Mining data in Outlook has always been something I have been interested in. One of my former colleagues pointed me to a just released tool based upon Excel, your Exchange Account, and PowerPivot. The Calendar Analytics Tool provides for very rich UI that can help analyze how your meeting time is being spent.

It will require you to start using the categories feature in Outlook, but it is worth it immediately.

You can download a copy today.

Calendar Analytics Tool Press Release

Calendar Analytics Tool Download

PowerPivot Download

Community Value Shares

• Adding References With Search
• Try out Project Euler
• Clippy’s Second Chance
• PowerPoint SlideFest

Blog Of Note

Alvin Ashcraft’s Morning Dew

This is a great read every day. Alvin puts together high quality blog content links that are categorized, making for an incredibly easy way to start learning something new.

Debugging, reviewing, and diagnosing software defects or code is at best a daunting task.  Sometimes the simplest change to an environment, code file or build machine can cause hours or days of frustration. Software developers not only have to write code, but also need to be forensics experts.

Telling Stories

This post is inspired by the first line of this song by Tracy Chapman, “There is Fiction in the Space Between”.  We were fighting a build system configuration issue for several hours.  At the end of the day, it turned out there were parameter differences in “AnyCPU” and “Any CPU”.  What is interesting is that these parameters were generated by default for us initially from two different systems.

On top of this, the system was presenting some false positives to say that the build succeeded.  The head scratching moments were plenty.  Eventually, the problem was caught by a second pair of eyes looking at diagnostic level log files.

Don’t Read Between The Lines

While one could point out that anomalies happen in development and coding environments, the results are pretty predictable and repeatable.  I see many developers struggle with debugging, especially when they have “certified” it works on their machine.  If your program has detailed logs or diagnostics, use them.

Try to isolate the area where the call is failing.  Usually understanding the source code logging messages will be a big help.  One of the things that I would suggest doing is to add additional diagnostics to the code if you can, so the next person may have an easier time if an error arises.

Four Eyes are Really Better Than Two

Don’t bang your head against the desk for hours pouring over the same problem.  Bring in the second or even third set of eyes.  It is not only the eyes, but the insight other developers may have with the problem at hand.  Don’t be intimidated by the “Oh duh” moment that usually happens, we all have them.

Diff Tools Really Make a Difference

Comparing what changed is critical in software development.  I find an increasing number of developers have never used diff tools or don’t use them effectively.  Make sure it is in your toolbox.

Summary

Any developer who hasn’t worked on an issue where it has taken hours or days to fix probably hasn’t been in the software industry long.  This is one reason why estimates can get out of whack quickly and fixes are never as fast as people want them to be.

What is the hardest debugging scenario you ran into with the easiest fix?

Browse your options

Most programs have an options / preferences or both in the menu.  There are usually a few tweaks that you can make to enhance the experience with the program.  It may be setting custom document directories, making the font larger, or turning auto save off.

Read the manual

At the very least, peruse the Table of Contents and the Glossary or Index. Trials by error mode can be mitigated by just having an overall understanding on how the product works. Manuals can be dry or boring, but there are usually nuggets to help you on your way.

Know How To Access Help

Whether its the F1 key in Word or /? at the command line, don’t be afraid to use it.  My favorite thing to do with any new program is to find the shortcut keys associated with it.  Usually there is a section in help just for this.  Programs today are getting more sophisticated help also.  Videos are now common for showing how to do complex tasks.  Hands on Labs and walkthroughs are also becoming more prevalent in applications.

Find the Experts

For almost every program out there, you will find a group of “experts” willing to share their opinions.  Pick your program, search on Bing or Google, look for the sites that have tips and tricks. Personally, I add these to my RSS feeds and review any new tips that come out.

Experts just aren’t bloggers.  Find the “expert” in your team / office / company.  Look for experts on Social Networks, such as Twitter.

Teach the program

In my opinion, there is no better way to learn about the program.  Take a topic you are weak on and present it to others, write about it.  By sharing what you have learned, new levels of productivity will be achieved.

Summary

It is often an enlightening experience, finding the new feature, shortcut or way of using programs differently.  As a practical example, I looked at help for findstr at the command line.  What a plethora of information.  What ways do you use to become more productive.

1. Take a walk or exercise.  This can be a very refreshing way to replenish the energy store and give a clearer perspective on the problem.
2. Talk with a colleague through the problem.  This sounding board method usually has me answering my own questions.  I have found that many times I couldn’t tell the person exactly what my block was.
3. Solve a different problem.  Head on over to Project Euler (if you are a developer) and knock out a problem or two, solve a crossword or Sudoku puzzle.
4. Sleep on it.  Don’t be surprised, if at 2am the answer comes to you.  At that point, I get up and am excited to work on the problem.

What techniques do you use break a mental block?

“Omissions are the hardest defects to find; after all, it’s hard to review something that’s not there. A checklist is the single best way to combat the problem, because it reminds the reviewer or author to take the time to look for something that might be missing.”

