Real World Computing

It's been five years since a decision was made to kill Notes and Domino at our organisation. Like many other organisations, we left for the Azure shores of Microsoft. Several changes of leadership later and Domino is still at the heart of our organisation and we're moving towards tighter integration with it than ever.  It occurred to me that now is as good a time as any to reflect on how our journey went.  The Low Hanging Fruit The low hanging fruit of any domino migration is mail. Email is an easily identifiable application which can generally be swapped out one-for-one. In our case, Notes client (and the lesser used Verse web application) for Outlook and Outlook Web Application (OWA).  We investigated several applications before finding one that worked and converted all of our .NSF mail files into .PSTs, then we imported these into outlook. Along the way, we discovered that Verse didn't safeguard our older mail quite as well as we'd hoped and we discovered that folder...

Teams or SharePoint Both! Teams IS SharePoint. (okay, so we know they're separate applications but I've had to labour this point for the sake of our staff).  Teams and SharePoint are two parts of the same thing and they can't exist without each other.  You'll find that sometimes SharePoint is more appropriate and sometimes teams is.  It doesn't matter. You can switch between the two as needed.  Teams is essential for meetings. SharePoint is best for browsing through files. Why Create a Teams Site? You should create a teams site for any of the following reasons; You want to text-chat regularly with a group of people (internal and/or external) You want to be able to share files regularly with a group of people.  You're collaborating on a project or working group.  You have a group that has regular meetings with, particularly online and ad-hoc meetings.  You want to create a SharePoint site for a group of people to use.  First Steps 1. Go to the Micr...

Seeing as we're in isolation, we seem to be spending a whole lot more time in Microsoft Teams -- and of course, Microsoft seems to have picked up the pace of teams updates as well.  One of the things that Zoom, (one of Teams' competitors) has that is enviable is a "sense of fun".  Zoom has these great backgrounds and they have some fun filters too. In this post, I wanted to look at how to get these options in teams.  Bear in mind that Teams is always changing and that some of these features are already being developed for the platform, so you probably won't have to use these workarounds for long. The Built-In Backgrounds Yesterday (15 April 2020), Teams started up with a new feature; Background effects. To get to these, simply click on the three dots while in a video conference and choose Show Background Effects . This opens up a selection of backgrounds in the right hand panel.  The first bunch are suitable for corporate meetings and include "...