[Originally published 1999.]
Word of Law No. 18 began an exploration of the tasks, skills and division of labor for effective use and support of Microsoft Word by medium to large organizations. This column continues with the responsibilities and skills of the Microsoft Word help desk and development staff.
Help desk staff assist both general and master users in the application of the organization’s standards to document creation, editing and production. They have primary responsibility for troubleshooting the difficulties that inevitably occur. It should be no surprise that the skills required for these positions include all of the skills described for both general and master users. That statement is not trivial, and we will return to it. In addition, the support staff needs to master the techniques of diagnosis and cure. For instance, if the organization’s use of Microsoft Word has embraced the Laws of Styles, the help desk staff needs to know how to examine a misbehaving document for direct formatting, and the techniques for stripping that formatting and applying proper styles.
The help desk staff needs to understand the entire range of documents produced by the organization and the solutions adopted by the organization for their formatting. This can make for some interesting staffing challenges. On the one hand, help desk staff who have grown through the ranks from general user through master user may have the best knowledge of the real life requirements for document production. On the other, the help desk staff should teach and promote the organization’s standard solutions. These may differ from the field experience, and help desk staff should be flexible enough to master the new solutions.
The help desk staff are in an especially good position to identify needs for improvement or development of the Microsoft Word environment. They can and should identify customizations not yet incorporated in the organization’s standard templates, AutoText or other customization of the Word environment. They should be encouraged keep a log of such incidents and suggestions.
For these responsibilities, the help desk staff requires yet a deeper understanding of Microsoft Word. They need to understand the role of templates, styles, AutoText, macros toolbars and menus. They need to understand what functions can be performed by each of these, even if they don’t know how to program or modify them. They need to be adept with the research tools for Microsoft Word, including the help files, Microsoft’s Support Knowledge Base, newsgroups and the library of third party books.
One way to think of trainers is help desk staff who have been released from their desk and moved to the front of the classroom. Of course, success in training requires skills in teaching and public speaking, which we need not review here. My point is that the trainers should offer most of the skills and knowledge we have just described for the help desk. Above all, they need to understand and promote the solutions the organization has developed for its use of Microsoft Word. For trainers permanently employed by an organization, this is relatively straightforward. The growth path from help desk to trainer, as outlined here, can accomplish it well. When an organization acquires its training from an outside vendor, the task becomes more challenging. The training vendor should learn the organization’s environment and tools, and customize the curriculum to incorporate them.
Developers
Developers bear responsibility for the back end of an organization’s use of Microsoft Word. They build its standards, including templates, styles, AutoText and macros. They need to master Visual Basic for Applications to enable templates to take advantage of its capabilities for customization and user input. They need to master the design and creation of forms, if used by an organization, and how to program the use of forms with VBA. They need to understand how Microsoft Word can communicate with other applications, especially Microsoft Outlook or a document management system, to obtain or share information.
The capabilities and potential of VBA as an applications development environment has made “real” programming talent an essential part of an organization’s Microsoft Word skills. Here, though, there is a significant potential for a disconnect. This staffing model has been based on an accumulation of skills, each level building on and expanding from the earlier levels. Finding staff with all of the skills we have described for help desk who can then master VBA may be challenging. Similarly, staff hired because of their programming experience may not have sufficient experience or skill in the actual document production. It may not be possible to have all of these skills in one person or group of persons, but being conscious of the issue can help.
In the next column, we will examine the responsibilities for coordinating and directing these responsibilities through the role of a system architect. We will also look at the lessons for smaller organizations and individuals.
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.