Month: April 2019

Did you know … you can use Teams to collaborate with vendors?

There were a few organizations set up to “federate” with Skype for Business – from your Skype client, you could send messages to their Skype for Business account. This will continue to work when you move to Teams. Microsoft calls each company’s Office 365 environment a “tenant” – you are able to send messages from Teams in our tenant to a federated partner’s Skype or Teams in their tenant.

** If your account is upgraded to Teams Only, messages sent from federated partners will be delivered to you in Teams. Otherwise messages sent from federated partners will be delivered to you in Skype.

To chat with a federated partner, simply address a new chat message to them. The “We didn’t find any matches” message lets you know there wasn’t anyone found in our organization. Click to search for the account externally.

If you get an error indicating that the conversation cannot be set up, you may be mistyping the address. It is also possible that the organization is not on our list of allowed federation partners.

If their organization is on the allowed partner list, you’ll be able to start a new conversation. Along the top banner, there are a few indicators to ensure you realize you are sending information outside of our organization. Messages sent to external recipients transit Microsoft’s Skype/Teams interop gateway. Anything that is not supported through the interop gateway – screen sharing, file sharing, multi-party chat, rich text messages – will not be available when you are chatting with an external recipient.

The other person will see your message in their Skype or Teams application – if they’ve been upgraded to Teams Only, the message will be delivered to them in Teams, otherwise it will be delivered in Skype.

Teams expands on Skype’s federated messaging functionality – accounts from allowed organizations can be “guests” in our Teams. This means vendors can participate in collaborative discussions and access shared documents without having an “n99” account with an Office license. Federated partners can add you as a guest in their Teams spaces too.

Team owners add guests the same way they add internal Team members.

When you type the guest’s address, it will not match any records in our tenant and the option to add them as a guest will be displayed.

Once someone has been added as a guest to a Teams space, there are two ways you can send them chat messages – the external account and the guest account.

What’s the difference? Where the “external” listing delivered your chat message to Skype or Teams (depending on the individual’s account configuration) in the other person’s tenant, “Guest” will deliver the chat message to Teams within *our* tenant.

Good news – that means you can use features that aren’t supported through the interop gateway. Bad news – the person may not check our Teams tenant regularly to see if there are new messages.

A person added as a guest to our organization will see a drop-down tenant selector next to their avatar in Teams. They’ll be able to click the drop-down and switch contexts to our tenant.

They will be able to see our Teams … well, the ones of which they are a member anyway!

They’ll also see chat messages sent to their guest account.

You may notice that the person appears twice in your chat history – the guest account in our tenant and the external account in their tenant are separate entities.

How will the person know they’ve got messages waiting for them in our tenant? A message count indicator will appear on the tenant selector. If they’re a guest in multiple tenants, clicking the drop-down will show them how many new messages are in each tenant.

Usage Tip: This notification isn’t immediate (and sometimes the notification is significantly delayed), so time-sensitive communication should be sent to the ‘External’ listing instead of the ‘Guest’ one.

Warning: Conversations and documents in our tenant are under our purview. This means we can restore access if data becomes orphaned, our retention policies apply to the data, documents and conversations will be included in legal discovery activity, etc. Activity in partner tenants are under their purview. Be cognizant of communication and file content before storing information outside of our tenant.

Quick OpenHAB2 Apt Install In Docker Ubuntu Container

# Set up docker image — exposes OpenHAB web on your port 8080
docker run -p 8080:8080 -dit –name UbuntuOH2 ubuntu:latest

# Shell into the container
docker exec -it UbuntuOH2 /bin/bash

# From within the container, run:
apt update
apt install sudo
apt install vim
apt install wget
apt install gnupg
apt install apt-transport-https

# Repo for Zulu Java
echo ‘deb http://repos.azulsystems.com/debian stable main’ > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zulu.list

# Repo for OpenHAB2 stable build
wget -qO – ‘https://bintray.com/user/downloadSubjectPublicKey?username=openhab’ | apt-key add –
apt-key adv –keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 –recv-keys 0xB1998361219BD9C9
echo ‘deb https://dl.bintray.com/openhab/apt-repo2 stable main’ | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openhab2.list

apt-get update
apt-get install zulu-8
apt-get install openhab2
apt-get install openhab2-addons

/etc/init.d/openhab2 start

# OpenHAB will be accessible on your IP at 8080. E.g. http://10.10.10.123:8080.
# docker start/stop UbuntuOH2

Did you know … you can perform an “unmatched query” in Excel?

