Guest Author: Hersh Ajgaonkar
lifewithsharepoint.com

I am having a great time using the Office 2010 beta installed on my Windows 7 OS. So far, from my two most used applications (OneNote and Outlook), here are the new features that I love.

OneNote

I use OneNote extensively and have always had a problem taking notes in a meeting where I also have to refer to a document or a web-site since I keep having to switch between the different windows. Well – don’t have to do that anymore. OneNote 2010 has this neat little feature called “Dock to Desktop” tucked away in the corner that looks like this:

Clicking (or alternatively Ctrl-Alt-D) will neatly dock OneNote on the side so that all your other windows then fit within the rest of the space. Small but a fantastic feature for someone like me who loves using OneNote all the time.

Outlook

I am an ardent fan of Scott Hanselman’s systems of organization and ZEB. One thing that I have always wanted Outlook to have was the ability to set my own custom buttons for rules that I could run as and when I wanted.

Need #1: I am a fan of GTD and use my own simplified GTD system.  I like to organize my emails into this hierarchical folder structure that has

1. [GTD] Folders organized based on action to be taken
2. [Filing] Folders for organizing based on context of the emails like internal stuff, project work and then break that up as well into further folders. I usually end up with upwards of 7 folders.

Need #2: Also, when I know that taking an action on an email will need more than 15 minutes of work, I like to put that on my calendar.

The easiest way to manage / move the emails would be if I was able to at least have toolbar action items that could quickly ‘file’ the email for me. The reason I don’t like creating rules that run as the message arrives is because sometime I miss the emails if they are ‘filed’ way too deep in the hierarchy and some of my actions need user input.

Well, now with Outlook 2010,  I am able to do both of these things and then some more with this handy feature called quick steps. You will see this on the “Home” ribbon towards the center. There are a few out of the box quicksteps, but I was able to quickly create one for myself called Schedule time (my need #1 above)

In the image above, the ones marked in RED are my custom Quick Steps. The one for Schedule time will take my email, create a calendar item from it, move the email to a ‘Scheduled’ folder and mark it as unread.  With this feature, I can now quickly block time on my calendar to take action on that email at a later time. Try it, it is cool!

One other feature that I didn’t really miss but now that I have it, I love, is the way the conversation view works. You have to use it to see how powerful it is – it is like a customized search based grouped view on steroids!

Thank You Office 2010 team – you have made my quest of getting to Zero Email Bounce a lot easier.

So, those were the new features that I have been using a lot. I am sure there are a ton of other features I haven’t yet used as much but when I do and notice something uber-cool, I’ll post another blog on that.

Guest Author: Hersh Ajgaonkar
lifewithsharepoint.com

Hersh Ajgaonkar is a SharePoint Architect working out of the Chicagoland area. He has over 10 years of consulting experience and has been working extensively and exclusively with SharePoint since 2003. Hersh hosts the blog (lifewithsharepoint.com) and tweets as @wcyber.