The solution: Create custom apps that automate most of this, given certain inputs.
The problem: Lots of time spent on same old, same old.
The goal: How can we make our jobs easier?
The solution: Create custom apps that automate most of this, given certain inputs. Limits user interactivity, computer process time takes substantially less time, result is much greater productivity (10-20 minutes personnel time for what used to be a four-hour process) and 80% improvement in turnaround time.
The custom applications are apparently available on the CRC Endpoint Services Website: (no longer available)
What tasks do we do all the time that we wish that we could automate? Making a web form into Google Calendar, for example. There may be applications that already do this. One would have to look at the repository to find out about this. Matt Jerome at CRC (mjerome@stanford.edu) would be the contact. He has created a Google spreadsheet that could hold all of this.
For database-related tasks, Python and Xojo both work well. Udemy is a great way to learn how to program a new language. Udemy does not have Xojo but it's quite well documented and one can learn it simply by starting to play with it. (download at xojo.com)
A great resource is our colleagues. Talk to them. They might have experienced the same problem and might have a solution developed already.
We might consider a large framework or storage which allows easy access to a lot of very specific applications.
One area to look at is the issues that annoy end users.
