Advantages -
- Cuts down time in completion of the task (usually the set up of a program)
- Allows inexperienced people to set up the software or complete the task without lots of background knowledge
- A corporate image or house style can be applied easily so it sticks with the businesses theme.
Disadvantages -
- Limits how customisation the user wants it to be, preset choices and there may not be many of them
- The wizard may offer options that are not wanted or required so it may not be too relevant
- May look similar to that of other companies
An example wizard is seen below, this is the function wizard within excel.
Another example is the Microsoft office set up wizard seen below.
When you open publisher it gives you several templates to choose from, it also gives you options to sift through business or personal templates. This enables the user to both use the program to create business format documents and personal for in home or informal letters. The reason why they do this is to save time for business when creating a publisher document they may want to mail merge it as a Christmas card, this would not be suitable for the business standard meaning it would be way to formal and would not look right. When creating a business document it may not look correct either because if it has the layout of the Christmas card it is not professional, they are all created preset by designers with your situation in mind. This aids the creation of documents massively as it allows the user to choose whatever theme they may need. As seen in the photo below:
This is also seen in Microsoft office, it gives several templates based on what is for, they have templates for letters, reports or even just text based documents each with different features such as page numbers or a front report page. This allows for both informal and formal writing for business matters or personal. This is seen in the picture below:
A house style is the preferred style the business tries to keep consistent in all of their documents. This is along all documents, emails and presentations. The reason being is it creates brand awareness and makes them look more professional when everything is consistent. An example of Microsoft house style is seen below:
This is the house style they use on letters, it has their logo with the address and contact information. It will also likely follow the same font and sizes with text and this creates a consistency they will use in all documents of this nature. The reason why they are hard to find is they were designed by their designers for use within the business world, presentations within the business will use this and it will not be spread around as it means they are easily forged and can be used to scam people.
A macro is a single instruction that expands into several instructions in order to complete a task. It is automated and often done in excel. It is often done in the form of visual basic or recorded.
