State of Florida House of Reps case study

Solution By using the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, the House improved its Engrossing and Enrolling application, which produces a current or final version of a bill, with a custom Ribbo

Microsoft Office System Customer Solution Case Study

Custom Line-of-Business Application Streamlines Florida Legislative

Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Government

Customer Profile

The Florida House of

Representatives, along with the

Florida Senate, drafts and passes

laws for the citizens of Florida

Business Situation

During the debate process, bills

may be amended multiple times by

legislators Each amendment needs

to be efficiently incorporated into a

bill To do so, the House staff used

an internal and manual application

Solution

By using the 2007 Microsoft® Office

system, the House improved its

Engrossing and Enrolling

application, which produces a

current or final version of a bill, with

a custom Ribbon user interface and

task panes

Benefits

Tasks completed 60 percent

more quickly

Lower training costs

More effective search capability

“The updated Engrossing and Enrolling solution capitalizes on a user’s familiarity with the Microsoft Office system, saving the House time and money while improving quality.”

Roger Foutch, Applications Manager, Florida House of Representatives

For some time now, the Florida House of Representatives has used Leagis, a custom system, to create, process, and track legislation The custom Engrossing and Enrolling application within Leagis integrates closely with Microsoft® Office Professional Edition 2003, but the task of amending bills still required legislative staff to locate and open separate Microsoft Office Word 2003 documents for every bill and every amendment to a bill A pilot project using the 2007 Microsoft Office system allowed Florida House IT staff to provide a remedy Using the new Microsoft Office Open XML file formats, the updated application lists all bill amendments in a custom task pane that allows staff to incorporate amendment text into a bill with just a few clicks in the user interface Now, a process that might have taken 30 minutes can be done in less than 10 minutes, with far fewer errors.

The Florida House of Representatives consists of 120 legislators These representatives create laws that support the safety and well-being of the citizens of Florida, the fourth largest state in the United States

When drafting a law, the House of Representatives subjects each to a series of committee hearings and floor proceedings, during which members debate the contents and add amendments In a process called

“engrossing,” each time the House adopts amendments, a new version of the bill reflecting those changes is prepared overnight Once bills pass both the House and Senate, they are

“enrolled,” signed by the Speaker, President, Clerk, and Secretary, and then presented to the Governor for his action

To maintain updates of each textual change throughout the bill’s life cycle, the House used a custom application built using the Microsoft® NET connection software The application, Engrossing and Enrolling, closely integrated with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003

While the application simplified information and version management, Engrossing and Enrolling required legislative staff members to locate all the amendments for a bill, manually determine the order in which to implement each amendment, and to cut and paste amendments into the text of the bill It was a cumbersome

method and errors were more common than they should have been

“Accuracy during the engrossing and enrolling process is critical But it can

be difficult to achieve because of constant changes We wanted a way

to easily track amendments and to increase automation for users,” says Roger Foutch, Applications Manager

at the Florida House of Representatives

The IT department of the Florida House of Representatives began to brainstorm ways to improve collaboration and communication during the enrolling and engrossing process, and sought a solution that would reduce both manual labor and the introduction of errors

Solution

Developers within the Florida House

of Representatives immediately recognized the opportunity that the customization capabilities of the 2007 Microsoft Office system presented Developers migrated the current Engrossing and Enrolling application from Microsoft Office Word 2003 to Microsoft Office Word 2007, customizing the application using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 1 This tool helps developers create add-ins at the application level, rather than only at the document level

Explains Foutch, “The developer environment within the 2007 Microsoft Office system helped us

Fast Facts

Development

team Two developers,a business

analyst, a database analyst, and a technical architect

Estimated

time to

complete

Pilot project developed in two weeks

Developer

tools Microsoft VisualStudio 2005

Tools for the

2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 1

Programming Microsoft Visual

tailor the Engrossing and Enrolling application to create a line-of-business solution that meets the needs of our users.”

