CCI Tech Tip Tuesdays

Looking for something simple to help keep you organized?  Google now has a tool that lets you create to do lists, link tasks to your calendar, and more.   It's called  Google Tasks  and you can read more here:  https://gsuite.google.com/ learning-center/products/apps/ keep-track-of-tasks/#!/   

Courtesy of Gene Sorkin, Associate Director of Information Technology Support, here are some telltale signs to look for the next time an email that smells phishy hits your inbox.  Keep an eye out for misspellings, such as legitimate business names that are missing or off by just one or two letters. Additionally, an unexpected email from an address that you never communicated with before is a good early sign of a possible scam. Subject lines containing too-good-to- be true offers or threatening statements meant to elicit an emotional reaction are clues that someone’s trying to phish you. Watch out for mass email sends or unexpected emails to email aliases like the example below. Any messages addressed generically, especially ones regarding financial transactions are suspicious. Extreme caution should be exercised with any link appearing in an unexpected or unsolicited email. Hover over the hyperlink text to see where the URL would actually direct you if clicked. Scamm...

Trying to host a conference call or video call that includes people outside CCI?  Want to have a dial-in only option?  Google Meet, Google's new video calling service, has a lot of features including: You can share your screen You can schedule meetings in advance  Google Meets is free for CCI staff, if you login to Google with your  courtinnovation.org  (or other CCI-approved google account) People can dial in with just their phone if they're not near a computer You can call someone's phone directly through Google Meet No time limits for meetings Read more about Google Meet  here . To use Google Meet, go to  https://meet.google.com/   and login with your  courtinnovation.org  account or other CCI-approved google account. If you're hosting a video call with CCI staff only, and everyone has a computer with a speaker or headset, you can continue to use Skype for Business.  While Skype for Busine...

When  conference rooms aren’t booked correctly they can disappear, get booked over, or get mysteriously changed.   There’s a simple step to take to be able to see all conference rooms at a glance,  and not create problems for your booking! You’ll know you booked a conference room the right way when you get a confirmation e-mail from the room. What NOT to do…. If you have a conference room’s calendar displaying next to your own calendar, you want to avoid double clicking in the conference room’s calendar to open the meeting window and create a meeting.  If you create a meeting this way, the conference room will NOT be reserved, and you also risk the conference room double booking you with another meeting. Want to see what conference rooms are available?  Use the Schedule Assistant to see the conference rooms  and  the availability of all your colleagues. Step-by-step instructions to book a conference room 1. ...

A lot of us rely on our saved bookmarks, passwords and history in Google Chrome.  Because of an update to Windows 10 that is underway by our IT department, everyone will need to sign into Chrome to save these features and settings by end of day this Friday, August 31st.   See the below message from our Technical Support Analyst Will Doren: "We are in the process of updating Windows 10 to the latest version. With this upgrade your google chrome will be reset to the original settings therefore erasing your saved bookmarks passwords and history, but by signing into Chrome you can save all these features and settings. Please see the instructions below and use your  CCI Issued GMail Account.   This will be  courtinnovation.org ,  sossou thbronx.org ,  crownheights.org ,  legalhand.org . If you have any questions please reach out to  ccitechsupport@nycourts.gov  for help." Please see  this article  about how ...

With vacation season upon us, setting an Out of Office message for your email helps keep things running smoothly in your absence.  Here's how to set this feature up in Outlook: 1. When in the Outlook app, click on “File” in the top navigation bar. 2. Select “Automatic Replies (Out of Office)” 3. This brings up a pop up window.  In this window, click “Send Automatic Replies” 4. Select “Only send during this time range” 5. Select the date range that you'll be out of the office 6. Below the date range, there are two tabs- "Inside my Organization" and "Outside my Organization".  This lets you send a different out of office message to CCIers than to people outside CCI. 7. In each tab, type up your out of office message.  If using the same message for both inside and outside the organization, you can copy and paste the text to the second tab. 8. If you are accessing Outlook via the web, Out of Office messages are in a different pl...

If you ever need to consult a spreadsheet while looking at a website, it can be frustrating to have to go back and forth between Excel and your web browser.   One way to make it easier is to convert your Excel spreadsheet into a Google Sheet (Gmail's version of the spreadsheet).  This way, you can have the data you need in the tab next door to the website you're looking at.  Read how  here .

A simple way to copy a file is by dragging.   If you're on a PC, hold down the "Control" key, then click and drag the file. If you're on a Mac, hold down the "Alt key, then click and drag the file. Both of these  will make a copy that you can drop anywhere you want by releasing your mouse button.

If you have websites you use often, you can add them to your bookmarks bar in Chrome.  This way, every time you open Chrome, your most used sites are one click away.    While using the website you would like to bookmark, first click the star icon in the top right corner. ​ ​ Then, in the window that pops up, select the Folder "Bookmarks Bar" and click "Done". The website will now display at the top of your page each time you open a new tab in Chrome. ​

One way to stay organized is to use the flagging function in Outlook. You can set reminders for yourself to follow up, reminders for others to follow up and turn flags into Outlook tasks.  Read more  here  to learn about the different ways to use flagging.

