Features I like in: Powerpoint 2007

pooyad — Mon, 14 May 2007 15:47:00 GMT

This is the 2nd in my series of useful features in products we all use. This may be a well known one but I only started using it recently and have found it incredibly useful.

Delivering a presentation on 2 monitors (or more likely on a projector)

I deliver a lot of presentations in my work as a technology evangelist and powerpoint is something I use on a daily basis. With this feature, you can view the slide, see the presentation notes, keep tabs on the time and highlight points on the slide on your monitor while the audience sees only the final version of the slide in their view. See the article linked above for a detailed explanation but you'll find the feature in "Slide Show-> Use Presenter View and Show Presentation On:".

Not sure how many of you do presentations that regularly, but it's been a great thing for me.

Features I like in Office Communicator

pooyad — Wed, 02 May 2007 10:02:00 GMT

One of the things that amazed me when I started working at Microsoft about a year ago is that there are so many great features in the Microsoft products everyone uses that people just don't know about. I could start talking about the lack of training in general and how complex software features tend to be focused on a small percentage of users and leave out the majority but that's not the point of this post :) What I want to do is point out the features that I find to be useful and see if anyone else finds them useful; hopefully this will be the first in a series of "Features I like in .... ".

I'd like to highlight the feature of Office Communicator I found recently which allows users to connect their work IM client (Office Communicator) to their personal IM (MSN/Live, Yahoo, AOL). I've started to use this feature a lot recently, the only thing I still have to figure out is how to mass import my contacts from each IM system into communicator; will update this post as soon as find out.

The second one is starting a conversation with multiple contacts at once, a sort of blast message to a group. There are lots of business scenarios where this can be used (discuss a support incident with a group of the support team, ...) but for my particular need it's "who wants to go to lunch?" I has asked some people if this feature existed and no one could tell me how it worked, strangely enough I found it on Microsoft IT Showcase, which is a great resource on how we do things internally.

I encourage everyone to post their favorite (hidden) features of the products they use, I've found this to be very handy. I showed Anton, a new colleague of mine, the Slide Library feature and he's posted on it.

Pooya's place (in the Gulf) : features

Features I like in: Powerpoint 2007

Features I like in Office Communicator