Candidate Style Answers OCR GCSE ICT J461/J061 Unit B062 Practical Applications in ICT: Controlled Assessment Task High Grade Candidate Response This support material booklet is designed to accompany the OCR GCSE ICT specifications for teaching from September 2010. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 1 Introduction OCR has produced these candidate style answers to support teachers in interpreting the assessment criteria for the new GCSE specifications and to bridge the gap between new specification release and availability of exemplar candidate work. This content has been produced by subject experts, with the input of Chairs of Examiners, to illustrate how the sample assessment questions might be answered and provide some commentary on what factors contribute to an overall grading. The candidate style answers are not written in a way that is intended to replicate student work but to demonstrate what a “good” or “excellent” response might include, supported by examiner commentary and conclusions. As these responses have not been through full moderation and do not replicate student work, they have not been graded and are instead, banded “middle” or “high” to give an indication of the level of each response. Please note that this resource is provided for advice and guidance only and does not in any way constitute an indication of grade boundaries or endorsed answers. The following files are included: B062 Candidate Style Answer (PDF) Litchfield ICT solution (PowerPoint) Presentation (PowerPoint) Litchfield ICT System (Excel) Mail merge (Word) Unit Recording Sheet (PDF) OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 2 Research I worked in a group of 3 to do research into the kinds of systems that other companies use to keep records. We needed to find out how and what data they store on their customers and employees and we also needed to find out how they store and calculate the business income, outgoings and profit. We had about 8 hours of lesson time & homework time to do carry out our research & analyse the results and to then produce a design for our final ICT system. Our group discussed the best way to collect this information and we decided that we should each take a different approach to avoid us all coming up with the same information, which would be a waste of time. Between us, we knew a few people who had their own business who we thought we could ask: my uncle runs a DVD rental shop in his local town centre; Pupil B’s mother & father own a small corner shop / newsagents and he sometimes helps out at the weekends; and Pupil C’s mother is the club secretary for the local swimming club club Pupil C swims with. None of these are related to bands but we decided they would all store similar data and need to record income, outgoings & profit so we decided to ask the people of these 3 businesses if we could interview them about the systems they use. Our group then planned the questions we would need to ask in our interviews to get the correct information. These are the questions we thought of that we would need to ask: 1. What information do you need to store about your customers / members? 2. What information do you need to store about the products you sell / rent (e.g. DVDs, newspapers, general produce) or the services you offer? 3. How do you store this data – on paper or on a computer? 4. If on a computer, what software do you use – e.g. a spreadsheet or database? 5. Does your system have any calculations / formulas to work out things like total income, profit, etc? 6. Finally, would you be prepared to let us have a copy of your system to analyse? OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 3 Each of us then adapted these questions to fit the business of the person we were going to interview. I phoned my uncle up first & asked him if I could interview him & asked when would be a convenient time; we did the interview on a Saturday morning, just before he opened the shop. Below is a transcript of the answers to my interview: 1. What information do you need to store about your customers? I need to know their full name, their date of birth (& I ask for proof of this when they become members, as most DVDs have an age rating), their address and a contact phone number. When they join, they are given an ID number as well. 2. Do you use email at all to contact your customers? No, not yet. Most communication is done by letters and if someone didn’t have an email address it would make the system more complicated. 3. What information do you need to store about the DVDs you rent? Their title, the age rating and the genre, e.g. family, comedy, thriller. 4. How do you store this data – on paper or on a computer? On a computer, in a database. 5. If on a computer, what software do you use – e.g. a spreadsheet or database? I use a database for storing the data about the customers & the DVDs but I use a separate spreadsheet to work out the total income & profit, etc per month. I also send letters to my members from time to time using a word processor. 6. Are these different computer systems linked to each other? For example do you use the data in your database to mail merge letters to your members? Yes, I do use mail merge for my letters. My employees are very good on a computer & if I don’t know how to do something, they set it all up for me, like a mail merge letter. I’m OK on a computer for the basic tasks like using a database or spreadsheet but I can’t always remember how to do more complicated things. 