Chapter 5: Productivity Basics

What We’ll Cover >>>

• Productivity Software
• Application Programs
• Utilities
• Office Suites
• Organization Programs
• Graphics Work Programs
• Communications Tools
• Specialty Work Programs
• Education Programs
• Programming Applications
• Accessibility Programs

This chapter will mostly identify categories of programs / applications used for productivity needs. It is not exhaustive, and won’t really cover all categories – mainly ones used related to productivity in education and the workplace, with a few supports. It also will focus on general categories and descriptions of the application types and purposes, but mostly not list specific applications to use since apps come and go and/or change name, pricing structures, availability, and integration-with-major programs’ capabilities. The exception to this will be where we discuss specific big program suites and options that are part of operating systems and/or of the well-established education/workplace market share.

Productivity Software

Productivity refers to how efficiently work converts input like labor into an output of goods and services. Productivity software refers to programs that enable someone to create and produce information output like in documents, databases, information media, and other data-related work products. Of course a lot of work products are more tangible, like equipment and customer-facing goods for purchase, but for this book’s context, this chapter will provide an overview of workplace productivity applications that have routine work uses.

The market for productivity software is huge, and includes program suites with multiple tools, stand-alone applications to use for specific work products, and many apps for mobile use.

Application Programs

An application program is a computer program that provides users with tools to accomplish a specific task. In productivity environments, like a college advising office, accounting company, factory, synchronous online meetings, movie post-production work, US Diplomatic Corps, mechanic shop – and so many more – computer programs are used in most aspects of operating and organizing the business, the handling of goods and services, research and development, and so on.

Application software can be any of the pieces of software on a cloud server, company mainframe, employee desktop, mobile talent’s laptop or tablet, and any smartphone used in part for self-organization and work-related support. Web browsers, productivity office suites, product websites for purchasing products (which use databases), online tax preparation programs, and scheduling apps are examples.

There are so many – thousands – in many categories. Any search engine query for something like ‘word processing applications,’ ‘scheduling software,’ ‘communication apps,’ and ‘conferencing tools’ will pull up many ads, web shops, and articles with aggregated lists of the “Top 10” or something similar.

Utilities

Utility programs were covered extensively in an earlier chapter; they are often supports for school, work, and general lifestyle needs. They don’t tend to be all-encompassing for multiple needs in workplaces, but they may be quick-use apps with questionable lifespans and security. However, some do also cross over into also functioning as common productivity applications, particularly ones with full scheduling and work management components, and messaging / meeting coordination tools. Some useful productivity utilities (too many for PC, Mac, Linux, and web-based use to list all here) include:

• Coding/programming: Notepad, HTML editors, browsers with editing.
• Communication: ZOOM, Teams, email and direct messaging apps.
• Documents: Wordpad, PDF makers.
• Finance: calculator, online banking apps.
• Graphics/media: online image editors, online web editors, stock photo acquisition and organization.
• Organization: calendar apps, task-list and noting tools, project management utilities, time trackers.
• Products/services–oriented: Online job application tools, reference/articles databases, grocery-shopping/product delivery apps.

Office Suites

There are many combination suites of tools, applications, and productivity extenders. So many that one should set one’s goals and needs, then use a web search engine to carefully search and weed out suites and packages that don’t meet needs or offer reliability and security.

For this textbook, to support basic Business Technology applications in a school setting and for workplace preparation, we’ll focus on programs that accommodate that. This textbook will leave industry-specific software solutions (like healthcare, automotive, financial/banking, marketing/merchandizing, human resources, engineering-related, vocational fields, etc.) to specific industry training certificates and degrees.

And, for this textbook, we’ll narrow down basic training and skills-building to the Microsoft® Office® suite. Skills learned for this are generally transferrable to other office suites, even if their user interfaces have some differences.

