Programming an event management tool for Targecy

Digitization of scheduling with Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, Outlook and VBA

In 2023, Targecy GmbH (Frankfurt) commissioned eWorks, a Microsoft Excel specialist, to program an Excel scheduling assistant for its annual networking event in order to be able to plan several hundred 10-minute meetings across parallel time slots without collisions. Due to the annual increase in the number of participants, Targecy GmbH needed a tool that could automatically calculate the previously manually planned appointment series in future. The aim of this digitalization was to optimize the quality of results while reducing working time and process duration. For the eWorks Excel developers, this was the start of a highly consultative software project with intensive data analysis, mathematical algorithms and impressive efficiency gains. Microsoft Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) quickly proved to be the platform of choice for this specific Excel solution. This is because VBA programming enables maximum agility with minimum development costs and optimum Microsoft Office compatibility - which was important in order to populate the Outlook appointment calendar fully automatically and provide all users with the best possible experience. The eWorks Excel programmers consistently relied on the client's existing Microsoft Office environment: an Excel workbook with embedded VBA macros (.xlsm file) contains the customized business logic, structured data entry for participants, requests and availabilities as well as an individual Excel ribbon for convenient navigation. As usual in Excel, planning runs can be configured, target weights can be varied and all restrictions can be fully customized. All calculation results are evaluated with comprehensible key figures and can be readjusted directly in Excel if necessary. For communication with the participants, various Word serial letters are available, such as appointment overviews or schedules, which can be automatically prepared, addressed and sent by e-mail - including iCal attachments for inviting participants to appointments. The project was therefore interdisciplinary from the outset and required cross-team collaboration between the eWorks Word, Excel and Outlook programmers and the WordPress specialists from the website team.

From the VBA programmers' perspective, the numerous restrictions and technical constraints that arise in the everyday practice of trade fairs and events and that need to be reliably taken into account proved to be a particular challenge: Participant preferences, parallelization and generally too little time - virtually impossible to create clear overviews for organizers and participants at short notice without a digital scheduling assistant. In addition, fairness conditions had to be taken into account, such as low idle time, approximate equal distribution and best possible preference fulfillment. Finally, all restrictions, fairness conditions and other aspects were transferred into a mathematical, linear optimization problem and solved pragmatically using heuristic greedy algorithms. The underlying, powerful Microsoft Office with VBA, Excel, Outlook and Word made every idea quickly realizable.

Creating Excel macros is one thing, quality assurance is another: In a realistic pilot test with real data, the eWorks Excel experts confronted the developed planning tool with over 750 participants and 500 call pairings, which it had to schedule over several time windows, taking into account individual preferred contacts, availability, absences and capacity limits - a mammoth task for one person. The very first pilot test was successful: all calls were scheduled, restrictions were adhered to and fairness conditions were taken into account. The previously necessary, manual, error-prone, multi-week reconciliation process suddenly became a digitalized process with consistent quality of results and noticeably shorter lead times - much to the delight of the users. The Excel programming therefore proved itself immediately in practical use and was able to optimize planning from many weeks to just a few days. The possibility of nightly calculation runs does the rest to save the user's resources. Planning became simpler, more cost-effective, more error-free, more comprehensible, faster and fairer - as planned!

With going live, the basis was in place - stable, productive, digital. Then came the appetite with the food: new ideas and ambitions arose from real use and a dynamic environment. eWorks condensed the user feedback into a prioritized roadmap, implemented targeted enhancements and raised further productivity reserves. Day-to-day operations constantly provided new impetus, which was implemented step by step in further optimizations. For example, the eWorks software developers subsequently added backtracking to the planning algorithm, thereby further increasing the quality of the results. They also optimized the performance of the calculation process in order to keep pace with the growing volume of data. On top of this, the eWorks Word experts developed various Microsoft Word document generators to generate A4 schedules and A4 appointment cards, from which the user can create PDFs at the touch of a button and send them by e-mail. Last but not least, Targecy GmbH also commissioned a WordPress plugin that can read website registrations directly via CSV import. Thanks to the extremely productive Microsoft Office platform, this request could also be implemented in just a few days. This tailor-made software solution for this highly complex task shows that there is almost nothing that VBA developers cannot program using practical Excel macros!

Are you also looking for a software developer for a digital planning tool or other software for companies? If so, as Word, Excel and Outlook specialists, we will be happy to examine all your requirements and deliver a prototype with a clear roadmap for expansion - pragmatically, cost-effectively and quickly. Just get in touch with us!