This month’s edition of Touchline sees the official announcement of E-Day, the day the paperless office finally arrives at the RFU! Over the next few editions of Touchline, I will provide you with information that will ensure you have the necessary tools to remain in touch post E-Day. This first article addresses the software that will be required.

Despite E-Day being some two years away, I would suggest that you do not leave it until the last minute to gain access to a computer. In fact,
I would strongly advise you to consider joining the computer age at your earliest opportunity.

Website
The RFU is publishing more and more information on its website, www.rfu.com. The adoption of the internet as a publishing tool has seen the birth of a new paradigm, i.e. a shift from ‘push’ technology (the author sends information to his intended audience) to ‘pull’ technology (the author publishes the information and the onus is then on the intended audience to retrieve it). The main advantages of the latter approach are:

• cost savings (the information only resides in one place)
• everybody has access to the same information (there is only one version)
• the reader is guaranteed to always be looking at the latest available information (with paper, there maybe a later version superseding the version being read).

This move also requires a new approach in our thinking. We have all grown up in a world where important information is always sent to us. In the future this will not necessarily be the case. Therefore, it is necessary to get used to the idea of retrieving the information we require as well as familiarising ourselves with new tools to assist us in refining our search to find the specific information being sought.

The RFU website has been optimised to be viewed using Internet Explorer version 5 or higher. This browser will allow you to view all the areas of the site to which your username and password give you access.

Some parts of the site offer user guidelines (e.g. how to administer the club pages). To view or print these guidelines, you will require Adobe Acrobat Reader version 4 or higher to have been installed on your computer. This is a piece of freeware. Whilst it can be downloaded from the internet (this is likely to take approximately 40 minutes via a 56kbps modem) it is often available on CD-ROMs attached to computer magazines.

If you are intending to publish information on your club or CB website and wish to use photo editing software the recommendation is to use Photoshop v5.5 or later.

Communication
If members of the RFU are to communicate between themselves effectively, it is an unfortunate but necessary evil to introduce some standards to facilitate it. Similar standards also exist in our spoken word world. How often have you been abroad and had difficulty communicating with the local people because you do not speak the national language of the country you are visiting.

In this regard, the world of IT is no different. By drawing an analogy between software and language it is clear to understand why standardisation is required. There are a number of different software manufacturers each offering products to address similar business needs. For example, each word processing application can be considered to be a different language from any other. As a consequence, the success rate in being able to read a document in manufacturer A’s product which was originally written in manufacturer B’s cannot be guaranteed - the ability to ‘translate’ from one language to another cannot be predicted. Therefore, if we are to be able to ‘communicate’ with one another via email attachments, we must all know and familiarise ourselves with the language that is being spoken.

The RFU uses Microsoft applications for it’s standard office suite of applications. There are a number of reasons why Microsoft has been chosen and whilst these reasons are outside the scope of this article, one important factor is the fact that Microsoft is the industry leader in office automation and therefore their products are the most widely used.

Specifically, at the RFU, the current standard is Office 97. Therefore, if you are looking to attach documents to your emails, please be sure that the relevant Office 97 product is able to open it. Please note that I am not advocating that you purchase Office 97. At the time of writing ‘Xp’ is the current version of Microsoft Office.

Fortunately, all Microsoft Office products are backwardly compatible. Therefore, if you are currently using Office Xp or are intending to purchase it, you will still be able to communicate with the RFU, but a little more care is required. The latest version of Microsoft Office has a number of features that will not all be supported by earlier releases. Therefore, if for example, you have created a Word Xp document, Word 97 will be able to read the document, but some advanced features will not be supported. A complete list can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/office/evaluation/indepth/compare.asp

It should also be noted that Microsoft Office Xp comes in two versions; the standard edition and the professional edition. The only difference between these two products is that the professional edition includes Access, a database design tool. The RFU has deployed the standard edition with very few users having Access. Please be aware that Access applications are not backwardly compatible.

Finally, although other software is not necessary for the purpose of communicating, I would urge you to protect your computer against viruses. For futher information on this topic please refer to Chris Notley’s article on page 13 in the January 2002 issue of Touchline.