neděle 17. října 2010

Golf

I started to play golf. OK, not yet, but we went to driving range on Friday and were totally amused. So I returned there on Saturday with my wife and today... I am buying "My personal trainer" for my Wii!

My Personal Golf Trainer

I was practicing swings on Wii Fit Plus, but I hope this will tell me much more about what to do better.

úterý 28. září 2010

Beta tester to share info about Remember The Milk's official Outlook synchronization utility?

As you know, Remember The Milk is probably creating it's own Outlook sync.

Is there anybody, that has already access to this synchronization utility and would like to share his feelings? It would be very interesting to know the approach of RTM.

I am a little bit playing with Android these days, but I am still excited if RTM would have it's Outlook synchronization!

pátek 24. září 2010

Those who can't do, teach. Are you kidding me?

I know that we are all following the AngelGate these days, but this subject is something that was stuck in my mind for a quite long period of time. And it is not because next Monday I start part time lecturing at Prague College again nor the discussions I had last few days with several people.

We are told (and it seems to be a thing all world around), that "if you're good enough to actually do, you wouldn't have time to be teaching." [Joomla4Web]

I like the argumentation on the Joomla4Web very much. However that is not exactly my case. To be honest, I started guest lecturing back in spring 2009, because my very good friend Veronika asked me to come and talk to her Computing students. I must say, I liked it.

It was only logical I started to lecture two HND computing units a week since January 2010. It is definitely not a full time job for me, but yes, I am getting paid, thanks for asking. I am also adding one HND business unit this semester (e-Business Strategy/e-Business implementation).

So to return back to the question in the title - there are several things that always follow in the discussions:

  • If you are a teacher, you just follow some books and you have never done this by yourself. Although I agree with Shari, that this is not the most important thing as "It is up to the student to digest the information he receives and find an application for it in his life, not for the teacher teach him each individual step" [BlogCritics], if you are wondering if I have enough practical experience teach computing or business, have a look at my CV.
  • If you are a teacher, you are not successful at you "normal" job so you have to teach to pay your bills". This one seems really very funny to me. Working more than 10 years for Sprinx, going to several conferences etc. I do not consider myself failing at my daily job.
    Also check my currently running projects.
  • Teaching is paid so bad, it is "last resort" position for people. Again, that might be true for government schools. I lectured at CTU, FNSPE while studying and yes, I was not making a fortune there. But this is not my case anymore. If you are still not believing me, setup a consultant meeting with me through my calendar and mention this blog post as a source. I promise, I will charge you only the same sum per hour :-)
  • When you are teaching, you are loosing your professional experience. True. That is why I am running my projects and keeping my professional career. Just now I am learning how to develop for Android so I do not stay at the same place.

And yes, I am still enjoying that :-) And that is the most important thing for me.

středa 22. září 2010

pátek 17. září 2010

Remember the Milk Outlook Synchronization by Remember The Milk?

It it not the end of the year yet, but I saw something interesting last day and it reminded me of the thing I was doing from January till today...

That I saw was really interesting - Remember The Milk people are about to have their own Outlook synchronization.

It seems quite logical to me. If you read the thread at Remember The Milk forum, you can see there was quite a demand for Outlook synchronization from the very beginning (2007).

I am not sure what brought me to Remember The Milk the first time, but it was my wife who appointed me to this online task list the second time. I opened the web and ... surprise, surprise, it looked very familiar and I found out I was already registered!

Working for Sprinx Systems at that time (and still now) and using Microsoft Outlook for my task management, I was looking for something that would synchronize Outlook with RTM. I was always interested in synchronization, wrote the very first version of SprinxCRM Outlook Sync ages ago and I wanted to use online task management.

Actually, that is why I started to develop SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk back in February 2010. Of course I did some research first and get my few beta-testers through a simple form here on the blog.

As far as I know the synchronizer worked pretty well from the beginning and when I saw the Software Engineer (Windows) opened position at Remember The Milk jobs page with explanation that the guy will be responsible for Outlook integration, I was amused. I even applied explaining that it the sync is already done, but apparently was not chosen.

However, I am very interested to see what was created by RTM people. Every competition is good, that is what I think about this. And that is also the story of OutlookSync - it evolved into UniversalSync and it supports not only Remember The Milk these days, but also Producteev and more will come in the future.

středa 15. září 2010

"Is 30% too much to pay a CRM sales rep for company lead?"

I came across a very interested LinkedIn discussion about Sales Rep margins.

You can read the discussion here.

