My Digital Life

Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh

No Release Candidate yet for Office 2007, however last Thursday the Office team released a Technical Refresh of the Beta 2 software (B2TR). The B2TR downloads can be found here. The original Beta 2 software must be in place before installing the B2TR update. There is one exception I found to this; the Business Contact Manager add in for Outlook must be unlinked from the Small Business Accounting database (if in use) and un-installed, prior to applying the Office Suite B2TR. Then the new B2TR Business Contact Manager for Outlook can then be installed.

The major noticeable improvement with B2TR is speed as well as many bug fixes. They have also polished the user interface and updated the program icons to match the Vista look and feel. I don't think the speed is where it needs to be yet, especially on the rendering side but this version is much more usable and I can recommend to advanced users.

If you did not download the original Beta 2 in June, Microsoft is now charging $1.50 per Office application as a download fee. The download has been so popular that they have exceeded their hosting budget and this is their way of doing cost recovery. I also think it is a way to slow the downloads of the Beta before they get RC1 done.

If you have been using Beta 2, this is a must have update until RC1 is released, hopefully by the end of the year...

One last note, because Microsoft and Adobe never reached an agreement on the inclusion of the PDF file format (see this post), Office 2007 B2TR requires you to choose and install one of two add ins; one with PDF and XPS, or one with just PDF. I am not sure how this relates to licensing, we will have to see what the final licensing plan will be for PDF when RC1 comes around.

Outlook calendar updates

I have always found that entering sporting schedules or other repeating public events into Outlook to be extra work that I don't really have time for, but I find having these schedules especially on my Pocket PC very helpful. Jason Langridge posted a tidbit about www.calendar-updates.com, a site that provides downloads of calendar items into Oultook, The site charges for these calendar items, but they provide a additional information in the calendar item such as TV and radio schedule. When you use Microsoft Exchange (I use 4smartphone.net) and Direct Push to your Windows Mobile 5.0 device the calendar events are automatically pushed to Pocket Outlook.

Now, am I willing to pay $1.99 to download the Washington Redskins schedule, probably...

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1

Last week Microsoft made available for public download the Release Candidate 1 of Internet Explorer 7. Release Candidates are versions of products which are fully functional and are going through the final stages of testing before official release. I have been using IE 7 since beta 2 and I have been very impressed. The three key attributes of IE 7 are tabbed browsing, integrated RSS reader, and much better security. I had switched to Firefox late last year, but when beta 2 of IE7 came out I decided to give it a whirl. IE 7 has been very stable and as time went by my reliance on Firefox and IE 6 have gone to zero. I can recommend that you try IE 7 RC1, you will not be disappointed.

I wish I could say the same about the Office 2007 beta, I love the new functionality but it is painfully slow. Hopefully we will see a technical refresh soon...

Outlook 2007 Beta 2 with Business Contact Manager and Vonage Click-2-Call addins

I thought I had both plugins working together from my last post on the subject. Both work in Outlook 2007 as COM add ins, however when I display the contact view the Business Contact Manager add ins crashes it's menu item and an annoying popup displays every time you change views.Most of the user functionality still works through the contact view and icons but since the menu is gone there is no way to get to the administration features.

By disabling the Vonage Click-2-Call add in, under Tools/Trust Center/Add-ins/Manage COM Add-ins the Business Contact Manager add in works fine. I don't know which one is the culprit but I need the Business Contact Manager more than the Click-2-Call add in, since I can still use the standalone Click-2-Call application by cutting and pasting the phone number I want to dial.

I may try my hand at writing a simple plug in using the HTTPS format described at Vonage's developer center to access the Click-2-Call service.

Vonage - Click-2-Call and Outlook plug in

From my past experience with VOIP in the corporate world, I got used to an Outlook plug in that allowed the direct dialing of a number from the Outlook contact view. To my delight I found that Vonage has such a plug in, it is called Click-2-Call and can be downloaded here. Click-2-Call can be used with or without Outlook and installs on Windows XP.

The standalone Click-2-Call application allows you to enter the phone number you want to dial. Once you click on the "Place Call" button, your handset will ring, when you pick up the call connection is be completed. If you have multiple Vonage lines on the same account you can also select which line to use. The Click-2-Call application will minimize to the Windows XP system tray for easy access.

Even though I would not currently recommend that anyone run the current Outlook 2007 Beta 2 (unless you are hardcore), I was glad to find that the Click-2-Call Outlook plug in works. Hopefully Beta 3 is around the corner.

The Outlook 2007 Beta 2 contact view with the addition of the Click-2-Call toolbar (red oval). You do not have to open the contact, just select it. Based on the numbers in the contact records, up to 3 icons will display, from left to right, Work, Mobile, Home. The other numbers in the contact record are displayed in a drop down menu accessible to left of the icons. The plug in usesthe Click-2-Call standalone application and the calling experience is same, however you do not have to click on "Place Call". All that I need now is for Vonage to create a "Line Property" module to use Outlook'sbuilt in calling feature which can associate the callwith a timer and a journal entry.

Office 2007 Beta 2 - Outlook with Business Contact Manager Part 3

 Screen real estate is always an issue with most applications, the Outlook 2007 dashboard concept is no exception. The inbox view is crowded, however the Office team implemented a very elegant solution; they use sliding bars for the navigation and to do displays. These are controlled by the international VCR forward >> and reverse << symbols.

