How a Voice Assistant Can Make You More Productive

How a Voice Assistant Can Make You More Productive

Voice assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home are suddenly everywhere — but can they really up your productivity? We have advice on choosing one, and tips on using it to make life easier.

It looks like 2018 is set to be the year that voice assistant devices become truly mainstream. The Amazon Echo Dot was the best selling item on Amazon.com, across all categories, during the 2017 holiday season. And in early 2018, Google announced that a Google Home device had been sold every second since October 19. Both devices and their respective software — Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant — were everywhere during CES earlier in January, indicating that current sales figures are just the start of the sector’s potential.

But what can a voice assistant do for you in the home or office, other than play playlists or podcasts? And can it really make you more productive, in a world where we’ve already got smart phones, smart watches, and tablets at our disposal? Here’s a look at what the devices can do, with tips from users, and how to decide which system is best for you.

Choosing the Right Assistant for You

First of all, how do you decide on a voice assistant? Amazon and Google are the two big players in this space so far. Here’s a look at the primary devices for their voice assistants: Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Alexa Echo and Echo Dot devices.

There are three primary Amazon devices:

• Amazon Echo (about $100)
• Amazon Echo Dot (about $50), a smaller device with mostly similar functionality that can be networked to other Echo devices
• Amazon Echo Plus (about $150), a larger device with improved speakers that functions as a smart-home hub

The Echo and its related devices run on Alexa, and the software is increasingly showing in a number of other smart devices. Using Alexa you can play music, shop online (via Amazon, of course), set reminders, and do online searches.

Google Home Mini, Google Home, and Google Home Max devices.

And three for Google:

• Google Home (about $130)
• Google Home Mini (about $50), a smaller device with mostly similar functionality that can be networked and also used like an intercom system with a Google Home
• Google Home Max (about $400), a larger device with great speakers that make it worth the cost upgrade if audio is your main concern, but otherwise has similar functionality

These run on Google Assistant, which does many of the same things as Alexa: search the web, do calculations, remind you of appointments, and so on.

If your primary concern is price, Amazon is the clear winner — with no loss in functionality. Amazon’s devices are also newer than Google Home, at this point, which means you’ll get newer hardware for less money.

For other voice assistants, there’s also Cortana, the virtual assistant found in Microsoft devices. This might hold particular appeal if you use a Windows 10 PC, but it’s worth noting that no new Cortana-enabled devices were featured at CES this month.

Apple’s delayed HomePod was released in the US, UK, and Australia on Friday. The Siri-enabled device has a music-first focus, which makes it a competitor to the Google Home Max more than any other of the leading devices currently on the market, but it remains to be see how Siri will work for other functions and outside applications. You may want to wait on this one if you are wedded to iTunes and Apple Music, but right now the discussion is largely Amazon versus Google.

Just what can you do with a voice assistant once you get on board? Here are some places to start.

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant can be found on Amazon’s own devices, like this Echo, and in an increasing number of third-party products.

Just go about your day: Research from Google found that 72 per cent of those who own voice assistants use them daily, as part of their normal routines. You can shift some of the tasks you currently use a phone or other device for to your virtual helper — listening to podcasts, catching up on the news, getting directions, and so on.

Both Amazon Echo or Google Home can be used to add items to your calendar, build your shopping list, or set reminders quite easily. For many users, these basic functions — ones that can be done with your voice, without having to pull out a phone — are enough to make voice assistants worth owning.

Keep yourself on task: “One way to use voice assistants, specifically Alexa, is to track your tasks and projects,” said user Daphne Mallory. “It’s so convenient to generate ideas for what to do, and then add it as a reminder or to-do list.”

Alexa Skills — personalized capabilities that can be created by individual users — are a useful tool in this. You may find one already created that fits your needs, such as quick news briefings or short daily workouts.

Lifestyle blogger Alexis Chateau uses her new Google Home Mini to set alarms for everything from appointments to recipes to doing measurement conversions. It’s also helpful for basic math, Chateau said, for example when writing reports. This keeps her from having to break out a calculator or type calculations into a browser window.

