OPAS - AN OFFICE PROCEDURE AUTOMATION SYSTEM

A discussion is presented of an experimental system being developed to support office automation. The emphasis of this study is on a technology that allows people to automate their office and business activities. Specifically, using forms as the interface, the authors propose a powerful data manipulation and restructuring facility that not only allows users to extract and manipulate data in the forms, but can be used to interface between new and existing applications as well. Since business and office procedures are not discrete activities, but a structured sequence of activities, a means to define and execute procedures is required. Such a means is described along with its model and an example of its application.