tips – The Domino Elf

What Happens to Your Facebook Profile When You Die?

Some of my real life and Facebook friends, as well as relatives of them, have died. A while after their funeral, you suddenly see that Facebook is telling you that it’s the dead person’s birthday. And then a lot of people who don’t know that this person has passed on are posting birthday greetings. It’s awkward, and can also be hurtful for the dead person’s family and friends.

However, there is a way to prevent this from happening. You can actually decide who should manage your Facebook profile when you die. This person (you can choose more than one) will then be able to do things such as pin a post on your timeline, respond to new friend requests and update your profile picture. They won’t be able to post as you or see your messages.

How to set this up

Go to the pull down menu in the upper right corner and choose Settings:
A new page will open up. At the bottom of the options list under General Account Settings you see a choice called Manage account. Click on the Edit link:
You will see a form called Your Legacy Contact:
Click on the field called Choose a friend and start typing the name of the Facebook contact you want to make your legacy contact. When the person appears in the list, click on her. You will then see this form:
You can edit the message that you want to send to the contact that you’ve added as your legacy contact. If you don’t want to send the legacy contact a message, just click Not Now. They will still be added as your legacy contact, and you will receive an email about it. However, I will strongly advice that you contact your legacy contact about this!

And that’s it. You now have a legacy contact who will take care of your Facebook profile when you die.

Delete the account if you die

If you don’t want to add a legacy contact, but want Facebook to delete your account when you die, you will find a link underneath the form that says Request account deletion:

If you click on that link, this pops up:

What will happen now is that when you die, and Facebook gets a confirmation from your family, or others, that you indeed are dead, they will delete your account.

Too morbid? No, this is something you should consider about all your online accounts. Who will clean up after you?

What do you think about this functionality and this tip? Is there anything about Facebook you would like a tip about? Leave a comment below!

How to See All Notifications on Facebook

UPDATE: I’ve been told that on a lot of mobile apps, what I’ve described here is still not happening. I think it will eventually happen, it’s just that the change isn’t rolled out yet for you. However, the See All-link is not present in the mobile app if the change hasn’t been rolled out for your yet.

Facebook is slowly rolling out a new algorithm for how it will give you notifications. Every time you post something, and someone comments on it or likes it, you get a notification. If you have commented something, and others comment on it, likes your comment or replies to it, you also get a notification. There are also other notifications, like if you manage a Facebook page, if someone posts something on a page or event you like and so on.

The notifications are shown in the form of a small red circle, with a number telling you how many unread notifications you have, which is displayed in the globe on your Facebook web page and Iphone/Ipad app, or over the bell icon on your Android mobile app. You will also see this red circle with the number over the Facebook icon on your mobile phone or pad.

When you click on the globe, you see a list of the notifications and can choose the ones you want to open:

Thus far this has been pretty straight forward. Notifications have appeared chronologically, and you’ve seen them all. Not anymore. Facebook is in the process of rolling out a big change.

From now on Facebook will prioritise what notifications they think are important to you. They do this based on your Facebook activities, who and what you interact with and who and what you follow (as far as I know). This means that there will be notifications you might not see, because Facebook have deemed them as not being important to you.

Personally, I find this incredibly annoying. I haven’t been affected by this change yet, but we all will be. Therefore I will now show you how you can see all your notifications.

Below the list of new notifications, you have a little link called See All:

Click on this, and you will now see all notifications, in glorious chronological order:

PS! If you have turned off specific notifications, they will naturally not be listed here. Nor will you be notified about them.

Hide Postings from Selected People on Facebook

Aren’t there times when you where you are itching to post a scatching status posting about something or someone? But you can’t do it, because you don’t want any persons involved to read your posting.

Luckily Facebook has a function not many people know about that lets you do just that: Post something and then tell what people should not be allowed to read neither the posting itself, or any likes or comments either.

This is how you do it:

Write your posting:

To the left of the Post button you have a pulldown menu:

Click on this button:

Go to Friends except… and click on it. This screen pops up (I have anonymized people in my list, but you will see your friends’ profile photos, names and workplace):

In the top of my list I have the two last persons I blocked from seeing a posting. You can see that they are active, because of the red circle behind their names. If I do want them to see this posting, I simply click on the red icon, so that it becomes white:

Now the person in the top of the list will not be included in this exception list.

