Altos Web Solutions, inc. – 5725 Bravo Ave, Reno, NV 89506 USA

source: ebay.com

Spreadsheet Lovers

In Dept

Excel Worksheet Design

Operational Workflow

The optimal solution depends on the customer’s goals and expertise. 

STEP 1 approval of requirements.

  1. We organize a briefing during which we will identify the constraints to draw up the requirements document;
  2. During the briefing we will ask a few questions including:
    1. how frequent and how deep is the maintenance;
    2. what are the most important things: performance, customer autonomy, etc.;
    3. what is the customer’s expertise: the type of formulas;
    4. best solution: plug-in, cloud service, emulator, spreadsheet reorganization, spreadsheet optimization
    5. mathematical, statistical, financial algorithms, etc. that are available or to be developed;
    6. what is the budget and time to market;
    7. how it should be integrated with other applications and other data;
  3. We will deliver the draft of the first draft of the requitements;
  4. We will deliver the economic offer in the form of a min/max budget for cost and time to market. Includes payment methods, refund logics, fines for exceeding certain milestones. The entire contractual part – including refunds – are guaranteed by a third party: PayPal in our case because it is our merchant bank. The requirement document includes the sprints or milestones to arrive at the final delivery which takes place when the acceptance tests – also included in the requirement document – have been passed.
  5. The customer rejects, approves or requests refinements to the submitted requirements.

STEP 2 development

  1. We proceed to the various stages of development at our infrastructure. The progress of the work can be monitored using appropriate access credentials.
  2. Any changes that occur before delivery will be recorded as a backlog within our Microsoft Azure project management platform for which the customer has the operational access credentials.
  3. When the development is considered complete, the customer has the right to carry out the acceptance tests on our infrastructure.

STEP 3 Delivery and warranty

  1. Once the acceptance test has been passed, all recorded backlogs will be analyzed and planned.
  2. If the conditions exist, there will be a further offer that must be approved. In case of disapproval, the changes will not be included in the ongoing development.
  3. We proceed to the official release (Go-Live) which unlocks some payments.
  4. The system remains under warranty for a minimum of 30 days up to a maximum of 3 months.

STEP 4 Maintenance

  1. At the end of the maintenance period, assistance will be the subject of a specific contract relating to support, maintenance, warranty extension, etc.

Beautify Data Table

Porting from MS Word to Web

Typically, MS Word produces a PDF  which can then be printed on various media, mainly paper.
Naturally on the web it is possible to download a PDF document paginated with the typical rules of paper.
A table intended for the web has other principles:

  • How interactive;
  • How dynamic. That is, the columns are definable by the customer and so is the horizontal selection of the data;
  • The graphs are interactive or have been prepared in advance and the customer can only decide which ones to see and in which order among those foreseen;
  • On which devices it must above all be represented (Ipad, smartphone, laptop);
  • To which CMS it will have to be transferred.

Excel Emulator Server

Definition

How many formulas have been added in office 365?
35 formulas. Then today we reached 450.
Furthermore, the syntax, logic, and updates on the formulas active today have undergone frequent changes.
So, a local emulator used by plug-ins and proprietary developed software may not respond as expected at any moment.
This problem is experienced by all software that import Word & Excel documents. It was Microsoft’s most effective way of maintaining its best-selling position for nearly 30 years.

But an emulator solves many problems… and for this reason we propose an interface within your program that emulates Excel and makes a request to one of our servers which provides you with the same result that Excel would have calculated for you as if you had done it right with your Excel.

This interface is available as a DLL, API and as a WordPress plugin.
The price? Go to the shop /shop/

Excel Worksheet Optimization

What does Excel Optimization Include?

There are many ways to optimize an Excel spreadsheet. We consider these activities as essential, but others could be added considering the specificity of the application and your specific needs.

  • Readability:
    • Clearly divide the input zone, intermediate computing zone, output zone;
    • Enucleate the constants, the diagnosis tables, the consultation tables;
    • Add comments;
  • Formulas:
    • Avoid calculating the same values several times;
    • Reduce string operations;
    • Reduce the nesting of the IFs because they are difficult to understand and maintain;
    • Reduce redundant formulas;
  • Troubleshooting & testing:
    • Introduce intermediate cells to simplify trouble shooting
    • Insert a test sheet where the input fields and the correct output fields are indicated. This sheet will be used every time even the most trivial modification of the Excel sheet is carried out;
  • Algorithms:
    • Prevent some calculations from being performed on external excel sheets;
    • Design mathematical algorithms (and related native Excel formulas) that are more efficient and more understandable;
    • Modify the algorithms to obtain better performances;
  • Formats:
    • Optimize the formats of the fields by standardizing them as much as possible;
    • Review the format of dates, currencies and related operations for more solid portability.

Excel Integration

Definition

Most of the time a database window is converted to CSV and then sent to the partner to allow him to do his post-processing.
However, each time there is some manual work to convert the CSV into the desired Excel which has been equipped with graphics, field formatting etc.

This additional work is sometimes a very high cost and in some cases beyond the competence of the recipient who would be forced to ask for help from a colleague or collaborator.

Therefore, we will have to study the way to save this cost which reduces any errors occurred during post processing.

