a new file to /etc/mosquitto/conf.d/ containing something like:

# See: http://mm011106.github.io/reference/mosquitto_conf.html
# Standard Listener
listener 1883
protocol mqtt
allow_anonymous false
password_file /etc/mosquitto/passwords.txt
# Websockets Listener
listener 9001
http_dir
Set the protocol to accept for this listener. Can be mqtt (the default), or websockets.
protocol websockets

Note that you can create more than one listener of the same type. You might, for example, want to create another listener that is restricted to a subset of topics so that you can allow access to that over the Internet. Perhaps you would restrict it to listing only sensor data but not control messages for your home automation project for example.

Once you have enabled websockets access to Mosquitto, you can do some interesting things directly from web pages. Get hold of MQTT.js for the browser and you can both listen to and send messages from/to the broker. Combined with a framework such as REACT allows you to, with only a few lines of code, display all the messages that arrive at your broker.

Updated 2018-04-24 21:20:16 - Tidy output after migration from WordPress.

A simple mail filer for Microsoft Outlook (VBA)

Julian Knight — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 19:56:06 +0000

Like many people I receive an unmanageable amount of email each day. Many days I get through only around 1/3 of the email I receive. However, the role I am in professionally requires me to retain a large proportion of correspondence. Some because it relates to ongoing projects, other because of security, audit or compliance reasons.

In addition, I work across many projects. It isn’t unusual for me to be involved in two dozen projects at any one time on top of my day-to-day management work.

So I have many folders – hundreds in fact – and filing email into the right folder has become a real drag. It can take an appreciable amount of time to hunt down the correct folder and Outlook does not provide any way to search/filter folder names in the UI.

Thankfully, I have access to VBA in Outlook. While the experience of using VBA macro’s to control Outlook is rarely pleasant, it does get the job done – mainly.

My requirements for the utility were as follows:

Must let me select multiple emails, if any have already been filed, show me the folder(s) so I can quickly file new email to the same folder as the rest of the conversation.
Must give me a list of all my folders with a simple way of filtering the list by typing a few letters.
Must also let me open a folder for viewing instead of filing or cancelling.

A couple of hours later, I was able to create a new utility. This has been published to Github and you can find it at: https://github.com/TotallyInformation/outlook-filer

Home Automation Hub using Node-Red

Julian Knight — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 15:32:18 +0000

The Internet of Things (IoT) comes alive with the help of Node-Red, a Flow-Based Programming (FBP) tool designed to help link together sensors, switches, logic and displays. With hardware magic from Arduino's, Raspberry Pi's, low cost sensors and wireless switches. We can easily build a bespoke home automation and monitoring hub.

Having got into some electronics with my son over the last couple of years, I’ve found a new enthusiasm for doing some home automation and monitoring. In the process joining a much overhyped band of people creating the so-called “Internet of Things” (IoT) Between Arduino’s and Raspbery Pi’s, some simple low cost sensors and a fair bit of patience, it is amazing what can be achieved.

One of the big tasks though is trying to link everything together. Generally, this involves either using a big pre-build tool such as the popular Domoticz or programming your own monitoring and control hub from the bottom up. Personally, I find the former approach too restrictive with the packages rarely doing what I need so that I am always fighting with them. But I find the latter approach too time consuming to ever get very far.

Thankfully, some great folks at IBM have come to the rescue by creating a tool called “Node-Red“. This uses an approach called “Flow-Based Programming” (FBP). Indeed, FBP was invented at IBM in the 1970’s so it seems only logical that the IBM Emerging Technology team should carry on the good work.

Flow-based programming uses diagrams to connect together small functions, in this case referred to as “nodes”. Rather like putting together a flowchart. Node-Red is aimed at people creating connections between IoT things such as sensors and switches so it is ideal for what I wanted. Even better is that it is based on my chosen programming and automation tool, Node.JS which runs everywhere, is lightweight, fast, flexible and powerful. Node.JS uses Javascript as its programming language and so I only need to learn 1 language to programme for both the server (the back-end) and the client (browser, the front-end or user interface).

Why not give Node-Red a try? It is getting more and more attention with lots of new node types being contributed by the community. There is a site for reviewing new nodes and examples at flows.nodered.org. There is a Slack site and a lively Google news group. There is also some good documentation at the docs site.

You may also find Node-Red useful for a lot more than just IoT as it makes it easy to work through computing tasks, reducing coding to a minimum.

