Search Results

Search found 446 results on 18 pages for 'leah allen'.

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

Page 12/18 | < Previous Page | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18  | Next Page >

  • Brighton Rocks: UA Europe 2011

    - by ultan o'broin
    User Assistance Europe 2011 was held in Brighton, UK. Having seen Quadrophenia a dozen times, I just had to go along (OK, I wanted to talk about messages in enterprise applications). Sadly, it rained a lot, though that was still eminently more tolerable than being stuck home in Dublin during Bloomsday. So, here are my somewhat selective highlights and observations from the conference, massively skewed towards my own interests, as usual. Enjoyed Leah Guren's (Cow TC) great start ‘keynote’ on the Cultural Dimensions of Software Help Usage. Starting out by revisiting Hofstede's and Hall's work on culture (how many times I have done this for Multilingual magazine?) and then Neilsen’s findings on age as an indicator of performance, Leah showed how it is the expertise of the user that user assistance (UA) needs to be designed for (especially for high-end users), with some considerations made for age, while the gender and culture of users are not major factors. Help also needs to be contextual and concise, embedded close to the action. That users are saying things like “If I want help on Office, I go to Google ” isn't all that profound at this stage, but it is always worth reiterating how search can be optimized to return better results for users. Interestingly, regardless of user education level, the issue of information quality--hinging on the lynchpin of terminology reflecting that of the user--is critical. Major takeaway for me there. Matthew Ellison’s sessions on embedded help and demos were also impressive. Embedded help that is concise and contextual is definitely a powerful UX enabler, and I’m pleased to say that in Oracle Fusion Applications we have embraced the concept fully. Matthew also mentioned in his session about successful software demos that the principle of modality with demos is a must. Look no further than Oracle User Productivity Kit demos See It!, Try It!, Know It, and Do It! modes, for example. I also found some key takeaways in the presentation by Marie-Louise Flacke on notes and warnings. Here, legal considerations seemed to take precedence over providing any real information to users. I was delighted when Marie-Louise called out the Oracle JDeveloper documentation as an exemplar of how to use notes and instructions instead of trying to scare the bejaysus out of people and not providing them with any real information they’d find useful instead. My own session on designing messages for enterprise applications was well attended. Knowing your user profiles (remember user expertise is the king maker for UA so write for each audience involved), how users really work, the required application business and UI rules, what your application technology supports, and how messages integrate with the enterprise help desk and support policies and you will go much further than relying solely on the guideline of "writing messages in plain language". And, remember the value in warnings and confirmation messages too, and how you can use them smartly. I hope y’all got something from my presentation and from my answers to questions afterwards. Ellis Pratt stole the show with his presentation on applying game theory to software UA, using plenty of colorful, relevant examples (check out the Atlassian and DropBox approaches, for example), and striking just the right balance between theory and practice. Completely agree that the approach to take here is not to make UA itself a game, but to invoke UA as part of a bigger game dynamic (time-to-task completion, personal and communal goals, personal achievement and status, and so on). Sure there are gotchas and limitations to gamification, and we need to do more research. However, we'll hear a lot more about this subject in coming years, particularly in the enterprise space. I hope. I also heard good things about the different sessions about DITA usage (including one by Sonja Fuga that clearly opens the door for major innovation in the community content space using WordPress), the progressive disclosure of information (Cerys Willoughby), an overview of controlled language (or "information quality", as I like to position it) solutions and rationale by Dave Gash, and others. I also spent time chatting with Mike Hamilton of MadCap Software, who showed me a cool demo of their Flare product, and the Lingo translation solution. I liked the idea of their licensing model for workers-on-the-go; that’s smart UX-awareness in itself. Also chatted with Julian Murfitt of Mekon about uptake of DITA in the enterprise space. In all, it's worth attending UA Europe. I was surprised, however, not to see conference topics about mobile UA, community conversation and content, and search in its own right. These are unstoppable forces now, and the latter is pretty central to providing assistance now to all but the most irredentist of hard-copy fetishists or advanced technical or functional users working away on the back end of applications and systems. Only saw one iPad too (says the guy who carries three laptops). Tweeting during the conference was pretty much nonexistent during the event, so no community energy there. Perhaps all this can be addressed next year. I would love to see the next UA Europe event come to Dublin (despite Bloomsday, it's not a bad place place, really) now that hotels are so cheap and all. So, what is my overall impression of the state of user assistance in Europe? Clearly, there are still many people in the industry who feel there is something broken with the traditional forms of user assistance (particularly printed doc) and something needs to be done about it. I would suggest they move on and try and embrace change, instead. Many others see new possibilities, offered by UX and technology, as well as the reality of online user behavior in an increasingly connected world and that is encouraging. Such thought leaders need to be listened to. As Ellis Pratt says in his great book, Trends in Technical Communication - Rethinking Help: “To stay relevant means taking a new perspective on the role (of technical writer), and delivering “products” over and above the traditional manual and online Help file... there are a number of new trends in this field - some complementary, some conflicting. Whatever trends emerge as the norm, it’s likely the status quo will change.” It already has, IMO. I hear similar debates in the professional translation world about the onset of translation crowd sourcing (the Facebook model) and machine translation (trust me, that battle is over). Neither of these initiatives has put anyone out of a job and probably won't, though the nature of the work might change. If anything, such innovations have increased the overall need for professional translators as user expectations rise, new audiences emerge, and organizations need to collate and curate user-generated content, combining it with their own. Perhaps user assistance professionals can learn from other professions and grow accordingly.

