Q1.
What is Microsoft Office Automation?
Q2. How do you tap into these powerful features?
Q3. How can it help your business?
Q4. What is involved in specifying a VBA macro or add-in?
Q5. What is a reasonable time and cost to do a custom
Office VBA project?
Q6. What about support after delivery?
Q7. What is SBA's strength in VBA?
A1. Automation, formerly called "OLE Automation," is a technology that allows you to take advantage of an existing program's content and functionality, and to incorporate it into your own applications. Automation is based on the Component Object Model (COM). COM is a standard software architecture based on interfaces that is designed to separate code into self-contained objects, or components. Each component exposes a set of interfaces through which all communication to the component is handled.
With Automation, you can use the Microsoft Word mail merge feature to generate form letters from data in a database without the user being aware that Word is involved. You could even use all of the charting and data analysis functionality that Microsoft Excel provides using Automation. You don’t need to write your own calculation engine to provide the multitude of mathematical, financial, and engineering functions that Excel provides; Instead, you can automate Microsoft Excel to "borrow" this functionality and incorporate it into your own application. (reprinted from Microsoft document "Automating Microsoft Office 97 and Office
2000").
A2. All of the Microsoft Office applications have their own scripting language, which can be used to perform tasks within the applications. This scripting language is Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The set of functions that a Visual Basic for Applications routine, or macro, can use to control its host application is the same set of functions that the Automation client can use to control the application externally, regardless of the programming language for the controller.
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A3. [Back to questions]
A4. Describe in business language what you want to do. SBA will define the software task and write a Statement of Work that reflects your business automation objective.
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A5. The most successful software projects are short-lived and well defined. SBA is most interested in projects that require about one month to execute. The cost should be less than $10,000.
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A6. SBA warrants all work against latent defects for a period of 60 days after acceptance. Product support after delivery and acceptance is available on a per hour basis. SBA also offers maintenance agreement proposals upon request. The approximate cost formula for annual support of a SBA developed macro is: Cost of project divided by 12. This includes bug fixes and minor functional updates.
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A7. SBA's demonstrated VBA macro skills are founded in making Excel and Access work seamlessly together. Excel is the premier calculating engine on the desktop today. Combining the information management power of Access with the ease-of-use and power of Excel is where we have worked full-time for the past four years.
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