Three Bears IT Consultancy

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

The high level of integration between Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft SharePoint means that it’s often possible to access features from within the SharePoint environment without needing to directly access the system.  This makes it possible to publish Microsoft Access files directly into SharePoint lists as well as saving Word and Excel documents directly into a document library.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 also delivers a number of features to assist users in managing offline files as well as organising their diaries across multiple team sites or collaboration environments.

In this post, we look at how to integrate your shared calendars in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 so that you can view some or all of them in real time.

First thing is to navigate to the Shared Calendar that you’re wanting to manage within Microsoft Outlook 2007.  Site configurations differ, but if the person creating the site used default options then you’ll likely see a link saying Calendar on the quick launch bar, on the left underneath the header Lists.

Click on the calendar link and the screen should update to show your calendar in the default view.

Just above the calendar, and below any crumb trail, you should see a menu bar and a drop down menu that says Actions.

Click on Actions and choose Connect To Outlook.

Microsoft Outlook should then appear with a dialogue box asking whether you trust this information source and want to link it to your Outlook account.  Click on Yes.

You’ll now notice that in addition to your personal calendar in My Calendar, a new header will have appeared in the calendar folder list that says Other Calendars.  This is where Outlook stores all other linked calendars.

To view a calendar, tick the box next to the name; to hide a calendar, untick the box.  Simple as that.

Screen shots and video on their way soon.

Three Bears IT Consultancy (www.threebears.biz) are delighted to be hosting and supporting the launch of a new web site which is seeking to become the first national register of all school closures across the United Kingdom. 

SchoolClosures.info will include term dates, INSET/training days as well as details of closures due to adverse events, such as the recent problems with snow, ice and the like.

The  SchoolClosures.info team offer a range of services to schools, private nurseries and parents.  For more information, visit the SchoolClosures.info web site.

We have created a petition on the Number 10 web site calling on the Government and the Opposition to safeguard funding for Higher Education and Further Education after the next General Election.  The cuts facing the Higher Education and Further Education sector risk compromising the cultivation and promotion of talent and entrepreneurship within the UK.

Please support our petition and take a stance at: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/higher-ed/

We’re aware of a number of people who have been experiencing problems with downloading and installing updates from the Microsoft Update site.  Microsoft Vista, as users will know, often has two phases to installing updates – the first happens after the download, the second phase happens when you subsequently reboot the machine.

We’re aware of a number of users for whom the second phase does not execute correctly.  During the boot up sequence, the computer displays the message “Configuring Updates.  Stage 3 of 3.  0% Complete” and at that point, the machine shuts down.

This is due to an issue with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and a required update which was released around April 2008, but which was never flagged as being essential.  As a result, your machine may not have downloaded it, depending upon your individual settings.

For more information, visit http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358

Microsoft have released the next generation of their SharePoint Server system to Beta testing.  We’re in the process of installing and configuring the system and will post a review here shortly.

More information is available from the Microsoft web site at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/ee391660.aspx

Parents and carers are again having problems with the Computer Share Vouchers (previously Busy Bees) scheme.  The scheme allows parents to sacrifice part of their salary to pay for childcare costs saving the cost of National Insurance and Income Tax deductions.  Reports are surfacing of carers not being paid and parents’ salaries being deducted, but no credits to their online accounts.

The site has suffered from IT issues in it’s previous Busy Bees incarnation.  In February of this year, user details were exposed following a system upgrade including email addresses of Busy Bees customers, National Insurance numbers, bank account details, payment logs and service logs.  It would appear that the scheme clearly have not learned from their mistakes, as the problems have only occurred after the most recent update to their system as reported at: http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=9535&d=23&h=0&f=0 .  I’m not sure that I agree with the quotation saying that the scheme is now in the 21st Century, as ancient as the differential engine may be, at least is works.

The site has since been upgraded from an old Citrix system which was besieged by connectivity and other problems, but the latest issues being experienced are just more power to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s attempts to remove this tax benefit.  This has sparked a number of campaigns by the provider to save the scheme, but recent issues with crediting parent accounts has harmed the credibility of the scheme.

The Computer Share Vouchers system is also equally as baffling to carers as to parents.  Whilst paying a childcare provider, parents are offered the chance to enter a suitable identifier – such as invoice number of equivalent.  However, this information is not subsequently passed on to carers, making it impossible for them to correlate payments with invoices.  As a result, parents are being fined with late payment fees and similar financial penalties, as carers seek to protect their cash flow; something which has increased significance in the current financial crisis.

The Computer Share Vouchers web site proudly boasts that the company “is at the forefront of the global investor services space.”  We’re thinking of running a competition for the first person to decipher exactly what this means, but if someone out there has access to an Enigma machine, could they please run this through it and provide a suitable translation into English.

Further reading is available on a number of blogs and support sites, including:

http://www.daddacool.co.uk/2009/11/computershare-voucher-service.html
http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/house-garden-194/money-saving-budgeting-bargains-609/344674-missing-busy-bee-computershare-childcare-vouchers.html

We’d love to hear your experiences.