    Read the article

  • It’s time that you ought to know what you don’t know

    - by fatherjack
    There is a famous quote about unknown unknowns and known knowns and so on but I’ll let you review that if you are interested. What I am worried about is that there are things going on in your environment that you ought to know about, indeed you have asked to be told about but you are not getting the information. When you schedule a SQL Agent job you can set it to send an email to an inbox monitored by someone who needs to know and indeed can do something about it. However, what happens if the email process isnt successful? Check your servers with this: USE [msdb] GO /* This code selects the top 10 most recent SQLAgent jobs that failed to complete successfully and where the email notification failed too. Jonathan Allen Jul 2012 */ DECLARE @Date DATETIME SELECT @Date = DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, '19000101', GETDATE()) - 1, '19000101') SELECT TOP 10 [s].[name] , [sjh].[step_name] , [sjh].[sql_message_id] , [sjh].[sql_severity] , [sjh].[message] , [sjh].[run_date] , [sjh].[run_time] , [sjh].[run_duration] , [sjh].[operator_id_emailed] , [sjh].[operator_id_netsent] , [sjh].[operator_id_paged] , [sjh].[retries_attempted] FROM [dbo].[sysjobhistory] AS sjh INNER JOIN [dbo].[sysjobs] AS s ON [sjh].[job_id] = [s].[job_id] WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT * FROM [dbo].[sysjobs] AS s INNER JOIN [dbo].[sysjobhistory] AS s2 ON [s].[job_id] = [s2].[job_id] WHERE [sjh].[job_id] = [s2].[job_id] AND [s2].[message] LIKE '%failed to notify%' AND CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [s2].[run_date])) >= @date AND [s2].[run_status] = 0 ) AND sjh.[run_status] = 0 AND sjh.[step_id] != 0 AND CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [run_date])) >= @date ORDER BY [sjh].[run_date] DESC , [sjh].[run_time] DESC go USE [msdb] go /* This code summarises details of SQLAgent jobs that failed to complete successfully and where the email notification failed too. Jonathan Allen Jul 2012 */ DECLARE @Date DATETIME SELECT @Date = DATEADD(d, DATEDIFF(d, '19000101', GETDATE()) - 1, '19000101') SELECT [s].name , [s2].[step_id] , CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [s2].[run_date])) AS [rundate] , COUNT(*) AS [execution count] FROM [dbo].[sysjobs] AS s INNER JOIN [dbo].[sysjobhistory] AS s2 ON [s].[job_id] = [s2].[job_id] WHERE [s2].[message] LIKE '%failed to notify%' AND CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR(15), [s2].[run_date])) >= @date AND [s2].[run_status] = 0 GROUP BY name , [s2].[step_id] , [s2].[run_date] ORDER BY [s2].[run_dateDESC] These two result sets will show if there are any SQL Agent jobs that have run on your servers that failed and failed to successfully email about the failure. I hope it’s of use to you. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