Built on top of Office Word 2007, the updated Engrossing and Enrolling application allows users to enter a bill number into a custom task pane The application then queries the Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 database, and the pane displays the amendment hierarchy for the bill, automatically telling the users which amendments are up-to-date and the order in which

to incorporate them

Extensible Ribbon User Interface The new Ribbon user interface (UI) replaces traditional layered menus with an intuitive structure that exposes commands and features as the user needs them In addition, by using the Open XML file format, developers can manipulate the components and commands available

in the UI Taking advantage of this feature, House developers customized the UI for Office Word 2007,

integrating task-specific buttons and icons, as illustrated in Figure 1

“The UI customization capabilities in Office Word 2007 allowed us to create

a tool that blurred the line between the native functionality of Office Word

2007 and the task-specific functionality needed by the Engrossing and Enrolling application,”

says Rahul Aggarwal, Enterprise Architect at the Florida House of Representatives

Modified Task Panes Figure 1 also shows the custom task pane The Cypress tool, part of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, enables seamless communication between the Ribbon UI and task panes When a user selects a command from the UI,

a corresponding task pane appears, directing the user to complete a specific action When multiple documents are open simultaneously, each maintains a unique task pane

Figure 1 The Ribbon user interface and task

pane were extensively customized to

facilitate a smoother engrossing and

enrolling process

The 2007 Office release turned a good application into a great tool Now, staff can complete engrossing and enrolling tasks more quickly, with little training time needed

“The updated Engrossing and Enrolling solution capitalizes on a user’s familiarity with the Microsoft Office system, saving the Florida House of Representatives both time and money while improving quality,”

says Foutch

Tasks Completed More Quickly The heavily customized Engrossing and Enrolling application turns a once-manual process into one that’s partially automated

Says Foutch, “Users don’t have to sift through various folders to find every amendment for a bill They just enter

a bill number into Word 2007, and associated amendments

automatically appear in the task pane Instead of 30 minutes, it takes just 10 minutes to engross a bill.”

In addition to efficiency, the automation also increases reliability Users are less likely to overlook an amendment or make an error when selecting the most up-to-date amendments for a bill

Lower Training Costs The customized Ribbon UI and task panes for Office Word 2007 create a more intuitive environment inside the Engrossing and Enrolling application for users Explains Aggarwal, “We threw in as many ‘bells and whistles’

as possible in order to create a better user experience, hence the context menus and myriad tailored icons inside our Word 2007 application.” Depending on the task that users are performing, the enhanced UI exposes the appropriate tools This feature enables the Florida House of Representatives to allow staff with little training to format complex documents—a tactic that has substantially increased efficiency for the House

In addition, the new UI exposes users

to a deeper level of functionality than they’ve ever experienced before More Effective Search Capability

In addition to making it possible to modify the application, the Open XML file formats the 2007 Microsoft Office system supports, connect content and back-end systems This ability allows

“The developer

environment within

the 2007 Microsoft

Office system

helped us tailor the

Engrossing and

Enrolling application

to create a

line-of-business solution

that meets the

needs of our users.”

Roger Foutch, Applications Manager,

Florida House of Representatives

the House of Representatives to more efficiently use the content within documents and simplifies the enrollment process

Says Foutch of the technology, “This positions the House to quickly realize benefits as we apply the Open XML file formats to both future bills projects and use it to more efficiently exchange bill information with the Senate.”

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office System is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact

For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to:

www.microsoft.com/office

For More Information

For more information about

Microsoft products and services, call

the Microsoft Sales Information

Center at (800) 426-9400 In

Canada, call the Microsoft Canada

Information Centre at (877)

568-2495 Customers who are deaf or

hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft

text telephone (TTY/TDD) services

at (800) 892-5234 in the United

States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada

Outside the 50 United States and

Canada, please contact your local

Microsoft subsidiary To access

information using the World Wide

Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about the

Florida House of Representatives,

call (850) 414-6603 or visit the Web

site at:

www.myfloridahouse.gov

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation This case study is for

informational purposes only MICROSOFT MAKES NO

WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS

Software and Services

Microsoft Office system

− The 2007 Microsoft Office system

− Microsoft Office Word 2007

Microsoft Visual Studio

− Microsoft Visual C#

− Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 1