HP/Microsoft do an Extreme Make-Over of a Not For Profit Organization

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure to be able to participate in a very heart warming story.  Families For Effective Autism Treatment of Washington (or FEAT WA), was the first winner of the HP & Microsoft Extreme technical make-over.  FEAT really does a lot of work for children with autism, and were struggling with their hobbled together IT infrastructure. 

Microsoft and HP came together to set up the IT Infrastructure backbone running Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials on a maxed out HP ProLiant MicroServer. And for the children and office workers, Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server 2011 Premium on an HP ML 110 G7; to be connected to with the HP t5749e thing clients and HP EliteBook 8460p Notebooks. HP also improved their networking infrastructure with the HP ProCurve 1810G-24 switch.

It was so awesome to meet and help out Brenne and Amanda at FEAT of WA to do their job and help children with autism.  Check out the video:

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Outlook 2010 Speed Tip: Using the Quick Step Box

Outlook 2010 has been out for a while, but one of the more recent features I started to depend on to make email faster for me is the Quick Steps box on the dialog:

The Quick Steps bar allows you to make quick and customized operations on pieces of email that you have in your inbox.  There are a bunch of default ones that I use all the time, and I’ve also created a few new ones myself. 

Let’s first talk about how to use it, it’s pretty simple.  If you have a message you want to take action on, simply make sure it’s collected and select the one you want.  If you want to reply and delete it, simply click that button.  A reply message is opened to the individual, and the original message is deleted.  It’s that simple. 

Let’s say we often move mail to a specific folder in our inbox, and it involves selecting the message, dragging it to a folder that may or may not be collapsed in the tree view, and then dropping it there.  Instead, we can create a new Quick Step for this.  To do that simply:

1. Select the Create New Quick Step
2. Give the Quick Step a name like “Move to Follow Up”
3. Select Move to a folder, under the Actions drop down. 
4. Then select the folder in the drop box that appears that you want to move the message to. 

And that’s it.  You can additionally assign a short cut key, give it tool tip text if you have complicated rules, or even add additional actions.

It’s made my life easier, with the amount of messages I get each day, I highly suggest checking out the Quick Steps.  Allows you to cut through email pretty fast.

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New SBS Marketer!

Well… not so new, as he’s been around as an external content vendor forever. Welcome David Fabritius to the Windows Server & Cloud marketing team here at Microsoft, with a focus on small and medium businesses. David is very familiar with the Windows Server family since he’s spent most of his time at Microsoft creating technical readiness material for the last few releases of SBS and other SMB-focused server products. David has a lot of experience as an ITPro deploying and managing server infrastructures.

David is from the Pacific Northwest and has been doing computer stuff since before college. He’s been a fan of SBS since he first bought a copy to run his own local small business. Since 2008, he’s been spending the majority of his time making sure you, the Microsoft Partner, are ready to sell SBS and have the training and resources you need to be successful.

Obviously with his new role, he’ll be helping to decide the direction of the product from within the marketing org!

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Thank you BizTech Magazine – SeanDaniel.com is listed in their top 50 Must Read IT Blogs

I was rather surprised last night to be browsing my @Mentions on Twitter only to find out that @BizTechMagazine listed me as one of the “50 Must-Read IT Blogs”. I first saw it when I was mentioned in their tweet. Today I was able to visit BizTech Magazine’s blog post to see that I’m not even at the very bottom!

It’s a great honour to even get a mention in a top 50!

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