To choose a person that should not see this new posting, you simply search for their name in the search field:

Type as many letters as needed in the search field until you see the name of the person listed. Then simply click on the circle to the right of their name:

After clicking on it, it will turn red:

If there are other people you want to hide this posting from, simply search for them as well and click on the circle icon behind their names.

When you have found all the names you simply click on the button Save Changes.

However, it can be a good idea to review the list of people you want to block. To do so, click on the little x to the right inside the search field:

Now you can see the list of all the people you have blocked for this posting:

As you can see I have two people whom I want to block from seeing this posting. The person I removed from the block list is still listed among the others that I’ve chosen, but as we can see the icon behind the name is white, which means he won’t be blocked.

Click Save Changes. You will now return to this screen:

As you can see on the pulldown button, this posting will now be shown to all friends, except the ones you just chose. You can even see the names of people it should be hidden for it you click on the pulldown arrow in the button:

If you change this to Public or Friends, the people you just picked will still see the posting, like everybody else. You choice has to stay on Friends except…

However, the next time you choose Friends except…, all the people you just added to this list will still be listed here. So if you want any of them to see the posting the next time you choose Friends except…, you have to actively remove them from the list.

So that’s how you hide a posting from selected individuals. Neat, eh?

How to Comment and Reply to them on Facebook

I’m sure you many times have replied to a comment someone has made on a posting on Facebook. But the well formed and well placed comment that you are so satisfied with suddenly becomes a small nightmare. You are constant bothered by notifications when people comment on the original posting.

Well, I got news for you. Because you have most likely done the same thing. And by that I mean you have probably replied to a comment in the wrong way more than once.

This is how you comment on postings on Facebook.

Here we have a posting on Facebook, with comments:

This is the point where a lot of people get this wrong. If you want to comment on the original posting, you do it like this:

Now everybody who has commented on the original posting will get a notification that I’ve posted a new comment. And that’s how Facebook works.

However, very often people are not replying to the original posting. Instead, they are replying to one of the comments. And that’s where things go wrong.

Do not type your reply as a new comment like this:

What will happen? Well, everybody who has commented on the original posting will now get a notification that someone else has commented. And everybody will be confused about who you are replying to.

Some of you try to remedy that by tagging the person who made the comment you’re replying to. Like this:

Do not do this. Everybody who have commented on the original posting will now get a notification that someone else has commented. And that is not what you are doing. You are replying to one specific comment. In addition, the person you tagged will get two notifications. One telling him that he has been tagged, and another telling him that someone has replied to the original posting.

So how do you reply to a comment, instead of the original posting? Simple. You click Reply under the comment:

Now, type your reply in this comment field instead:

Hit Enter, or the Post button your Facebook app, and your reply will now be directly beneath that comment:

Now, only the person who wrote that particular comment will be notified, and not everybody else who have written comments on the original posting. This is also a way to get a discussion thread going.

If someone now wants to reply to your reply, they click on Reply beneath your reply:

Their reply now will be displayed just beneath yours.

What happens when others make a reply to the original comment? It will be listed under the comment, beneath your reply. And here’s the nice part: Only you and any others who have replied to the comment will be notified about it!

This means that those who made their own comments on the original posting will not be notified. This makes Facebook cleaner and much more enjoyable for everyone. Here’s what a nice discussion should look like on Facebook:

As you can see someone commented on my posting, I then replied to that comment, and then 6 other people replied to that reply. Notice the grey line to the left that tells you that all these replies belong to the original comment. And at the bottom of the picture, you have two new comments. But those are comments to the original posting, which is not a part of the discussion thread belonging to the first comment.

So now you now you know how to reply and comment on Facebook!

Using IBM Verse (and Notes) to Keep Track of My Traveling Plans

Don’t let the headline fool you. I also show you how you can do this in Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo and other email and calendar clients as well!

I’m a pretty disorganized person who had to force myself to become organized. And I have succeeded pretty well with it, even if I do have a few relapses now and then.

