Here are just a few ways that the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the Windows Vista operating system can help increase your employees’ productivity. In summary:| • | Windows Vista can help you find and compose Microsoft Office system documents quickly. | | • | Windows Vista can help you share documents with others easily and safely. | | • | Windows Vista can keep employees productive when they are at home or travel through offline access to network files. |
In business, small sums of money can add up rapidly. For example, an employee earning U.S. $60,000 in total compensation makes about $30 an hour. At that rate, 20 minutes per day of lost productivity cost your company approximately $2,500 a year. Multiply that by 200 employees, and you’ve lost the equivalent of U.S. $500,000 worth of time every year. The 2007 Microsoft Office system can help you reduce such waste—and running it on Windows Vista can save you additional time and money. Here are eight ways to use the 2007 Office release and Windows Vista together to help your employees be efficient. Simple installationFrom the beginning, Windows Vista makes your IT team more productive by simplifying the deployment process for the 2007 Microsoft Office release. With its modular, hardware-neutral design, Windows Vista dramatically reduces the number of disk images you must support, which makes adding the Microsoft Office system to your disk image library easy. Using the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007, you can install images remotely and automatically, which means IT employees don’t have to install the software on each computer in person. Strong securityThe enhanced security features in Windows Vista help employees to share Microsoft Office system files safely. For example, a document might contain a virus that quietly changes important settings on your computer. You won’t need to worry about such attacks, because Windows Vista won’t let applications change system settings without your permission. In addition, Windows Vista BitLocker Drive Encryption technology—which is included in Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Enterprise—makes traveling with Microsoft Office system files less risky if a laptop is lost or stolen. The BitLocker feature keeps sensitive data away from those who are not authorized to view it. Greater alternative input optionsIf your employees have disabilities or repetitive stress injuries that make typing difficult or impossible, or if they simply prefer to talk instead of type, they can use the Windows Speech Recognition feature in Windows Vista. This technology allows people to compose and navigate Microsoft Office documents and applications (including e-mail and Windows Internet Explorer) by voice instead of with a keyboard. Although Microsoft speech technology is also available in Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Speech Recognition is improved in Windows Vista. All a user needs is a computer microphone. Windows Speech Recognition currently supports eight different languages, including both U.K. and U.S. versions of English, and traditional and simplified versions of Chinese. Fast, accurate information searchesThe average knowledge worker spends 3.5 hours per week unsuccessfully searching for necessary information, at a cost of U.S. $5,251 per year, according to data from the global IT market research firm IDC. The Windows Vista integrated desktop search functionality can help employees find information reliably and rapidly. Available from the Windows Vista Start menu and Control Panel, as well as within all document folders and 2007 Microsoft Office system applications, integrated desktop search quickly locates information anywhere on your computer or your company’s network, including in e-mail. Windows Vista helps you sort through search results quickly, too, by displaying high-resolution thumbnail images of the located files. You can search by file name, words, phrases, figures, or by custom keywords called tags. Using Windows Vista, you can apply tags to files when you save them for the first time or when you view them in document folders. By carefully tagging files, you can help employees quickly locate all the documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on your network that are associated with a specific client or project. Easy information sharingThe XML Paper Specification (XPS) document functionality in Windows Vista helps you share Microsoft Office system files with people who don’t have the originating program. For example, you can share a Microsoft Office Visio diagram with someone who doesn’t have that application by sending them an XPS version instead. All Microsoft Office system applications can create XPS documents, and anyone with a Web browser that supports the Microsoft open XPS document file format can view, print, and search through XPS documents. The Windows Meeting Space feature in Windows Vista is a new collaboration tool you can use with Microsoft Office system documents. Using Windows Meeting Space, as many as nine people can share your desktop simultaneously, provided they are all running Windows Vista. Windows Meeting Space is perfect for quick, unscheduled group editing sessions that don’t require the more sophisticated conferencing features available in systems such as Microsoft Office Live Meeting. In addition to local area networks and wide area networks, Windows Meeting Space works over wireless and improvised peer-to-peer networks, so you can use it almost anywhere. Fast presentation setupWindows Vista helps you project Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations from a mobile PC. Using the Connect to a Network Projector Wizard, you can access network-enabled projectors in a conference room or other meeting space. Easy offline access to network dataHere’s more good news for mobile workers: Using Windows Vista, you can view and edit network files when you’re offline. That means you can work on Microsoft Office system files that you store on a server—even when you’re at home or on a business trip. Windows Vista automatically synchronizes your desktop version with the server version the next time you connect to the network. Accessible views of information in Microsoft Office OutlookWindows Sidebar is a viewing pane on the right side of the Windows Vista desktop that contains gadgets, mini-programs that perform a wide variety of handy functions. You can use gadgets to view snapshots of information from Office Outlook even when that application isn’t open. For example, the gadget directory in Windows Live Gallery includes gadgets that display upcoming appointments, pending tasks, and your Inbox.
 | Rich Freeman is a Seattle, Washington-based freelance writer specializing in business and technology. He has more than 14 years of strategic marketing and communications experience in the IT industry. |
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