I mentioned yesterday that we’re creating groups based on the upper level manager through whom individuals report. Since my groups are based on the upper level managers, I need to be able to identify when a new individual pops into the list of upper level managers. Real upper level management doesn’t change frequently, but unfilled positions create gaps in the reporting structure. I call the manager before the gap the highest-ranking person in that vertical and that individual’s reporting subtree becomes a group.

Determining if values from one list appear in another list is easy in Microsoft Access – it’s an unmatched query. I’d rather not have to switch between the two programs, and I was certain an Excel formula could do the same thing. It can!

The formula is:

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(H2,SOA6MgrSummary!A:A,1,FALSE)),”Not in Manager Summary”,””)

And it does flag any manager from column H that does not appear in my list of upper level managers.

I am also able to filter my spreadsheet to display only records where the upper level manager does not appear in my summary table.

What is my formula doing? It is a combination of three functions

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(H2,SOA6MgrSummary!A:A,1,FALSE)),”Not in Manager Summary”,””)

It starts with the IF function – a logical comparison – which is used as if(Test,ResultIfTestIsTrue, ResultIfTestIsFalse).

If the test is true, “Not in Manager Summary” will be put into the cell. If the test is false, nothing (“”) will be put into the cell.

The test itself is two functions. I’ve documented the VLOOKUP function previously, but briefly it searches a range of data for a specific value. If the value is found, it returns something. If the value isn’t found, it returns N/A.

In conjunction with the VLOOKUP, I am using the ISNA function. This function is a logic test – it returns TRUE when the value is N/A and FALSE otherwise.

So my formula says “Look for the value of cell H2 in column A of the SOA6MgrSummary tab. If the result is N/A, put ‘Not in Manager Summary’ in this cell, otherwise leave this cell empty”.

 

Did you know … Excel can create a sum of values where a condition is true?

For a project, we need to divide the entire company into groups. I chose organizational structure because it’s easy – I can determine the reporting structure for any employee or contractor, and I can roll people into groups under which ever level of manager I want.

The point of making groups, though, is to have close to the same number of people in each group. While I can use COUNTIFS to count the number of people who report up through each manager, I need to add those totals for each group of managers to determine how many individuals fall in each group. How many employees are included in Group 0?

This is actually quite easy – just like count has a conditional counterpart, countifs, sum has a conditional counterpart sumifs

The usage is =SUMIFS( Range Of Data To Sum, Range Of Data Where Criterion Needs To Match, Criterion That Needs To Match)

You can use multiple criteria ranges and corresponding criteria in your conditional sum — =SUMIFS(SumRange,CriterionRange1,CriterionMatch1,CriterionRange2,CriterionMatch2,…,CriterionRangeN,CriterionMatchN).

I only have one condition, so with a quick listing of the groups, I can add a column that tells me how many individuals are included in each group.

Bonus did you know – instead of specifying a start and end cell for a range, you can use the entire column. Instead of saying my “Range of data to sum” is B2:B101, I just used B:B to select the entire “B” column.

Viewing the values, I can see that my group size is not consistent.

As I adjust the group to which the manager is assigned, these sums are updated in real-time.

 

Did you know … you decide what appears in your Teams activity feed?

Have you noticed that some new Teams messages show up in your activity feed and others do not? The Teams activity feed is meant to highlight Team messages that are important to you. How does Teams know what is important to you? It doesn’t … Teams needs you to tell it what is important to you.

Normally, Teams conversation activity doesn’t appear in your activity feed. When my test account posts a message into the “General” channel …

I see the channel is bolded, indicating new activity; but I do not have any indicators on my Teams or Activity tiles.