    Read the article

  • Hidden Formatting Troubles with STR() (SQL Spackle)

    Fill in another bit of your T-SQL knowledge about STR(). It right justifies, rounds, and controls the output width of columns. Sounds perfect but here's why you might not want to use it. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • Stairway to SQL Server Indexes: Step 1, Introduction to Indexes

    Indexes are the database objects that enable SQL Server to satisfy each data access request from a client application with the minimum amount of effort, resulting in the maximum performance of individual requests while also reducing the impact of one request upon another. Prerequisites: Familiarity with the following relational database concepts: Table, row, primary key, foreign key Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • How To Use Regular Expressions for Data Validation and Cleanup

    You need to provide data validation at the server level for complex strings like phone numbers, email addresses, etc. You may also need to do data cleanup / standardization before moving it from source to target. Although SQL Server provides a fair number of string functions, the code developed with these built-in functions can become complex and hard to maintain or reuse. The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor 2.0 enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • SQL Server Ranking Functions

    A new article from Wayne Sheffield that examines the ranking functions in SQL Server. Learn how you can use ROW_NUMBER(), NTILE(), RANK(), and DENSE_RANK() in your applications. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • Oracle Partner Deutschland @ Facebook: Gewinner des iPad2

    - by A&C Redaktion
    Auf dem OPN Day Satellite in Frankfurt haben wir unter allen Fans des Facebook-Profils von Oracle Alliances & Channel Deutschland ein iPad 2 verlost: Wer bis zum 8. November 2011, 16 Uhr den "Gefällt mir"-Button angeklickt hatte, nahm an unserer Verlsung teil. Und..... der glückliche Gewinner ist: Markus Meyer vom Oracle Partner Tonbeller AG!Wir gratulieren ganz herzlich und wünschen viel Freude mit dem neuen iPad!!!!

    Read the article

  • Oiling the gears for the data dictionary

    Documenting the database is always a challenge, and there are many techniques you can use to help all the people on your team understand what all your tables are used for. David Poole brings us an easy way to implement a framework for documentation. The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor 2.0 enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • 7 Things that High Availability is Not

    Wesley has heard High Availablity touted as all sorts of technological cure-all for busy SysAdmins and DBAs, and now he's taking a stand against it. There are a range of things that High Availability is regularly confused with (either deliberately or innocently), and Wesley's clearing it all up The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor 2.0 enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • Profiling SharePoint with ANTS Performance Profiler 5.2

    Using ANTS Performance Profiler with SharePoint has, previously, been possible, but not easy. Version 5.2 of ANTS Performance Profiler changes all that, and Chris Allen has put together a straight-forward guide to profiling SharePoint, demonstrating just how much easier it has become.

    Read the article

  • Reflections on SQL Saturday #60 - Cleveland

    - by AaronBertrand
    Every time I attend a SQL Saturday , I leave with a rejuvenated and even further reinforced sense of community. Cleveland ( SQL Saturday #60 ) was by far no exception. Allen White ( blog | twitter ), Erin Stellato ( blog | twitter ), Cory Stevenson, Brian Davis ( twitter ), and all others involved put on a fantastic event that endured some crappy weather, parking problems, and significant delays and hardship for at least one speaker - sorry Grant! (Grant wrote about his experience .) I was able to...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Raw Materials - Og, Sumerian DBA, Part 2

    A disruptive innovation raises an old, old question. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • Google+ Platform Office Hours for February 1st 2012

