Topic: Spreadsheets

How much Excel can we get in Flex?

Sasha Dzeletovic, Thursday, January 29, 2009 @ 7:28 pm

...and why would we go around doing that when there are perfectly good solutions out there for online spreadsheets? For instance Google Docs in which I still haven't found a bug or a feature I'm missing.

Spreadsheets are necessary because people use them because they know how to use them. It is a straight forward interface that can yield good in high complexity situations.

Now most people want to use them online. And luckily there are plenty to go around.

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Software Development

More Killer App – OpenRecord, a Wiki/Spreadsheet

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, July 6, 2006 @ 9:00 am

I've been promoting the idea of the collaborative spreadsheet as the killer app for AJAX for a while now. First there was WikiCalc, then Google spreadsheet. The folks over at the Dojo Foundation -- yes, the Dojo Toolkit folks -- have been working on a Wiki app that fits into this category as well. From their about page:

The goal of the project is to create an open source software product. The product we're making is a wiki engine, but where most wiki engines are geared toward pages of text, OpenRecord is geared toward loosely-structured database content.

It's still in an early development stage, but you can take a peek at some prototypes here. Click around to the various pages and try adding and editing cells and rows.

Speaking from experience, these types of applications will need professional support if they are to make a dent in the corporate world. Look for the document and knowledge management folks (OpenText, EMC/Documentum, etc.) to start introducing these "Office Lite" functions in their products.

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Google Spreadsheet Available for Limited Test

Dietrich Kappe, Tuesday, June 6, 2006 @ 11:21 pm

Holy collaborative spreadsheets Batman! Looks like Google is getting on the killer app bandwagon with their new spreadsheet offering. It's only available in their lab environment to select invities. From the announcement and the google blog post, it looks exciting. I especially liked this bit:

Real-time collaboration: Google Spreadsheets can be
shared, updated and edited by several users at the same time, in
real-time, saving users from the hassle of manually consolidating
multiple spreadsheets from others. Users can also chat while editing or
viewing the same spreadsheet and control who may edit and view their
shared spreadsheets by listing the specific people by email address.

This has me feeling almost prophetic. If google comes out with a private label version, I may never use Excel again.

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Quick Update: Collaborative Spreadsheet

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, June 1, 2006 @ 9:00 am

Ajaxian alerts us that Jotspot has partnered with Salesforce.com to produce a collaborative spreadsheet-like application.

Check out the inner popups, formulas, security selections, etc. This
really shows how you can build an application that looks like a desktop
app but also has the mashup ability shown off too.

In this case the Salesforce.com application provides the backend model for the collaborative spreadsheet application. It does more than just provide a spreadsheet, however. It includes task tracking and calendaring.

What are Jotspot's plans for the application going forward? From the original article:

The salesforce.com/Tracker partnership is a good example of Jotspot's
strategy to "embrace and extend Microsoft", which Jotspot CEO Joe Kraus
and I spoke about previously in my post in March.
With JotSpot Tracker integrated into salesforce.com, there is no need
to download Excel files to the desktop - because everything is
available on the Web via the Salesforce service. Which of course is one
of the steps towards a Web Office suite!

Embrace Microsoft? That had better be a massive bearhug. Good luck.

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Software Development

Collaborative Spreadsheets: The Killer AJAX App?

Dietrich Kappe, Wednesday, May 3, 2006 @ 9:00 am

Management abhors a vacuum. That's why when there are no workable information systems in place, spreadsheets and email chains spring up to fill the gap. Anyone who has tried to tame one of these organic sneaker-nets knows how hard they are to uproot.

One of the reasons they are so resilient is that they work pretty well for the users involved. The user interface is familiar to all of them, and writing a spreadsheet is a heck of a lot easier than writing reports in crystal and entering data in a disconnected and unwieldy forms interface.

The downsides for the larger business are, of course, the reason why senior management typically tries to eradicate theses ad hoc systems is that their business data is stuck, unversioned and unverified, in employees inboxes and file-systems. They break down as they grow and as spreadsheets are invariably modified, often in incompatible directions, in response to changing and growing business requirements.

The response is to implement a variety of replacement solutions: Knowledge Management Systems, data entry and reporting solutions, work-flow and OPM systems. These solutions tend to be expensive, slow to implements, and ultimately unsatisfying replacements.

Why not embrace the spreadsheet and integrate it with the KM/work-flow/reporting systems? Collaborative spreadsheets, with roll-ups, entitlements, work-flow -- the killer App of the AJAX era? There are already a few AJAX spreadsheets -- Num Sum has a good one -- and in a blast from the past, Dan Briklin, one of the creators of VisiCalc, is working on WikiCalc. Don't get too excited. WikiCalc doesn't have any of those necessary things -- work-flow, roll-ups, reporting -- that would make this a killer app.

Bit even if the perfect solution comes along in a few months, that's no guarantee of success. One secret to implementing information systems that are successfully adopted is this: eliminate the competition. In the case of a collaborative spreadsheet system this means eliminating email attachments, desktop spreadsheet applications, shared file-stores, etc. The AJAX collaborative spreadsheet may be a little ways away from being able to replace the current desktop solutions, but their time may come.

At any rate, these office apps are unlikely to be Microsoft's Pearl Harbor or anyone elses.

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