Worried about documents having too much jargon?  Want to make sure everyone can read the documents you create?  Microsoft Word has the ability to scan your document and score it based on reading level.  It will give you two scores: Percentage of overall readability out of 100% Score based on the school year reading level of the text. (i.e. this document is at a 7 th  grade reading level)   You can score an entire document or just a sentence. Read the article  for the whole story.

Thanks to Gene Sorkin, Associate Director of Technical Support, see the below article on recent changes to Gmail.  One of the new features is “Nudging” where Gmail will remind you to follow up or respond to messages in your inbox. ​  This is one of the ways the new Gmail helps you stay organized. Read the full article  for more info on Nudging and the other new Gmail features rolling out in the next few weeks.

When creating a document that pulls in text from different places, getting all the text to match in terms of formatting (like font size, and type, if it's bolded, color) can be frustrating.  The Format Painter function can help with this.  Format painter lets you easily take the format for one section of text and apply it to another section of text in a document.  You can use Format Painter in Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Docs, and Outlook, among other programs. Simply highlight the text whose format you would like to use, click the Format painter icon, and then select the text that you would like to change.  The Format Painter tool is located near the Paste, Copy and Cut functions in the program.  See screenshots below for where to locate the Format Painter tool. In Outlook: ​ In Microsoft Word: ​ In Google Docs: ​Happy pasting!

Did you know you can delay delivery of your e-mail messages?  In Outlook, you can schedule individual messages to be sent at a later time, or even set-up a rule so that all of your e-mails are delayed a few minutes before they're sent.    Learn more here .   Note: you must have your computer turned on and Outlook open at the time you want to send the message. If you are a Gmail  user,   Boomerang   allows you to schedule your e-mails for the future and more. The free version has a limit of 10 e-mails per month.

Foxit PhantomPDF - available on most of our Windows 10 machines - easily allows you to combine multiple files into one PDF file.   You can read more about how to easily combine multiple files here. And as a bonus, here's a shortcut: select all the files you want to combine in the File Explorer window, right-click, and select to combine files in Foxit Phantom PDF.

Excel is great for recording data, but how can you quickly analyze all that information?  Sometimes a pivot table is the answer to help you summarize, explore and present data.  Using Excel's visual interface, you can quickly summarize information by categories, creating easy to manipulate tables, and even view them as charts. Initial data: Quick and easy pivot table: Click here for an overview on what pivot tables are. Click here for a free tutorial on using pivot tables .

As many phones are beginning to have wireless charging options, it's important to learn how to protect your credit cards, door access keys, and other cards from getting demagnetized! With these wireless-charging phones, don't use any case that stores your cards in a pocket on the back of your phone. And never put your cards on the wireless charger, or on your phone while it's charging. Read more about the specifics here.

Did you know that you can change the background in your Windows desktop (the place with all the icons on your computer)?  You can change it to any image at all! To learn how to change your wallpaper, click here. To learn how to do it on your Mac computer, click here.

If you find yourself e-mailing people the same messages over and over (perhaps it's an invite to an event, or confirmation about attendance of a class), you can actually make e-mail templates in Outlook that you can easily customize to send whenever you want.   ​ Learn more about creating a template here.

These days sending someone a link is a pretty common occurrence!  Maybe you're e-mailing a client and want to tell them to go to your website, but instead of hoping that they google the website, or typing out the URL so they have to copy and paste it, use Ctrl+K (or Command+K on a Mac) to add a hyperlink to your e-mail or word document.   This tip works in Outlook, gMail, Google Docs, and Office!   Learn more.

Multi-factor authentication is a better form of security that anyone on the court network will use when accessing your e-mail outside of the court network - sort of like when you sign on to online banking.  It can seem like a headache, but it's not as much of a headache as what you would experience if our network was compromised!  (Still not convinced?  Read this post to learn more about why security matters to our organization and all of us ). To make this more convenient, you can actually set-up a few ways to use it based on what is best for you - we recommend you choose a primary and secondary option.  Click here for full instructions on how to set it up. 1. An authenticator smartphone app that generates codes for you This is the recommended option - it works with your smart phone, and allows you to set-up a back-up number if you don't have your smart phone with you.  The app works when you have WiFi so is a perfect fit for international travellers ...

For many of us, we know that security is important but it is a lot of steps, a lot of things to remember, and two-factor authentication can feel like such a pain.   Michael Levan, the Center’s System Administrator, answers some frequently asked questions about security, and why it matters for you and for the whole organization and the clients we serve. Security doesn’t seem that important for me personally. I don’t really have anything important in my email or computer anyway. Once your computer is hacked, anything you do on your computer could be seen or collected by a malicious attacker. How many times have you used your computer to go on Amazon? Or Ebay? All of these logins you do daily have information about you: your last name, address, credit card number, bank card number, security questions, or even your social security number. Also , you are putting everyone in the organization potentially at risk – and their private information. The attacker receives crede...