Outlook 2013 URL Protocol Handler

Julian Knight — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 21:07:40 +0000

Outlook has a custom URL protocol that allows interaction with different elements such as folders, mail and calendar items and contacts, Since Outlook 2007, this has been restricted for use only within Outlook itself but there are some tremendous opportunities for use from simple web systems. This post explains how to turn it on, even for Outlook 2013 (Office 365 version). It also gives pointers to other articles on how to use the protocol.

Update 2018-04-24: Having changed roles at the start of 2017, I am no longer getting quite the volume of email that I used to. So I no longer need to manage my email in quite the same way. However, the Outlook URL protocol handler remains very useful, especially when creating To Do lists in other tools and linking back to Outlook emails.

One of the nice features about older versions of Microsoft Outlook was that it had a set of URL Protocol Handlers (like [outlook:inbox][1]) defined that could be used system wide to trigger actions in Outlook such as opening a folder, creating or editing an item.

Unfortunately, along the way, these got gradually toned down so that they only worked from within Outlook itself.

This can still be useful. I’m not sure how many people realise that you can create “folders” in your Outlook mailbox. Choose Properties .../Home Page and set a URL – maybe your blog or Intranet. Now when you click on the folder, you will see the web page instead of a set of mail items or whatever.

When using this feature to do some more clever stuff such as creating To Do lists from incoming mail, you might choose to use a dynamic web system to handle the list. CouchDB or Node.JS are lightweight web systems that come to mind.

Then you might find yourself wishing that you could create links in your To Do system back to the original email in Outlook. Well you can! Sort of.

It turns out that, although the external use of the Outlook: protocol hasn’t been available since Outlook 2003, it can still be turned on, even in Outlook 2013. There is a useful article on the TeamScope web site that shows you how to turn on the outlook: protocol system-wide.

One minor wrinkle though if you use Office from an Office 365 subscription – the location for Microsoft Office applications is different! You will find them at: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15.

Here then is the registry code that you need to enable the protocol:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook]
"URL Protocol"=""
@="URL:Outlook Folders"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\DefaultIcon]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office 15\\root\\office15\\OUTLOOK.EXE\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell]
@="open"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell\open]
@=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office 15\\root\\office15\\OUTLOOK.EXE\" /select \"%1\""

Simply save this into a .reg file and open it to install the changes.

Now you can use the outlook: protocol anywhere on the system, great for dynamic web systems. One minor word of warning though – there are dangers! Don’t open links unless you know what they are, where they go and what they do!

To find out how to use the Outlook protocol handler, try one of the following articles:

Slipstick: Using Outlook Links – articles on Slipstick are always useful and knowledgeable.
What’s new for Outlook 2013 developers
How to hyperlink to Microsoft Outlook messages

One final note. I’m now looking to create some tools that link between Outlook and CouchDB. CouchDB provides a very lightweight NOSQL database that uses JSON and JavaScript to great effect. I’m already using it to track statistics on incoming/outgoing emails, linking the web interface back to Outlook via the home page method mentioned at the start. I’m going to have a go at creating a task monitor too if I get the time. I am currently reading only around a quarter of the emails in my work inbox and I really need some tools to improve the situation. Food for some more blog posts hopefully. [1]: outlook:inbox “Activate Outlook and show the inbox”

Microsoft 64-bit Application Support (lack-of)

Julian Knight — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:08:44 +0000

Microsoft's 64-bit support is still sorely fragmented as we find out with a brand new laptop trying to access Microsoft SharePoint.

The joys of working with Microsoft products!

So I have a brand-new, shiny 17″ HP laptop. 64-bit throughout. 6GB of RAM and comes pre-installed with 64-bit Windows. You would think, then, that you would want to use 64-bit applications right? Wrong!!

I automatically use the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer to access some Microsoft specific sites (Outlook Web Access and SharePoint 2007). I install and use the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office. Does this work well with SharePoint (from Microsoft)? No!

For starters, you cannot upload an Excel spreadsheet to a SharePoint list like you should be able to. You get an error:

Next you try to switch a list into a “Datasheet” view – which looks a bit like a spreadsheet. Inevitably, you get another error:

To fix these errors, you then have to download and install “2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components“. And you have to use the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

Low-cost Information Management, Communications and Collaberation Tools

Julian Knight — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:00:47 +0000

Although much of the work I do is for very large organisations and extremely costly projects, being an adopted Yorkshire-man, I’ve always an eye open for a bargain! More seriously, there are many small to medium sized businesses and charities that cannot afford big IT budgets but that still are crying out for good information management, communications and collaboration tools. In this article, I’ve tried to highlight a few tools that I think are worth looking at. I’ve not included anything in this article that requires a monthly or annual cost. All the tools here are available for free at least with limited features. The feature lists given are for the free versions with paid-for key features noted where appropriate. I also note if any of the web sites are blocked by typical enterprise firewalls. There is a lot more than what I’ve shared here, I’ll try to update this article from time-to-time.

