Business Productivity Blog - Increase your productivity

How to pulish your presentation online

How to publish your PowerPoint presentation online?

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Most of the time a PowerPoint presentation is presented to the audience during a live presentation – either face to face or online. But sometimes you want to publish your presentation on a website for others to see when they have time. You might want to publish a company presentation on your public facing website, […] Read More

Adobe and Business Productivity sign agreement

Business Productivity signs agreement with Adobe

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Update: Adobe KnowHow has shut down its operations in January 2018. You can still find all our courses on our website, Udemy and our sister site Storyals.   Last week, August 30, Adobe announced a new learning service called Adobe KnowHow. With this service Adobe aims to take a bite of the growing online learning market. Through […] Read More

Skype integrated with Outlook.com

Increased productivity with Skype in Outlook.com

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Last week on August 19th, Microsoft announced that Skype is now available as an integrated service in Outlook.com for users in the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, France, Canada, and the United States. Microsoft is working hard to roll out the service worldwide. The Skype Outlook.com integration means that you can send instant messages, have voice […] Read More

Give your pictures life with Windows Photo Gallery

Give your pictures new life with Photo Gallery

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Update: Windows Essentials 2012 suite reached the end of support, and is unavailable for download.   Most people today have thousands of pictures saved in numerous folders on computers and hard drives. If you don’t have the right tools, working with pictures can be a time-consuming nightmare. In many cases, our pictures are left in […] Read More

Create a professional SWOT analysis

Create a professional SWOT analysis

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It’s Monday morning, you’ve just gotten back to work after the weekend and your boss asks you to do a SWOT analysis for a new, potential business area and present it to the leadership team tomorrow. Your mind goes blank as you stare at the 2 by 2 matrix you’ve drawn on a white sheet […] Read More

How to unplug from work

How to unplug from work during vacation?

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This time of year a lot of people are taking time off work to go on vacation with their loved ones. A few decades ago you didn’t have to worry about customers calling you on your mobile phone at any time of the day or colleagues sending an email with requests. The downside of today’s […] Read More

Windows 8.1 - Top enhancements for traditional PC users

Windows 8.1 – Top enhancements for traditional PC users

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With Windows 8 Microsoft made a huge bet on new, portable devices with touch screens. The new Windows 8 interface is extremely cool if you have a touch-enabled tablet – but if you don’t, Windows 8 can be a bit confusing, and switching between the new Windows 8, touch-enabled interface and the traditional desktop interface […] Read More

What are QR codes and what are the benefits

What are QR codes and what are its benefits?

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Whether you are in a coffee shop, a retail store or reading a magazine, you probably can’t help notice the black and white squares with funny patterns on products, billboards and ads. These little squares with funny patterns are called QR codes (Quick Response) codes. These are not new, they have been around for quite […] Read More

How to effectively manage personal change

How to effectively manage personal change?

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Last week I wrote a blog article on how to effectively manage organizational change. In order for an organization to change, the people in the organization need to change as well. As humans we constantly go through change – we grow up, we get married, we have children, we move, we change jobs, we get […] Read More

How to effectively manage organizational change

How to effectively manage organizational change?

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Last week I attended a seminar by Richard Jolly, one of my former professors at London Business School. Professor Jolly does research in organizational behavior. One of his courses, “Managing Change” made a huge impact on me. In today’s fast-paced business environment, businesses need to effectively manage change in order to survive. Whether it is […] Read More

What is Office Mobile for iPhone and how can I use it

What is Office Mobile for iPhone and how can I use it?

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On June 14th, 2013, Microsoft announced the availability of Office Mobile for iPhone in the Apple App Store. This announcement was warmly welcomed by many Microsoft Office and iPhone enthusiasts, but a lot of people were also disappointed by the very limited usage rights of the application. In this week’s blog post I’ll give you […] Read More

Manage email, time and contacts using Microsoft Outlook 2010

Manage email, time and contacts using Microsoft Outlook 2010

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Most customers I meet use Microsoft Outlook at work to manage their email, time and contacts. Even though most of us spend many hours each day using Outlook it’s very rare I meet someone who uses Microsoft Outlook really effectively. Even though Outlook has evolved over the years, most people use it the same way […] Read More

Getting started with the Lync App for Win 8

Getting started with the Lync App for Windows 8

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Update 1 (2015): Microsoft announced that Skype for Business will replace Lync. Update 2 (2017): Microsoft announced that Microsoft Teams would replace Skype for Business eventually.   Last week I wrote about the OneNote app that is available as a free download for everyone who has Windows 8. At the same time as the OneNote app was released, another free […] Read More

Getting started with the OneNote App

Getting started with the OneNote App for Windows 8

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On October 26th, 2012 Microsoft launched the OneNote app in the Windows store, a free application that is designed for Windows 8 devices with touch screens. An update to the OneNote app was released on March 22nd that included improved inking capabilities and support for Office 365 notebooks. The OneNote app is really clever, but […] Read More

Analytics for Twitter in Excel 2013

Use Excel to analyze Twitter data

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Would you like to know who is the most active tweeter in your field? Wouldn’t it be great if you knew what your competitor is doing on Twitter to attract customers? Do you wish you could see where in the world people are tweeting about your products? Well, you can! Using a free add-in for […] Read More

Sharper skills using Microsoft Excel 2010

Sharper skills using Microsoft Excel for business

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When I tell people about our business and the courses we provide most people say that they would love to improve their skills in Excel. A lot of you have probably stared at an empty spreadsheet and just wished that it would magically turn into a great looking report with clever analysis. There are numerous […] Read More

Whats whatsapp and how can I use it

What is WhatsApp and how can I use it?

