Chinh Do

Instant Messaging Etiquette for the Workplace

February 13, 2010
Chinh Do
Technology, Tips
0 Comments

The use of instant messaging at the workplace is very prevalent these days. While instant messaging is very convenient for everyday communication, don’t treat it the same as email, face-to-face meetings, or phone calls. There are several significant differences between instant messaging and traditional forms of communications:

Instant messaging is not necessarily one-one-one. At any given moment, one person may be engaged in several simultaneous instant messaging conversations.
Even though your messages will be displayed on the recipient’s screen immediately, the recipient may not be able to read the messages and respond immediately.
With most instant messaging applications, the recipient cannot read your messages until you press the Enter key to send it. This limitation inherently makes instant messaging significantly slower than voice conversations.
Most people can speak faster than they can type.

Here are some guidelines on basic/everyday instant messaging etiquette that will help you and your co-workers make the most out of this communication medium.

Instant Messaging apps - AIM, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ

Include Relevant Info/Questions in The First Message

Avoid typing greetings or non-essential messages separately first. Include the question or relevant information in your first message.

Not-so-good examples (avoid this)

Conversation 1
Jane (10:54:50 AM): Hi
Mike (10:55:01 AM): Hello
Jane (10:55:06 AM): The test server will be restarted in 1 minute.
Mike (10:56:11 AM): Thanks for the info
Conversation 2
Jane (2:15:08 PM): Good afternoon
Mike (2:15:13 PM): Good afternoon
Jane (2:15:13 PM): Do you have a few minutes to talk on the phone re project A?
Mike (2:15:18 PM): Sure, let me call you.
Conversation 3
Jane (4:03:30 PM): You there?
Mike (4:03:35 PM): Yes
Jane (4:03:42 PM): Can we have a short team meeting in conf room A
Mike (4:03:50 PM): Sure. Be there in 5.

Good examples

Conversation 1
Jane (10:54:50 AM): Hi, the test server will be restarted in 1 minute.
Mike (10:54:55 AM): Thanks for the info
Conversation 2
Jane (2:15:08 PM): Good afternoon, do you have a few minutes to talk on the phone re project A?
Mike (2:15:13 PM): Sure I will call you.
Conversation 3
Jane (4:03:30 PM): Can we have a short team meeting in conf room A?
Mike (4:03:35 PM): Sure, be right there.

Every time you send a message, the recipient is disrupted from whatever he/she is doing. The more you can delay this disruption the better, even if it’s only seconds. It’s also not necessary to ask the recipient if he/she is there. That’s what the online status (away/available) is for. You can just type your message or ask your question. One exception to this would be if your message contains sensitive information.

Send Complete Messages

Good:

Jane (9:15:23 AM): Hi, all integration tests are failing in the integration environment for the admin user group. Can you take a look?”

No so good:

Jane (9:15:23 AM): Hi, all integration tests are failing…
Jane (9:15:27 AM): the integration environment…
Jane (9:15:32 AM): for the admin user group…”
Jane (9:15:38 AM): Can you take a look?

If you have to send several sentences in sequence, compose them in a separate editor first (notepad would do), then type them out quickly in succession. That way the recipient does not have to wait for you while you type your next message, make editing corrections, etc.

Do Not Expect Responses Immediately

Unless the recipient reports to you, do not expect a response immediately after you type a message. The recipient may be in the middle of five other instant message conversations, on the phone, or working on something else more important. If the recipient’s status is not set to “Away”, and you have not received a response after a few minutes, it’s ok to ping him/her again. Maybe they forgot about your message.

Update Your Status and Respect Others’ Status

If you need to step out, change your status to “Away”, or “In a Meeting”, or “Back in an Hour”, or whatever is appropriate for the situation. This tells everyone else that you are not available to respond to messages immediately and save them from having to wait for your responses.

Pick Up the Phone

If the instant messaging conversation starts to go into lots of details and may make take longer than a few minutes, consider picking up the phone and continue the conversation there.

Using a Different Configured Binding in WCF Client

To programmatically switch bindings on the fly, you can do it via the constructor of the generated client:

var client = new WeatherClient(“MyEndpoint”);

“MyEndpoint” is the name of the endpoint defined in your config file:

<client>
    <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="http1" contract="MyContract" name="MyEndpoint" />
</client>

Show Your Papers!

