Authors of EASAPs will have some common characteristics. They should be:

• Experienced users of the software applications to be driven by an EASAP

• Knowledgeable about the needs of the user community within their organization

• Trained in the use of EASA authoring tools

There are also a few characteristics that EASAP Authors do not have to possess. They do NOT have to be:

• Software developers

• Trained in GUI programming i.e. know Java, C++, etc.

• Experts in User Interface design

If you would like to get a User account on EASA, you will need to contact one of your EASA administrators to get a User name and password. A list of your EASA administrators will be displayed when you select Support under the Help menu. If you think that you fit the profile of an Author and would like to generate EASAPs of your own, you will again need to notify an EASA administrator to have your User account modified to allow Author mode access. In addition, you may be required to attend an EASA Author’s training course to become eligible for receiving technical support as an Author direct from an EASA Support office.

As you start to use EASA, a good way to quickly learn how to use the software is to make use of the available tutorials. Currently, there are four tutorials from which to choose, these cover interaction with spreadsheets, databases and batch analysis software. You will need to download some files that are required to complete the tutorial.

From the EASA webpages, select Author mode:

Select the Tutorials tab under Help:

Download the Tutorial Files to a local folder and begin the tutorial outlined in the Tutorial Notes link.

Tip: The EASA Authoring Tutorials are designed to help you rapidly learn the skill of authoring EASAPs. If you have not yet attended an Author’s training course, it is highly recommended that you work through the online tutorials before beginning to author your own EASAPs.

In Author mode, your main focus will be creating EASAPs to be published for use by others in your organization. All the tools required to generate, test, document and publish your EASAPs are found on the EASA Web Pages in Author Mode. Pages describing them are found below:

• EASA (same as in User Mode)

• Applications

• Authoring

• Help

It will not always make sense to create an EASAP to run software applications. There are certain characteristics of use that need to exist before creating an EASAP will be worth the effort. These characteristics are:

• A recurring need to perform similar analysis

• Potential users exist that do not know how to use the underlying software applications, but would benefit from being able to use them

• A commonly used software application could be made more productive with a simple-to- use GUI

• Old analyses are often retrieved and re-used, and therefore, archiving them in a re-usable form would make this process easier

A common theme in the above list is the idea of repeated need. Creating an EASAP will not make sense for the one-off problem solving cases. In general, EASAPs will be more useful for ongoing processes and design efforts, than for troubleshooting specific problems, unless they are of a recurring nature.