The smaller versions of the voice assistant devices, like this Google Home Mini, can function as standalones or as part of a household network.

Maintain your flow: Voice assistants are a “fantastic productivity hack,” said marketer David Said, who has been using Amazon Alexa Dot and Google Home for most of the past year.

“I like voice assistants because talking doesn’t break my flow,” Said said. “I can continue to type and visually focus on one thing while quickly asking one of my two digital friends a question about something I need to know quickly, ideal for finding facts during article writing for example.”

Voice assistants can also be used to avoid unwanted distractions. “When I’m about to start with a job that needs my attention and focus, without interruptions, I ask Google Assistant to cancel or mute all the notifications so that nothing distracts me,” said Cristian Rennella, VP of HR and cofounder of QuotesAdvisor.

“When you work in a capacity where you do these remedial processes tens or hundreds of times a day, using these tools really starts to save you time,” Said said.

Bring in other apps: The ability to use voice assistants with other apps and services adds to their usefulness, Said said. “If you work with a note system like Evernote or enterprise resource planner like Asana you can use apps that allow you to set tasks, deadlines and even assign them to coworkers,” he says.

You can also use the assistants to do simple tasks that would require breaking from your current task, or pulling out another device — for example, calculations while working on a spreadsheet, or adding an item to the shopping list while you’re cooking dinner.

“Use voice assistants like a third hand, for when doing whatever action you need to do would take up to much time on its own,” said Jeremiah Jeschke, CEO of officeAutomata.

Make the whole home smart: There are already a whole host of smart devices that work with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, which means your voice assistant can be part of a wider smart-home set up. Phillips Hue, Belkin Wemo, Nest devices, and Roomba vaccums are a few of the smart devices that work with both virtual assistants.

And at CES, a host of new devices with Alexa or Google Assistant were featured, making it clear that Amazon and Google are gunning to run your entire home. Amazon is putting Alexa in headphones, cars, smartwatches, home appliances, and televisions. For its part, Google’s Assistant will show up in TVs, headphones, and Android Auto. Watch for more to come over the year as Google and Amazon fight to become the undisputed leader in this rapidly expanding electronics sector.

How to Protect and Secure Your Data in Microsoft Excel

You can safeguard any data in Excel from a single cell to an entire workbook. Here’s how.

You’ve created a spreadsheet in Excel that you plan to share with other people. But you may not want everyone to be able to view, edit, or reformat all the data. No problem. Here’s a list of what you can do:

• You can protect anything from a lone cell to a full workbook.
• You can hide a cell, a row, or a column so no one can see it.
• You can lock a cell so no one can edit it.
• You can protect the entire worksheet to put your security into effect.
• You can hide a specific worksheet.
• And you can protect an entire workbook by marking it as final, encrypting it with a password, or adding a digital signature.

As usual, I’m using Excel 2016 via my Office 365 subscription. But the options for protecting your data should apply equally to the prior couple of versions of Excel.

To start, open or create a spreadsheet with enough data to stretch several columns and rows. Make a copy of that worksheet so you have more than one sheet. Change some of the data in the second sheet. On my end, I created a workbook with different tax information stored in multiple worksheets.

Let’s say some of the cells contain data that you don’t want other people to see. Excel by itself doesn’t offer a way to completely hide a cell, but you can at least cloak its view.

1. Click on a cell that contains data you want to hide.
2. Click on the Format button on the Home Ribbon and select Format Cells.
3. In the Number section of the Format Cells window, click on the Custom category.
4. In the Type field, delete the word General and type three semicolons — ;;;. Click OK. The data in the cell is now hidden.

But it’s still visible in the Formula Bar. And someone who knows this process can easily reverse it. How? With the cell still selected, return to the Format Cells window and click on the General category. Click OK, and the cell contents reappear.

Excel is more adept at helping you hide entire rows or columns.

Put your cursor in any cell in a row or column you want to hide. Click on the Format button on the Home Ribbon and move your mouse to the entry for Hide & Unhide.

Click on the command to Hide Rows or Hide Columns. The row or column disappears.

