It is unfortunate that computers, which promised to make our lives easier, often create more work for us. We get overloaded with mundane tasks such as making backups of important data, maintaining order in documents, processing bazillions of emails, reminders and meeting invitations, ignoring instant messages from colleagues, deleting spam – and the list goes on!
So it pleases me when companies add intelligent features to their products – features like search, automatic user-friendly backups, recognizing dates, phone numbers and addresses in emails. These and many other wonderful features save time, minimize the chance of an error when moving data between applications, and improve the overall flow of information. But if you're going to implement any sort of automation, make sure to do it right or not do it at all:
It is no secret that bad automation is far worse than no automation. The example above shows that it is not enough to have good intentions. You have to invest time in researching the problem. Or, with the case in point, simply testing your implementation thoroughly.
