Automating data entry for end users

Abstract

Data entry professionals perform lengthy, repetitive tasks by hand, usually without the support of software tools. Since existing generic tools for end user programming were unable to automate data entry tasks, we worked with two data entry professionals on the iterative design and development of a new tool, named CoScripter Tables. The tool was made available within our corporation as a prototype and has been successfully adopted and is in regular use. This paper characterizes the needs of data entry professionals, describes the novel features of our tool, and presents a survey of 16 users which validates its use in a variety of real-world data entry tasks.