Development of maintenance tool for multilingual Word templates

Word programming of VBA macros for template maintenance

BMW Finanzdienstleistungen (Schweiz) AG (Dielsdorf, Switzerland) uses Word document templates for many business processes, each of which is required for three languages and four brands. As each Word template exists in 12 variants, thousands (!) of Word templates have been created over the years - and the trend is rising. The template maintenance degenerated into a material battle and became a "Sisyphean task". eWorks was commissioned to find and implement a technical solution to the problem that would significantly reduce the required template maintenance effort.

As a first step, eWorks developed a concept to drastically reduce the maintenance effort for the Word templates. As the use of a client-server system such as a document management system (DMS) was ruled out, the decision was finally made in favor of a Microsoft Office solution based on Microsoft Word and Microsoft Access 2007. The solution approach found consisted of 2 aspects: A) A) Reducing the number of templates and B) Programming a template maintenance tool. An important secondary condition was that C) no training was required for the countless Word users and template users. A technical solution approach was developed that fulfilled A+B+C, which was presented to the client, discussed together and finally approved - the implementation began.

In the second step, eWorks programmed a template analysis robot, the so-called "template crawler". Its task was to analyze thousands of old Word templates fully automatically, merge similar templates into a common "master template" and log any differences found in a Microsoft Access database. In addition, the template crawler was able to extract linguistic texts, independently find their translations and build up a language database similar to a "dictionary". As the generated master templates were comparatively "few" Word templates (a few hundred compared to many thousands previously), their maintenance effort was reduced to a fraction - goal A was achieved.

In the third step, a template maintenance tool was developed to reduce the time required for template maintenance even further: the so-called "template tool". This maintenance tool provides powerful functions for the mass editing of Word templates, for example for the global change of font and font size or for the global search & replace of multilingual texts. The template tool was developed as a Microsoft Word 2007 solution that could be easily integrated into the client's Office installation and provides the maintenance functions directly during template editing via the Word ribbon. Thanks to the maintenance functions, the most frequent, cross-template changes to all master templates can be carried out in one go - goal B was achieved.

In the fourth and final step, the so-called "template generator" was developed, which was able to generate all potentially required template variants based on the master templates and the language database. The template generator was the linchpin of end user acceptance: it ensured that, from the user's point of view, everything (supposedly) remained the same and all templates (apparently) still existed. Since nothing seemed to change from the user's point of view, no acceptance problems arose and neither user training nor a familiarization phase was required - goal C was achieved.

eWorks technically designed and developed the template crawler, the template maintenance tool and the template generator. All functions and masks were programmed in VBA ("Visual Basic for Applications"), a stable and proven Microsoft technology for integrating individual functions into Microsoft Office documents. eWorks programmed the software solution including the required VBA macros, handed it over to the client as a turnkey solution and supported him during installation. Following commissioning, eWorks is available to the client for troubleshooting (warranty) and change requests.