You can use AddIns to customize the broad functional range of Microsoft Office to the specific needs of your company or your team. Complex workflows can be simplified, repetitive tasks can be reduced to a few clicks, or missing functions can be added.
The producitvity gain resulting from an optimization of workflows and from the tailoring of the Office-Suite is important and can easily recover the initial investment. In most cases it is not a question of complex applications, but manageable customizations.
I have been developing extensions for MS Office using VBA or the Visual Basic programming languages (6.0/2005) for over ten years for my clients. I advise them on development, configuration and deployment of AddIns. I am specialized in the customization of Microsoft Word for clients with a high number of complex and structured documents (law firms and banks).
Projects and examples
Word: AddIn for paper tray configuration and printing of copies
Word: AddIn for client-related print output
Word: Support for Automatic Numbering
Excel: Generating custom reports for a CRM software
Excel: Generation of Excel Workbooks for e-mailing using data from the mainframe
Powerpoint 2003: Company-specific FileNew dialog
Outlook: E-mail-archiving and customized print output
Using Microsoft Offic with an installation "out-of-the-box" is a standard procedure for a Home Office or a small company. The configuration for individual needs can then be performed by the user or the team.
In medium-size and larger businesses installation should be planned together with a configuration. I will support your company in migrations to new versions of MS Office, in installation questions and in the configuration of the product to enhance user productivity.
It is seldom the case that all requirements for the development or a template set are known when the consultant starts to work for the client. In most cases a workflow analysis should be conducted as a preliminary step to write the specification. This is very important if the template set or the macros have to deal with documents being edited in multiple steps. Often productivity gains are derived in coming from the workflow analysis, not from the development itself.