I only had one macro program used to estimate the cost of about 20 models of product in one operation.
I spent about 6 months researching the general functionality of OOo before finally converting this macro. Once converted, I uninstalled everyones (10 installations) MS Office 97 and installed OOo 1.1.2 (updated as needed to 1.1.4). This has worked well in our situation. No complaints from the general popluation. Everyone just uses it.
You should sell top management on this before going further. There is lot of freedom felt in the whole organization from making a move like this. Indepence is gained. Be sure to let your business constituants know you have made the move.
Conclusion: Convert and test all macros, then introduce with emphasis on the advantages ( somebody chime in here), demonstrating how the old macros have been converted and work fine, and finally hit them in the pocketbook, show how much money they will save in the future if they convert now.
We converted, tackled each small problem as it was encountered and went on with life. We are FREE!
Next is database, then accounting, then the whole damn OS.
Alex Janssen President Data Visible Corporation www.datavisible.com
Chris Benatar wrote:
I am working in a company that is currently doing the move from MSO to
OO.o and am involved in attempting to mitigate the impact of the change
WRT document conversion. We have about 150 seats so it is a fairly
small environment but it is still having a big impact on business. I
didn't initiate the change and would not have done so given the likely
fallout.
Users are typically reluctant to change from what they know and
conversion issues just give them extra ammo when complaining to their
managers. The most pronounced and important is the lack of macro
conversion.
If you think of it from a corporate perspective, it is a high risk to
make any change and to do so knowing that you are going to encounter
conversion issues feels like career suicide. The likely costs of the
complete conversion of say 4000+ seats worth of documents will no doubt
exceed the MS licensing costs and the potential for lost business as a
result of downtime could potentially be many times this. This means
that you have to take a gamble which will probably save money in the
long term but be much more expensive (and career limiting) in the short
term. From a corporate’s perspective this is Y2K times 10.
By having reliable document conversion and more importantly macro
conversion, OO.o could really take over the world. Corporates could
move across without the same level of risk. At the end of the day, in
the business world, corporates dictate the standards and smaller
companys follow and Joe average follows them and Auntie May follows
what Joe Average recommends.
The time and effort to make OO.o able to do this may seem considerable
but the results will transform the OO.o world and this in turn will do
amazing things to the general view of Open Source software. OO.o is
great because it allows people to try Open Source software without
having to go the whole hog and installing a new platform. It gives them
a chance to be convinced.
At present, I would not recommend OO.o to any company unless it is a
startup in which case I would push strongly for it. If the conversion
issues were properly resolved, I would recommend it to all companys big
and small.
Why do you care? The more users of an Open Source product, the more
Open Source standards are used and therefore the standards become
universal.
Chris
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