Excel Tips & Tricks: The Quick Access Toolbar

Do you ever find yourself clicking through the Ribbon in Excel (or other MS Office programs), because you can’t quite remember which tab you need?  The Quick Access Toolbar allows you to easily customize your favorite or most often-used commands, saving time and reducing frustration.

OE "Spotlight on Excellence" Recognizes Two AVPF Employees

The Organizational Excellence Spotlight on Excellence peer-recognition program highlights individuals who exhibit the principles of OE in their daily work and contribute to an institutional culture of quality. Two of our own were recently recognized:

Jim Bowen (OSP)

Jim's nominator summed up his contributions as a “wizard.” While specializing in accounts with outstanding receivable balances that have been in collection, Jim remains solutions-oriented and dedicated to understanding the problem and seeing it through to resolution. This work requires extraordinary collaboration to untangle and uncover the root cause and bring it to closure.

In the last several months, Jim helped collect nearly $150,000 of difficult-to-collect accounts. His patience, persistence, and relationship-building skills brought closure to these problematic accounts that would otherwise go to settlement.

Andrew Yeung (MRP)

Andrew's nomination highlighted his proactive identification of a streamlining opportunity to automate a labor-intensive manual process. His collaboration and solutions-orientation helped create a new process tool that saves time and reduces errors when billing for A/V Services in the Jordan Hall Conference Center.

Andrew's nominator not only cited his technical competence but also Andrew's patience, flexibility, and excellent customer service. Andrew engaged key stakeholders and maintained open communications throughout the process redesign. In sum, Andrew's work was described as exceeding expectations.

Finance Job Openings

Looking for a new position within the finance area? The Job Openings page of the AVPF Blog has available positions within the finance departments and is updated with every edition of the blog.

Everything you should do before hitting 'send' on your work email

Harvard Business Review Associate Editor Gretchen Gavett breaks down the do's and don'ts of work emails and highlights how you can make your message stand out.

Click here to read the full article from EAB.

New: UVA BBA and Revenue Report in Discoverer

As a result of the Orange Team’s efforts, the MRP team pleased to announce the availability of a new report in Discoverer.  The UVA BBA and Revenue Report provides additional information not in the Versus report, including:

• Revenue not yet installed
• Amounts funded, but not budgeted
• Budget balance available

Additionally, a new view structure was utilized that allows results to be returned in a couple of minutes, as opposed to 15 or more minutes for the Versus report.  Read more about the new report and its best practices.

From Melody's Desk

Well, summer is over and school is in session. We know this from the students crowding the Student Financial Services’ counter last week, the traffic on Emmet Street, the long lines at Chipotle, and football and marching band practice occurring on Lambeth and Carr’s Hill Fields. :)

Congratulations to the folks in SFS who handled 4,800 phone calls, 1,547 emails, and 742 walk-ins from students and parents over a span of 9 business days. Put the calculator away, I’ll do the math for you. That’s 533 calls, 183 emails, and 82 walk-ins per day. I appreciate the hard work, patience, and professional approach from each SFS team member!

Speaking of UVa football, I snapped the below picture at Lambeth Field, as I walked from my office at the newly renovated O’Neil Hall to Carruther’s Hall (making sure to count my steps for the Hoo’s Well FallFitness Challenge).

Have you ever listened to a TED talk that you just wanted to share? A friend shared a TED talk from Shawn Achor, positive psychology guru, with me:  http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work. This one combines the best characteristics of a TED talk:  funny, fast-paced, and an easy take-away. Two excerpts:

“If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.”

“In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully.”

Do you have a favorite TED talk? Send me an email or post a link in the comments – I’d love to see it.

PS:  Don’t forget to subscribe to the EVP/COO Area newsletter to keep up on the news from other corners of the University.

Finance Team Gears Up for Day of Caring

The United Way Day of Caring on September 16 is a time to make real improvements in our community and team-build at the same time. Forty-four volunteers will be working at three different sites:

1) Walker Upper Elementary School: Walker Upper Elementary School (5th and 6th Grade) participates each year in the annual Mix-it-up-at-Lunch event where students are assigned to a new lunch seat with the purpose of giving them the opportunity to get to know students outside of their social circle.  Research shows that when students feel like they know each other and can find things in common, they are less likely to bully one another and more likely to help each other out.  Volunteers will help with a "get-to-know-you-bingo" game that allows students to see what they have in common with the new students that they are assigned to sit with.

2) Nathanael Greene Primary School: Volunteers will help paint 100-charts on the blacktops at the school. They will create a 10x10 grid with 100 spaces.  Stencils will then be used to paint the numbers, 1-100, in each box. They may even  create large 100-charts on tarps to be used within classrooms.

3) Western Albemarle High School: Volunteers will weed and mulch the grounds and do some painting.

A kickoff breakfast rally will be held at the Albemarle Square Shopping Center beginning at 7:30am.  A fresh breakfast and lots of coffee will be available. Thanks to everyone who is willing and able to participate!

Data Governance, Continued

Last month, we shared a quick video explanation of various data governance topics. This month, Forrest and Tom are back with the second half of that discussion—to help you better-understand data governance at the University, and how the MRP team is involved. Watch and share this video!

Finance Outreach & Compliance Has a New Home

Come visit the team in our new space in Carruthers Hall.