For office and multiple-industries workplace productivity, an office suite is an example of standard productivity software. Several office-work/information production programs are bundled together and can integrate in terms of styles, key shortcuts, templates, and transferrable skilling/tasks for getting work done. Suites can be installed on a computer, and/or accessed through a web platform from the cloud (manufacturer’s servers), and/or synchronized between both. Some can also have plug-ins from other applications that can extend the productivity suite’s capabilities (like Acrobat for PDFs, reference manager programs for foot- and end-noting citations, Power BI for adding data modeling to MS Excel, etc.)

TIP: Plug-ins/Extensions. A plug-in is a piece of software that adds features / extends functionality to existing program.

An office suite might include word processing, accounting spreadsheets, visual presentations, email/scheduling integration, print publishing, flow-charting, and database production. Some add additional tools and extensions, too many to list.

Word Processing: A catch-all phrase for producing many kinds of informational documents in various formats like textbook content (such as this book). A word processing program allows users to create, copy, save, edit, format, rename, print, and retrieve text-primary documents. Examples of word processing programs include Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Apple Pages, and LibreOffice Writer. They can be used for:

• Articles
• Assignments
• Correspondence and memos
• Newsletters
• Notes
• Novels and stories
• Project management documents
• Reports
• Resumes
• Term papers
• Worksheets

Spreadsheets: Another catch-all phrase for financial/accounting and calculations-oriented workbooks. A spreadsheet program is an application that organizes text and numeric data into a tabular format. Data can then be arranged, sorted, calculated (using formulas and functions), analyzed, exported, and illustrated using graphical representations. Examples of spreadsheet programs include Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, and LibreOffice Calc. A spreadsheet program can be used for:

• Accounting sheets
• Analyzing business performance data
• Calculating revenues
• Determining assignments’ weight and grades
• Figuring budget information
• Forecasting loan payments
• Preparing payroll information
• Producing charts and graphs

Presentations: These tend to present images, sounds, videos, text, graphics/charts, and other audio-visual clips and media to enhance general content for meetings, conferences, and customer-facing material. Presentation programs are designed to present information in transitioning slideshows and other multimedia formats. Examples of presentation programs include Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Apple Keynote. They are commonly used to:

• Create animated videos (with voice and animation)
• Design website concepts with hyperlinks and interactivity
• Enhance lectures and tutorials
• Make illustration slideshows
• Prepare slideshow presentations

Databases: An electronic warehouse of organized and structured text and numeric data that can be sorted, filtered, queried for specific information, and data report generation. Database programs (database management system) are applications designed for creating, editing, updating, maintaining databases, and managing organized information stored in them. Examples of database programs include Microsoft Access, Oracle Database, and TablePlus. Databases and their programs are used in the following industries (well, actually in almost everything):

• Banking
• E-commerce
• Education
• Government data
• Healthcare records
• Human resource management
• Library management
• Sports data
• Travel reservations
• Weather/climatology

TIP: Database vs Spreadsheet. A database is designed to hold potentially thousands to millions of tabulated records of data, for accessing, sorting, querying specific data issues, etc. A spreadsheet – while it can be big and also uses a tabular format, is designed for specific ranges of data for calculations and detailed analysis with filters, conditional formatting, summary tables, charts and graphs, etc.

Organization Programs

Organization programs and apps are designed to manage time, information, and other lifestyle & productivity schedule-oriented needs. Smartphone users have hundreds to choose from. Frequently there are “best organizing tools” articles with application lists, summaries, and links. Some of categories include:

• Calendars/scheduling
• Collaboration/meetings
• Note-taking/study aids
• Reading/viewing content priorities
• Reference/citation managers
• Tasks/Lists
• Time-tracking / accountability for payroll

Graphics Programs

Graphics-related applications can support office suite work, web page enhancement, and marketing/communications work products. They fall into several categories, with payware, SaaS options, freeware, and lightweight apps for computers and smartphones. Categories include:

• Design: Layout and formatting of publications, advertising, and visual-based communications.
• Graphics/images: Creation, modification, and organizing of images for other documents. Images can include photos, collages, painting, cartooning, clip/icon art, and image editing/clean-up.
• Animation: Seamless movement of imagery for presentations, online training modules, websites, and entertainment/education-related work products (and so much more).
• Modeling: Developing working models of content, like 3D characters and items for gaming, Computer Aided Design (CAD) for complex schematics and architectural designs, and adding texture and depth to 3D modules.
• Video/film: More than just animation, video/film-related productivity has to do with capturing, editing, modifying, and distributing video-related work like commercials, website ads, films, and film processing.

