(Editor's note: This post from Adam Lazarus continues an ongoing series of posts from college students offering advice on how to use Office Live Workspace and other Microsoft software and services for their classroom work.)
Hello again. Just over a month ago, I wrote a post for this blog explaining how I started using Office Live Workspace for a class project. I'm writing again to fill you in on how it's going and why Office Live Workspace is really helping our group outperform the rest.
As I explained in my previous post, Office Live Workspace is helping our group in many different ways. The group project for which we are using it is designing a theoretical book-selling system using standard system analysis and design techniques. The project has three phases, each with its own due date. My group just completed Phase 2 and is just beginning the final phase. Even though we are two-thirds through the project, we're still finding new ways to use our workspace to keep us working more efficiently.
With the project stretching over an entire semester, I noticed the workspace was beginning to get cluttered and filled with lots of documents and files. It became harder for anyone to find what they needed. A neat feature we started using was to create folders in our workspace. That allows us to keep all of the documents more organized and separate everything into its own category.
Adam L. screenshot.png
Another part of Office Live Workspace that has come in handy is the ability to see different versions of each document. The project has strict deadlines, and there have been times when more than one person is working simultaneously on the same document. Being able to create multiple versions of documents has allowed us work more efficiently and collaborate better with each other.
A time when I noticed the Versions feature of Office Live Workspace really helping our group was when a team member was having difficulty creating diagrams in Microsoft Visio. He posted a comment on the workspace, asking for help. Another team member then created a new version of the document and showed him the correct way to create a diagram.
Our group has benefited greatly from using Office Live Workspace for this project. It gave us such a huge step ahead that a few other groups in the class have now also begun using it to manage their projects. The next phase for us is a presentation. My group is planning on using our workspace, along with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 in the new Office 2010 beta, to create the presentation.
I'm hoping it turns out just as well as everything else has so far with the project, thanks to Office Live Workspace.
Adam Lazarus
Junior, University of Tampa