I like the guide from Million Dollar Consulting (Alan Weiss) mentioned by Pierre DeBois very much.

It describes what to pay as a finder's fee:

---20% for business that the other party closed and requires only your introduction and client acceptance of work.

---10% for business for which your introduction has been arranged, but your skills are needed to close the deal.

----A thank you and small gift for cold leads that require your skills to close the deal.

That seems pretty fair for me. Costs of sales are high these days and you have to pay enough to your sales teams or ... you know what happens to your profit if your sales team is moody or unmotivated. I will write more at my Gassumo CRM page.

pátek 10. září 2010

Producteev connector for SprinxCRM UniversalSync

Since I like to have more possibilities to choose from and since latest Astrid supports also Producteev online task list (also here), I decided to try to implement a SprinxCRM UniversalSync connector to Producteev.

I just started, but I already have a one-way synchronization from Producteev to Outlook. Have a look at Producteev Connector Homepage.

úterý 7. září 2010

What Google Apps (mainly Standard Edition) synchronization are you missing the most?

I started this Google Apps discussion on LinkedIn and even the very first post was very helpful with a lot of links, thanks Aaron!

Still thinking about more synchronizations... I am already planning to include Google Tasks in SprinxCRM UniversalSync and maybe I also do something more on Google Calendar Synchronization as I am not that much happy with the original Google one.

I hope to sort all those things soon and prepare the next generation of my synchronization utility.

More about how SprinxCRM UniversalSync works

If you are really interested in how SprinxCRM UniversalSync works, how are Outlook tasks synchronized e.g. with Remember The Milk (RTM) task or Google Calendar events with SprinxCRM calendar, read here on Gassumo.

I will also try to create a presentation for this.

neděle 1. srpna 2010

Where is SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk heading?

If you are Outlook or Remember The Milk fan, I hope you heard about SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk. As mentioned in WebWorkerDaily, it is "an add-on for Outlook that enables two-way synchronization of tasks between the two apps".

It is almost 5 months since I started developing this little task synchronization utility. Interested where it is heading now? Have a look what is in development right now!

středa 28. dubna 2010

Outlook Android synchronization

Thinking about syncing your Outlook tasks with Android? Are you obsessed like me to have your tasks with you all the time?

If you are experiencing something similar to me, you might be in a need for two sync utilities:

SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk
Astrid

They both allow you to synchronize your tasks with great online task list Remember The Milk. Simply create your account at Remember The Milk, install both tools and setup them to use the account you have just created.

And voila - your tasks from Outlook are sync'ed to RTM and from RTM to your Android phone!

čtvrtek 1. dubna 2010

Release Candidate 1 + end of survey for Outlook Remember The Milk synchronization

So just few days after OutlookSync for Remember The Milk Beta 2.5 Release Candidate 1 is out!

You can dowload it from the new location at http://www.sprinxcrm.com/SprinxCRM%20OutlookSync%20for%20Remember%20The%20Milk.

I have also created the page on Facebook and I will update it with news, videos etc. If you are on Facebook and like this little piece of software, why not become a fan :-).

Since I think I have now enough of responses on my survey, I am closing it. I would like to thank very VERY much to all the participants and I am also preparing for you as a reward to helping me to get to this point. Again, thank you very much!

úterý 30. března 2010

And 6 weeks later... beta 2.5 is here!

I just want to let you know that I have just released Beta 2.5 of OutlookSync for Remember The Milk. You may download it from http://www.sprinxcrm.com/SprinxCRM%20OutlookSync%20for%20Remember%20The%20Milk/publish.htm. Simply click the red button and it should do all the work. There is a video on YouTube showing how it works.

I plan to freeze the features and publish Release Candidate next week. Version 1.0 should be available at the beginning of April.

pondělí 8. března 2010

SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk Beta 1.1

I am quite busy developing, so just to let you know, I have already released two versions of SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk - Beta 1 and Beta 1.1. If you have subscribed through the form below, you already know.

Release plan for Beta 2:
  • Support for Remember The Milk lists - synchronized as Tasks subfolders
  • Support for Outlook categories - synchronized as Remember The Milk tags
  • Solving currently know issues: Outlook 2010 Beta, RTM timeouting, few COM Outlook problems

středa 24. února 2010

Almost there!

OK, so I think the time for the first technology preview is comming!

I am already successfully synchronizing my Outlook tasks with Remember The Milk. I have also implemented an archiving plugin as I had a lot of completed tasks in my default task folder and I had bad luck trying to find some Outlook Auto-Archive settings to clean this up.

