Office Automation System

Definition and Explanation:

Office Automation (OA) is the use of technology to help people do their jobs better and faster.

or

"The use of computers, micro electronics, and telecommunications to help us produce, store, obtain and send information in the form of pictures, words or numbers, more reliably, quickly and economically."

During the past 25 years, computer technology has helped to dramatically increase productivity in the office. The movements towards automation in the new hardware and software technologies like word processors, spreadsheets, electronic mail, and so on, which make office workers more productive, These combinations of technologies that have a dramatic impact on day-to-day office operations are called office information systems (OIS). In this chapter, we explore office information system, and how they evolved.

The Nature of Office

Generally, an office is a place where staff and line professionals, secretaries, and clerks perform management and administrative tasks. The big difference between today's office and that of the previous decade, modern offices use electronic communication, office oriented technologies therefore called electronic office or paperless office. ' Office Work: The management and administrative tasks performed in the office can 'be divided into five general categories: Decision making Data manipulation Document handling Communications Storage

Types of Office Automation Systems:

Three major types/categories of office applications are:

1. Document management systems

2. Message handling systems

3. Teleconferencing systems

1. Document Management Systems:

a. Word Processing:

Word processing software lets you create, edit, store, retrieve, and print a text document. Let us examine each part of the definition.

Text document is any text that can be keyed in, such as a memo, letter, fax, and thesis.

Creation is the original composing and keying in of the document,

Editing is making changes to the document to fix errors or improve its content, like deleting a sentence, correcting a misspelled name, or moving a paragraph.

Formatting refers to adjusting the appearance of the document to make it look appropriate and attractive. For example, centralize the heading, make wider margins, or use of double spacing.

Storing the document means saving it on disk so it can be accessed on demand.

Retrieving the document means bringing the stored document from disk back into computer memory so it can be used again or changed some way.

Printing is producing the document on paper, using a printer connected with the computer.

Difference Between Typewriter and Word Processing (WP):

Some people think that WP is a glorified typing, but there are many advantages of WP on typewriter. The main difference between the typewriter and WP is the separation of typing from printing; when you use WP, typing the document and printing the document do not occur at the same time; you print the document on the paper whenever you like. Perhaps you want to print an intermediate draft, just to see how it looks, and then continue making changes.

Second difference between WP and typewriter is that you can save/store your keyed data when you use a word processing package. You can make changes as you go along, or even at some later time, and print out a revised or perfect copy. The key difference here is that only the changes themselves are retyped, not the entire document.

The ability to print at will and to store work distinguishes WP from typewriter. But these are not the only two hallmarks. A word processing package is a sophisticated tool with many options, which are as follows:

Standard Entering & Editing Operations	Standard Print Formatting Operations	Advanced Operations
Moving the cursor to various places on-screen. Scrolling the document up and down. Returning lines automatically. Inserting and deleting characters and blocks of text. Moving and copying blocks of text. Searching for text strings. Replacing text strings. Spelling checker feature. Thesaurus feature	Adjusting line spacing Indenting blocks of text Reformatting blocks of text Centering text Proportionally spaced characters Automatic page numbering, headings, and footings Multiple columns per page Selection of fonts	Mailing list preparation Form letter Math feature Sorting Redlining and edit tracing Cross-referencing Preparing indexes and tables of contents Integrating with spreadsheet programs Desktop publishing features Embedded typesetting codes

b. Desktop Publishing:

Desktop publishing (DTP) enables you to produce well-designed pages that combine charts and graphics with text and headlines in a variety off typefaces, it lets you to do all this at your desk, without a ruler, pen or paste.

Desktop publishing is software involve, using a microcomputer, mouse, scanner, laser or Ink Jet printer, for mixing text,, and graphics to produce high quality output for commercial printing.

The features of DTP include:

Text

Graph

Colors

Sound

Animation

Principle of Good Design:

Desktop publishing programmers put many different fonts and images at your disposal, but you can overwhelm a document if you crowd too much on to a page. The guidelines that follow will help get favorable reviews for you and your document:

Use only two or three typefaces in a document.

Be conservative: Limit the use of decorative or unusual typefaces.

Use different sizes and styles of one typeface to distinguish between different heading levels, rather than several typefaces.

Avoid cluttering a document with fancy border and symbols.

Do not use type that is too small to read easily just to fit everything on one page.

c. Image Processing System:

Some firms have large volume of documents that must be maintained in files so that the information can be retrieved when needed. Insurance companies and banks fit in to this category. Initially these firms maintained files in paper form, but the space requirement became intolerable. The solution was to store an image of the document rather than the document itself. This office automation application (AO) has recently being given the name imaging processing system and is currently stimulating the most interest.

Image processing system is also called electronic image management system, allow users to electronically capture, store, process, and retrieve images of documents. These documents may include text, numeric data, handwriting, graphics and photographs. In some cases these may be part of the same document.

Image processing technology promises to reduce the problem of paper overload by providing information management with more efficient use of physical storage space and increased productivity.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR), scanners are used to convert paper or microfilm records to a digital format for storage in secondary storage devices. Once stored, the images can be retrieved for displaying or printing.

Image processing system is used in problem solving when it is necessary to review historical documents for the purpose of understanding a problem. An operator accesses the document management system from a workstation and produces a hardcopy output for the manager.

d. Reprographics:

Reprographics is the process of reproducing multiple copies of a document. Office personnel are usually responsible for making more than one copy of a report, letter, or other documents. When documents are widely distributed, either internally or externally, reprographics often includes collating, folding, binding, or related tasks.

Multiple copies may be made in various ways. When only a few copies are required, it may be cost effective to print out multiple copies using the printer attached to the computer. Most of the time, however, photocopier is used.

2. Message Handling Systems:

a. Telex:

Telex is the service, which enables user to transmit and receive printed messages over a telephone line. Users have to be telex subscribers, with their own telex equipment and code number, in order to send or receive messages. The telex service started in 1930 and from the mid 1970s it developed significantly as an international message transmission system.
Data transmission speed as compare to other methods of telecommunication is very slow and only a restricted set of characters can be used in messages.

b. Fax:

Fax machine connected to a telephone, uses computer technology and communications links to send quality graphics, charts, text and handwritings almost everywhere in the world. The sending material (paper) is placed in the fax machine at one end, where it is digitized. Those digits are transmitted across the miles and then reassembled at the other end to form identical version of the original. All this activity takes only minute or less.

Personal computer users can send and receive faxes directly by means of a fax/modem. The only missing ingredient in the scheme is paper.
Fax is not only faster than overnight delivery services, but it is also less expensive. Fax contributes to problem solving by sending documents to member of the problem solving team quickly and easily, regardless of their geographic location.

c. Teletext:

Teletextis a system for supplying commercial and other information through existing television networks. The data such as news, weather, sports reports, stock market data, airline and train schedules, TV guides etc. is transmitted via a television channel at the same time that the channel is being used to broadcast conventional television.

d. Videotext (Viewdata):

Videotext or Viewdata gives a home user access to information in databases via a personal computer or converted television set. The method of Access is via telephone lines, coaxial cable, or optical fiber.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11