In the past keeping track of my traveling plans, tickets and hotel reservations was pure hell. Especially in the days with printed tickets. For the past 5 years I’ve been using my cell phone to keep track of everything while travelling. And I do not use one app for the hotel reservations, one app for the airline tickets and so on. I import everything into my calendar on my Android cell phone. I used to do the same on my good old Nokia N8, and you can of course do this on your Iphone as well.

First of all: You need an email and calendar application on your cell phone. Personally I’m using IBM Verse, but there are also several other apps for this, including Gmail and Outlook. The application will make it possible for you to read and send email directly from your phone, as well as read and update your calendar. I will show you two ways of updating your cell phone calendar with all of your travelling plans, tickets and reservations.

From the confirmation page

When you you’ve booked a hotel or flight online, you will get to a confirmation page after the order has been completed. Very often you will find a link, icon or button like this on the confirmation page:

Sometimes you will have to click on it to get suggestions for the various types of calendars and sometimes they will all be listed. In this example I’m using hotels.com. When I click on the button link pictured above I get this:

If your email client is not listed, click on ical Calendar. Since I’m using IBM Verse that’s what I have to do. A screen pops up where I have to put in my email adress:

Now hit Send.

No matter what method you chose above, you will now receive an email that looks just like a meeting invitation. Simply click Accept or Add to Calendar (or whatever it’s called in the email client you are using) in that email, and the reservation will be added to your calendar, with all the most important details (like reference number, addresses, times, dates and so on).

From the confirmation email

What I describe here will only work if you are sitting on a computer. As far as I know, this is not possible on a cell phone application.

Often when you get a travelling confirmation by email from an airline, or a reservation confirmation from an hotel, the email will sometimes contain a link or button that will look very similar to this:

Choose your email client. If you are using Google or Yahoo, it will open up your calendar and you will see a web form where you can add details and then confirm that you want to add this to your calendar.

If you choose Outlook or iCal (sometimes this will be called ics) you will be asked to save the ics file to your computer:

Open your email client. In my case I’m using IBM Notes since, as far as I know, this can’t be done in IBM Verse (which is the web version of my email) yet. Go to the calendar and find the import function. In IBM Notes it’s under File -> Import A file dialog will pop up. Choose .ics as the file type:

Navigate to the file, click on it and then click Import. You will be asked to confirm that you want to add it to your calendar. Do this and now it will be imported, with all the details you need.

In Outlook you import ics.files under File -> Open & Export -> Open Calendar:

A file dialog will pop up:

Navigate to the file, click on it and then click Open. A window for creating a new calendar entry will open. Here you can add additional details if you want. Click Save & Close to create the calendar entry.

Synchronisation

The beauty of all this is that you don’t even have to think about whether you add these entries in the calendar on your cell phone or in the calendar of your email client. The entries are synchronised, both ways, between your phone and the client.

Here’s how my travelling plans look in IBM Verse on my phone:

I can open one of these entries by clicking on it. If I click on my hotel reservation I will get the confirmation number, time and date for check in and check out, the address and contact information for the hotel and even details on how to cancel:

Pretty neat, eh? All your travelling arrangements on your cell phone.

PS! Most email providers also gives you the option to use an online web version of your email. This means that even if you have imported this in your local Outlook or IBM Notes client (or other calendar and email client) this will also be visible in the online web version! This means if you lose your cell phone, you can simply use a computer and log on to your email via web, get the details from your calendar there and then print them out or write them down.

Any ideas for even better ways to do this? Did you find any errors? Did you like this? Hate it? Please leave some feedback in the comments field below!

7 Great Tips About IBM Notes

The IBM Notes client is an important tool for a lot of IBM customers. It’s a powerful client (albeit a bit cranky at times), which has a lot of features that people don’t know about. So here are 7 quick tips to make your work day even more efficient.

1) Find a Notes application/database quickly

There’s no need to spend time looking for a Notes application or database on your workspace or in the bookmark menu. Simply use the search field under the Open-button (or the binoculars if you have docked the Open list). Just start typing the name of the application and Notes will list all the applications containing the letters you are typing. Then you can simply just click on the correct one:

No more time spent looking for applications!

2) Create a new email at any time

To create a new email, simply hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and then hit the M key. A new email will open up. You don’t even need to have your mail application open!

