ISEE Systems, a leading developer of business simulation tools, have published reviews of two of the new Dashboard Business Simulation Games developed using the ithink platform. These team games enable companies to share their own best practice (learn from others) in a way that really sticks and to put staff into difficult but realistic decision-making situations where if they make a mistake it does not cost the business!

There are two neat tools you can use to quickly turn excel spreadsheets into online simulations, what-if models and dashboards. They are Simulate from Forio and Crystal Presentation Design (formerly known as xcelsius) from SAP. Here's the lowdown.

There are a plethora of excel add-Ins out there, many of which aim to improve or extend a feature which excel already performs. I am not much interested in these but what I am interested in is add-ins which enable you to do something really useful which you cannot currently do in excel. In this article I introduce seven excel add-ins which meet this criterion - NodeXL, Solver, Rainbow, Spreadsheet Converter, Crystal Ball, Fractal Maps and XCell Compiler.

It's a common problem - you have developed some very useful excel charts and dashboards and now you need to publish and share them on the web. There are lots of excel add-ins and add-ons (and I must have tried them all) - the problem is most will either be very expensive or disappoint you either in terms of their restrictions or how nicely they present your data.

The boundaries of digital collaboration extend way beyond document sharing and communications. PathXL are a Belfast-based Digital Collaboration/Big Data company who have developed workflow/data analytics software to help pathologists and clinicians make quicker, faster diagnoses of complex cancer tumour patterns and to work more effectively with colleagues in clinical cross-functional teams.

Its easy to get the wool pulled over your eyes especially when you talk to experts! Communications consultant Jodi Glickman Brown offers three concrete steps to get the information you need in a conversation with an "expert" even though you might know very little about their subject.