Office Applications

Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are the core of an office application suite. Additional tools might be included such as email, calendar, note taking, formula editing, diagrams, mind mapping.

SSuite Office Software I’ve not tried this free, Microsoft Windows only, office suite but it certainly looks interesting.
Microsoft Office I know that it may seem strange to include this in an article about low-cost solutions. However, you can get Microsoft Office at a very low price from a number of legitimate sources. These include enterprise licenses that allow home use and student licenses if you have a full-time student in the house. Cut-down versions of the MS Office suite are also often bundled with computer sales.
Google Docs This free offering from Google provides a reasonable choice for straight-forward documents but may be blocked from some enterprise sites. You get 1GB of free space and can pay for more if you need it.
Gliffy

Web-based diagramming like a simple version of Microsoft Visio. Free version is limited to 1 user, 5 diagrams and 2mb storage. Otherwise a monthly fee is required starting at US$5 per month.
Other options: Libre Office (forked version of OpenOffice, good enough for most people, not as good as MS Office), AbiWord, KOffice (Linux), iWork (Mac), …
Options not to bother with: Microsoft Live – far too simplistic, unreliable logins, poor sharing compared to Google (though you do get 25GB of free space).

Web Conferencing

Should provide instant messaging, voice, video, whiteboard (shared drawing space) and desktop sharing between computers as a minimum. May also provide meeting management tools, recordings of meetings and other facilities. Will generally be web applications that just require a web browser to access though plugins such as Adobe Flash may also be required and some may provide specific mobile tools.

AnyMeeting

Web-based. Free, advert supported. Up to 200 attendees, 6-way video conferencing. Polls and surveys, invitations, registration forms, optionally charge attendees. Flexible audio options: audio broadcast, conference call, VoIP (computer microphone & headset)
Vyew

Web-based, requires Adobe Flash. Free, advert supported. Up to 10 attendees. Forums, record activity, shared annotation of documents. Additional attendees and other features available on premium versions requiring monthly fees.
Other web-based alternatives: WebEx, GotoMeeting, GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, Microsoft LiveMeeting.

Voice

Phone-to-phone voice calling.

ChatTime An iPhone app that uses local access numbers in many countries allowing international calls at low rates. Doesn’t require 3G or data access. Note that they still recommend using local SIM cards when roaming. International calls between 2 ChatTime users do not incur additional charges (both users have to call their local ChatTime access numbers).

Project and Task Planning

Tools that help teams and organisations plan complex tasks.

Asana

Team and project online task manager. Free for up to 30 members. Calendar sync, mobile web compatible, multiple workspaces (project categories), multiple projects, email in (new tasks by email), receive email updates, activity feed for each task, SSL connection, iPhone app
ReqMan

Totally free, unlimited users and projects. Project planning, time management & recording, requirements gathering, questionaires, reporting, WIKI, workflow, change requests, test cases, issues.
HappyToDos Online to-do and task management. Projects & tasks, estimate completion dates, estimate effort (hours), time reporting, team collaboration & file sharing.

Other Possibles

I’ve not yet looked at these but will do at some point

zeropc.com (blocked at enterprise site as possible malware)
https://podio.com/ (blocked at enterprise site as “Social Networking”)

Things to remember

When using web-based tools, remember that you may want more than connection security. Many tools claim to be “secure” by using SSL but that only secures the connection between you and them. Your data is unlikely to be stored encrypted on their servers and even when it is, it is even less likely that you can specify your own secure key so that server administrators at their end are prevented from accessing the data. In addition, remember that there are rarely enforceable service level contracts with web suppliers, if their systems fail, or they themselves fail; your data is history.

Enterprise System Design and Accessibility

Julian Knight — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:21:57 +0000

It isn't just web pages that are required to meet accessibility standards and laws. **All** applications have to. This short article is a reminder to application designers and builders regarding the standards and legal obligations they have to meet.

Most web designers are well aware of the need to design with accessibility in mind and that this is a legal requirement in many countries. Not so many IT architects and designers who deal with internal, enterprise systems are aware, though, that these laws and requirements also apply to internal systems.

