Workflow evaluation criteria

When Spreadsheets Stop Being Enough

Keep simple tools where they work. Move to a governed workflow when handoffs, permissions, status, evidence or recovery become too important to reconstruct manually.

Assess my current process

Compare the Process, Not the Product Labels

The right question is not whether spreadsheets are universally risky. It is whether the current process gives authorised users enough control, traceability and recovery for a specific decision. Use representative records and failure scenarios to test that answer.

Evaluation area	Questions for the current process	Evidence required from an OreLynx proposal
Field continuity	Can users work through an agreed connectivity interruption and identify the authoritative copy afterward?	Demonstrate the agreed local states, synchronisation responses, conflict handling and recovery on approved devices.
Owned actions	Can the team show the source, owner, due rule, evidence and review outcome without manual reconstruction?	Trace an agreed action from source through assignment, evidence, review, exception and recorded outcome.
Change history	Are material changes attributable, reviewable and recoverable under the current controls and retention settings?	Exercise create, correct, approve, reject, supersede and restore scenarios with authorised roles.
Portability	Can the team identify and verify the complete record set needed for handover or offboarding?	Define and test the agreed export content, metadata, structure, completeness check and delivery boundary.

Signals the Current Tools May Still Fit

One accountable owner and a small, stable contributor group
A bounded record set with simple review and recovery
No unsupported regulatory, audit or cross-entity conclusion
Manageable version, access and offboarding controls

Signals Worth Evaluating

Repeated reconciliation across people, devices or systems
Unclear ownership of exceptions and corrective actions
Several approval states reconstructed from messages or filenames
High effort to prove completeness, history or authorised access