7. Does your system have any calculations / formulas to work out things like total income, profit, etc? Yes, the spreadsheet totals the income for a week and then totals the income for a month. It records & totals any expenditures, like buying new DVDs, paying wages, etc. and it works out the profit per month. I need to have accurate records of these for tax purposes. 8. Is there anything else that your system does that I haven’t asked about but you think I might need to know? OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 4 In the database, as well as storing information about members & DVDs we also record the actual rentals – who has which DVD, when its due back, whether its been returned yet, etc. 9. Finally, would you be prepared to let us have a copy of your system to analyse? I can let you have some copies but I can’t show you the data stored on our customers because of the Data Protection Act. You can have a copy of the information we store on DVDs and I could let you have a copy of the weekly spreadsheet to give you an idea of that. 10. Thank you very much. As you can see from my interview, I asked a few extra questions as well, that seemed relevant. I have included scanned copies of the data printouts I collected from my uncle’s DVD shop – the first is a copy of the database that contains the DVDs they have, the second is a blank copy (for confidential reasons) of a booking form to show how the bookings are linked to the DVDs and the customers, the third is a spreadsheet showing the income from rentals in a week and the expenditure on wages, new stock, overheads, etc. I have included transcripts of the other 2 interviews from our group work in my project as well, and the other members of my group have got the transcript of my interview & the copies of data from my uncle’s shop. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 5 Analysis of research: From our research, we found that all 3 businesses use a spreadsheet to record income, expenditure and profit, with formulas to work out calculations automatically. The DVD shop uses a database programme as well to record data about customers & DVDs but this is not linked at all to the spreadsheet. It is used, however, to mail merge letters to the customers. The small local shop/newsagents’ stores the data about their customers and the newspapers in a separate part of the spreadsheet they use to calculate profit, etc. The swimming club uses a database programme to store their data about their members & the training & competitions they have and this is linked to both a spreadsheet programme where they have formulas to work out calculations and also to a word processor where they can send out letters, etc to their members, e.g. giving a list of competition dates. None of the businesses use email yet – the swimming club find texts quicker if they need to communicate about training, etc; the shop don’t communicate with their customers on a regular basis but would use the telephone to contact a customer, e.g. if they hadn’t paid their newspaper bill; the DVD shop use letters mostly to communicate. The software features used by the 3 businesses include: Different data types, e.g. text, number, currency, date, Boolean Relational database with 2 or 3 tables (DVD shop: DVDs, Member, Rental; Swimming Club: Members, training classes, competitions) Searches (DVD shop: searches for overdue rentals, searches for specific members to send an offer to) Mail merge to transfer data from a database or spreadsheet to a word processor (DVD shop: member details merged to letter for overdue rentals or for promotional letter; Swimming club: member details and training details merged to letter to all members) Use of tables & reports to present data (All businesses use tables to store the data; DVD shop uses reports to create lists, e.g. of DVDs of a specific genre or age rating) Formulae for automatic calculation, such as +, -, / & *, SUM, VLOOKUP (All businesses use formulae to add up total income [subs for swimming club], total expenditure and work out profit; DVD shop uses VLOOKUP for inserting the rental price of DVDs) For my system for Litchfield Promotions, I could use either a database programme or a spreadsheet programme or a combination of both. I will need to use mail merge to link my final system to a word processed document. I know I could do calculations in a database programme like Access but it is more complicated & they are mostly done in queries or reports, not tables, which is not what would be needed for this – a simple table would be better. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 6 I could use either a database or a separate worksheet in a spreadsheet to store data about the bands & the venues – both would work as well, but if I use a separate database programme I will need to link it to the spreadsheet so all the data was accessible from one place. I definitely need to use mail merge to send letters, invoices, etc to the venues & bands. I could do this from a database or from a spreadsheet. From our research & by looking at the task, it looks as though the data I will need to include in the system will be: Band name (text) Band contact address (text) Band contact phone number (text) Venue name (text) Venue address (text) Venue contact phone number (text) Venue cost per event (currency) Number of people the venue holds (number-integer) Wage cost for lighting technicians (currency) Wage cost for sound engineers (currency) Cost to pay the band (currency) OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 7 I am now going to produce 2 quick design prototypes of alternative solutions before deciding whether to use just a spreadsheet package and word processor or whether to use a database as well as a spreadsheet and word processor. This is how I could set up a spreadsheet with different tables to