    Google+ Platform Office Hours for February 1st 2012 Jenny Murphy and Jonathan Beri represented Google. Fraser Cain, Abraham Williams and Allen Firstenberg joined us from the developer community. This week we discussed the new configuration options for the Google+ Badge. You can read more about these new features on the platform blog: googleplusplatform.blogspot.com Please join the discussion on our support forum: groups.google.com Learn more about our office hours on Google Developers: developers.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 4150 55 ratings Time: 47:51 More in Science & Technology

    Read the article

  • Stairway to Transaction Log Management in SQL Server, Level 1: Transaction Log Overview

    The transaction log is used by SQL Server to maintain data consistency and integrity. If the database is not in Simple-recovery mode, it can also be used in an appropriate backup regime to restore the database to a point in time. The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • SQL Server Central Webinar Series #8: Creating smaller and comprehensively verified backups

    The next webinar from SQLServerCentral will look at backups and how you can create faster, smaller, and verified backups. Join Steve Jones and Rodney Landrum for this presentation on SQL Backup Pro and SQL Virtual Restore The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor 2.0 enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • SQLServerCentral Best Practices Clinic: Part 4

    In this next installment looking at implementing best practices here at SQLServerCentral, Brad McGehee looks at a few performance counters and what they tell us about the performance of our database server. The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • Understanding T-SQL Expression Short-Circuiting

    Understanding the basics of how T-SQL logic works in branching is important to ensure you code works as expected. This article will help you learn how this impacts control of flow language. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • APEX 4.2 ist da!

    - by carstenczarski
    Seit dem 12. Oktober 2012 steht APEX 4.2 zum Download bereit. Nach der Installation, die wie immer, mit dem Skript apexins durchgeführt wird, können Sie gleich mit dem Ausprobieren der neuen Features beginnen - allen voran das einfache, deklarative Erstellen von APEX-Anwendungen für mobile Endgeräte oder HTML5-Diagramme. Aber auch darüber hinaus gibt es zahlreiche neue Dinge - mit Verbesserungen beim Excel-Upload für den Endanwender oder der Möglichkeit nun 200 (anstelle von 100) Elemente auf eine Seite zu setzen, seien nur zwei genannt.

    Read the article

  • Some tips for working with big data models

    The main goal of this article is to present some tips to help professionals that need to work with complex, big, and hard to understand database models that anyone may came across some day. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • Reflections on SQL Saturday #60 - Cleveland

    - by AaronBertrand
    Every time I attend a SQL Saturday , I leave with a rejuvenated and even further reinforced sense of community. Cleveland ( SQL Saturday #60 ) was by far no exception. Allen White ( blog | twitter ), Erin Stellato ( blog | twitter ), Cory Stevenson, Brian Davis ( twitter ), and all others involved put on a fantastic event that endured some crappy weather, parking problems, and significant delays and hardship for at least one speaker - sorry Grant! (Grant wrote about his experience .) I was able to...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Managing and Connecting to AlwaysOn Availability Groups

    From the previous AlwaysOn Availability Group article, we provided a name for the availability group listener which is simply a unique DNS name as a Virtual Network Name (VNN) to direct read-write requests to the primary replica and read-only requests to the read-only secondary replica. The Future of SQL Server Monitoring "Being web-based, SQL Monitor enables you to check on your servers from almost any location" Jonathan Allen.Try SQL Monitor now.

    Read the article

  • TSQL Challenge 47 - Read the modification history and identify the fir

    A table contains the list of modifications made to each card. Your job is to write a query that shows the first number, current number (most recent) and the number of changes made. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

  • T-SQL Quiz 2011

    The 2011 edition of MVP Jacob Sebastian's T-SQL Quiz is underway. You can take part in the quiz each day, submitting your answers for the chance to show off your knowledge and perhaps win some prizes. Join SQL Backup’s 35,000+ customers to compress and strengthen your backups "SQL Backup will be a REAL boost to any DBA lucky enough to use it." Jonathan Allen. Download a free trial now.

    Read the article

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

< Previous Page | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18  | Next Page >