Subject Code: AP-522

Subject Name: Professional Practice (Online )

OFFICE AUTOMATION

Prepared by: Ar. Sahil Singh Kapoor

Affiliated to GGSIPU and approved by COA & AICTE

Office automation is the application of computer and communications technology to
improve the productivity of clerical and managerial office workers. In the mid-1950s,
the term was used as a synonym for almost any form of data processing, referring to
the ways in which bookkeeping tasks were automated. After some years of disuse,
the term was revived in the mid-1970s to describe the interactive use of word and
text processing systems, which would later be combined with powerful computer
tools, thereby leading to a so-called "integrated electronic office of the future".

The major functional components of an office automation system include text

processing, electronic mail, information storage and retrieval, personal assistance
features, and task management. These may be implemented on various types of
hardware and usually include a video display terminal, a keyboard for input, and a
hard-copy output device for "letter-quality" printing.

Affiliated to GGSIPU and approved by COA & AICTE

Initially, systems sold by major manufacturers were aimed at clerical and
secretarial personnel. These were mainly developed to do word processing and
record processing (maintenance of small sequential files, such as names and
addresses, which are ultimately sorted and merged into letters).

More recently, attention has also been focused on systems which directly
support the principals (managers and professional workers). Such systems
emphasize the managerial communications function.

Affiliated to GGSIPU and approved by COA & AICTE

Electronic mail and filing permit a user to compose and transmit a message on an
office automation system. In the early 1970s, the ARPANET community developed
a number of such systems which have been heavily used. Through standard
message format protocols, several hundred different computers and electronic
mail interfaces are able to exchange information with one another. These protocols
are like the post office's specification of how recipient and return addresses should
appear on envelopes and which sizes are allowable for envelopes. In the electronic
message world, they describe what sequences of characters are required at the
beginning of a message to identify the sending and receiving mailboxes.
Automating the filing system of an office has proven to be most difficult for
documents which are not created on some electronic system. These enter the
electronic storage medium in one of several ways. They may be scanned using a
facsimile or image scanner for later viewing on a CRT or as facsimile hard copy.
They may be microfilmed or microfiched, with the user supplying some index
terms for a document

Affiliated to GGSIPU and approved by COA & AICTE

To the system. Later, the microimage reader moves the proper frame into view
under computer control. Or, the entire text may be re-keyed into the system.
Once the document is captured electronically, indexing becomes the main
problem. One can index by keywords only, or attempt, as some legal retrieval
systems do, to index every single word. These issues have been thought out in
the library information retrieval context over many years. There is also some
experimentation with other indexing cues, such as spatial (the document is on
the "second" shelf on the right in some computer image of an office) and
pictorial (a graphic symbol is shown on a CRT: e.g. a dollar sign for budget
information).

Affiliated to GGSIPU and approved by COA & AICTE

Today's organizations have a wide variety of office automation hardware and
software components at their disposal. The list includes telephone and computer
systems, electronic mail, word processing, desktop publishing, database
management systems, two-way cable TV, office-to-office satellite broadcasting, on-
line database services, and voice recognition and synthesis. Each of these
components is intended to automate a task or function that is presently performed
manually. But experts agree that the key to attaining office automation lies in
integration-incorporating all the components into a whole system such that
information can be processed and communicated with maximum technical
assistance and minimum human intervention. This goal can be accomplished when
(1) computer, communication, and office equipment are networked and (2) an office
worker can easily access the entire system through a personal computer sitting on
his or her desk. Then it will be possible to change substantially the way people work
in an office.
Affiliated to GGSIPU and approved by COA & AICTE