Improve Your Productivity With Automation

Improve Your Productivity With Automation

Workflow automation is an increasingly important factor in productivity. A research report from Formstack released this year found that half of managers are spending the equivalent of one full workday each week on administrative tasks, many of which could be automated. And 44 per cent of managers reported that their workplace has invested significantly in workflow automation tools within the past two years.

Managers are spending significant amounts of time, up to half of the average workday, on administrative tasks. In many cases, these tasks could be automated.

“Few business owners really grasp the concepts of what automation in technology can do,” said Martin Webb, a founder of Tudodesk. “When they start a business or look to grow it, they instantly assume the problem they need to solve is by hiring help.”

There are times when automating repetitive or administrative tasks can free up time and mental space, allowing for focus on more important matters.

Automate Your Email

Many people find themselves feeling overwhelmed with emails. Inbox Zero is a great goal, but it seems like an impossible dream much of the time.

Automating your inbox is one way to stay on top of your emails, and it’s surprisingly useful. If you use Inbox by Google you can start by using the suggested responses that show up at the bottom of the reply window. When quick responses are all that’s needed, they often fit the bill perfectly and allow you to get an email dealt with quickly and out of your inbox.

The canned responses available in Inbox by Gmail can be surprisingly useful, allowing you to quickly deal with emails and get them off your to-do list.

There are several other applications, and features of various email clients, that allow for automation that can save you time on this productivity-sucking task. If you send newsletters, for example, Mailchimp’s marketing automation features allow for easy targeting of your list based on characteristics like preferences and previous sales. Zapier, an application that integrates with your devices and other preferred apps, provides several ways to automate your inbox including automatically saving email attachments to your cloud storage account and creating task cards from emails you send or receive.

Automate Your Agenda

Using Outlook, or another digital agenda, to set events and automate the process as much as possible can save a lot of time and confusion. You can use these programs not only to schedule events but to invite participants, set event reminders, and even find good times for meetings based on your existing schedule.

Agenda automation has been a boon for QuotesAdvisor.com, said CEO Sophie Miles. “Small companies cannot responsibility their secretary of setting up all the future events. It would be very difficult for her or him to get an email confirmation of each person who will attend an event,” Miles said. “Therefore, we use this Windows tool to integrate what is said in the emails to the activities that are carried out.”

After using this Outlook feature for a year in their New York office, employees have found that they keep track of events more easily, keep meeting agendas on track because they know when another meeting is coming up, and more easily keep records of past meetings, Miles said.

AI is increasingly a part of schedule automation, and Microsoft is integrating artificial intelligence into its software in several different ways. There are also stand-alone applications like x.ai, which uses a virtual assistant to help you manage your agenda. Watch for this area of productivity automation to expand in the coming years, especially as digital voice assistants become more popular.

Automate Your Leads

Lead generation and the onboarding of new clients can be automated in several different ways, Webb said. That starts with developing your leads. “Today you automate inquiries so that you have a constant stream,” he said. “Ranking on Google, listing on search engines and directories, and having a well-designed website can help you automate the task of finding new business and automate what happens when customers find your business.”

Once you have those leads or a new customer, the ability to auto-generate information about that person is also valuable.

“At Tudodesk when a customer’s email is added onto our CRM the system automatically looks to enrich that data with a photo of that person, there social links, bio, age, gender, company name and address and so on,” he said.

This information can then be used to welcome new customers, sending a note that is personalized but also automated. “These sorts of emails when written correctly build the initial blocks of a relationship,” he said.

Automate Your Team

Services like Microsoft’s SharePoint allow for the automation of workflows in Flow, across a variety of business functions including payroll, meeting scheduling, and team collaboration.

“I personally think that SharePoint is a really good tool to use, both at work and home, and its automated features are so helpful in everyday life,” said Tytti Rekosuo, a graduate marketing executive with Pro-Sapien Software Ltd.

Using Flow in SharePoint, you can automate many of your personal and team tasks, and share the results with the appropriate people.

SharePoint doesn’t only allow teams to collaborate together and share and manage content. It also features automated processes like email notifications that can reduce time spent on routine tasks. You can set up a clear approval chain for a proposal, for example, or easily update the status of a project or task.

Automate Your Browsing

It’s simple, but setting your browser to automatically open certain tasks can save time and ensure you have the websites and applications you need available as soon as you start your work day.

“Due to the nature of my role, whenever I open Chrome or any other browsers I use, I’ve set it up so that my email, my Google Calendar, my company’s HR portal and my LinkedIn profile will open up immediately without having to navigate,” said Matthew Mercuri, a partnership specialist at Broadsign. “This saves me significant amounts of time in the morning when I boot up.”

Browser extensions can also automate repeated tasks like saving a link or posting to a work Trello board. The Pocket extension, for example, saves links to be read later, even offline on mobile. There are browser extensions for Evernote (if you use that note-taking application) and for popular applications like Trello and Inbox by Gmail. Search your preferred browser name and “extensions” to find ones that may help you out.