store different data: Band Table: Venue Table: Expenditure Table: Bookings Table: Some of the information in the Bookings table could come directly from the other tables. I could have a combo box in B1 and B2 to give drop down lists with all the bands and venues in. A VLOOKUP function could then use the cell linked to the combo box to lookup the value in the other sheet (e.g. Bands sheet) to give other values such as the Band cost, Venue cost, number of tickets available. One problem I can see with the solution above is that the total expenditure for an event couldn’t automatically be inserted into the Bookings table unless I added the Booking ID to the Expenditure table or moved the cost of lighting technicians & sound engineers into the Bookings table. Another problem is I have missed out a formula to calculate the total income which I could OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 8 easily add in the Bookings table by having another row for tickets sold and having a formula that multiplied that value by the price per ticket. I could use mail merge to transfer information from the tables into a word processed letter or invoice. Alternatively, I could use a database package to produce the solution, as below: BAND ID BAND NAME BAND ADDRESS BAND PHONE BAND COST BOOKINGS ID BAND ID VENUE ID EXPENDITURE ID PRICE PER TICKET No TICKETS SOLD VENUE ID VENUE NAME VENUE ADDRESS VENUE PHONE VENUE HIRE COST EXPENDITURE ID No OF LIGHTING TECHNICIANS No OF SOUND ENGINEERS COST PER LIGHTING TECHNICIAN COST PER SOUND ENGINEER The problem with using a database that I can see is that it’s going to be difficult to do calculations. I would need a query which included the costs/expenditure values from each table and then I would have to use calculations in new fields to work out total expenditure and also total profit. The Expenditure table in the design above wouldn’t work properly as I would need to add information for a booking in both the Booking table and the Expenditure table, which could be a bit awkward. I have forgotten to include a field for number of tickets available– this could go in the Bookings table. I could use mail merge to transfer the data from the database to a word processor for letters or invoices, or I could use Reports in the database to present the information. Having produced basic models of 2 different ideas I have for the solution to this problem, I think I will choose to use the spreadsheet to base my final system on. I will make some amendments to my first idea above. I think this would be the easier system to use for the calculations as it is quite straightforward to put formulas into a spreadsheet. I will also be able to use combo boxes to allow the user to select data from and these can be linked to other cells so that selecting one piece of information will lead to other information being automatically inserted. I conclude, therefore, that to the most efficient method of working out income, outgoings & profit for Litchfield Promotions would be a spreadsheet. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 9 Design brief My Design Brief is going to be to produce a system to be used by the Office Administrator and his assistant at Litchfield Promotions. The system will need to store data about the bands and the venues and it will also need to automatically calculate income and expenditure and profit and should allow modelling of different financial situations to take place. The system should also be able to use mail merge to transfer data to a word processor, to produce letters and invoices. The system should be produced in about 12 hours. It should be user-friendly as the Office Administrator’s assistant may not have a high level of skill in using IT. The system should have checks to reduce errors in entering data and there should be some security put on the system to prevent unauthorised users seeing confidential data. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 10 Design Specification The Design Specification for my system is below, which takes into account my findings from the research and the user’s requirements stated in the task. The system will need to be able to: 1. Store different types of data, e.g. text, number, currency, date This will be tested by me entering different types of data into the system – they should all be accepted if I have used an appropriate software package 2. Do automatic calculations and recalculations when data is input to the system, e.g. to work out profit I will test this by using a calculator to manually work out the expected answer to a calculation & compare this with the result of the formula; I will change some of the data and use a calculator again to check the correct answer is given by the formula. 3. Model different financial situations to see if a band playing at a venue would make enough money I will test this by entering different values for the costs of a venue, costs of a band, costs of wages and entering different numbers of tickets sold to see the effect on the profit of an event. 