INSTRUCTIONS:

Throughout this course, many discussion opportunities come up where you need to respond to other people’s opinions and comments. Include a link to any site you used to help you respond to the questions. Make sure you respond substantively to each of the 4 posts (minimum 75 words each)

IT133: Microsoft Office Applications on Demand

CLASSMATE POST #1

Mail merge allows business and corporations to quickly and conveniently combine data from multiple documents into a single document and vise versa. When creating mailing labels for example, a business can use mail merge to combine data from a single source document and a content document formatted with the desired labels. In this example, the source document would contain a list of names, addresses, city, state, and zip code. The content (main) document is responsible for the layout of the labels, this includes size, number, and format of each label. When a mail merge is used, the desired data from the source document will auto-fill the desired information on the content document. The opposite can also be done, where data from multiple content documents can be combined into a single source document using mail merge. This becomes particularly important for business who often send hundreds or thousands of letters to multiple customers. Having to type each label individually would not only be time consuming, but can result in mistakes. Most source documents are often kept on a database, using mail merge eliminates the need to create multiple individual documents when only a portion of data is needed. Mail merge is also commonly used when creating financial reports, where data from multiple spreadsheets can be combined into a single document.

Kevin Ashby

CLASSMATE POST#2

Businesses use mail merge for bulk email, letters, labels, and envelopes.The mail merge feature in Word can help organizations produce various forms of written communication more efficiently. With the mail merge process, your organization can create a batch of personalized letters or emails to send to your professional contacts.Compared to the process of preparing individual letters to convey one set of information to many people. Mail merge saves you time and effort by automating the process of entering standardized pieces of data such as names and addresses into a document. When used smartly, mail merge can improve your productivity greatly. It also can boost the effectiveness of the documents you create.

Gregory Smith

IT190: Information Technology Concepts

CLASSMATE POST #3

Michigan law does allow an employer to track an employee’s internet usage on devices the company pays for, and data that passes through their network.

I believe that a plan like what we have at my workplace works well. My company ‘can’ monitor what we do on work computers, tablets, and phones. They do not monitor unless a request from a supervisor is put into writing. A supervisor would make the request if they have multiple reports of an employee wasting time doing personal things on the computer during company time. The policy is in place and buried in the fine print when an employee is hired. You agree to being recorded on camera and electronically. It is a very broad statement that not many would think means, all my online activity could be tracked. If the rules were stated plainly that we are tracking your online activity, most would just use their cell phone on their own data and do the same thing. One study said the average worker spends 5 hours out of a 40-hour workweek goofing off on line. It is a serious issue in my workplace.

Depending on how much the CEO wants to spend and how much monitoring they want to do would determine what software to roll out. Teramind looks to be a great but pricey choice. Teramind can be in stealth mode, where the user doesn’t know about it. Or for contractors or vendors that may use the computer, a notification can be made that they are being tracked. I think unfortunately, lost productivity due to misuse of the internet is a cost of doing business. I would however roll out the software without notification, and only use it in extreme cases.

James Davis

CLASSMATE POST #4

Pennsylvania law states that employers are allowed to use hidden cameras in their workplace as long as no sound is recorded and is not in private areas such as a bathroom regardless of intentions. Another law states that your employer may legally track their employees without their consent as long as they do not use that device to track them in a place with “reasonable expectation of privacy” unless they believe the person has criminal intent.

A software I read about is called Cerebral Security. Cerebral is monitoring software that uses multiple tools to monitor activity in what is called the five stages of monitoring: Watching, Analyzing, Alerting, Seeing, and Reacting. The “watching” phase tracks everything the employee does on the computer from moving files to reading emails to surfing the web. The monitored content is then ‘analyzed” by an AI that determines if there is a data breach and “alerts” the employer to the activity. The employer then “sees” what has happened and “reacts” accordingly. This boasts a “less than 2%’ false positive which for an AI is very good, but I think with some tweaking that could be eliminated.

To implement this plan would be simple, installing it onto computers while the employees are away and then introduce it to them on their next workday. I am a firm believer that people do a better job when they know they are monitored, so telling my employees even on the day of installation would work well for their overall productivity. In a way, it can be seen as a fear tactic, I would be using this software to scare them into doing their jobs instead of not telling them and having them caught and possibly fired. This will help them improve their work ethic and decrease the probability of them losing their jobs or getting in trouble. You would not do something illegal with a cop watching your every move right?

Bradley Stone

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