Integration of Software

There are almost as many different types of computer software applications as the number of ants found in a typical mound. While ants do communicate with each other, many software products do not. Many of  these products are deliberately designed to be proprietary. These products typically require support subscriptions. 

If you own one of the many proprietary software products, and have a large quantity of data in it that you need to move to a new software application, various means are available to do this. Many of the older applications use database file structures readable by Microsoft Word, and other applications. In others the data can only be retrieved by capturing the printed reports as a computer file. This file will then need to be cleaned up and manipulated for import. Some applications do not export or print all of the required data and must be re-typed into new applications, or converted by the vendor to readable files. 

Of the products that do provide a degree of integration, many require a knowledge of computer database structure as you must import files in different order than the application you are importing them to. An example of this is Microsoft (r) Outlook and Outlook express which is used by 70% of the US population. This product offers a "Import" option where in you are allowed to import CSV (Comma Separated Value) files, or Excel spread sheet data. The import is not directly done as various fields or data must be matched to the files inside of Outlook. This is accomplished by clicking on a displayed piece of data, and matching this to a filed name in Outlook. If a mistake is made, the entire address book needs to be deleted, and the file re-imported.

It therefore becomes important when choosing a new software to review the Import, and Export capabilities of the software to avoid future problems. The Export files should be of common  CSV or Excel type structure and contain no control codes. They should have all the pertinent information in them and file headers should exist to identify the data. Import functions must clearly define what information to import and in what order.

( TimeLegal has full export and import functions under our utility menus)