Macro Pack

Project Name: Macro Pack

Team: Alec Antell, Ken Knoblock, Kasie Mina, Jerome Nefkens, Tom Price, Stephen St. Cyr

Schools and Unites Represented: Campus Services, Central Finance, HMS, Treasury, OFSP

Mission:

To save employees time and reduce errors throughout the University by creating macros that automate routine tasks in Excel.

The mission of the project is to save employees time and reduce errors throughout the University by creating macros that automate routine tasks in Excel. There are many financial folks who use excel on a daily basis to complete many different types of tasks (e.g., analysis, modeling, reporting, etc.). Excel is a powerful and flexible tool, but it can be enhanced through the use of macros to automate routine tasks and can help eliminate mistakes and save time. My colleagues and I have developed many types of simple and complex macros, but these macros are saved locally on our hard drives and are difficult to share. We can send them to folks, but if a change is made to them, we would have to resend the macro and walk them through how to make the update. A number of people may be able to save time and effort by using a particular macro in excel but currently they either have to re-create it on their own because they are unaware that someone else already created it or they simply do without it and spend additional time at the task on hand.

Outcome:

Useful macros were identified and macro workbooks were created for widespread use.

The project team collected useful macros and created a set of macro workbooks to include in the centralization of the macros. Small finance groups tested the tool and provided helpful feedback used to refine the tool. In September 2018 the project team is set to host a kick-off meeting to demo the Macro Pack to a larger audience. The project team hopes to connect with others that will help support, improve, and scale the tool for many stakeholders across the University.