Role of Applications

My prior experience utilizing Microsoft’s Office Suite is extensive, though this is my first foray into Microsoft Access. For those who have been in the Air Force, death by Powerpoint is real, but it’s also two-sided. I can’t put a number to how many weeks I have spent utilizing Powerpoint to put together presentations which utilize almost none of Powerpoint’s features because we have a standard format which must be strictly observed.

            That said, Powerpoint is a powerful tool, but not precisely appropriate for the required content for this assignment. I prefer Powerpoint when presenting to an audience physically or telephonically with the ability to provide more detail. My preferred method for this, when I’m not pigeon-holed by standards, is Pecha Kucha. In Pecha Kucha, 20 slides are presented with each being up for only 20 seconds for a presentation length of only 6 minutes 4 seconds. The slides favor visuals with very limited (almost never justified) text that serve as memorable anchors for the message delivered with each slide by the presenter.

            Microsoft word is a powerful word processor which is used to provide formatted text, unlike text documents which are unformatted. Word also supports the inclusion of images and drawing, though I’ve never been a fan of Word’s native shape manipulation.

            Excel is another software application that I have extensive experience utilizing. One of the most frustrating aspects of working on DoD computers is that I’m unable to create macros for my Excel workbooks, but I have still managed to create a workbook with extensive computations that saves me a lot of time and energy. For the purposes of this assignment, Excel was useful in documenting the time spent on activities and creating visual depictions of the same.

            Microsoft access is a databasing management system or DBMS that enables creation, maintenance, and access to databases. Common database operations include: adding new data, editing existing data, deleting data, and querying the database for information. While databases are quite powerful, I do not believe that Microsoft’s Access is the appropriate software application for storing this kind of data. Not because it is incapable of it but because there’s not a whole lot of use that I see in the specific case of tracking task/activity priority for one individual. However, Access would be appropriate for tracking task/activity priority for a large group of individuals.

            Ultimately, Microsoft word feels like the most appropriate software application for detailing my activities in one day and I would recommend it for this and any other use cases where narrative information will be provided. Excel would be useful for conducting an analysis of the time spent on different activities each day for multiple days. Access would be useful for doing the same for a large group of people. The visuals from Excel and Access would be useful inclusions for the Word document or for a Powerpoint presentation. A Powerpoint presentation would be best utilized to present the data to a large audience simultaneously, especially if that presentation is accompanied by someone to provide further details on the information in the slideshow.