ANSWER: What Would You Do? (Broken A: Drive)

OK, I got two answers regarding the last What Would You Do?. Both of these answers are different from what I did, but they both would have worked (sort of). Nonetheless, Mary from Children's and Laura from Bartlett are winners of booklights, which they will be receiving shortly.

Basically, our dilemma involved moving a document from one computer to another without the capability to save the file to anything (something that is necessary to send an attachment or upload to a website).

Mary suggested just copying and pasting the document into an email text box (rather than worrying about attachments). The customer could then send the message to themselves and open the document on another computer. Then they could copy and paste that into Word.

This does work, but doing so would probably strip the document of any special formatting features. However, it works. Mary gets a booklight.

And, yes Mary, having Flash Drives at all public service desks would be sweet.

Laura from Bartlett suggested just saving the document to the My Documents folder on the computer. You would not even need to move the file to another computer because then, the customer would have been able to upload the document.

Well, this does work if you are on a computer that happens to allow you to save to the My Documents folder. Also, as Laura points out, finding the My Documents folder can be quite a task. That is why I have pretty much ruled out the possibility of using the My Documents folder. However, if you know how to do it and it works, then awesome. Laura gets a booklight. Laura also suggested the Mary-technique of copying and pasting into an email message.

What I did in this situation now seems like technology overkill, but I was able to move the customer's document from one computer to another without losing any special formatting.

First, we created a Google Docs and Spreadsheets account. If a customer has an existing email, this takes about 2 minutes. We then pasted the Word document into Google Docs. Then we accessed the customers new Google Docs account from another computer. Then, Google Docs has the option to Save as a Word document (again, we do not lose any special formatting). We were then able to upload the document. We did it in a flash.

Of course, this was a fairly savvy teen who was able to go through this process easily. I may not take all customers on this journey. Of course, what is easier, pushing a customer through Google Docs or having them re-format their document?

This brings up another idea, but I'll save it for the next blog post. This one is too long as it is.

Microsoft vs. Google and the Future of the Web

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times. This could have an effect on customer assistance in the near future.

In short, Google and Microsoft are currently riding out a "battle" that may change the way people work with computers and the Web. Google is beginning to offer free web-based versions of Microsoft products. For example, Microsoft has Word, Google has Writely. Microsoft has Excel, Google has Google Spreadsheets. Microsoft has Outlook, Google has Gmail and Calendar.

Will some of our customers prefer to use the Google products? What sort of products will be available in the future? We once could control the types of programs available on our computers, and the Web was used exclusively for finding information and communicating with other people via e-mail and chat. But the Web is everchanging (recently by leaps and bounds). As we have witnessed in the past year, our customers now use the Web to apply for jobs (more so than ever before), to organize their pictures, to listen to music, to create their own blogs or MySpace pages (for now), to interact with other people (not just communicate). Pretty soon, they will also use the Web to write papers, create presentations, establish spreadsheets.

As the Web grows, and as we continue to be the only access to the Web for %10 of the online population, we will continue to be responsible for providing some basic assistance to these customers. And as the Web changes, the definition of basic assistance will continue to change as well.

That is why I write this blog, and that is why I hope you read it.

You Mean I Have to Learn How to Use Another Word Processing Tool

Some day soon, a customer may ask for some word processing assistance. You had taken the various Word trainings that I have offered so you approach the customer's computer with confidence. But when you arrive, you see something quite different than Word. Did we change word processing software and not notify anybody? No, we would never do that.

Chances are, the customer is using www.writely.com. This is an online word processor that Google now owns and it is free with registration. Click here to take a tour.

You can also use this if you ever need to collaborate with several staff in various branches. Instead of sending attachments back and forth, just create the document on Writely and anyone can update the document from anywhere. You can assign who can see and edit the document, or you can make it available to the whole world. Once the document is complete, you can transfer it to Word easily, or just print it directly from Writely.

If you want to give it a shot, I have created a document that anyone can edit. Just click here and type away! You will need to Sign Up, which is super quick.

NOTE: Make sure you are using the right browser (click here to see a list of supported browsers).