Microsoft Outlook

Is it a mystery? To some it still is. Here’s the deal. Exchange is email. If you’ve ever used Outlook, you were probably using Exchange Servers or something like them. Outlook is often the interface to a hosted Exchange Server.

I talk to people all the time about hosting SharePoint and Exchange together for them. Often times I get that blank look… You know the same one I got when I asked the best looking girl in my college marketing class to go out with me. For some reason people think that Exchange is some convoluted program that they don’t need or have the ability to comprehend. It is email, contacts, calendars – personal information management – most often used for businesses.

How to leverage basic tools for advanced productivity

What did you do today? It’s as common of a question in the business World as the dreaded statement “you’re fired”.  And yet, employees seem to find every way possible to simply not get fired; just enough to get by, rather than finding a quick, easy way to answer the first question any time it’s posed.

Don’t get me wrong – I can procrastinate with the best of ‘em.  However, once I made it through college and began my work as a grunt in the top-heavy corporate machine, I was inundated with emails, sticky notes on my desk, and late-night voicemails from my supervisor trying to find out whether or not my TPS report would be ready by EOB the next day (and yes, I always use an up-to-date cover sheet).  I found myself struggling to answer such a simple question.  I honestly couldn’t remember what a TPS report was, let alone whether or not I had actually produced one the day before.  The business world was full of too many acronyms, too many projects, too many questions, too many TASKS to keep track of in my brain.

I have been using theGoogle Calendar since its release in 2006 for home and personal use; however, just recently, I discovered that it can also be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook Calendar. Some may ask why I would want to synch these two calendars in the first place, so let me explain.