Summary and Reflections for Phase Two
As ground breakers in Information Technology often find out, I learned that Outlook wasn’t really designed or conceived to be used in quite the fashion I used it for the grant reporting tickler system described in the previous post. While the previous page's description may sound fairly straight forward, some of the execution was incredibly cumbersome. However, Outlook did possess many of the necessary features that we needed at the price we could afford and in the amount of time and personnel resources we had to give our project. While I would have loved to use Visual Basic and C++, and XML and all that stuff, that would have been another learning curve for me - one I hope to climb some day. But for now, pushing Outlook to its edges also helps to reveal the possibilities of this tool, and one can hope for future upgrades and development that continue to enhance functionality and ease of use. For future versions of Outlook I would suggest several “improvements.”
- Provide more color choices for labels.
- Provide increased functionality between recurring instances of a calendar entry and the underlying “master.” For example for any change made to the master, provide the user with a right click menu option to apply it to one or more of the instances – and vice versa.
- Streamline the size of recurring calendar entries so that they are not so large. Presently, if you add graphics and documents to a recurring calendar entry, it becomes much larger than the sum of its parts.
- Provide a “clone” feature for calendar entries to facilitate re-entering them into the calendar or copying them from a test calendar to a production calendar.
- Provide multiple levels of recurrence in a calendar entry. For example each of our reports has a four stage compliance strategy. However each of our reports also recur as quarterly, semi-annual, and annual reports.
- Provide a Full Year View (so we don't have to buy partially integrated plug-ins)..
- Provide more consistency between Word, Excel, Outlook email, and Outlook Calendar entries so that formatting and other “meanings” do not get lost when copied between them – I think a common web-based interface and presentation between them would be great.
In conclusion, using Outlook to model the tickler system has proven effective in helping people to remember, to collaborate and to get reports to funding streams in timely fashion for our agency. Users have become increasingly responsive as the system increasingly responds to their needs and input. In fact, in this second round of reporting, I would say that we have actually achieved the goal set forth in our Compliance Strategy to submit 98% of our reports to funding sources timely. Going through the process of modeling and testing the tickler system with Outlook has also helped us to identify and refine what components and features are needed in a tickler system and how people need to see and receive them.
As for Phase Two, I envision setting up a more collaborative report writing environment within the tickler system, perhaps with our Outlook Exchange Server and SharePoint. I also envision automating the tickler system with a database. Currently the ticklers are serving as repositories for everything we know about getting a particular report to a funding source – they include text and graphics and word files and excel files and emails from sponsors. They include instructions and links and copies of previous reports and blank forms. They include a hopefully effective visual presentation strategy of all the previous to motivate the user to do their part in getting the report out. In fact, they are one-stop shopping for getting a grant report out on time for organizations on a shoe-string. I envision a future when perhaps much of this information and many of these items may more efficiently reside in a database from which calendar entries and email ticklers can be more easily and automatically generated and much more information about our grants and funding sources can be tracked – and the entire system would be much more intuitive and easy to maintain and “pass on” to a successor. However, I believe the ticklers, in order to succeed, must retain their capability to be adaptable to the moment and to project “immediacy,” “responsiveness,” and “online presence.” To foster compliance from the inside out, especially in volunteer and not-for-profit organizations which are not generally ruled with an iron hand, we must keep in mind that people need “to know, to care, and to act” (James Banks). The tickler system model needs to find ways to address people on those three levels. We must empower both their cognition and their conscience in hopes that we can impel them to “do the right thing.”
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