Anthony Milner

Josh and I were heading out to a client in Macquarie Park today. Josh looked up direction on Google Maps and I looked up the directions on Whereis. The results were interesting.

Josh had the results much faster (15 seconds) which has a lot to do with his gen y speed but was also a result of the great user interface in Google Maps and I was still tinkering with Whereis (approx 60 seconds) had to enter details twice, slower server reponse etc…

Google told us to go via the Cahill Expressway and gave a journey time estimate of 30 minutes.

Whereis told us to go via Western Distributer and gave a journey time estimate of 18 minutes.

The Western Distributer is definitely much faster from our location (Redfern)

It’s the second time this has happened. My Wife went on a inservice and used whereis, I insisted Google was better (I just love it’s usability) but the reality is that whereis once again chose a shorter and quicker route.

Whereis [18 minutes]

Google Maps [33 Minutes]

Mark tagged me with this meme. It works like this…

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Little known facts about Anthony…

1. During school I worked as a trolley boy at Franklins and did such a good job that I was soon promoted to shelf packer. I continued to impress and was the first Male at Franklins Rose Bay to break through the glass ceiling and be promoted to the Female dominated role of check out chick.
2. I spent part of my gap year on a Kibbutz working in a bakery. I learnt to make bread, croissants, bagels, rolls and challah. 
3. My Dad bought a video camera when we were quite young, home video cameras were quite a rare thing back then. It weighed 20kg and came in 2 parts – the camera and a heavy recorder which was slung over the shoulder – Wherever we went people thought we were from SABC TV. We would often make movies or just setup on the street corner and interview people. I guess it was all this exposure to filming that gave me a crazy idea to be a film maker. At University I met a film grad and we started raising money to shoot our first short film (in those days you needed money – today it would have been a lot easier) We went to businessmen we knew and pitched our idea, we were promised funds but when it came to collecting the hard nosed businessmen showed us the door, I had just been given my first lesson in the business school of hard knocks.
4. Last year I bit a piece of dead skin off the corner of my thumb (as you do) which caused an infection to travel down my arm at speed. I ended up in hospital for a week and had two operations to save the thumb – go figure. Umm…I don’t bite dead skin anymore.
5. I’m also a greenthumb, handyman and cooking show freak – (must be an IT thing)
6. Aged 10 playing cricket and fielding, I caught the batsmen out but then instantly threw it at the wickets and stumped the other batsmen who was still running between wickets. All eyes went to the umpire, it took the poor guy 10 minutes and consultation of the rule book to decide if both batsmen could in fact simultaneously be given out, eventually he decided the catch was enough.
7. I’m a form factor freak. It can be a fast car, a laptop or a mobile phone, if the buttons aren’t in the right place and the design isn’t right, I’m not happy.
8. When I was 8 years old we went on a family holiday to Umhlanga in Durban. The hotel we stayed at had a talent night and I got up and told an adult joke I didn’t fully understand. It must have been funny because I won first prize – dinner for two at the Pink Prawn. My brothers told me to give the prize to my parents but I had bigger plans. A nice young girl from my school was also at the resort and I invited her to dinner at the Pink Prawn   and she accepted the invitation. Our parents dropped us off at the restaurant and we were waited on by bemused staff. We ordered hamburger and chips, it was a night to remember.

OK done, and I’m tagging…

Craig Bailey
Angus McDonald
Sam Fu
Alan J Lee
Brad Marsh
Michele Connolly
Summer Hu
Tony Hollingsworth

We’ve recently upgraded to CRM 4.0 and it went quite smoothly. Overall the product design and performance has improved and I’m looking forward using the completely rewritten CRM Outlook addin which did not behave very well in CRM 3.0.

The buggy Outlook addin meant that I had to use CRM in the browser. If you’ve ever done this you may have noticed some interesting behaviour.

As I bring up CRM in the browser I get this…

Then it tells me to close the window…

So in MS CRM Open=Close – this is a usability masterstroke.

If this is your first time you get really confused but if you happen to look at your task bar you’ll find the “real” CRM minimised there.

This has always made me chuckle. Its like MS CRM is playing a little game of hide and seek.

Picture this…

User: “Must work in CRM now”

CRM: “Go away”

User: “OK”

CRM: “Try and find me”

User: Gone home early (user happy to be home early). User happy = good usability

Boss: “Why is CRM not updated”

User: “CRM doesn’t work”

etc…

On investigation of this peculiarity I discovered a default system setting called “Application Mode”.  Application Mode removes the browsers menu, navigation and command bars presumably in order to remove the confusion surrounding navigation which does make sense. It also frees up about 115px of screen real estate so its not all bad. However in order to achieve this CRM attempts to pop a window with no chrome using Javascript.  If the script makes it through the myriad of popup blockers it still confuses the user by asking them to “close the window”. So it’s a poorly executed introduction to CRM and probably the worst possible place to have really bad usability is on entry to the application.

Enough of my complaining – how do we fix this?

Get your CRM administrator to access Settings > Administration > System Settings and select the Customisation tab and uncheck “Open Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Application mode”

Phew…CRM is so much better now