But wait, you say, it’s easy enough to unhide that row or column. Simply return to the Hide & Unhide entry and click on the command to Unhide Rows or Unhide Columns.

Ahh, yes, but now we’re going to protect the entire worksheet so no one can unhide that row or column without the password.

1. Click on the Format button and select the command to Protect Sheet.
2. In the Protect Sheet window, type a password in the field for “Password to unprotect sheet.” Click OK.
3. Confirm the password. Click OK again.
4. Now click on the Format button and return to the entry for Hide & Unhide. Notice that the commands to hide and unhide rows and columns are grayed out.
5. To restore that functionality, click on the Format button and select Unprotect Sheet. Enter the password. You can now edit the sheet again and unhide the row or column that was hidden.

What if you want to prevent someone from changing the contents of a cell? That option is automatically enabled when you protect the worksheet.

Protect your worksheet again if you unprotected it. Now move to any cell in that sheet. Click in the cell or in the Formula Bar and try to change the data. A message pops up telling you that the cell or chart you’re trying to change is on a protected sheet. To make a change, you’ll have to unprotect the sheet, again requiring the password.

1. To be able to edit a cell without having to unprotect the sheet, click on that cell when the sheet is unprotected.
2. Click on the Format button and select Format Cells.
3. In the Protection section in the Format Cells window, uncheck the option for Locked. Notice that you can also hide a cell here, but that simply hides the formula not the contents of the cell.
4. Click OK. Now when you protect your worksheet again, the data in that cell is unprotected and can be modified.

You can select multiple cells, rows, or columns and unlock them all in one shot.

And here’s another way free up specific cells for editing.

1. While your sheet is unprotected, click on the Review tab. Select the cells you want to open up for editing.
2. Click on the button to Allow Edit Ranges on the Review Ribbon. In the Allow Users to Edit Ranges window, click on New.
3. Confirm that the cells you selected are displayed in the “Refers to cells” field.
4. Name the range and then enter a password if you want to require one. Click OK.
5. Protect your sheet again. Now anyone can edit only that range of cells.

What other changes to your worksheet can you prevent? Make sure the sheet is unprotected. Then try to protect it again. The Protect Sheet window displays all the different options, most of them unchecked, some checked. By default, the following options are unchecked, meaning someone cannot perform them while the sheet is protected.

• Formatting cells, columns, and rows
• Inserting columns, rows, and hyperlinks
• Deleting columns and rows
• Sorting data
• Enabling AutoFilter
• Using a PivotTable or PivotChart

The items that are checked are the only tasks someone can perform.

You can selectively check or uncheck individual options.

1. For example, if you want people to be able to format cells, columns, and rows but not change the data itself, check the options for Format cells, Format columns, and Format rows.
2. If you don’t want people to be able to even select a cell, uncheck the options for Select locked cells and Select unlocked cells.
3. Remember to enter and confirm a password.

Next, you can hide an entire worksheet. In this case, the worksheet isn’t password-protected, so someone can unhide it. This process is most effective if someone doesn’t know a worksheet is hidden.

Here’s what you do: Right-click on the sheet name tab of the sheet you want to hide and select Hide from the menu.

To bring it back, just right-click on the name sheet of a different sheet in the workbook, select Unhide, and confirm which sheet you wish to unhide.

Finally, you can protect and secure your entire workbook.

Click on the File tab. Then click on the Protect Workbook button.

Excel offers several options for protecting your workbook.

The first option to Mark as Final tries to discourage anyone from modifying the workbook by telling people that it’s completed, and no more editing changes should be made. When someone opens the document, a message appears at the top: “MARKED AS FINAL. An author has marked this document as final to discourage editing.”

The second option to Encrypt with Password requires a password to open the workbook.

We’ve already covered the third option to Protect Current Sheet.

The fourth option to Protect Workbook Structure allows people to change the data but prevents them from altering the structure of the workbook, such as inserting, deleting, or renaming worksheets.

And the fifth and final option to Add a Digital Signature entails a more complex process that requires you obtain and set up a digital ID.