4. Be able to be modified if the needs of the company change 5. Have validation rules to reduce errors when entering data I will test the validation rules by entering invalid data to see if it is blocked and also I will need to enter valid data to make sure the system accepts valid data 6. Have security measures, e.g. a password, to prevent unauthorised access to the data 7. Have parts of the system locked so an inexperienced user can’t change formulas, etc I will test this by selecting cells I have locked and trying to change the data. 8. Use methods of importing / exporting data from other software programmes, e.g. for mail merge letters and invoices I will need to test this works correctly by looking through to find the data that needs to be imported and checking it against the data that actually is imported to make sure it matches 9. Have a user-friendly interface I will need to test this by asking a non-ICT specialist to see if they can understand it 10. Use macros to perform common actions in one go I will check that any macros work by clicking on buttons that I link them to and making sure they perform all the correct actions. Plan of work: I have approximately 12 hours to produce my ICT system, test it, present the results in a format suitable for Litchfield Promotions and to evaluate my system. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 11 Week: Planned work: Test against Design Specification: 1 Refine the design for my system 2 Work out formulas needed in design 3 Start to set up the system Check all data types are accepted 4 Continue setting up, including validation rules, macros & security Enter invalid & valid data to check invalid is not accepted and valid is accepted 5 Enter formulas and check they work correctly then protect these cells Manually calculate answers and compare to results of formulas. Click on a cell with a formula in to see if it can be changed. 6 Enter data into all parts of the system Check all data types are accepted 7 Enter data into all parts of the system 8 Carry out tests to the system 9 Complete testing of the system, including asking a non-ICT specialist to look at it 10 Make any amendments necessary after testing 11 Evaluate the system 12 Complete evaluation and note any improvements needed Test the system is user-friendly for a non-ICT specialist For evidence of my final solution and how I produced it please see the PowerPoint ‘Litchfield ICT Solution’ and for my presentation of the system to the users at Litchfield Promotions please see the PowerPoint ‘Presentation’. I made my system using a spreadsheet programme which has 5 screens: a menu screen with buttons to access the other 4 screens which are: Bands screen to store data about the different bands Venues screen to store data about the customers (venues) Bookings screen where bands are linked with venues and details about ticket sales are entered Expenditure screen where data from the other screens is brought together and income & expenditure automatically calculated OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 12 A mail merge document is linked to the Expenditure screen and this document could be adapted to produce letters, invoices, etc. My system contains validation rules to reduce user error, a password to increase security of data and functions & formulas to automatically calculate & re-calculate income & expenditure. Data can be changed (e.g. prices of tickets) to model financial situations and the system could also be adapted to further meet the user’s requirements at a later date. My final Excel spreadsheet & mail merge document are also included in my portfolio as evidence of the software features I have used. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 13 Testing Test No: Test against Design Specification: Test &Test Data: Test Result: Further Action needed: 1 Check different data types are accepted ‘Band’ in Bands sheet cell B5 Data accepted None ‘20’ in Bookings sheet cell D4 Data accepted None ‘£75’ in Bands sheet cell I5 Data accepted None 2 Check valid data is accepted according to validation rules ‘100’ in cell J4 of Venues sheet Data accepted but had no £ sign, was just a whole number Format column to currency so £ is inserted automatically 3 Check invalid data is not accepted according to validation rules ‘0’ in cell J4 of Venues sheet Error message appeared on screen: None “You have not entered a cost for this event. Please enter a value greater than 0” 4 Manually calculate answers and compare to results of formulas. VLOOKUP function in cell G4 of Bookings sheet – enter Bottle Crate in cell C4 and £800 will show in G4 The value showing in G4 was £800 None 5 Manually calculate answers and compare to results of formulas. INDEX function in cell O4 of Bookings sheet – the value in N4 should show ‘3’, O4 should show ‘The Face’ & H4 should show ‘£2500’ The value in O4 was ‘0’ and the value in N4 was ‘3’ and H4 showed ‘£2,500’ Change cell references B2:B25 in INDEX function to absolute ($B$2:$B$25) and re-copy the INDEX function down column O. Do OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 14 the same for the INDEX function in column Q 6 Click on a locked cell with a formula in to check it cannot be changed. Select J2 on Expenditure sheet and delete the formula I could not select cell J2 or change the formula in it None 7 Test the system is user-friendly for a nonICT specialist Ask a non-specialist to enter the Bookings sheet from the main Menu sheet and add data for a booking to row 4 My Mum was able to use the button to go to the Bookings sheet and enter data into a booking row None 8 Check correct data is mail merged into mail merge document Open mail merge document and compare data with data stored in the Expenditure sheet The same data was displayed in the mail merge document as in the Expenditure table for Booking ID 2, BoyBand at the Bottle Crate None 9 Test the password prevents nonauthorised people getting into the system Open the system and check it asks for the password The password was asked for. I entered ‘password’ which is the password I had set to test this and I had access to the system None OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 15 Test Results 1a) ‘Band’ is accepted 1b) ‘20’ is accepted 1c) ‘75’ is accepted OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 