Recently I’ve yet again seen a number of dreadfully designed user interfaces (UI) for enterprise systems that most certainly don’t meet usability standards let alone accessibility standards!

So here are a few links to information on standards and laws around accessibility – while most of these seem to be focused on web systems, lets remember that they do apply to internal and enterprise systems as well.

Wikipedia: Web Accessibility
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (from the web’s standards body)
UK Central Office of Information (COI): Web Standards and Guidelines for UK government web sites
There is also a British Standard for web accessibility BS8878. However, ridiculously, the British Standards Institute charge £100 for it! SO I won’t link to it but there are some web resources that summarise it, as always Google is your friend.
Accessible Technology A guide for IT professionals (PDF) The key regulations for UK organisations are:
Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 & 2005
Equality Act 2010 (supersedes the DDA)

One final note about designing to accessibility standards. Plenty has already been written on this subject and I don’t want to repeat that. Just to say that it is normal for web sites to be asked to meet W3C WCAG 2.0 level Double-A (AA) standards. However, you should not try to slavishly follow these standards. There are lots of grey areas. In particular, if you are using the online web validation tools, don’t worry too much if you get some minor failures. You need to test failing pages against accessibility devices rather than blindly following some written rules.

Minor update 2018-04-28 Reformat after move from WordPress to Hugo.

Apple iOS 5 and iCloud, The verdict

Julian Knight — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:12:25 +0000

So I’ve been using iOS 5 on both iPad 1 and iPhone 4 for a couple of days now and I thought I’d follow up on my previous post about what I thought would impact me.

The first thing to note is that it took two days to update the two devices. That’s due to how long it takes to download over a relatively slow link, and how long it takes to re-flash the OS followed by a very long, slow restore of all data – around 30GB on each of my devices.

Likes

I love the ability to fire up the camera without needing to unlock the phone. Though why Apple require a double-click of the home button I’ll never know! Why not just always make it available? Double clicking home also gives access to iPod controls on the same screen again without unlocking which is also useful. It may be just me but the camera seems to start up faster now too. Using the volume button to take a photo really is so much better and results in a lot less camera shake. The notifications system will take a while to tweak to the best settings I think but is vastly better than the previous version. Photo Stream is certainly useful but somewhat confusing as it effectively seems to be a copy of photos from whichever device takes them. See also my dislike below. Not part of iOS itself, but the ability to synchonise iWork files (Pages, Numbers & Keynote) between devices is good though I really hope the extend this capability to the iCloud desktop client as well. Keeping track of expenses, kids pocket money, holiday allowance, etc. is now much easier.

Dislikes

5GB of free iCloud space is useless for backups, don’t even bother. Even worse when you have more than one device on a single account as of course you will as you want to share information between them. Just my iPad filled up 5GB with backup even after turning off the backups for most of the apps. Even worse, if you enable iCloud backups, you don’t get local backups! Like I really want to restore a 32GB device from the internet! Taking photos on the iPhone 4 with the phone in the logical position to use the volume button – e.g. landscape with the buttons top-right – results in the images being upside-down in Windows!! Is no testing done by Apple!! I noticed this is one of the iPhone picture sharing apps too. Photo Stream is not an album! That means that many photo management apps cannot see the pictures, you have to copy them to an album before you can do anything with them unless you are in the native Photos app or another Apple app that recognises the Stream. Ugh! You seem to have to “Save to Saved Photos”, then switch to Albums then to Saved Photos, then click the share button, then select the photos, then click “Add To…”, then click “Add to Existing Album”, then choose the album. Fantastic! 8 clicks and changes of screen just to copy photos out of the Photo Stream to an album – ARGHHHH… Memory management on the iPad one is still poor with far too many apps crashing, even Pages. Is it just me or does the camera seem to take much darker photos sometimes now? I notice that in a number of cases, where I would previously have expected the camera to take a flawless outdoor picture, that I couldn’t get the auto-exposure to get it right and the HDR pictures were coming out quite dark. Again, not directly iOS or iCloud related but the latest version of Pages is still rubbish. Too much stuff just silently disappears without warning – such as fields and inter-document links. Also too much formatting is still lost such as lists within table cells. I’m also getting lots of crashes on the iPad 1.

