The 12 days of Christmas: tips and tricks for the festive season

For the twelve days of Christmas, this website gives to thee, a dozen tips on productivity. And if you follow our hints for good security, you won’t end up like HMRC. (That’s enough carolling – Ed.)

All of us here at the Microsoft NHS Resource Centre wish you all the best for the festive season. If you’re working throughout, our thoughts are with you. And if you’re an IT manager, someone interested in security, or a user of Microsoft’s Office suite, our tasks, tips and tricks should see you through the 12 days of Christmas and into a bright New Year.

Day one

Task for the day

Read the new operating framework for the NHS. It may not be the most thrilling Christmas reading, but it’s a vital guide to the coming year even so. “Information” gets its own section this year; and PCT chief executives are given the job of “leading local health community programmes to develop IM&T.”

Find out more at the DoH website

Security

Remember the simple stuff. Which means don’t forget the basics, such as keeping your spam filters, anti-virus signature files and anti-spyware definitions up-to-date. Your guard may be down at Christmas, but it can be party-time for hackers.

Tips and tricks

Zoom! Have you got a scroll wheel on your mouse? If so, you probably know that you can turn the wheel to scroll up and down a document. But it’s also a handy way to zoom in and out.

Hold down the control key and jog the scroll-wheel at the same time to zoom instantly and make reading documents and web pages a doddle.

Day two

Task for the day

Get ready for I8 weeks! OK, this will be on the list of every NHS manager and IT specialist already. But as the operating framework makes clear, the deadlines for being able to report on 18 weeks fall even earlier than the requirement to meet it.

And there are IT solutions available; find out more on the NHS Resource Centre 

Security

Be prepared. Don’t fall into the same trap as HMRC and leave your data unprotected. Prepare for the worst case scenario by ensuring that all personal data is encrypted in case it should fall into the wrong hands.

Tips and tricks

Elect to select. There are smart keyboard shortcuts to select almost anything in Microsoft Word. You may already know that you can double (left) click on a word to select it.

But did you know that by holding down the Ctrl key and single clicking you can select a sentence? Triple click anywhere (without Ctrl) and the whole paragraph will be highlighted.

Day three

Task for the day

Develop your networks, make the business case. As the operating framework also makes clear, the NHS cannot be transformed without IT. So make sure you are in a position to make the case for IT investment.

Security

Education, education, education! All the technology you can muster counts for nothing if your staff do not fully understand the security policies that you have in place. Make sure that they are not only aware of what the policies are, but why they are important.

Tips and tricks

Scraps and snippets. If you want to use the same piece of text in several documents, save it as a scrap. Simply highlight the section of a document you wish to keep and drag it to your desktop. It will instantly be saved as a scrap, and you can drag it back into future documents whenever you want.

Day four

Task for the day

Brush up on the Enterprise Agreement: You may remember that Microsoft signed a new enterprise-wide agreement with the NHS this summer. But you may not have had time to read all the details.

Now is your opportunity; find out more about the NHS EA for England

Find out more about the enterprise agreements in place across Scotland and Wales

Security

Change your password. Passwords can be compromised, so use at least nine characters (letters and numbers) and change them every month. It might sound like a lot of work, but it’s much less hassle than clearing up after a security breach.

Tips and tricks

Do a presentation anywhere. Microsoft PowerPoint includes several options for doing presentations even when you don’t have access to a copy when you need to put on your big show.

For starters, try Pack and Go (from the File menu). This will neatly compress your presentation and a player into one file. You can email the file to someone without PowerPoint and they will be able to run the presentation.

There’s also a Save as a Web Page option; ideal for putting your presentations online.

Day five

Task for the day

Make friends with a reseller: A feature of the new Enterprise Agreement is that the reseller arrangements have changed. Resellers have also been given new roles, the first of which is to conduct a piece of software asset management work.

Find out more about what your NHS reseller has to offer and how they can help you manage your NHS EA licences

Security

Stop clicking on links in emails. You have not won the lottery, the joke really isn’t that funny and there is no once in a lifetime bargain. Just because your email says something does not mean it is true. But link clicking spreads malware infection - fact.

Tips and tricks

Presentation Perfect. There’s nothing worse than fumbling between slides when you’re doing a presentation. To move between slides, get to know these simple shortcuts.

To move forward, any of the down arrow, right arrow, space bar or page down keys will work. And to move back a slide, any of the up arrow, left arrow, backspace or page up keys will do the job.

Day six

Task for the day

Use Microsoft’s NHS infrastructure optimisation tool. Tailored to the NHS, newly updated and online from January: Microsoft’s new IO tool will help you to profile your infrastructure and develop a roadmap for making it more robust and secure, easier to manage and ready for change.

Read more about the existing tool on the NHS Resource Centre, however IT Managers will be alerted in January when the new online assessment tool is live

You can also find out more about Infrastructure optimisation and how it supports your NHS EA via this live webcast presented by IT technical strategist, Richard Lane

Security

Use patches! Security updates, called patches, are issued for good reason. Don’t put off installing them even if it means a rolling upgrade process. Hackers and assorted ne’er-do-wells look for the holes to jump in. Don’t let them - use patches!

