Saving the Filter Criterias in Excel - Custom Views

Recently I got a large amount of data in excel which keeps growing and based on some scenarios I need to apply different filters to it. I had been looking for some way to save these filters as a custom view or the typical IE "Favorites" kind of view.

So for example, If I have a sheet with some sales data in it and I keep filtering on the Country and Total Sales>1Million. I also sort and filter on the Country and Sales Person sometimes to get a second view. Now to do this each time is going to be tedious especially when the number of filters increase.

Almir suggested a great way to do it using Custom Views, which basically help you save your filters and toggle between them when required. To create a Custom View,

1. Clear all filters
2. Go to "Views" and Click "Custom Views"
3. Click on "Add", give the view a name "No Filters" and say "OK"

4. Now apply the required filters and Repeat steps 1 to 3 by giving the view the desired name, say "Applicable Filter"

To toggle between multiple views, go to "Custom Views" where you will be able to see and apply all the views that you have created earlier.

To make life a little easier for novice excel users, you can also write a macro which does this and attach it to a button or drop down list on the sheet. So that they just have to choose the filter name from the drop down and it would get applied. But for a individual user, Custom Views are the best option!

Restoring Deleted Files/ Folders - with history

Most often people find it a drawback that SVN offers delete rights to all users. And the common concern being that anybody might accidentally delete some data and then the history might be lost.
But this is just a misconception and the data can be retrieved with history. Just follow these steps using TortoiseSVN:

1. Right click the parent folder that contains the deleted files/folder
2. Select "Show Log"
3. Select and right click on the version before which the file was deleted
4. Select the "Browse Repository"
5. Select the file/folder which needs to be restored and right click
6. Select "copy to" which will copy the files/folders to the head revision

Same results can also be achieved by using the svn copy command.

Recently my tailor and my shoe shop both have been delivering poor quality on their products. Their quality has been consistently good over a period of more than 20 years and I haven't had many chances to complain.
I was surprised to see the quality deteriorate over the last few times that I have availed their services. When I dug a little deeper, the reason turned out to be attrition!!

Their earlier skilled workers had moved to some other shop or retired. That's when it struck me that Knowledge Management isn't just a concept to be used in large corporates or particular industries only. It's applicable in every enterprise, irrespective of the size and nature of their services! People are bound to move on and they have accumulated a huge mass of knowledge about the products and processes that is going to be lost if we don't capture it in time. Knowledge that has translated into happy customers and in turn revenue for your enterprise.

So think about KM as one of the most critical strategies for your business and not just something that should be done if time permits.

Code Review Automation - A little underestimated!

By now, code review automation is a pretty established practice and more of a norm than a value add. There still exists the debate whether code review automation really brings much value to the table in case of
1. Applications which might not demand a high quality code where every coding standard has been considered or
2. In a case where the tool throws up too many observations which might not be feasible to fix in the already tight delivery schedules.

In spite of all the apprehensions, the code review tools definitely help in a few aspects at least to maintain some hygiene in the code being spewed out. Namely,
1. Maintaining some coding standards and styling, making the code much more readable and maintainable
2. In case of certain Java related tools like Findbugs, which also point out possible null pointer exceptions and performance bottle necks.
3. Extremely useful to get the newbies at a decent standard of coding without much efforts on mentoring, since most tools come with a explanation to fix the reported finding
4. Saves a lot of precious peer review time of detecting empty catch blocks, wrongly declared data types, initializations within loops and the like...

Mind Mapping is a excellent visual method of representing & classifying ideas and a structured approach to brainstorming. Mind mapping involves identifying a central idea and then drilling down on various aspects related to that idea.

For example, If I were to plan for my vacation and analyze my options. Here my central idea would be "Vacation Plan" or "Vacation Places". Then I would try and drill down to the immediate sub categories which is type of vacation and then to the places available to me.

So the drill down would depend on your target for the breakdown structure. In the example mentioned above, I also have the option of drilling down based on the duration of the trip (short, long, weekend break etc...) or budget (>25k, < 10k,>50k etc...)

Why should you mind map?

• It takes you away from trying to prioritize the idea as you would do in a list
• Enables a free yet focused discussion on ideas and allows drill down to all possible options
• Visual representation allows you to recall better.
• Effective way to study, understand and explain complex concepts in a concise format

Tool:

There are a large variety of tools available for mind mapping. One of my personal favorites is XMind, a free and open source mind mapping tool. It has a great, intuitive GUI along with options to convert your mind maps to tree structure graphs and fishbone diagrams. Additionally, it allows you to export the diagrams to image, word, PPT and a host of other export options.