The City of Eagan, Minnesota, uses many types of software to help manage its physical and data assets. As the technological environment has grown and evolved, some software products have become siloed, and some workflows have become reliant on older, less advanced software. How do staff connect the different parts of a technical workflow? How can we ensure that users are able to maintain functional and familiar workflows as we upgrade how we work with our data? To explore this question and potential solutions, we will look at a project management spreadsheet and a capital improvement plan (CIP) spreadsheet, two workflows that used to be intensely manual and have now been mostly automated. The process of connecting software products and moving data automatically can be accomplished using common tools like Microsoft Excel, Power BI, and Power Automate. As a result, data is more easily accessed and dispersed, and data from a single source is used in different displays and applications. On the surface of these workflows, staff are able to use the same processes and tools they are familiar with, while also seeing how the data is used beyond the original objective.
At the conclusion of this session participants will be better able to:
• Identify workflows in the organization that may benefit from bridging methods like live reporting.
• Consider timelines and priorities for workflows when modernizing databases.
• Acquire some tips and tricks for bringing live data into Excel and creating useful reports.
Contributor/Source
Robin Drucker
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