I have blogged about putting a checklist into place for code reviews just earlier this year, see Checking off on Code Reviews.  I just want to reemphasize the importance of these checklists.  I can’t sum it up any better than the quote from the article above.

What other areas can you think of in the breakdown of Code Analysis? 

Introduction

Your boss just finished reading a great series of posts on Code Analysis.  You have been asked to go implement it in your code base.  Do I need to go on here?  Well maybe just a little bit.

A Method to the Madness

Why would management want code analysis?  As a development lead on teams, I have found it to be a very promising way to improve the coding standards of the team.  More importantly though, it provides one way to implement processes. In each section I have added a measurement that can start being captured immediately upon implementation.

It is never too late

You might as well get code analysis into your development process going now.  Unless you have hundreds (I mean literally hundreds) of projects in your solution, it can be less than a week to get code analysis running if nowhere else than your continuous build environment.  This is a quick technical debt win, that can get into your next iteration/sprint/whatever you may call it.

Measurement: Evaluate the bugs before code analysis and after code analysis.  It may surprise you. Also, see how long code reviews take after implementing code analysis.

Enforce The Rules

People ignore warnings, but have to do something with errors.  When turning on code analysis, don’t just treat them as warnings unless you have a very mature team that can’t stand warnings in code. When code analysis rules are enforced as errors, an action must be taken to fix the error, either by suppression or otherwise.

Measurement: Capture the number of build breaks on check in due to code analysis rule failures.

Don’t argue about the rule

Just fix it, I have seen time and time again where the “validity” of the rule was argued for hours when it could have been fixed in minutes.  Now there are exceptions to every rule, but at this point it is a conscious decision.

Measurement: Look at the number of suppressions over time in the code base.  Reevaluate these at a retrospective/after action.

A Word to Leadership

Reward the use of code analysis.  To many developers, the implementation of code analysis may be like “policing” the code that they have written.  Encourage them to share ways that they “changed” the code base to satisfy the rule as a best practice.  Listen when they truly believe the rule should be suppressed permanently and document the reasons.  At the end of the day, it is just another tool in the arsenal of good coding practices.

What experiences have you had with management in implementing code analysis rules?

I will explore how to implement code analysis in several painless steps as a blueprint to get code analysis off the ground effectively.  I will start here with a summary of the posts that I will create for this topic.

Summary 1 – Management Said So

Your boss just finished reading a great series of posts on Code Analysis.  You have been asked to go implement it in your code base.  Do I need to go on here?  Well maybe just a little bit.

You might as well get code analysis into your development process up front.  Even in legacy projects.  Do you have one of those teams that only runs code analysis at the end of a development cycle to satisfy the letter of the law instead of the spirit of code analysis.  When you get those 1000+ warnings, do you start suppressing like crazy, stating that it is an invalid rule?  What is the worst that can happen if your team implements code analysis now instead of towards the end?

Summary 2 – The Other Developers Will Despise You

The build just broke because of the stupid code analysis junk that is being forced upon us.  Who thought that those rules even made sense to begin with.  What is wrong with a 500 line method? I have been coding them for years?  I bet some PM made up these rules.  We never need code analysis before.

These are just a few of the tamer comments you may get from the team.  How you implement Code Analysis will be critical to your relationship with teammates.

Summary 3 – Implement But Don’t Obstruct

To implement code analysis without impacting the team’s performance is paramount.  You must prove that it has extra benefits for people other than developers.  Implementation starts at the policy level and moves quickly into standard development and coding practices.  Learn how to start doing code analysis with little or no impact to the development.

Summary 4 – Preach What You Practice

Ready, Set, Turn on Code Analysis.  Have your reporting and measurement strategy in place.  Justify the value, both tangible and intangible.  Understand where the hidden benefits are and how you can use them to your advantage.  Evangelize the good.

Conclusion

Code Analysis implementations in .Net are more political than practice.  As I write this series of posts I will help provide solutions to some of these political landmines. Do you have a successful Code Analysis story to share?  How about a failed implementation?

Currently s.f expands to:

1. String.Format(“”, )

What I would like to see is:

1. Syntax:  String.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, “”, )
2. The using statement for System.Globalization to be added if it doesn’t exist

This is extremely easy given an alternate expansion.  I must thank Mark Miller and Rory Becker at DevExpress for the insight that they have given.

Steps to create an alternate expansion

Locate the expansion for fmt (s.f calls this alias)  in DevExpress – Options –Editor–Templates.  You can search for fmt or find it under the Text commands folder

Right-click on the template and select create duplicate.  It will ask for a name, keep the default text.

When you have done this the fmt node should look like this:

Note:  Order matters.  If you change the second fmt, it will only get called if the first fmt context conditions are not met.  You can move expansions up and down by selecting the expansion and using the buttons below:

Change the text of the first expansion from:

To

Lastly, add a dependent Namespace

Choose Ok and Test it out!

Kudos to DevExpress

It is nice when a company opens themselves up to questions from their customers.  Mark and Rory are awesome at providing top notch customer service.  Be sure to check out their videos at the DevExpress Channel.

It now works fine.