16 2) ‘100’ is accepted but is an integer not currency 3) The value of ‘0’ is not accepted and the expected error message comes up: “You have not entered a cost for this event. Please enter a value greater than 0” OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 17 4) The value in G4 is ‘800’ when The Bottle Crate is selected in C4 5) The value in O4 is ‘0’ and the value in N4 is ‘3’ and H4 shows ‘£2,500’. This is not as expected so I need to make the cell references in column O absolute so they always use $B$2:$B$25 OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 18 I have changed the cell references in the INDEX function & now the expected result of ‘The Face’ shows in O4 8) The data for Booking ID 2 is BoyBand at The Bottle Crate, cost of venue £800.00, cost of band £6000.00, total expenditure £6,800.00, total income £0.00 and total profit -£6,800.00 (as I didn’t enter any ticket sales in the Bookings screen there is a negative profit) The data in the mail merge document also shows BoyBand at The Bottle Crate, cost of venue £800.00, cost of band £6000.00, total expenditure £6,800.00, total income £0.00 and total profit £6,800.00 OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 19 9) When I try to open the spreadsheet I am asked for a password which I need to know to open the file OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 20 Evaluation Weaknesses of my System and Areas for Improvement: Although the main Menu makes it user-friendly my system isn’t that user-friendly on the other sheets. I need to add some formatting to the sheets, like more colour and maybe make the row height bigger to space out the data more as when a lot of data has been entered it could look very cluttered. My Mum suggested that the Lookup formulas in the Booking sheet could be changed so that they didn’t display #N/A when data hadn’t been entered yet for a booking. I can change this using conditional formatting as there is an option to format cells with an error in, which is what #N/A is, so I could format cells that have an error with white text that wouldn’t show up. My Mum also said it would be better if you could get to the mail merge document from the spreadsheet. At the moment this isn’t very user-friendly for a non-ICT specialist so I could either put a hyperlink into the main Menu sheet to do this or I might be able to record a macro that opens the mail merge document and then link this to a button on the Menu sheet. Another weakness of my system is that the buttons back to the Menu aren’t very obvious. I need to colour these so they stand out. Finally, having watched my Mum use the system, I think I should have put some basic instructions on the Menu sheet, telling the user what to do, as it isn’t obvious at the moment. Evaluation against Design Specification: I said at the beginning of my work that my system would need to be able to: 1. Store different types of data, e.g. text, number, currency, date I tested this by entering different types of data into the different sheets and they were all accepted. 2. Do automatic calculations and recalculations when data is input to the system, e.g. to work out profit I tested this by checking the answers formulas gave me with a calculator or in my head. I tested the VLOOKUPs & INDEX formulas by comparing the result with the data in the Bands & Venues sheets to see if it was correct. All my formulas now work after some amendments I had to make after my Testing section. 3. Model different financial situations to see if a band playing at a venue would make enough money My system can do this by using What-If Analysis with 2 scenarios I have set up. But I think a user would need some instructions how to do this as it isn’t obvious. 4. Be able to be modified if the needs of the company change OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 21 My system can be modified – the spreadsheet could have rows or columns inserted or deleted if necessary and more formulas could be added if needed, although this might need to be done by someone with a good knowledge of the software. 5. Have validation rules to reduce errors when entering data My system has validation rules to prevent unreasonable data being added to the sheets. 6. Have security measures, e.g. a password, to prevent unauthorised access to the data My system has a password set which is ‘password’ at the moment. This would need to be changed to a more secure password by the user. 7. Have parts of the system locked so an inexperienced user can’t change formulas, etc I have locked the cells with formulas in and unlocked the cells where values need to be added or changed and then I protected each worksheet so that only the unlocked cells could be selected and have data changed. 8. Use methods of importing / exporting data from other software programmes, e.g. for mail merge letters and invoices I have created one basic mail merge document which can be amended to suit the needs of the user or copies could be made and then several different amendments made to create several mail merge documents such as invoices and letters. I haven’t linked a mail merge document to either the Bands sheet or Venues sheet, which could be done to transfer that data. 9. Have a user-friendly interface My Mum found the system quite easy to use, especially the buttons on the main Menu but she didn’t really find the Booking or Expenditure sheets very easy to look at and read data off so I need to make these sheets more user-friendly. 10. Use macros to perform common actions in one go My system has buttons on a menu sheet which are linked to macros I recorded to take the user to the other sheets, which makes it more user-friendly. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 22 Diary of work and Issues that arose: Date Work done Issues arising Week 1 Set up 4 worksheets in a spreadsheet & named them as: None Amendments needed to System Bands Venues Bookings Expenditure. I entered appropriate headings for the data in columns. Entered formulas for Ticket Income in column F of Bookings and formula for total expenditure in column J of Expenditure Week 2 I set up the combo boxes in columns B & C of the Bookings sheet and set up the INDEX functions linking to the cell link of the combo boxes. I tested the combo boxes worked by clicking on the drop down menu & selecting different bands and venues I had entered into the other sheets. None I played around with linking the combo boxes to different cells. First I did it to column I but this didn’t look right as it was visible on the worksheet. So I thought it would be better to use the cell underneath the combo box, i.e. column C but this didn’t work. Finally I put the cell links as columns P & N and put the INDEX functions next to them in columns O & Q as these columns weren’t visible to the user. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 23 Week 3 I set up the VLOOKUP in columns G & H of the Bookings sheet to automatically insert the correct cost of a band & a venue when they were selected using the combo boxes. I tested the VLOOKUP worked and gave me the correct costs by checking against the information I had put in the Band & Venue sheets. None None Week 4 I set up the fourth sheet, Menu, and recorded macros to go from here to the other sheets and back. I put buttons linked to the macros on the Menu sheet and then I removed the gridlines and added wordart & clipart to make it look nice. When I was recording the macro to take the user back to the Menu sheet I forgot to press ‘Stop Recording’ and I couldn’t work out why my macro didn’t work. When I realised what I had done I deleted that macro & started it again. I realised when I had created it & linked it to a button’ that I could copy & paste it into the other sheets, rather than creating it again for these sheets so this saved time. Week 5 I set up a scenario in the Booking sheet using the What-If Analysis to test different ticket incomes with different numbers of tickets sold and different prices of tickets. I hadn’t used this software feature before & at first I told the system to put the scenario in the row below, which wasn’t what I wanted to do. When I realised, I redid the scenario and it worked as I wanted it to. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 24 Week 6 I created a mail merge document linking the data in the Bookings sheet to the document, so that this could then be edited by the company to produce invoices, letters, etc. I have used mail merge before so I didn’t have any problems with this. I didn’t use the wizard as I have been taught how to do mail merge without a wizard & I used the method I know. Week 7 I tested my system to check for any amendments that needed to be made. There were a few issues that arose that can be seen in my Testing section. My INDEX function didn’t work when I copied it down the column because I had relative cell references in the cell range where the data was coming from. Week 8 I took my system home & asked my Mum to test it for me, as a non-ICT specialist, so she could give me feedback. I got her to use the Menu buttons to navigate around and to enter a new booking. My Mum managed to use the Menu and enter a new booking without any problems. But she didn’t find it easy to find & open the mail merge document and she asked why I hadn’t put a button on the Menu to access that document. She also said that the buttons on the other screens weren’t very obvious and maybe they should be brightly coloured. Lastly she said that on the Bookings & Expenditure sheets it looked a bit confusing where I needed to format column J of the Venues sheet to be currency, as a £ sign was not automatically inserted when I entered a number. I needed to change the cell references B2:B25 in the INDEX function to absolute refs ($B$2:$B$25) and re-copy the INDEX function down column O. I had to make the same amendment in column Q. I could add a hyperlink or a button on the Menu to automatically open the mail merge document. I could colour my buttons and the text on them to make them show up – e.g. use contrasting colours for the button & text. OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 25 there weren’t any bookings made and the formulas display ‘#N/A’ in the cells instead of a value. She asked if they could be made so they didn’t show anything or they showed ‘0’ so it looked better. Week 9 Made my PowerPoint presentation to present the final system to the users at Litchfield Promotions, to show them the main features of my system Week 10 I made a second PowerPoint presentation to show evidence of what I have done & the software features I have used in making the final system Week 11 I made some amendments to my system as identified in my Testing – I amended the INDEX function and used conditional formatting to ‘hide’ errors where functions do not have values to calculate yet I could use conditional formatting to make the results of the formulas white text if there is an error (i.e. if #N/A is displayed) so they don’t show up. I decided to keep this simple & not include a lot of technical detail as the users only need to know what it does & how to use it, not how all the formulas & functions work I started to write up the evaluation to my system Week 12 Finished writing my evaluation OCR GCSE ICT J461 / J061 Unit B062 Candidate Style Answers 2010 26