Tag: tips

Save a Tree: Tools to Go Paperless

It is almost that time of year again for KTL Solutions to host its annual Mid-Atlantic Technology User Conference, “Empower the User”.  This will be our eleventh annual user conference and it will be held on May 19, 2016, at the Microsoft Center in Reston, Virginia.  In past user conferences, we have found many users have benefited greatly from the topics presented and have been able to immediately apply some of the information obtained when they returned to their offices.

Read More »
April 26, 2016
laughing coworkers
Jeff Chamberlain

3 Ways to Use Humor in Business

I have always been a fan of comedy, since I was young and used to spend my weeknights in front of the TV watching a VHS copy of “SNL: Best of Chris Farley”.  Stand-Up, sitcoms, improv, sketch – I watch or participate in all the current and classic forms, but I wondered if there was a way to incorporate it into my job.  I mean, everyone likes to laugh, everyone could use a good joke, but how do I best utilize humor that not only maintains the respect your organization has built but also gets across a clear message. Here are the 3 points I use when figuring out how to use humor effectively at work.

Read More »
February 29, 2016

Five Tips on Understanding SQL Server Better

Being a developer I often find myself in situations where I need to troubleshoot SQL queries that are not performing well and generally need optimizations. I would like to share some interesting tips on how SQL Server handles queries and what execution plans might be better than others. A query execution plan is an ordered set of steps that are used to access the data in SQL server. If you are working with SQL Server Management Studio once you have started a new query window click the following button  (or CTRL + M) so you can enable execution plans. In the examples below I will be using tables from AdventureWorks database which is a sample database provided by Microsoft.

Read More »
May 20, 2015