Tips and tricks

Take Note! Many presentations include gorgeous graphics, but there's a Notes section available for each slide too, which often gets forgotten. These notes aren't for your benefit- they appear automatically in printed handouts if you select Print>Notes Pages.

Since we often come back to a topic weeks after a presentation has been made, taking a few minutes to draft some handouts will ensure your message stays effective long after the projector is switched off.

Day seven

Task for the day

Sign up for Microsoft’s annual NHS CIO summit, 2008: If you haven’t booked a place already, sign up for this 15 January event to hear the latest from NHS Connecting for Health, Microsoft and trusts deploying the latest technology.

Find out more and register


Security

Know your PID. IT managers should make sure they are up to speed with NHS Connecting for Health’s Information Governance guidelines regarding the exchange of Person Identifiable Data (PID) via email.

Tips and tricks

Keep it clean! One of life’s little embarrassments is sending out a document with comments, notes and annotations still included (and just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there).

Many red faces have resulted from comments like “I think we should charge more for this, what do you think, Brian?” being sent out accidentally, so remember to clear them all first. Alternatively, upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007.

This includes the nifty “Document Inspector”, which will clear your document of all extraneous comments with a single click.

Day eight

Task for the day

Business Intelligence: Want to impress the board? Microsoft has put together a demonstrator to show how its Office suite can be used to deliver business intelligence to the NHS.

Find out more and see the demo

Security

Don’t send data on discs in the post. A jolly man with a sack should deliver Christmas presents, not confidential data. Go digital and make use of encrypted email and secure database systems whenever you can.

Tips and tricks: Many happy returns. To start a new line in an Excel spreadsheet cell without moving to the next cell, hit Alt-Enter.

Day nine

Task for the day

Communicate and collaborate: Want to make life nicer for staff? Microsoft also has some great communication and collaboration technologies, as UBHT has discovered.

Read how United Bristol Hospital Trust has implemented MOSS technology for better communication and collaboration

Security

Backup is not a dirty word. Sometimes things just go pear shaped, so whatever you do, have a solid data backup strategy.

Tips and tricks

Information at your fingertips. Upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 and you get Microsoft Outlook 2007 as part of the package. One of its many clever new features is the integration of RSS feeds.

These are streams of information to which you can subscribe, and there are millions out there - from BBC news stories to lists of tips and tricks like this one. With Outlook 2007, the latest stories will pop up in your Inbox, just like normal emails.

Find out more about Office 2007 and the benefits to NHS employees

Office 2007 for IT Managers

You can also purchase your own copy of Office 2007 via the Home User Programme for NHS staff

Day ten

Task for the day

The bigger picture: As part of its Enterprise Agreement with the NHS, Microsoft has been running a Common User Interface programme. This is aimed at helping the NHS to make the most of the technology it has invested in and at make healthcare IT easier and safer to use. 

Read more about the CUI programme

Security

Exterminate like a Doctor Who Christmas special. Secure decommissioning of hardware does not mean throwing it in a skip. Nor does it mean deleting files, as this will not erase them to the point of being unrecoverable. Use secure erasure tools, or better still a third party organisation certified in data destruction.

Tips and tricks

Send an email at the perfect moment. You can send email at the time of your choice. Write your email, and then select Options. One of the many delivery options (usually listed as Do not deliver before…) will allow you to specify the time and date of delivery. Of course, we don’t for one minute want to suggest you should present yourself as the hardest-working member of staff by sending emails at 11pm…

Day eleven

Task for the day

Take a course: or find out how Microsoft’s free training could help staff in your trust and cut calls to the IT helpdesk. The training courses available are due to expand early next year and the NHS Resource Centre will also be launching a refined e-learning platform for easier, more rewarding and better online training!

Find out more and get started with free IT online training that you can take from work or home

Security

Don’t lose that laptop. Encryption might protect the data upon it, and biometrics might keep the casual thief out of bounds, but if your laptop is stolen you are still one laptop short of a usable computer. If you’re out partying, leave it safely locked away.

Tips and tricks

Organise your emails. All versions of Outlook include powerful management tools to arrange your emails in the easiest way possible. If you’re used to sorting in date order, for example, try selecting View>View by Conversation.

Each series of email conversations is magically collated, so you can see an entire discussion without endless searching.

Day twelve

Task for the day

Find a late present: It’s a bit late for Christmas shopping. But if there’s someone you’ve forgotten or you’d like some Microsoft software, check out the Employee Purchase Programme or the Home User Programmes for NHS staff.

Read more about both programmes; it's easy to take advantage of the offers available

Or go directly to the My Offers space on the NHS Resource Centre website

Security

An MP3 player is for Christmas, not the office. In fact, all unauthorised devices that can be connected to the network by way of a simple USB plug should be restricted. Remember, keyloggers and other nasty viruses can live on a tiny USB key...

Tips and tricks

And finally, let’s all have a Happy New Year… Most versions of Microsoft Outlook have some sort of “message recall” function, but none of them is perfect. This is because once an email has gone, it’s not entirely within your - or Outlook’s - control.

So make it your New Year’s resolution never to send emails in a huff; and be sure to check who the recipients are before sending off that joke from your less-than-savoury pal down the pub. Use some courtesy, re-read your email before sending it, and if all else fails, pop round and talk to the potential recipient with a cup of tea.

This solves almost everything.