Microsoft Lync Server 2013

The book I read to research this post was Microsoft Lync Server 2013 Unleashed 2nd edition by Alex Lewis et al which is a very good book that I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . I did do a series of tutorials on Lync Server 2013 as a client and if you are reading this on another site they can be found at http://scratbag.me. This book does have information for clients but also looks at it from the administrator’s perspective. The book contains loads and loads of information and I think only someone with experience of using Lync and maybe going through the book and trying out the instructions with the software will get maximum benefit. Lync had a predecessor called Office Communication Server 2007 & Lync 2010 and these always integrated with programs like Office & SQL Server. It is a server based communication tool that lets you use things like instant messaging, video conferencing, e-mail and video phone calls. If you use different software for each of these jobs and home computing based options there may be vulnerabilities that can be exploited by viruses so you are better off getting it in one tidy package. There are 3 versions with the 2013 edition. There is the standard edition, enterprise edition and plus edition. The standard edition is suitable for small to medium sized businesses. The enterprise edition is aimed at large data centers and the plus edition is the same as this edition but with enterprise grade video chat. The standard edition has a lower grade version of video chat and also only works with the SQL Express database which is a free version but lacks many of the features of SQL Server. Lync is like a collection of programs that vary from edition to edition and they call these roles that you must set up. They have many different purposes like you might have an edge server that communicates between your company and the outside world. Obviously you have to control the permissions given to users and what they can access. This is a good book which I thoroughly enjoyed but I think they could have included more illustrations and maybe made it a little easier to follow.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part G

This is the 7th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to look at themes mostly in this post. If you press shift and left click on the corner of some shapes it works differently but only on certain shapes. With triangles for example it changes its constraining proportions and with a square it will let you change it to a rectangle. If you click on design/ themes there is a variants option next to it that changes according to what theme is selected. There is flyouts in both themes and variants with various selections. On themes is a setting called apply to new shapes which is selected by default but when unticked the theme has to be manually added to each shape you draw and doesn’t inherit anything you previously drew. There is effects, connectors and embellishments options in themes. Embellishments is normally best set to automatic. Effects does things like drop shadows and connectors changes the appearance of selected connectors between shapes. The theme you set up is automatically set up in themes flyouts for re use. There is a setting to apply it to all pages in a document. File/ paste just pastes a shape minus the formatting information. File/ paste special has various options for pasting the formatting settings for text and shapes. This includes themes. Home/ shape styles concentrates on settings for the shape. You can set things like fill color and a gradient if needed. You can cut, copy and paste with in this program using the shortcuts control+ x for cut, control + c for copy and control + v for paste like in most other programs. When you do some text somewhere and do some in another shape only the font color is stored and passed on by default. The command to copy formatting information is home/ paste/ format painter. You normally select what you want copied and have to select what you want copied and where you want it to go to. If you double click on the format painter it copies all the formatting information.  When you select shapes going onto something else you can put them in containers or groups. Home/ group does grouping and insert/ container is the container command. Groups using a default visual boundary around the group but containers let you choose a boundary from the options. In groups you can double click a shape and move it outside the boundary but if you move the group the shape will follow. In containers the shape can be selected by a single click and moved outside but then becomes separate and follow the boundary if moved. Also you can add text to containers in predefined titles specially for that purpose. In groups text is normally just put into the centre space in between the group.