January 30, 2010
Chinh Do
Technology
1 Comment

They say a man’s home is his castle, and since my computer is my virtual home, I must have complete control over what goes on in it. When I see a stranger person walking around in my yard, he’s better be ready to tell me who he is, what company he works for, why he’s in there. Likewise, when I see a strange window running in my computer, I must have the ability to easily tell what it is, who makes it, when it was installed, etc.

Yes, one would think that being able to quickly identify any running window would be a basic feature of any modern so called window operation system. It’s 25 years after the first release of Microsoft Windows, and the sad truth is that you still often cannot easily identify running windows.

Look at the example below. If you are not familiar with this utility, and you came back to your laptop seeing this, would you know what it’s about? Should you click Yes or No? Is this a legitimate application, or something more sinister?

The first obvious problem is the missing message. That’s forgivable however. Bugs happen, files get corrupted, language resource files go missing, etc. What’s not acceptable is for the Windows OS not to provide any method to identify misbehaving windows.

So how about it Microsoft? Let us easily find out identifying information about any running Windows. Perhaps with with a click of a button, we can see:

Name of owning application/process
Name of vendor (if available)
Folder where executable resides
Date the application was installed
User who installed the application
If the user didn’t run the application himself, identify the parent process or service that launches the application (shortcut in Startup folder, registry, etc.)
Available code signatures

For now, if you want to identify any visible window, use Sysinternals’ Process Explorer. Drag the “Find Window’s Process” icon and drop it on top of the target window and Process Explorer will highlight the owner process in its window. From there, you can get the executable name, company name, folder location, etc.

Process Explorer Find Window's Process

WCF Client Error “The connection was closed unexpectedly” Calling Java/WebSphere 7 Web Service

If you get the following exception calling a WebSphere web service from your .NET WCF Client (service reference):

System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException: The underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly. —> System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly.

Try adding this code before the service call:

System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;

More info on the 100-Continue behavior from MSDN.

Give The Power of Speech and Sound to Your PowerShell Scripts

Do you ever have the problem where you start a long running script (such as running a code build), multi-task on something else on another monitor while waiting for the script to finish, and then totally forget about the script until half an hour later? Well, here’s a solution your problem: have your script give you holler at you when it’s done.

Hello sir! I am done running your command!

In my library script file, I have the following functions to play sound files and to speak any text:

function PlayMp3($path) {
    # Use the default player to play. Hide the window.
    $si = new-object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $si.fileName = $path
    $si.windowStyle = [System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle]::Hidden
    $process = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Process
    $process.startInfo=$si
    $process.start() 
}

function PlayWav($path) {
    $sound = new-Object System.Media.SoundPlayer;
    $sound.SoundLocation="$path";
    $sound.Play();
}

function Say($msg) {
    $Voice = new-object -com SAPI.SpVoice
    $Voice.Speak($msg, 1 )
}

If you like the text-to-speech feature but find Windows’ speech engine lacking, check out Ivona. It’s a commercial text-to-speech engine but you are allow to generate and download short speech files for free personal use. Now, my script can nicely interrupt me to tell me when it’s done. Other online text-to-speech engines: vozMe, SpokenText.

If Making Noise Is Not Your Thing

If making noise is not your thing, consider displaying a message in the Notification Area. Here’s the code (courtesy Microsoft TechNet):

function Get-ScriptName {
    $MyInvocation.ScriptName
} 

function DisplayNotificationInfo($msg, $title, $type) {
    # $type - "info" or "error"
    if ($type -eq $null) {$type = "info"}
    if ($title -eq $null) {$title = Get-ScriptName}

    [void] [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
    $objNotifyIcon = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.NotifyIcon 
    # Specify your own icon below
    $objNotifyIcon.Icon = "C:CdoScriptsFolder.ico"
    $objNotifyIcon.BalloonTipIcon = "Info"  
    $objNotifyIcon.BalloonTipTitle = $title
    $objNotifyIcon.BalloonTipText = $msg

    $objNotifyIcon.Visible = $True 
    $objNotifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(10000)
}