Communication Programs

Communications productivity programs are designed to make it easier for people (teams, employer/employees, students, conferences) to work together. Apps can centralize information and enable users to seek additional information, get technical help, and conduct synchronous online meetings. Some may include other useful features, such as client communication or project management. There are typically two major types of communications software that can be broken up into more specific areas and groups of programs.

• Asynchronous: Related to communications that can happen at any time, any place, at any distance, with an emphasis of one user to another user(s). This can include email, file transfers, blog and comments, forums, recorded lectures on a conferencing tool, streams of past events and existing entertainment, etc.
• Synchronous: Real-time communication is near-instantaneous for immediate consumption and action. Online live meetings using a conference tool is one example, and can be used for course lectures, collaborative meetings, seminars and workshops, and team-building exercises. Direct messaging/texting in the moment is another. Streaming videos of gaming or other activities is another, in which you can observe a live stream of something like the daily lives of foster kittens or witness someone preparing a recipe in an online ‘cooking party.’

Communication application categories can include:

• Chatbots/agents: Product and service websites often include a chat function. This may be handled solely by a chatbot, or opened with a chatbot before a user gets routed to live technical or customer support.
• Conferencing: As more jobs have moved to at-home workspaces and mobile locations, online conferencing tools for in-person meetings and collaboration have become a staple of work productivity.
• Editable/signable documents: Automated formstacks, and editable PDFs or other activated documents can let a user read, amend, and sign documents before emailing or returning them for processing. Students needing an early withdrawal can use an online withdrawal form at many colleges.
• Email: Email speaks for itself; messages with embedded or attached images and files can be sent back and forth. While email can have complexities of organization and retention, it also provides a message trail to help one remain in the loop about a situation or work interaction.
• Messaging: Direct or text messaging is much more in-the-moment than email. It can allow attached and embedded files as well. Messaging tends to behave like a multi-sided conversation, but by text rather than an audio phone call.
• Streaming: Streams can be of past events and are also often livestreams of a current event. Gamers may stream gameplay. People generating an online presence may livestream events of their day. A lecture of an online meeting can be livestreamed for those who are not participants but who want to observe the current activity. it also allows a streamer to create, present, solicit feedback, etc.
• Online technical support: Technical support for computer and technical systems can be provided online and in-the-moment. An example would be a user working with tech support of their laptop computer to solve a microphone problem, or a college tech support helping a student install an application like SplashTop so the student can use the college computers as a virtual machine on their own Chromebook.

Specialty Work Programs

There are too many specialty work applications to list, but they exist in the thousands, for all industries (consider visiting the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics). They tend to support:

• Industry-specific databases: (finance, human resources, real estate, insurance, informatics, medical information, products for shopping).
• Live Information: (financial, stock market, lenders, entertainment life feeds).
• Repositories: (book and article writing, journalism, research theses and academic papers).
• Research and development: (compilers, government database exporters).
• Work product creation and editing: (film, 3D printing, equipment parts creation).

Education Programs

Education is itself big business, because it employs and serves so many people and offers so many kinds of output (academic, financial, demographic data, career-training stats, training interfaces with specific industries). Programs can include:

• Financial: Student financial aid applications (FAFSA), education loans, college tuition and enrollment management, textbook and materials acquisition (bookstores).
• Learning management: Platforms for managing students, grades, curriculum, assignments, and teaching aids (like CANVAS).
• Media: Access to films, videos, clips, recordings, synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, etc. YouTube and other how-to examples.
• Reference/info managers: Information, articles, and other documents/data that can be referenced, cited, and used for academic and journalism papers, books, workplace development, and employment predictions.
• Statistical: Data for demographics, college success, college accreditation, program goals and outcomes, relationship of training to industries.
• Student work-facing: research tools, academic honesty checkers, work preparation (like Grammarly), training/demos (LinkedIn Learning, Khan Academy).

