Archive for category: News

For those who spend a large part of their day behind a screen, keyboard shortcuts are great and the time saved by using these shortcuts definitely accrues over time. You are losing precious seconds of productivity every time you lift your hand off the keyboard to use the mouse instead. Effectively using keyboard shortcuts can cut that wasted time down.

Most of us are already familiar with the most common keyboard shorts such as cut/copy/paste/undo/redo (ctrl+x/c/v/z/y).

At one point or another, we all have probably seen some type of chart online that shows all the possible keyboard shortcuts. This list is a bit daunting to take in at once and difficult to commit to memory unless you actually sit down and make it a point to memorize all the shortcuts. Even then, I find that it quickly fades from memory if not put to regular use.

Therefore I wanted to create this short list of keyboard shortcuts that I actually use in my daily work:

1. Windows key + Arrow direction key – Snaps app window to left/right side/corner of screen
   

   Examples:
   Windows key + Left arrow direction key – left side
   

   
   Windows key + Right arrow direction key – right side
   

   
   Windows key + Left arrow direction key then Windows key + Up arrow direction key – left upper corner
   

   Windows key + Left arrow direction key then Windows key + Down arrow direction key – left lower corner
   

   Windows key + Up arrow direction key – Maximize window
   Windows key + Down arrow direction key – Minimize window

   The most common use case for me is when I want to compare two similar files. For example, sometimes I pull up an erroring work unit log on the left side and a normal, functioning log on the right to compare the two and see where the path diverges. There are also times that I will compare an old backup file to a new modified one to visualize the changes.
   

2. Windows key + E – Opens File Explorer
3. Windows key + M – Minimizes all windows (useful for quickly accessing desktop shortcuts)
   Windows key + Shift + M – Restores all minimized windows
   Windows key + Comma – Temporarily peek at the desktop
4. Windows key + S – Opens Windows search.
   Simply start typing the program/file name after pressing Windows key + S. Useful for opening programs/files quickly.
5. Ctrl + Shift + V – Paste as plain text. I use this at least a couple of times a day. This is especially useful when composing emails with copied snippets from other sources.Ctrl + V:
   

   
   Ctrl + Shift + V:
   

In ServiceNow there are a ton of buttons when you first start using it and it can be overwhelming and easy to ignore them at first.

When a ticket finally makes it to you, it might be in a hierarchy of other ticket types (requests, changes, tasks, incidents).  For my example it’s under the “Request Item” field.

The Request Item in our case is another ticket type in the hierarchy and usually has more detailed of what the task is to complete this ticket.  A useful button that you may overlook is the “I’ button which is essentially an Info button with tons of helpful information.

This button shows a plethora of information that may be relevant in resolving the ticket or task and essentially allows you to view more specifics about the ticket without just searching for it elsewhere in ServiceNow.

All these Info buttons could be useful, some give detailed user information while others give location info.  It saves a bunch of time. Hope this was helpful!

Often people have spreadsheets that they are using for data gathering and don’t want to change the familiar format to accommodate a Lawson Upload.  Especially when it is a multi-tab spreadsheet that data can change depending on which tab you are pulling data from. No problem. Using advanced Excel techniques can pull the information from the specified tab in a format needed for uploading.

In this example, time attributable to projects is entered on a multi-tab spreadsheet one tab per period.

As the tab changes on the Instructions tab, and after the macro finishes by clicking n the Create Upload button, the total count and amount can be validated that the process worked as expected.

Each tab can have a different order of users and/or different active projects across the top.

As the tab changes on the Instructions tab, and after the macro finishes by clicking n the Create Upload button, the total count and amount can be validated that the process worked as expected.

The macro extracts the non-zero time entries and formats the data in a way that the Upload Wizard can then load the data into Lawson. 

Often our Lawson print queues get cluttered and out of hand.  Lawson’s deljobhst command is a really great tool for cleaning up your batch jobs.  It can clear the clutter from your user’s print managers, as well as free up some space on your server.  Run this command in LID.

For each of these commands, you must provide a “ToDate” in MMDDYY format.  So, if you give it an end date of 033119, for instance, you would delete all the selected job history up to March 31, 2019.

You also have the option of providing a user’s account so that you just perform the delete for a specific user.  There is also a from date option that allows you to manage job history for a specific date range.

We recommend setting up some of these commands on a schedule to keep your Lawson server happy & healthy.

Here is a summary of the command:

The -w option will delete all waiting jobs, so jobs in recovery and jobs with Invalid Parameters.  After you run this, there will not be any jobs listed in the waiting queue for the specified user (or all users) up to the specified run date.

The -c option deletes all completed jobs.  This is a great way to clean up user’s job schedule print manager lists.  This action removes the data from the QUEUEDJOB table.  It does not remove print files.

The -r option removes all the print files associated with batch jobs, that were created up to the specified to date.  This will help keep your server from getting too cluttered.  Make sure you back up your print directory, especially if you have a retention policy at your organization.  If you run the command so that it deletes ALL print files (so delete everything up to today), it will delete your entire print directory.  Don’t panic!  It’ll be created the next time a user runs a batch job.