Indifferent

iCloud contact sharing means that contacts previously only stored locally on my device are now shared between all devices which is better. But why can’t I move contacts to one of my already shared contact stores such as Gmail (uses Exchange sync)? Rubbish. I can’t even export from iCloud.com. Also strange is that I can now create contact groups on iCloud.com but NOT on my local devices!! Why doesn’t iCloud sync everything to my desktop? I can’t understand this unless Apple are going to have some kind of “premium” offering later. iCloud bookmark syncing, while useful to keep devices in sync, doesn’t allow changes from iCloud.com which would be very useful. The update process for iOS 5 was not entirely seemless, on my iPad I ended up with quite a mess with icons scattered all over and not restored to where they were before. OK, I’m bored now so that’ll do. I’ll try and add some more another time.

Hope you find this useful.

Apple iOS 5, What does it change for me?

Julian Knight — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:22:07 +0000

There are some really nice looking changes on the way for Apple mobile users lucky enough to have a device that can be upgraded to iOS 5. I thought I’d throw together a quick look at how this will change things on a practical level for me as I use an iPhone and an iPad for work and personal use. Update: 2011-10-13. I’ve added some more details.

Perhaps the biggest change will come from the inclusion of the new iCloud service free with 5GB+ of space. Apps, books, and music purchased via Apple don’t count towards the 5GB and neither do synchronised pictures which is handy given the size of pictures now. In the future then, apps that are iCloud enabled (Numbers, Pages and Keynote for example) can be set to automatically synchronise between your Apple devices – this is great because I wont have to think about whether my expenses spreadsheet is more up-to-date on the iPhone or the iPad. Annoyingly though, this doesn’t extend to the PC/Mac where you have to copy documents using the web interface to iCloud. Pictures and videos taken on the iPhone will be automatically synchronised to iCloud and then to both the iPad and the laptop. iCloud keeps the latest 1,000 photos for 30 days, a connected PC (or Mac) will keep them permanently. Update: Synchronising Mobile Safari Bookmarks will certainly be useful. Having a single set of bookmarks on both iPhone and iPad without having to sync via Internet Explorer (which picks up loads of irrelevant IE bookmarks) will be very nice and will be a quick way of being able to start looking something up on the iPhone then carrying on at leisure on the iPad. Update: Music, of course, can also be synchronised via iCloud and songs purchased from Apple will not count towards your space allocation. However, this isn’t a lot of use to me as I don’t like to be restricted by ridiculous, costly DRM; nearly all of my music comes from CD’s. The same applies to books; in fact, the economics are even worse generally for books since most sources of eBooks are stupidly expensive given the restrictions on them. The iPhone and iPad will be backed up to iCloud too so I no longer have to worry about traipsing up to the office to back them up using iTunes. There are other iCloud features of course but I won’t be using them as they are too little, too late. Google already provides me with synchronisation of calendars and contacts and allows sharing with non-Apple devices as well. ToodleDo gives me synchronisation of tasks. Dropbox, box.net and Google Docs gives me sharing and synchronisation of documents. Find My Phone is useful of course, I already have that, but Find My Friends wont be as many of them don’t have Apple devices. Update: One exception to the above is that I will be using the Notes synchronisation as using Exchange based mail for synchronisation of Notes is pretty bad. Update: One warning about iCloud. You can backup your iDevices to iCloud but, if like me, you have say 2 32GB devices this could get very expensive. I have a map application for example which can have many GB of data, if I back this up to iCloud, I’ll be paying a lot for the convenience (US$2 per GB per year). So the bottom line is that we are not PC/Mac free just yet. The second warning is that you will need to be careful if you connect to the Internet over 3G not just WiFi; with all of this automatic synchronisation going on, things could get even more expensive when you go over your data limit! (Thankfully, my iPhone at least is on the UK’s Three network with unlimited, uncapped data) In addition to iCloud, Apple claim over 200 other improvements in iOS 5. The ones that will impact me are:

Notification Centre

Notifications are a pain at the moment, the changes in iOS 5 should make them usable again.

Update: Better still, you can change the settings for each app so you can have some apps with no notifications, some with the new banner style and some with the old alert format. You can also control whether the alerts for an app will appear in the lock screen.
Email Improvements

At last! Email gets the capability for some simple formatting. You can also add a flag. Not much but at least a start. Apple’s understanding of heavy email use is still an awful long way from a useful reality.

