Business For Dumbf≫≪Ks

Memorandum

To: Kevin Speelsbee

From: Bob Ace

Date: 11/05/05

Re: Office Automation and Group Collaboration Software

There are many types of office automation software available on the market today. Office automation software programs enable a user to perform a variety of different types of information processing including the ability to save information electronically. The most common type of automation software that is used while attending Iowa Central Community College (ICCC) is Microsoft's Office Suite. Three of the most common software applications utilized by college students include Microsoft office, excel and power-point. Students and officers (where I was President of the Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society (PTK) for our college and Vice-President of our Student Senate), utilized these programs on a daily basis.

Advantages to using this type of office automation software, is that students have the needed tools necessary to create many types of documents. These documents can then be saved electronically to the student's local hard drive, or to the college's network server. If the students have saved this document to the network server, they can choose to save it to the shared class folder. By doing this, it will allow for collaboration, and file sharing in the event that another student would like to make use of the materials for a particular project within our site for government. This type of file sharing allows for standardization in materials, power point presentations, spreadsheets, and eliminates the need to manually file documents in multiple locations. With this type of software application, students are also able to quickly modify and update documents in the event that the technology changes or the documents require modification.

On the downside to implementing this type of electronic technology is the fact that data can become corrupt when saving information to a secondary storage medium. It is also essential to verify that regular backup policies have been implemented and that these backups are occurring on the network server. In addition, it is necessary that restore policies are in place in the event of a failure. It is also important to note that if the backup operator does not have permissions to back up this folder, the backup on the folder will not take place which may result in loss of data entirely if a failure occurs on the network server. In addition, to utilizing application software, the use of group collaboration software is on the rise.

Iowa Central Community College has implemented Microsoft's Net-Meeting group collaboration software to host virtual remote classes to students and instructors through the world. This type of application software allows for real-time electronic communications, collaboration and conferencing abilities. It enables groups of participants to teleconference using the Internet as its transmission medium. The benefits associated with this type of software, enable the college to host a virtual classroom remotely and the ability to provide training sessions via the Internet. This ultimately reduces the costs associated with travel and