In fact, Excel is one of the most powerful tools for data presentation, data pre-processing and data post-processing. In short, an irreplaceable companion.

Precisely because it has been matured for over 30 years of continuous improvements, it is still too little known.

Therefore, the first step is to bypass the passage from CSV which makes you lose all the necessary information, and which has a high cost to restore them.

The second step consists in integrating the Excel sheet directly into the data source that feeds it whenever the final recipient-customer wishes. There are several technologies. The most common one is the ODBC technique which enables the Excel sheet to enter a particular database view.

This technique, for example, constitutes a simple and elegant solution for reprocessing the data deposited within the CRM and for which the end user has the permissions to retrieve them whenever he needs it, avoiding asking for help from an expert or ask for temporary permits every time.

What-If Analysis

Definition

This powerful feature of Excel is particularly useful in drafting a company’s budget. A modern company works constantly on the edge of the budget which must be planned, which must be implemented otherwise the sustainability of the company is at great risk. So everyone makes a budget and everyone is busy modifying it and notifying the changes and getting them approved.

So, if Excel has this function, it is an important fact but in a logic of digital innovation it is not enough.
One function must be webized and therefore the functionality of Excel must be replicated within business procedures that are typically on the web.

This type of web-Excel-Budget-What-if-simulator integration is within the competence of our company, and we are ready to study a custom solution to make this periodic and frequent business need easily usable by personnel who do not have specific technological skills.

How we do Protect Customer Data

We comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) standards with EU customers and the recently issued ADPPA (American Data and Privacy Protection Act) standard for all other countries in the world.

In particular, we can use the digital sovereignty criteria used by the client, or the digital sovereignty criteria – prepared by us – and resident in the United States or resident in Europe or, at the client’s request, set up an environment resident in the country chosen by the client.

However, even more recently, an agreement was stipulated between the EU and the United States which states that American legislation today is equally valid for European citizens as well.

See Press release10 July 2023 Brussels:
Data Protection: European Commission adopts new adequacy decision for safe and trusted EU-US data flows

ref. ec.europa.eu

You can download here the doc wi894-Adequacy_decision_EU-US_Data_Privacy_Framework_en.pdf

How we Manage the NDP (Non Disclosure Policy)

Developing data solutions means coming into contact with customer data – even if only temporarily – and this raises a number of “legal” caveats and security. 

We have published our NDP (Non Disclosure Policy) /ndp_non-disclosure_policy which of course could be adapted to the specific needs of each individual client.

How do we Proceed with the Requirements?

STEP 1 
we organize a briefing during which we listen to the customer’s needs and collect all the information needed to set up a moke p for the customer’s exclusive use.

STEP 2
We deliver for free a mockup made on an excel sheet that represents the layout of the data without taking too much care of the editorial open of the optimal format of the data.

Along with this mock-up we provide a min/max quote which gives you an extra budget which we guarantee will not be exceeded.

Usually the min/MAX range respects the rule that MAX < 2 * min.

STEP 3
We will produce the advance invoice and as soon as we receive confirmation of the payment we undertake STEP 4.

STEP 4
If the client discovers that our offer remains competitive and is within its available budget, then we proceed to supply a definitive layout and write draft 1 of the requirements which include a chapter dedicated to:

  • “User story” or describes in words the User Experience, the operational workflow accompanied by further infographs;
  • “Features” or describes in detail the architecture, the technology, the data structure, the algorithms, the acceptance tests (Acceptance tests) that will decide whether we will respect the commitment received, the UAT (User Acceptance Test) environment inside of which we will deposit the artifacts so that the customer can do all the stress tests he deems appropriate before bringing the application into production, the internal tests in the QA (Quality Assurance) environment that will be carried out before bringing the application to UAT, the development environments on which we will work (Staging area) and their compliance with the agreed digital sovereignty criteria, the signing of the NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), the list of employees who will be involved in the development in various roles;
  • Project management within which all communications between the customer and developers will be managed and the management of work items, tickets, bugs, backlogs and where the versions of sources and data will be deposited;
  • Training and start-ups;
  • Maintenance, customer care, ticketing, guarantees;
  • If necessary and if requested, we can write the transfer procedures from UAT to Production and vice versa;
  • Installment of payments, checkpoints, delivery planning.

STEP 4
When the customer has signed all the documents produced for approval, and has made the payment envisaged by the agreements, we will start the development and respect the approved timing.

STEP 5
During the development the eventual sprints will be performed, and the various check points will be approved.

At the end of the development, we will collaborate with the customer on the final acceptance test, after which we enter the start-up and guarantee phase.

STEP 6
Once the start-up is complete and the warranty time is over, you enter the application maintenance period which includes the customer care and ticketing service until the end of the contract.

How we Avoid Conflicts, Critical Issues and Make the Climate of Collaboration Relaxed to the Full Satisfaction of all of us

The MS Azure project management system that we use, requires that all requests, specifications, and any type of communication is managed by the devops MS Azure platform.
Every meeting, call, chat is recorded and stored in an area accessible to both the customer and the developers.

So, it is easy to dismiss any controversy and any criticism.
Honestly, there has never been a case of critical relationships with our customers.

Last Updated on July 12, 2024