The inbox view with the navigation bar fully displayed. The arrow points to the VCR control.

The inbox view with the compacted navigation bar. It uses icons for quick access to the inbox, calendar, contact, tasks, notes, public folders views.

By clicking on the navigation pane all folders within a view are displayed in a anchored floating window.

This view with the navigation and to do bar retracted provides more detail of the inbox data. VCR buttons are used throughout Outlook, giving you the ability to easily customize a view. Other the Beta performance issues I find Oultook 2007 to be a winner.

I use Microsoft's Small Business Accounting 2006 (SBA) and just updated it to SP3.  I got a scare when I could not connect from Outlook 2007  with Business Contact Manager to SBA SP3. I primarily use the interconnection to record billable time on tasks and appointments. I was able to get around the problem by disconnecting from the SBA database and reconfiguring the connection. This is performed by using the Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager menu / Accounting Tools / Disconnect Accounting System, then going back to the Accounting Tools menu item to configure the Accounting System. The integration between SBA and Office makes the accounting system a winner.

You can follow my posts on Office 2007 by using the Office 2007 category.

Office 2007 Beta 2 - Outlook with Business Contact Manager Part 2

A major improvement to the calendar entry screen is the addition of the time zone fields which are accessed via the options. For folks traveling from one time zone to another, scheduling meetings has always been a hassle. You had to manually add/subtract the time zone offset to the appointment for it to show up correctly when you arrived at your destination and changed the time on your machine and/or synched Pocket PC. Pocket Informant on Windows Mobile has a utility that changes the appointments to a desired time zone, but this is really just a stop gap. I think the Office team has correctly addressed the issue. Now you can have a start time in one time zone and with an end time a different time zone. Great for cross country and international flights. Another nice feature, when you open the calendar item, the time zone times stay the way you entered them even though they are displayed as local time in the calendar view.

Options menu with Time Zones selected.

Time Zone fields with a different Time Zone for start and end.

Link to: Part 1

Office 2007 Beta 2 - Outlook with Business Contact Manager Part 1

It has been about a week since I installed Office 2007 beta 2. The component I use the most is Outlook. Finally the Office team has grasped the concept that Outlook is the most widely used application in the Office suite and that a usable dashboard needed to be incorporated with the Inbox view. Their attempt of a dashboard in the Outlook Today view was pretty lame, but with the addition of the "To Do" bar in the inbox view the office team has hit the mark. For my use of Outlook, this is exactly what I was looking for, the integration of my inbox, calendar, and tasks into one view.

One major change I have found in Outlook 2007 is the way flags and categories are handled. With Outlook 2003, I used flags and their colors as categories for my messages (since categories were not easily accessible), in Outlook 2007 the categories are up front and center, and the flags have been refocused to just be reminders. I customized my inbox view to sort by flag and removed groups. Dynamic view changes in the beta do not seem to get saved, the next time the inbox view is displayed, it reverts to the default view. I got around this by manually creating a view using Define Views. I also created a view for tasks to only show my overdue tasks, tasks due today and flagged messages due today. 

 

The major addition to the inbox view is the "To Do Bar" on the right, it contains a month calendar, current calendar items, and tasks. This bar can be customized and minimized. Since I use One Note 2007, a copy to One Note icon is displayed (green arrow). This works for any Outlook item type. By default the category is now displayed (red arrow). Colors can now be associated with categories, now all we need are icons like in Pocket Informant and Agenda Fusion. Flags have predefined shades of red based on the reminder date you want to set (blue arrow).

All in all I love the new view and especially the "To Do Bar", this is alone is worth the upgrade. However the beta of Outlook 2007 is a little shaky, so I would not recommend it for the non IT person. Here are some problems I have found:

• Dynamic view changes do not get saved.
• Initial synchronization with Exchange is very slow.
• Outlook 2007 is generally slow.
• Over several days of use (in between suspends) I loose connectivity to Exchange, although the status shows connected. I have to end the Outlook process (via task manager) and restart it. I had the same problem in Outlook 2003 before SP1.
• Sometimes, on initial startup, the Business Contact Manager database is not found. Restarting Oultook fixes the problem.
• Identifying a different text language in a mail message does not work. This feature works in Word 2007.

Office 2007 Beta 2 - Taking the plunge

Fresh from my good experience with IE 7 Beta 2 (I have not gone back to Firefox for several weeks now), I decided to take the plunge and install Office 2007 beta 2. The key driver for installing the beta was to check out One Note Mobile, but I also installed Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Publisher.

So far so good, Outlook is pretty stable, a little slow but usable, Word and Excel seem solid, and One Note is much improved.  One Note Mobile is interesting but I don't understand why inking was not included, when you need to put something down quickly that capability is a must. It looks like I won't be getting rid of Phatpad anytime soon. 

I was thrilled to see the PDF integration, but this morning the Wall Street Journal burst my bubble by reporting that talks with Adobe broke down, and Microsoft would have to pull the feature from Office 2007. It seems Adobe wanted a separate install and fee charged for PDF creation. 

All in all for now Office 2007 is stable, and I like the new command interface.