Programming Applications

All the emphasis on online and live-time workplace services and applications requires technical support for programming, coding, developing and modifying programs and tools, and more. These can include:

• Build tools: These are used to automate the process of building, compiling, and packaging code so it can be executed later.
• Code repositories: Platforms for developers to collaborate on code and share in programming libraries.
• Debuggers/testing frameworks: Find and correct code errors as part of streamlining and testing programming solutions and problems.
• Emulators/virtual machines: Used to create and operate isolated environments for software testing in different computing conditions. They can also stand in for computer productivity work if your computer can’t accommodate a needed program – you can log into a virtual machine and work with its programs as if it were one’s own machine.
• Integrated development environments (IDEs): Software applications with multiple-functions environment for coding, testing, and debugging programming for software, apps, and websites.
• Programming Editors: Simple editing applications that programmers use for coding websites, working in multiple code languages, developing mobile apps’ code, etc.
• Version control: Track changes to code over time for collaborating with other developers.

Accessibility Programs

According to the Disability Status: 2019 – Census 2019 Brief (Wikipedia), approximately 20% of Americans have one or more diagnosed psychological or physical disability. This doesn’t include undiagnosed persons. However, enough people face one or more kinds of barrier to doing routine work, study, and travel (commuting) that education and the general workplace has need of accessibility-related hardware and software.

Accessibility situations tend to rely on assistive technologies, which themselves are not inappropriate or unhelpful. However, there is a long way to go for enough Universal Design of in-person and technology-related hardware / software to eliminate barriers altogether. These things are worth considering when surveying tools and applications for team and workplace use, since one or more persons will likely be affected by an often silent difference in accessibility needs.

These can include:

• Audio: Persons with hearing divergence may need tools to help access audio information in lectures, videos, and meetings. These can include closed-captioning, noise cancelling mono audio systems earphones, sign-language interpretation, and prioritizing email and direct messaging over audio connections.
• Behavioral divergence: Can include persons through attention and stress-related issues, insecurity in food/shelter/safety that spills over into the classroom and workplace, and situations of substance addictions that can affect attention and information retention.
• Cognitive challenges: Persons on the Autism spectrum may absorb and feedback information differently. Persons recovering from brain injuries who are being retrained may experience info access problems. Mental illness expressions may leave persons needing need more time and extended deadlines to produce needed work product. etc. Dyslexia can make managing text content difficult, while other cognitive divergences may make watching videos with rapid image and lighting changes problematic. Each individual situation will be different. However, access may be improved by actual classroom and workplace interaction enhancements, like memory aids, task-stepping, reminder systems, programmed automation of some tasks, regular daily guidelines/scheduling, minimized distraction, colleague mentoring, clear procedure manuals, etc.
• Language: Persons for whom the dominant language in a region or country (like ESL learners) can experience issues interpreting text, audio, film, textbooks, and computing applications. Access can be increased by using learning and work applications with full translation capacity in any language, an interpreter, and computing keyboards that are aligned to different alpha-numeric keys.
• Mobility: Persons with mobility divergence may not be able to get to locations, use standard workplace tools the same way, and may need more room and time to accomplish some work product outcomes. Some persons may lack specific limbs or capacity to use standard computing tools. Transportation options, distance movement, exhaustion, and bulkiness of some mobility tools can limit access to the classroom and workplace as well. While it is tempting to recommend distance learning / home-based workplaces, the actual barriers to connecting technologically and in person need to be mitigated and removed so people can interact socially and professionally at any location. For instance, computer manipulation tools like sip-and-puff, joysticks, head wands, eye tracking, electronic pointing devices, and touch screens may accommodate specific needs.
• Visual: Persons with some or significant visual divergence may need tools to help clarify text (screen readers, magnifiers), and explain the content of images (alt text). Optical character recognition (OCR) software can scan printed materials into a computer for audio and other output formats. An accessibility menu may assist. Braille keyboards and voice recognition can help accomplish workplace tasks.