What is included in the Activity feed?

Messages to which you’ve replied:  When you reply in a thread, your reply tells Teams that the thread is important to you (just liking a post doesn’t count … you’ve got to actually reply. There are enhancement requests to include some provision for following a thread without replying and muting notifications on a thread to which you’ve replied).

The test account added a new reply after I’d posted my reply. In addition to seeing the channel name in bold, my Activity tile indicates there is one unread message.

Followed Channels: If you want to receive notifications for all threads posted to a channel, follow the channel. Click the ellipsis next to the channel name and select “Follow this channel”.

Now when the test account posts a new thread …

I have an indicator on my Activity tile.

Team At-Mentions: You’ll also see an activity item when the Team is at-mentioned in a post (that’s why at-mentioning the Team is a really effective way to bring attention to your post).

In addition to the activity indicator, I also see an “@” symbol on the Teams tile indicating that a Team has been at-mentioned. And a little number next to the channel that tells you how many unread Team or Channel mentions are in the channel.

Some Channel At-Mentions: What is the difference between at-mentioning a Team and at-mentioning a Channel? When you at-mention a Channel, only people who have favorited the channel will see activity alerts.

Usage Tip: If you break your Team up into channels that aren’t deeply interconnected, individuals can favorite and follow the channels where they are actively involved and check other channels when they’ve got some time. You can at-mention the channel for important messages without overwhelming the whole team with alerts.

While the channel is marked as bold to indicate unread messages, I don’t get any notification about the at-mention. How do you mark a channel as a favorite? Just click that star to the right of the channel name (favorite channels also appear in the initial channel list so you don’t have to expand “X more channels” to see them).

Now a message which at-mentions the channel …

alerts me. A lot 😊

 

Ohio House Bill 62

Letter sent to my Ohio State Representative and Senator:

I’m writing in reference to House Bill 62.

Pertaining to the definition of “Plug-in electric motor vehicle” and “Hybrid motor vehicle” (Sect 4501.01 DDD and EEE) and their additional respective registration fees, the wording in the bill as I read it leaves some ambiguity to a third segment: the “Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle” or PHEV. These are vehicles that will both plug into an external source to charge for a modest electric range AND use the gasoline engine in a typical hybrid configuration when the charge is depleted. These vehicles are NOT designed to run indefinitely on electricity alone. My concern is that the current wording classifies certain PHEV’s as Plug-in electric motor vehicles. PHEV’s will still pay the gasoline tax, similar to hybrids, when they fill up at the pump *and* be charged a 200$ registration fee. Examples of vehicles in this category are the Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius Prime, Chrysler Pacifica PHEV, Kia Niro PHEV, Honda Clarity, and the Ford Fusion Energi. I would like to see the law amended to ensure PHEV owners, who generally pay some gasoline tax just like “Hybrid motor vehicle” owners, are not subject to the higher registration fee.

Beyond the classification of PHEVs, the gasoline tax is consumption and usage based. Heavier vehicles tend to have lower mpg ratings, thus their drivers accrue more tax. Individuals who drive a lot accrue more tax. The new registration fee is a fixed amount that has no bearing on an individual’s actual vehicle usage. I will be assessed the 200$ fee, and I drive maybe 2,500 miles a year. Someone with a pure electric Tesla who drives 300 miles a day pays the same 200$ fee but drives 75,000 miles in a year. If I convert an F-350 to a plug-in electric motor vehicle, that 7,000 pound truck is going to be assessed the same 200$ fee as my 3,800 pound PHEV.

I don’t have a problem being asked to pay for *my* usage of the roads. I wouldn’t complain about per-mile fee for electric and hybrid vehicles or an additional tax on electrical consumption to fund road repairs. I’d be less upset if the petrol tax were scrapped and everyone charge a registration fee based on the vehicle’s weight so infrequent drivers universally subsidize frequent drivers. But I vehemently object to being uniquely, financially penalized for low-milage usage of a PHEV.