3) Create a meeting out of an email

Sometimes an email discussion has gone on long enough. If you feel the time has come to have a meeting you can create a meeting out of an email by right clicking on the email and choose Copy into New -> Calendar Entry:

You will now be asked what kind of calendar entry:

Choose Meeting and click OK. A new meeting form is prepared. All people in the To-field will be in the Reuired field and all the people in the Cc field will be in the Optional field. All contents of the email, including attachments will be included (remove the attachments!). Now you can continue scheduling the meeting.

4) Paste as plain text

When pasting text from another document into a rich text field in Notes, all formatting from the original source is kept (colors, fonts, tabs and so on). If you want to paste the text into a rich text field, but remove the formatting from the source, simply hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys on the keyboard while hitting the V key. Now the text is pasted as plain text, and it will be in the same format as the rest of the text in the rich text field. Easy peasy!

5) How is your day?

When you start your working day you want to know what’s on the agenda today. No need to open your calendar for this. Simply open the right sidebar panel called Day-at-a-Glance:

You can even look at other dates in the past and future as well.

6) Trace your history

Did you know that Notes keeps complete track of every single Notes application and document you’ve opened in the seven past days? It’s true! No more brain twisting trying to remember what you did yesterday! Simply click on History in the bookmark menu (under the Open button or under the binoculars if you have docked the Open list), then the date you want to check and finally the name of the application. Now Notes will list all documents you worked with in that application on that date:

7) Don’t develop a mouse elbow

We all use the mouse too much. But did you know that you can access any action button in a Notes document or view without having to click on them? Simply hold down the ALT key on the keyboard. You will then see a number in the upper left corner of all the action buttons. Simply click on the corresponding number on your keyboard (while still holding down ALT) to trigger the action button.

Example: If you want to send an email, you don’t need to move the mouse button up to the action button Send and on click on it. Simply hold down ALT and hit the 1 key on the keyboard. Neat, eh?

Hope you liked these tips. If you did, or want to add something, leave a comment!

7 Quick Tips About IBM Connections

IBM Connections is a great tool for collaboration. But there are some very quick and cool things you can do to make it work even more efficient for you. Here are 7 tips:

1) Filter your activity stream

A lot of people find the activity stream (news stream on the IBM Connections front page) to be overwhelming and confusing. Not to worry, you can filter out anything you want. There’s a pull down menu at the top of the activity stream, under the status field, that you can use to choose the specific information you want to se updates from:

Click on it to choose the application you want to see updates from, so that you won’t get drowned in information:

2) Save postings for later

Sometimes you see a posting in the activity stream that you want to either read or follow up on, but you haven’t got time right now. This can simply be solved by saving the posting. Simply click on Save to save it for later:

You will find this posting under Saved in the left menu. Read all about saving and unsaving postings here.

3) Sort a search result by application

Let say you do a search on all contents in Connections:

The search result will look like this:

You can now sort the search result by application by clicking on the application name in the left side menu:

If you want to look only in files, you choose Files. If you want to search only in wikis, you choose Wikis. And so on.

4) Quickly find your most recently updated communities

A very quick way to find your most recently updated communities is to click on the Communities menu at the top. Those communities will be listed at the bottom of the pull down menu:

5) Find the latest post in a forum thread that is sorted as a conversation

In a forum thread, you can choose to sort it either by date (upon which you can choose to show the oldest or newest posting at the top) or by conversation. If it’s sorted by conversation, it can sometimes be hard to know what the newest posting is. Luckily you have a link at the top of the forum thread where you can choose to jump to the latest post:

6) Convert an activity entry into a To do

Sometimes someone will post or share something into an activity that triggers the need for an action. In those cases it’s important to set a due date and assign this task to someone. Thankfully, you can actually convert most activity entries into a To do. Here’s a an ordinary entry. By expanding it and then click on the More pulldown menu, we find the option for converting it into a To do:

After choosing this, you can assign it to someone, as well as set a due date and add tags and more information and attachments. You can even convert emails that have been uploaded to the activity in this way!

7) Quickly search for people and profiles

Under the Profiles menu at the top, you find a menu item called Directory:

After clicking on this you will get a search field where you can simply start typing the name of the profile or person you’re searching for. Connections will suggest profiles for you while typing

I hope these quick tips are useful to you. If so, please leave a comment or share it on social media. If you have anything you want to add or give me feedback, leave comment!