I would like to do more testing till the end of the week and release a Beta version on the beginning of the next week. Stay tuned!

Please help me by filling my short survey so I have the right testing environment. Thanks!

pondělí 22. února 2010

No results in Outlook Remember The Milk Survey for few days?

Silly me... I was not receiving new entries in my Outlook Remember The Milk Survey for few days so I blamed weekend for that ... but no, the form was too tall for the windows so you would not be able to submit it ... I am very sorry for that, please submit again, if you can now... My apologies...

neděle 14. února 2010

Remember the Milk Outlook Synchronization?



Please go to my Gassumo page about SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk to read about the synchronization utility, to download latest versions etc.

You may also want to read about the latest addin - Producteev Connector for SprinxCRM UniversalSync.








UPDATE 4!



Go to SprinxCRM OutlookSync for Remember The Milk homepage.


UPDATE 3!


Install

UPDATE 2!


Release Candidate 1 is out! Please read more here. The survey is closed for now. Thank you!

UPDATE!



After about 6 weeks I am happy I can tell that Outlook Sync for Remember The Milk is reality!
It is still in a beta stage, but you can download it from here. Happy synchronizing!



I am a great fan of Remember The Milk. I have registered long time ago, but stopped to use it when I found out that there is no Outlook Synchronization. After buying nice Google Android HTC Dream/G1 phone, I have returned back to them and would be really lost without keeping my tasks both on the web and on the phone using Astrid.


Since I have started to develop things again and I am currently developing Outlook Addins, I might consider developing Remember The Milk Outlook synchronization. It will probably just synchronize tasks and attach correct labels.


What do you think, would you use that? Please answer below or click here and open the form in new window:

čtvrtek 11. února 2010

What am I doing these days? Synchronizing Outlook!

These days I am pretty busy creating a new version of SprinxCRM OutlookSync. There are 450 millions of Office users around the world and I assume a lot of them are using Microsoft Outlook.

To start - don't take me wrong, I think Outlook is a great product and I really like it. But it is not a CRM. Once again - Outlook is not a CRM.
I hear you to disagree with me and I understand there are plenty of people using Outlook as a CRM, but let me quote SearchCRM:

"Again, without knowing more about your situation, this can be a very effective approach -- especially for a very small (3-5) group of users with no remote (disconnected) requirements. But BE CAREFUL, because you may find that you quickly exceed the capability of Outlook to scale to your requirements. Sure, you will find work-arounds, but 1-2 years later you will likely end-up with a disjointed system, unhappy users, and poor quality data. More than likely, your users will simply stop using the application when it becomes too kludgy" (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/answer/Using-MS-Outlook/Exchange-for-CRM)

What I am trying to achieve with OutlookSync is to connect Outlook with SprinxCRM and bring those CRM benefits to the Outlook users.

The benefits:
  • you will be able to attach an appointment to a company or person so you would know who you will speak to or where to go for the appointment as you have the address of the firm in the CRM
  • send and received emails will be automatically uploaded to CRM and categorized to the person you are emailing with. For example, if you would receive email from Joe Doe , this email will be automatically categorized to Joe Doe in your CRM.
  • when planning future activities with your business opportunity, those tasks will appear in Outlook as well so you will not miss them. Even better, if you keep your Outlook synchronized with your mobile phone, you can mark them done exactly at the time the are really completed for example after you call that guy or had that business lunch.
  • you will never lose any data again as the copy is archived in the CRM
  • you can access your Outlook data from any place as you connect to the CRM using internet or even from your mobile phone if you open the mobile CRM version on e.g. Blackberry

úterý 2. února 2010

Where to practice End-User Support

I am teaching End User Support at Prague College.The really funny thing is that I am currently dealing with serious support issues with Buxfer. I have bought the highest possible subscription but as of today,I am unable to use it. Have a look for yourself here and here...

Always look on the bright side of life - at least a great example for my students: always check the Service Level Agreement...

UPDATE: Not sure yet how it will end with Buxfer after Unable To Use Buxfer After Setting Projections so I will still give them time to solve it.


UPDATE 2: Finally I have been able to "hack-login" into Buxfer using combination of Buxfer Mobile and Firebux and send the priority support request. My issue has been solved in less than 24 hours then. I understand the need to login first to send the support request, so they know your SLA level, but still, if CRM for service would be in place, they would know just from my email...

UPDATE 3: Yes, finally I am a Buxfer user again. Thanks guys!