The EASA system enables an organization to create simple, web-enabled tools that automate and simplify the use of existing software and data, such as spreadsheets, databases, or other third party applications. Published on a corporate Intranet, these custom applications my be made available to anyone at the organization via a web browser. EASA empowers a wide range of personnel at an organization, giving each of them simplified access to software that might lie outside of his or her skill set.

EASA amplifies and transmits the experience, knowledge and best practices of the experts within a company to the rank-and-file decision makers. EASA contains Authoring tools that enable specialists in a commercial software application or an in-house code to create and publish an application with a simplified, web-accessible interface.

This 'Author's Guide' provides information and instructions for Authors to help them successfully create and publish custom EASA applications called EASAP's.

• Web Browser Access
  • A User may access EASA via a web browser across an organization's LAN or even across the Internet.
• Application Library
  • EASA Applications or EASAP's are stored in a central repository.
• Results Library
  • The output from an EASAP is stored in a central repository.
• Authoring
  • A specialist Author captures knowledge, expertise and best practices within an application.
• GUI Generation
  • The EASAP Builder streamlines the creation of an easy-to-use graphical user interface.
• Integration with Existing Systems
  • EASA interacts with existing software tools, databases or may be embedded via a special URL or Web Service calls
• Queuing
  • EASA includes a queuing system to maximize utilization of software licenses and computing resources.
• Low Bandwidth
  • EASA requires minimal bandwith by using internet protocols; mobile networks access is supported.

EASA recognizes three levels of access or roles: User, Author and Administrator.

All EASA users will need an EASA account with a user name and password.

An Administrator is primarily responsible for installing and configuring the EASA system. An Administrator will have access to both Administrator and User mode.

An Author is responsible for creating and publishing EASAPs for use by the rest of your organization. Author access to EASA allows both Author and User mode.

A person can be both an Author and an Administrator. This enables access to all three modes, User, Author and Administrator.

• A User operates a published EASAP. This means they will make use of the tools available in both,
  • The Application Library
  • The Results Library

By default all accounts in EASA always have access to User mode. In most organizations, the User role will involve the most people. To set up a User account in EASA, see Creating a New User Account.

An EASA Application, or EASAP, is a simple Web-enabled application to drive a software package, a batch script, an in-house code, database processing, or a live Excel spreadsheet computation …to name only a few of many possibilities.

An EASAP is created by an Author who is a specialist of some kind and uses computer software to fulfill a role. An Author will need to gain expertise and familiarity with the EASAP Builder, EASA's development environment.

Any EASAP generated using EASA’s Authoring tools will have a similar look-and-feel. Once a User has mastered the use of one EASAP, learning to use another EASAP is straightforward. The figure below shows an example of a typical EASAP GUI. In this EASAP functionality is specified by an Excel spreadsheet which takes a few inputs and generates a graphs and tables as output.

In addition to being simple and easy-to-learn, an EASAP should also generate useful results for a User. The popularity of an EASAP may depend to some extent on its ease-of-use, but ultimately, the value of an EASAP will be measured by the quality of the results it generates and inserts in the Results Library. Therefore, defining the report structure and format for presenting results to the User is an integral part of Authoring an EASAP.

An EASAP may allow a User the ability to effortlessly submit multiple runs as a Parametric Study. The User specifies a sequence of multiple explicit values for inputs and multiple runs are then queued and processed from a single EASAP submission. EASA provides special tools and content within the Results Library for aiding users in analyzing the results from the multiple runs.

New in EASA 6.0 is an option to replace the browser-based EASAP GUI above and interact with a local temporary spreadsheet instance or in EASA parlance, an Excel Client, saving new or modified data to a database with the EASA Ribbon. Read more about the Excel Desktop Client.