Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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In a recent update I reviewed a book by productivity guru Peggy Duncan that helped users work more effectively with Outlook. What makes Peggy's book so good is that it is based on real-world experiences.

When I was approached by the publishers of another meeting capture software recently, I realized that for most Outlook power users the program's breakdown of items leads to a constant shuffling of views. What MeetingSense (from Yon Software) does is literally reorganize Outlook around the most significant events in a business person's life.

Outlook (arbitrarily) defines three types of events: Appointments, Events and Meetings and puts items in your Calendar. Scheduling meetings with shared calendars adds a layer of complexity that many users find daunting.

And yet the maelstrom of activity around meetings is really the essence of what you use Outlook for — email to schedule and prepare, calendar to keep track and avoid conflicts and contacts to know whom to include. Shuffling through this web of activity involves changing Outlook views through these three areas — with the possible addition of Tasks in terms of preparation.

MeetingSense makes its concept of the meeting the central event or focus for all of these activities, and allows those for whom meetings are a necessary and constant reality to manage them more effectively.

We covered a similar tool recently — Quindi — which captured an online meeting for rebroadcast and also handled some of the surrounding activity. But as we'll see, MeetingSense goes beyond the meeting itself to handle its preparation and follow-up with truly comprehensive Office integration.

Here's what I mean. If you open the main Outlook organizer tool — Outlook Today — which not that many users even work with anymore, here's a typical view.

Figure 1147

It's based mainly on the calendar and integrates some other components like Tasks and Email, but it really offers no clear idea of what truly matters.

When I opened the MeetingSense Dashboard for the very first time, it totally reorganized how I viewed Outlook in a way that really made sense — it showed me what was really important in terms of meetings and action items — things I needed to do.

Figure 1148

Remember that MeetingSense's definition of a Meeting is beyond Outlook's — it encompasses basically all vital interactions including appointments and all day events.

Let's go through the process. MeetingSense installs into Outlook to allow users to access the Dashboard and other items and also to Schedule a Meeting.

Figure 1149

When you use the MeetingSense scheduler as opposed to Outlook you can email invitations as you normally would, but you also get an Agenda tab that allows you to let attendees know and prepare for the topics to be covered.

Figure 1150

Notice that MeetingSense is not an infrastructure tool — it is designed to work with any other conferencing software for online meetings and integrate telephone conferencing.

But beyond online meetings the product is valid for any meeting that requires accountability and follow up. In some ways I see it as bringing the thoroughness of a court reporter or transcriber to the ordinary workplace.

You can also launch a quick meeting directly from the Dashboard. Here is a simple one in which we can show a PowerPoint presentation, but notice that with a meeting open, everything (including audio from all participants using a speakerphone or ordinary computer microphones on a web conference) is recorded.

The mailed out agenda would be in the upper right, and all of the important aspects are tracked and saved.

Figure 1151

This includes any collaborated or changed files. If the participants decided to change the PowerPoint file, or a Word document or spreadsheet, the saved version would be included in the meeting workspace and distributed to the meeting participants and any other people that the meeting decided needed the files.

The files, delegated tasks, action items, (revised) agenda and every other meeting component is stored for retrieval and also distributed subsequently to all participants, along with reminders for significant items to ensure compliance.

Both the Dashboard and the Meeting interfaces can be customized or revised by moving around the components (called Pods).

The next figure (taken from the online demo) shows a fully populated meeting console and the resulting meeting summary email.

Figure 1152

Notice how the console makes sense of the decisions made at the meeting and the summary distributes the necessary information.

Meeting participants automatically populate the meeting console as they join the meeting and they all receive the work product of the completed meetings as attachments to the meeting summary email. Saved meetings can be retrieved and revised any time to account for changes in circumstances.

Pricing is $299 for an individual package which can be used by a consultant to help organize his or her clients' meetings up to packs for 100 users with volume discounts up to 35%. A free trial version is available for 30 days.

Probably the best way to evaluate the product is to sign up for a live demo or experience the product through the excellent simulations on the demo page of the web site.

Current users include government agencies, academia, small and large businesses and consultants and not surprisingly, law firms (it's almost like a virtual court reporter).

For average Outlook users, many of whom have avoided the cumbersome scheduling components that often require Exchange Server, this product offers a lot of potential benefits.

Nothing created in Outlook vanishes into thin air after the meeting is over — it is all catalogued and organized making for increased efficiency and accountability.

In many ways MeetingSense does for Outlook what Xcelsius does for Excel — even the same term dashboard applies to a basically an overview that lets you work more efficiently with the information.

For small businesses this can be a great way to ensure that productivity is maximized and time before, during and after meetings is spent efficiently.

For larger concerns with web conferences or other types of virtual meetings that involve high stakes and accountability, the backup and retrieval capability and the automatic distribution of significant information flowing out of the meetings managed by Meeting Space may well pay for the product.

The company estimates that it takes less than a minute to install the product and less than half an hour to learn it. As we saw with Peggy Duncan's Outlook tips, sometimes taking the time to implement organizational solutions can pay dividends in efficiency and productivity. This is a product that may be symbolic of that concept, making meetings less onerous and more productive for all participants.

At the time of this posting (12/06), MeetingSense is currently featuring an introductory price of $99.

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