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Even though I consider myself to be rather up to date on the latest in communications technology, I felt like I was in the hi-tech stone-age when I was recently introduced to WhatsApp by the other mothers at my son’s nursery. Since I frequently send text messages to friends and family in various parts of […] Read More

Smart and effective notes using Microsoft OneNote

Smart and effective notes using Microsoft OneNote

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In April we launched our first course, “Eye-catching presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint 2010” on Udemy (the online learning platform where experts around the world can share their knowledge). During the next couple of weeks, we’ll take all the 10-minute video tutorials on Microsoft Office 2010 that we have published in our video library on www.businessproductivity.com […] Read More

How to make a good first impression

How to make a good first impression in business?

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Whether you are giving a presentation, selling a product or interviewing for a job, making a good first impression is extremely important when you are doing business. Due to the way the human brain functions, it’s very difficult to change the first impression, so you need to get it right the first time around. Most […] Read More

A richer LinkedIn integration with Outlook 2013

A richer LinkedIn integration with Outlook 2013

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Having a large, professional, business network is extremely important for your career. Most often this is where you will hear about new job opportunities, get connected to business deals and find talented people to hire. If you want to know more about how to increase your business network you can read my blog post, “Five […] Read More

Business Productivity on Udemy

Business Productivity is now on Udemy

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Today I’m really pleased to announce the first Business Productivity course called, “Eye-catching presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint 2010” on Udemy. What is Udemy you might ask? In this week’s blog post I’ll tell you more about Udemy and how you can access the new course we provide through the online learning platform. What is Udemy? […] Read More

Active listening - key steps

Active listening – key steps to succeed

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One of the key skills of a good leader is the ability to actively listen. To actively listen to someone you need to give that person your undivided attention. In today’s world where we are constantly connected to news, tweets, facebook posts, and email it’s becoming harder and harder to stay focused and to stay […] Read More

Get started with Yammer - an End User Guide

Getting started with Yammer – an End-User Guide

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The past few weeks I’ve been writing about enterprise social networks; the benefits and the solutions provided by Microsoft. Before you get going with an enterprise social network I recommend you define your goals and objectives, that you evaluate different platforms and that you clearly communicate usage guidelines and policies. Last week I shared with […] Read More

Getting started with social in Office 365 – an end user guide

Getting started with social in Office 365 – an End-User Guide

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Last week I wrote a blog article about Enterprise Social Networks by Microsoft, including SharePoint and newly acquired Yammer. Enterprise social networking can have an enormous impact on the knowledge sharing within your organization. If done well it can, among other things, lead to an increased sense of organizational identity, improved transparency, decentralization of information […] Read More

Enterprise Social Networks by Microsoft

Enterprise Social Networks by Microsoft

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There is no doubt that social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become vastly popular for keeping up to date on friends’ activities. But social networks are not only for personal use, more and more companies are seeing the benefits of enterprise social networking, that is, social networking between employees and business partners related to business […] Read More

How to effectively assign work tasks

How to effectively assign tasks?

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In my productivity workshops, I often talk about task management and I show the attendees how they can effectively use Microsoft Outlook to keep track of their tasks. During these sessions, there are always questions about assigning tasks to others. As some of you might know, you have the ability to assign tasks to other […] Read More

Which new Office 365 version should I choose

Which new version of Office 365 should I choose?

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Note: Checkout out the blog post on our sister site Storyals to know the difference between Office 365 and Office 2019 and which one is right for you here. Last week, February 27th, 2013, Microsoft announced the worldwide availability of the new Office 365 for business. This updated version contains the newest version of Microsoft’s productivity […] Read More

Microsoft's Scroogled campaign is gaining momentum

Microsoft’s “SCROOGLED!” campaign gains momentum

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The past two weeks the media has been filled with articles about Microsoft’s “Scroogled!” campaign where they accuse Google of invading people’s privacy with their targeted email ads. In the campaign, Microsoft encourages users to switch over from Gmail to Outlook.com. By going to the campaign site www.scroogled.com, users can sign a petition addressed to […] Read More

How to save money with Skyp

How to save money using Skype

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How to save money using Skype Last week a report from telecom market research firm TeleGeography showed that Skype voice and video traffic over the Internet grew 44 percent to 167 billion minutes in 2012. Last year Skype hosted the same amount of calls as one-third of the world’s phone traffic. Skype is being used […] Read More