Excel Tips & Tricks: The Ugly “#DIV/0”

When you create formulas in Excel worksheets you will often find that your formula is set up correctly, but certain cells will return a result of “#ERROR,” “#N/A,” or “#DIV/0!.” These outputs are generally not desirable when sharing the worksheet with others.

Add the “IFERROR” function to your formula to dictate what is displayed instead ofthe error message. For example, to tell Excel to display “-“ instead of “#DIV/0” whenever it encounters a divide-by-zero error, write the formula as “=IFERROR(A1/B1,”-“) where the characters in quotes at the end are what will display if Excel formula results in an error.

MRP Staffing & How to View Reporting Relationships in Outlook

The Managerial Reporting Project recently added more staff, and is rapidly filling additional openings on the team. With the recent and projected growth, the team realigned its structure to operate more effectively.

Forrest Swope (Data Stewardship Lead), Mark Anderson (Decision Support Systems Lead), Scott Newman (Director of Reporting Technologies), and the Change Management Lead (to-be hired) serve on Judy DiVita’s leadership team. All other staff report up to either Judy or someone on her leadership team. The project will continue to partner closely with ITS, with leadership support from Teresa Wimmer.

These changes will be reflected in the Integrated System in September. But did you know you can see manager/direct report information right in Outlook? For example, you can see Judy DiVita’s organization by hovering-over her name in an outlook email:

Mouse-over a name to see that person’s contact card. Click the down arrow on the right expand the contact card.

Select “Organization” to see the person’s Manager, peers that share the Manager… … and scroll down to see direct reports.

HR-Finance User Group Community and Online Help

The contract with the UVa help desk vendor to provide Integrated System help and support ended in May 2015. So where can you go for help when you need it? In addition to the system toolkits where you can view training guides, and Learner Home in Employee Self-Service where you can access and review training topics, you can find help online from your colleagues and subject matter experts from the HR-Finance User Group Community! This is the online place for users of the Integrated System to find and give help and exchange ideas. Whether you are a new user or a subject matter expert (SME), this is a vibrant community where questions, answers, and discussions are welcomed and encouraged! 

To join the group:

1. Go to “My Workspace” on UVa Collab. You will authenticate through NetBadge if you don’t already have an active NetBadge session open.
2. Click “Membership” in the left column.
3. Click “Joinable Sites” near the top.
4. In the search box in the upper right, enter “HR-Finance” and click “Search”.
5. You’ll see HR-Finance User Group in the resulting Worksite list. Click “Join”. 
6. Once you have joined the group, navigate to the discussion forums from the menu. Whether you have knowledge to share, need help, or both, this resource is for you!

Online Self-Help is also available for both the Integrated System and the Student Information System. To access the online self-help, click on “Help” or “?” in the system and get a list of topics that are applicable within the window you have open. Use the search field and enter key words to narrow the list of available topics. Help topics are specific to UVa processes, procedures, and system customizations, and contain the most up-to-date information available.
Once you find the topic, click “Do It!” to open the customized help. The help topic opens in a smaller window which gives step-by-step instructions to follow as you complete the work in the system. See the instructions for accessing andusing the online help if you are using online help for the first time or if you need more detailed instructions.

Bookmark This: ResearchUVa

In case you didn’t know… 

ResearchUVa is HERE!

ResearchUVa is the result of a year-long collaboration between the Office of Sponsored Programs, ITS, Organizational Excellence, and the research community. This first phase provides a read-only portal for easy access to research data. Access is granted through Netbadge to all faculty with a research proposal or award and all administrators named as a fiscal contact on a research project in the Integrated System.Use these links to:

• Login to ResearchUVA

• Take an online tour

• See FAQs about ResearchUVA

For help, please email the ResearchUVa-help@virginia.edu listserv. 

Free Courses at Lynda.com

Did you know that Lynda.com, the catalog of more than 3,500 online courses, is now available free of charge to UVa Staff and Faculty? Courses include everything from Having Difficult Conversations, to Project Management, to Microsoft Excel. Thanks to our UVa Library colleagues for making this possible!

To log into Lynda.com:

1. Go to www.Lynda.com.
2. Click on “Log In” at the top right corner of the screen.
3. Choose “Organization Login” instead of the default “Individual Login”.
4. Using the option at the bottom where it asks for your organization’s URL, enter the UVA homepage URL (www.virginia.edu) and click “Go”. After your first time logging in, you will simply click on the bottom “Go” button. There is no need to enter a username and password on the initial login screen.
5. This will take you to NetBadge.
6. Once you log into NetBadge you will be able to create your profile and browse the site.

How to Do Walking Meetings Right

"Recent research finds that the act of walking leads to increases in creative thinking. This certainly supports the usefulness of walking meetings. Plenty of anecdotal evidence also suggests that walking meetings lead to more honest exchanges with employees and are more productive than traditional sit-down meetings."

"Those who participate in walking meetings are 5.25% more likely to report being creative at their jobs than those who do not. Additionally, the responses suggest that walking meetings support cognitive engagement, or focus, on the job. Those who participate in walking meetings are 8.5% more likely to report high levels of engagement."

Read more about the benefits of walking meetings (and how to do them right) at the Harvard Business Review.