Update: You can also mark multiple emails as read which can save some time.
Lock Screen Changes

You can now take photos, listen to answer phone messages and see multiple notifications without having to unlock the phone.
WiFi iTunes Sync

Long overdue and maybe a lot less relavent if iCloud backup and sync works well. Of course, 3rd party apps have taken over a lot of cases where iTunes was needed – podcasts for example, currently you have to connect a wire to get podcast updates automatically so I use a 3rd party app that deals with podcasts much better and auto-updates directly. Annoyingly, WiFi sync only happens when you connect to a power source.
Update: Keyboard Improvements

The new split keyboard will be useful on the iPad when using it on the go (typing with thumbs).
Update: Custom Alert Tones

The constant bleeping of iPhones gets painful, you can now make this slightly better by assigning custom tones to many alert types so you are more likely to be able to know what the phone is trying to tell you.
Twitter Integration

This is not terribly significant but will probably encourage me to use Twitter more (not sure that is really a good thing though!).
Camera Improvements

You can now take a picture without unlocking & by using the volume + button, both nice features. You also get a positioning grid and manual focus/exposure hold. Of course 3rd party apps have had all this for ages and much more. Simple photo enhancements are also baked in to the camera app.

Update: You can swipe left/right in the camera app to get straight to the photo albums. You can also finally create new albums.
Safari Improvements

Like the camera app, Safari is playing a bit of catch-up with 3rd party apps. I’ll still be doing serious browsing in iCab though. The internals have also been updated and HTML5 support is now closer to desktop Safari.
Update: Map Improvements

Directions now show alternative routes which can be very useful.
Update: Built-in Dictionary

You can now look up many words in the built-in dictionary. Not sure if there is any control here though and not sure how many languages are covered or how many words.
Update: Keyboard Shortcuts

Hooray! You can define simple keyboard expansions. E.g type “e-” and get your email address. Not a replacement for Text Expander but it is available to every app.

Data Cleansing Tools

Julian Knight — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:51:32 +0000

It is very common to receive information in a format that cannot easily be formatted and processed as you want it to be. For example, you may have an unstructured list of information that you need in a table; or data in a table that you need as XML; or data in a web page (HTML) that you need in Excel. So many information professionals maintain a tool-kit that allows them to manipulate all sorts of information in different formats. Here is a small list of tools aimed at cleansing and structuring data.

Text editors [Free and commercial; All platforms] Often the first port of call for manipulating un- or semi-structured text. Anything beyond simple search/replace and manual editing is likely to use Regular Expressions (see below).
Spreadsheets [Excel – Commercial; Windows, Mac. OpenOffice – Free; Windows, Linux, Mac. Many similar free and commercial software tools] This is often my second tool of choice as they are more structured than plain text but not as restrictive as a full database.
Regular Expressions – Quick Reference. Often incomprehensible but very powerful text transformation “language”. Commonly found in good text editors though it is sometimes easier to use one of the web training tools as long as the text to transform is not too big. Well worth learning as many, complex transformations can be built up using a series of regular expressions and they are available from many tools. Also available in any decent code editor or IDE, Microsoft Office (via VBA code), PHP, JavaScript, Java, Linux command line tools, etc.
Google Refine [Free software; Windows, Linux, Mac] Run locally to manipulate tabular data. Quite powerful but not especially well documented. Part of the Freebase project. Support is provided by the mailing list. Can save and re-run, easily undo steps. Cannot run in batch mode as a transformation engine. Useful when transformations and cleaning in a Spreadsheet don’t cut it.
DataWrangler (Alpha) [Free; Web] From Stanford University, they have a demo version online. Similar to Refine.
TextPipe Pro [Commercial US$ 30-400; Windows] “industrial strength text transformation, conversion, cleansing and extraction workbench” Once you have structured data, there are a number of types of tools that are used to extract, transform and process data – ETL (Extract, Transform and Load), Business Information (BI) and Data Mining. Typically though, these are enterprise class tools and only really worth bothering with when you have large-scale data and need repeatability. Here is a small list of such tools for reference.
XSLT [Free and Commercial, All platforms] This is an XML transformation language. It is used for transforming an XML scheme into another one. Perhaps may be thought of as regular expressions for XML.
SQL [] Structured Query Language is the standard language for manipulating relational databases.
Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 [Free?; Windows] Desktop BI add-in for Excel 2010.
Pentahoe [Free and Commercial]
RapidMiner [Free and Commercial]
Orange [] Visual programming, visualisation, data analysis
Talend Open Studio [Free and Commercial] Aimed at data integration
CloverETL [Free and Commercial]
IBM Data Stage [Commercial]
Ab Inicio [Commercial] It might also be worth looking at the BI Verdict web-page for the latest analysis of the strongest players amongst the BI vendors and products