IBM Connections Tip #4: Save Connections Posting for Later

In my previous blog posting I showed you how you can save a Facebook posting so that you can read it later without worrying about it disappearing. A lot of IBM Connections users don’t know that you can actually do this in the activity/news stream in Connections as well.

Let’s say you are at work. While you are looking through your activity stream in the morning, you see a posting that you feel the need to follow up on later. Unfortunately you know that because of the hight volume of traffic on your Connections site, there is no way you will be able to find it again in the activity stream. Not to worry, you can save it and find it, very easily, later.

In the web browser:

Under each posting in the activity stream, you will find a link called Save this:
Click on it. It will now tell you it is saved:
Go to the left side menu in Connections and find the menu item called Saved:
Click on it and all your saved items will now be listed:
You can now click on any saved posting and interact with it or open it, just like if it was in the regular activity stream

If you want to remove an item from the Saved list you hover your mouse pointer over it and click on the x that will appear in the upper right corner:

After clicking on it you will be asked to confirm that you want to remove it from saved.

On a mobile device

You can also save things and view them later in the IBM Connections application for your mobile or pad. These screen shots are taken on an Android Galaxy S5 phone. Unfortunately my application is in Norwegian, but I think you will be able to follow the logic anyway.

Find the posting in the activity stream:
With your finger, press down on the posting and keep it pressed until this window pops up:

The top most selection (Lagre) means Save. Click on it.
You will now be told that it’s saved.
Go to the main menu and find the menu item called Saved
All your saved items will now be listed:
You can now interact with this posting just as if it had been in the normal activity stream

To remove it from the saved list, press with your finger on the posting until a pop up window appears. Choose Remove from Saved. The posting will now be removed (you will not be asked to confirm).

I hope that helps you keep afloat on all that you need to follow up on in your Connections environment.

Should You Turn on Out-of-Office?

Summer means holiday and vacation, at least in Norway, where the country grounds to a halt for three weeks. Most people have been told to turn on Out of Office in their email when they go away. But should you? I’m here to tell you that no, you probably shouldn’t. Not unless you plan to not read your email.

I’m sure you are familiar with this situation:

You need a reply, urgently, from someone about an issue in an important project. Seconds after hitting Send, you hear a pling in your Inbox. But the email reply says: “John Doe is Out of the Office. Will return 32nd of February 2014. If urgent, please contact Jane Colleague.”

So naturally you contact Jane. She promises to look into your problem, but she’s not really familiar with the project, so she has to check up on things before getting back to you. Here’s the punchline: John brought his cellphone with him on holiday. And on this device he reads the email you sent. So he replies to your questions. These are questions Jane now is spending her valuable time finding replies to. Unfortunately she’s not able to come up with any answers, so she contacts another colleague and then he starts spending time on this.

The wheels are now in motion. The others don’t know that you are happy because John got back to you after all, and the company loses time and money because other people are working on providing you with something you already have. This is bad business.

My advice is therefore: If you are planning on being available via email, either via computer or a hand held device, during the holiday, do not turn on Out of Office! You are either offline or you are online. There’s nothing in between. Telling someone that you are out of office, but you will “read email sporadically,” is worthless info for when there are issues that can’t wait.

Second advice: If you have turned on Out of Office, do not reply before you are back at work! The people who have emailed you are not expecting a reply before you are back, because it’s stated very clearly in your Out of Office reply when you will be back (or at least it should be). And if it was urgent for them to get a reply, they must surely have been in contact with other colleagues of yours by now. Replying, even if you have stated that you are Out of Office, does not come off as being very professional.

Last advice: If you do turn on Out of Office, make sure you care completely offline! It’s ok to take a break and have timeout from your work. It’s your well earned holiday, and you are not indispensable. Making certain key personnel at your workplace know how to reach you (like your boss or project leader) by phone or other means is fine. But do not read your email.

A lot of people do not take Out of Office messages seriously any more because of what I’ve written above. So I will personally add an: “No, seriously, I really am out of the Office…” to my Out of Office message.

Have a nice summer, folks!

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