Automate Your Workflows

Several applications exist that allow you to automate several of the workflows that are easy to forget to do, or that can be time-consuming. For example, with IFTTT you can set up a daily reminder about the weather, or set up your digital voice assistant to make appointments in your agenda.

Using IFTTT, you can automate several of the common digital tasks you’re most likely to forget, like backing up your photos.

Another application, Process.st creates checklists from process templates and shares them with your team, which helps each member stay on track.

Windows 10 April 2018 Update Feature Focus: Continue on PC

Microsoft first announced their plans to build an ecosystem of devices around your Windows 10 system at BUILD 2017. Since then they have been testing several features to bring this ecosystem to life. The ultimate goal is to make it easier to pick up activities and work you have started on other devices in this ecosystem.

Cortana, if you use the digital assistant on your compatible devices, will help you pick up where you left off on other Windows 10 devices. If you are using a Windows 10 based device and move to another Windows 10 device using the same Microsoft Account in about a 10-minute period, you will receive a notification in the Windows 10 Action Center. This notification will have shortcuts to websites that you were actively using on the other device.

This is very handy as you move between Windows 10 devices but what about when you are on your mobile device and want to easily get a website to browse on a larger screen. That is where the Continue on PC feature in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update comes in handy.

Updated versions of Microsoft Edge on Android and iOS devices now have a button that opens a sharing menu so you can share a website link to one of your Windows 10 devices.

Microsoft Edge on Android

Continue on PC for Android Devices

On your compatible Android device, at the bottom of the Microsoft Edge app window, you will see an icon which looks like a mobile phone with an arrow heading out to the right. This is the Continue on PC button.

Microsoft Edge on iOS (iPad and iPhone)

Continue on PC for iPad (iOS)

On an iPad, pictured above, the Continue on PC button is in the top right corner of the Microsoft Edge window. On an iPhone, not pictured, this button is located along the bottom of the Edge window just like on Android devices.

By tapping the Continue on PC button you will open the dialog you see in each of the screenshots above.

The top part of the dialog box will show you all the Windows 10 devices connected to the same Microsoft Account. Greyed out names are offline and unavailable while the darker names are available targets to share website links. If you select a specific machine, the shared link will be opened in Microsoft Edge on that device immediately.

If you select the Continue later option at the bottom of this dialog window, the websites link will be available in the Action Center as an alert when you log into any of your Windows 10 devices.

Continue from your phone alert in Windows 10 Action Center

Once you click this link on any of your Windows 10 devices, it will open in Microsoft Edge and be cleared from the Action Center on your other devices.

Note: Continue on PC from your mobile devices is a one-way endeavor. You can only share from the mobile handset to your Windows 10 devices. However, Microsoft is already working on a solution for this limitation.

Timeline Integration with Mobile Devices

The release of the Windows 10 April 2018 Update is a significant step towards the vision Microsoft has for this broad ecosystem of devices we all use. Their goal, which was re-iterated at BUILD 2018 last week in Seattle, is to make it simple for you to do your work from any device and at any time. Continue on PC and Cortana’s Pick up where you left off features are key players in this ecosystem. Another new feature available in the April 2018 Update is Timeline.

Timeline gives you quick access to your web browsing and document work across all your Windows 10 devices. Currently, Microsoft is beta testing a feature on Microsoft Edge for Android and iOS that will make the browsing activity on those mobile devices show up in your Timeline. This would eliminate the needs to share website links via Continue on PC because your mobile browsing activity would be synced across all your devices.

Mobile Browsing Activity in Timeline

You must be running the Microsoft Edge beta on Android or iOS to try out this new integration.

The Timeline integration between your Windows 10 devices and mobile handsets is going to grow even more over the Windows 10 Redstone 5 development cycle. As announced by Microsoft last week at BUILD 2018, Timeline and other activity will be synced between your Windows 10 devices and your Android/iOS handsets in both directions. That means the ability to see your complete desktop/laptop Timeline activities on your phone and vice versa.

Microsoft will implement this via the Microsoft Launcher on Android and Microsoft Edge on iOS. To test this upcoming integration out you will need to be a Windows Insider testing current Redstone 5 builds. Plus, beta versions of Microsoft Launcher on Android and Microsoft Edge on iOS will need to be installed on your mobile devices.

The Future Ecosystem Integrated

Although the updated Continue on PC and Timeline integration in the Windows 10 April 2018 Update is a big step towards this ecosystem of devices Microsoft is building out, more is set to follow to make it even more useful.

I learned last week at BUILD 2018 that the Nearby Sharing feature in the Windows 10 April 2018 update, which allows you to easily share files between devices via Bluetooth, will expand to Android and iOS devices in a future update to the operating system.