PowerPoint - Animations Delay Transitions

06 Apr 2019

I was working on a slide deck for work recently where I wanted to transition from one slide to another after a specified period of time. I was using PowerPoint and figured this would be no problem at all. I’d used this approach many times previously, but on this occasion it simply wouldn’t advance. The reason I eventually discovered was down to some on-slide animation.

Power-up with the Second SAP SuccessFactors Release of 2019

02 Apr 2019

We’re now well into the second quarter of 2019, and that means that it’s almost time for the Q2 release of SAP SuccessFactors to be released to customers. The questions are, what’s in this latest release and what do customers need to know?

That’s exactly the overarching question my colleagues and I at Zalaris tackle with our quarterly reviews. We compile the information SAP release, check the preview systems and then draw upon our own analytical skills and implementation & support experience to filter the wealth of information down to the key elements, presenting them in a format we hope is friendly and consumable by all.

Q1 2019 : SuccessFactors Employee Central Service Centre - Quarterly Review

23 Mar 2019

Employee Central Service Centre (ECSC) is the integrated HR ticketing solution for SuccessFactors. Based on several components, the solution leverages functionality from Employee Central (EC), SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer (C4C), SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) and other optional components. In reviewing this Q1 2019 release, I’m going to look specifically at the SCP and C4C updates that impact the use and implementation/maintenance of ECSC.

Create a Nice PDF with Drafts and Shortcuts

10 Mar 2019

Early last month, a student teacher was posting on the Automators forum about using Drafts to make dealing with templates such as lesson plans easier. Through a bit of discussion in the thread, it came about that the student teacher really just was looking for a way to get simple text entry into a format compatible with the template - i.e. printable vs. editable. With this amendment I was able to put together an example based on the template they provided that would transform text in a draft via a Drafts action and Shortcuts into a nicely formatted PDF document.

In this post I’m going to review the solution and approach as to how I did that.

Editing Large Amounts of Text in Shortcuts

26 Feb 2019

Last year I posted a small piece on text editing to the Automators forum. It was inspired by another post on the Drafts forum and focused on coming up with a way to edit text making more use of the screen estate than the paltry offering of the standard text options in Shortcuts. The premise was simply to enable a larger text editing area via Scriptable.

Launch Center Pro Shortcut Adder

13 Jan 2019

The latest iteration of the iOS app Launch Center Pro comes with an option to use a Shortcuts shortcut to add launchers for shortcuts to Launch Center Pro. It allows you to grab a shortcut from Shortcuts, and to set the launcher icon and the launch URL in Launch Center Pro. Very meta, and very cool. However, I have a lot of shortcuts. I’m often at the four figure mark, and it just doesn’t give me the ease of set-up I need, and also I often like to run my shortcuts via a shortcut launcher to speed things up. To that end, I took it upon myself to produce an enhanced version of the original shortcut.

Shortcuts: Quick Run

26 Dec 2018

Did you know there’s a way to speed up Shortcuts shortcuts on iOS? It’s really simple and can make a huge impact. Particularly on more complex shortcuts.

Getting to Grips with Launch Center Pro

20 Dec 2018

A few days ago over on the Automators podcast forum I answered a query about making use of the iOS app Launch Center Pro, which had recently been updated. The post was fairly extensive and received a lot of positive feedback. I therefore decided to paraphrase it here on my own web site as a reference for those who follow my writing.

The posting came about in response to queries from a couple of users about use cases and a general utilisation of the app and so, in response, I decided to share some details about what it does for me. It focuses on the fact that Launch Center Pro offers me some specific features that I find useful, but for some of these features there are certainly alternative approaches. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as different approaches suit different workflows and different mind sets. Based on that I set out the following assertion for everything that follows.

Launch Center Pro isn’t necessarily an app for everyone, but it can be an app for anyone, from novice through to advanced iOS user.

Shortcuts: Voice Controlled Options

30 Nov 2018

Shortcuts on iOS is a wonderfully versatile tool and I use it for a wide variety of things. Sometimes I even use it hands free as Shortcuts support Siri trigger words. Unfortunately, the shortcut’s subsequent interaction tends to be rather one way unless you are able to access your device’s keyboard. But it is just a tendency. Shortcuts can still interact with you on basic decision making operations and I use this in a number of shortcuts, including, most notably, a briefing routine that not only varies by time of day, but allows me to customise the content as it runs.

In this post I’m going to show you the basic building blocks for how this works.

Making Sense of the 2018 Q4 SAP SuccessFactors Update

22 Nov 2018

We’re fast approaching the end of the year and so it’s time for SAP to roll-out the last of their SAP SuccessFactors HCM product suite quarterly updates for the period. In Preview systems at the moment it seems SAP have been pushing as hard as ever to get some great updates out to clients.

As ever, my colleagues and I at Zalaris have been taking apart the information about the release and figuring out what’s actually important, and what has the greatest benefit potential for the customers. There’s certainly been a lot of new and interesting updates to pick through, so it’s a pretty jam packed review overall.