[Gllug] Puke - Berlin Bundestag will switch to Outlook and Exchange

[Christopher Currie]

Thanks to all who replied to my query - and apologies for not 
replying /commenting before. The suggestions are all very helpful, even if my 
comments below may seem negative in places. 

 On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:44:59 +0100 John G Walker <johngwalker at tiscali.co.uk> 
wrote:
> Subject: Re: [Gllug] Puke - Berlin Bundestag will switch to Outlook

> On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:37:34 +0100 Christopher Currie <ccurrie at usa.net>
>
> wrote:
> > It seems to me that, as we are physically moving office next month,
> > it would be reasonable to ask the bosses and the support company to
> > install O.O.o on the system after that, but I may encounter some
> > resistance.
> >
> > Any other software solutions that people can suggest? (I can't
> > imagine the bosses agreeing to convert the PC to dual-booting with
> > Linux).
>
> You can run Open Office and MS Office together on the same PC with no
> problem. I did this for a long while before I migrated to Linux.

yes indeed. I was not suggesting that they replaced MS Office, merely that 
they add OO on one PC. At the moment I run OO for Windows from a stick each 
week, and it's fairly quick. But the work should not depend on my personal 
property or know-how.

 On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 07:53:56 +0100 Matthew King <matthew.king at monnsta.net> 
wrote:
>
> As a paragraph in Word (and indeed most word processors) is really just
> a line, how about storing it as a text file and using sort(1).
>
> It has two interesting (for you) options:
>
>        -b, --ignore-leading-blanks
>        -f, --ignore-case
>
> If you lack a real OS, there is surely a win32 sort binary.

I could try this. I imagine that it might be more difficult for any very 
non-techie colleagues who have to do the job when I'm away. Also the bosses 
would have to agree to istall the sort program.

On  Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:38:55 +0100   "Andrew Roberts" <ar at nooneishere.co.uk> 
wrote:
>
> On 21/06/07, Christopher Currie <ccurrie at usa.net> wrote:
> > We have two similar smaller 'databases' which are still Word-sortable and
> > likely to remain so for some years, and copies of the files need to be
> > mailable to one or two staff to work with at home. So I don't want to
> > suggest a proper relational database system, which would seem to be a
> > sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
>
> Wouldn't Excel or Access be more appropriate for this task?

I should have explained that the additional text added to the 'databases' each 
week is prepared each week for publication and *then* added, so one would 
have to import the Word text into Excel/Access before sorting. 

No doubt this would be possible, but it would have to be set up so that 
non-experts could do it simply. (In O.O. one can save as an encoded text file 
and then pull it into OO calc and sort it). Some information would be lost 
with the text formatting. Would a spreadsheet be easily searchable?

One could do it the other way round, preparing the weekly publishable text in 
the spreadsheet or database program and then exporting it and adding required 
formatting and text emphasis, but I think that might add substantially to the 
time involved. Staff training would again be required for several people.

On  Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:19:10 +0100  Ryan Cartwright <ryan at crimperman.org> 
wrote:

> Andrew Roberts wrote:

> > Wouldn't Excel or Access be more appropriate for this task?
>
> OOCalc or even (gulp) OOBase will do it as well and would be a bit more
> recent than Office 97 solutions.

Yes, but that would mean persuading the bosses to install yet more OO 
software, which is unlikely. They have recently upgraded us from Office 97  
to Office 2003 (and I'm not sure that the upgrade is complete on everyone's 
PCs). Access to some components is limited to a few staff.

On  Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:42:55 +0100 -dn  <GLLUG at getaroundtoit.co.uk> wrote

> Ryan Cartwright wrote:
>
> > OOCalc or even (gulp) OOBase will do it as well and would be a bit more
> > recent than Office 97 solutions.
>
> I shudder at the thought of replicated databases (staff working at home)
> and the synchronisation effort...
>
> How about a web-based solution? CMS?
> - can I assume staff have Internet access from home?
> (have to ensure has ability to present topic-paragraph at a time as well
> as by 'sorted list', per original specs)

That might work, though the CMS we have for our website at the moment wouldn't 
do it in a month of Sundays! 

Charges would, I imagine, be an issue.

On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:44:03 +0100 Mike Brodbelt <mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk> 
wrote:

> I'm not against the idea of converting people to OpenOffice.org, but I'm
> really not sure pushing it as an answer here is a good solution.
>
> The problem is that you have staff who are using a word processor to do
> a job it is totally unsuited for. This is a case of "when the only tool
> is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" syndrome. Changing word
> processor is the wrong answer - you should be using this as a reason to
> drive more intelligent use of applications, and be pushing education
> onto users, not a different word processor.

The word processor is needed for *part* of the job at least. The time needed 
for weekly sorting has been, up to present, a very small part of the 
requirement for the total operation. The problem is that suddenly that part 
has outgrown the software.

I suspect that our network/support firm would  agree that an integrated 
WP/database system accessible on the  central server, with a Web interface 
for staff working from home, would be the best approach if we were starting 
from scratch, but the bosses would shudder at the likely costs of setting it 
up. There is never any time for staff training.

> They should be using a spreadsheet at least, but if you want a better
> solution, give them Access or OO Base, and backend it on MySQL.
>
> > We have two similar smaller 'databases' which are still Word-sortable and
> > likely to remain so for some years, and copies of the files need to be
> > mailable to one or two staff to work with at home. So I don't want to
> > suggest a proper relational database system, which would seem to be a
> > sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
>
> In that case you should at least push a spreadsheet on them. That has
> the virtue of being readily moved to a proper database at a later stage.

I think the bosses might be persuaded of a spreadsheet approach.

With thanks to all,

Best wishes

Christopher
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