Leaving Microsoft, 4/7: workflows choose the software

An administrator at a French care institution is preparing its budget. They download the required template, enter the institutions it covers and click a small “+” sign. New sheets appear in the workbook. This is one of the steps described in the February 2025 EPRD instructions issued by the Caisse nationale de solidarité pour l’autonomie, or CNSA. A few pages earlier, the instructions settle the choice of software: Microsoft Excel is required. ^[1]

The EPRD, or état des prévisions de recettes et de dépenses, is a statement of projected income and expenditure. Here, the file used to submit the figures also contains the program that builds the tables. Macros, instructions executed inside the office application, have to run to generate the expected sheets. The CNSA’s instructions state that its templates and platforms are incompatible with LibreOffice and OpenOffice. ^[1]

This dependence arises from the reporting procedure. An institution that wants to change its office suite still has to work with the software specified for preparing its submission. After procurement contracts and licences that influence the choice of cloud, this fourth instalment examines business applications: the software, large or small, through which a public service gets its work done. Questions of sovereignty reach into the everyday tasks of submitting a budget or processing an email.

The form does some of the administration

The CNSA guidance reveals how the process works. The cover sheet identifies institutions by their FINESS number, an identifier in France’s health and social care directory. As each institution is added, the button generates its corresponding tabs. The file retains a structure and version number recognised by the ImportEPRD platform. Inconsistencies between the workbook and the submission created on the platform, or incorrectly generated sheets, can jeopardise submission and data integration. ^[1]

To the person filling it in, the result looks like a spreadsheet. The receiving system expects a structured object: fields in particular positions, matching institutions, calculations and sheets that follow the template. Changing the application used to open the file therefore calls for checking a whole sequence of behaviours. Dependence extends to how the submission is assembled, as well as how it is read.

The date matters. In February 2025, the CNSA required the .xls format and warned that ImportEPRD would reject .xlsm files. The ministry page examined for this investigation, updated on 18 September 2026, now offers XLSM versions of several templates. These publications establish that the distributed files have changed. Compatibility of each current template with another office suite remains to be checked: the 2025 technical instructions describe a specific historical position. ^{[1] [2]}

A related reporting system uses a different design. For healthcare institutions, the hospital information agency ATIH’s EPRD-PGFP 2026 guide, which also covers the multi-year financing plan known as PGFP, provides an Excel workbook whose macro generates a CSV file. This text file carries the values to the ANCRE platform. The same guide also allows users to enter data directly in a browser or import data prepared by third-party financial management software. ^[3]

Third-party software must produce a file that matches the published exchange specification, including the institution identifier, financial year, and codes for tables, rows and columns. ANCRE checks these elements on import. By placing part of the requirement on the structure of the data it receives, the agency allows several ways of preparing it. The guide still requires users to generate and check an Excel report on which the regional health agency will base its validation. The additional choice concerns preparation and collection; an Excel-format report remains part of the later stages. ^[3]

How to read this figure

CNSA: EPRD templates for care and support institutions, February 2025 instructions, pages 3, 5 and 8–10. ATIH: healthcare institutions, EPRD-PGFP 2026 guide, sections 3.4–3.6, 3.8 and 3.12. The diagram depicts documented procedures; it does not measure their use or relative quality. The ministry’s distribution of XLSM versions in 2026 means the rejection of XLSM described in 2025 cannot be extended to that year. The ATIH guide uses both TXT and CSV extensions for third-party exchange; the figure follows its definition of a structured text file. An Excel report remains part of the final check. l0g has tested neither procedure. [1] [2] [3]

This comparison brings out a form of influence often absent from debates about office software: the body collecting data can widen or narrow the software choices available to those who produce it. The institutions, budget rules and platforms differ, and this investigation establishes no link between the two collection systems. What they illustrate is a design decision that can connect an administrative obligation to a particular preparation tool.

What happens behind an Excel button

Software documentation explains why file converters cannot resolve every dependency. Microsoft gives an example in which an Excel macro creates Word documents from rows in a spreadsheet. The program opens Word, then instructs it to add and save the documents. It uses commands specific to Word, known to developers as its object model. The workbook therefore depends on the behaviour of another application installed on the computer. ^[4]

LibreOffice, for its part, documents partial support for VBA, the language used by many Microsoft Office macros. Common uses are supported; others require adaptation. Successfully opening a file tells us about the ability to read the document. Establishing whether its button produces the expected letter requires examining and testing the program behind it. Teams need to identify the operation that must keep working, the inputs it needs and the output it should produce. ^[4]

Access offers another example. Microsoft allows the data tables to be separated from the application containing queries, forms, reports and code. A copy distributed in ACCDE format can retain the compiled program, ready to run, while containing none of its VBA source code. LibreOffice’s documentation also explains that connecting to an Access database does not provide access to its forms and reports. Reading the tables is one stage of taking over the application. Its data-entry screens, rules and generated documents need their own assessment. ^{[11] [12]}

Maintenance becomes a concrete question. Who holds the editable version? Who understands the rule that calculates a deadline or rejects an entry? The file format says nothing about the customer’s contractual rights. It does help establish what the customer actually possesses and what else will be needed to change the service.

A planning consultation enters the office suite

Automation often meets a practical need. The City of London Corporation tested a tool for planning consultations with the British housing ministry’s Digital Planning programme. An account published by the ministry on 27 February 2025 reports 2,000 comments from almost 300 people during consultation on the City Plan 2040. An officer said the tool had saved her hours of re-entering information. This is feedback published by the project’s promoters, with no measurement of the cost of leaving the system. ^[5]

The service performs a modest but useful task: it turns emails arriving in a shared mailbox into records that staff can consult. Government guidance describes daily processing of unread messages, retaining their text, date, sender, attachments and a link to the message. An acknowledgement can be sent. The tool is optional and intended for councils already using Microsoft 365. ^[6]

To examine its dependencies, we downloaded the software package linked directly from that guidance. We inspected version 1.0.0.13, held in the public Digital Land repository at the specific revision identified in the sources. We read its definition without installing or running it. The package describes a Power Automate flow: a program whose steps execute on Microsoft’s platform, using connectors to communicate with other services. ^[7]

The flow links Office 365 email to SharePoint, the storage and collaboration service, and uses a component that converts HTML content to text. It prepares a list, saves the message in a document library, creates an entry with the initial status “New”, then adds the attachments. After the acknowledgement branch, which runs according to the configuration, it marks the email as read. The message’s read status is therefore part of the collection process: the automation itself changes it. ^[7]

What the flow represents

A simplified reconstruction from the public Planning consultation email processing 1.0.0.13 package and GOV.UK guidance dated 27 February 2025. The daily loop selects unread messages, saves each message, creates its SharePoint entry, adds attachments, handles the optional acknowledgement, then marks the message as read. Setup and technical branches are omitted for clarity. The export guidance explains that the Excel table includes the message’s location and the number of attachments, without carrying their contents. Arrows describe functions, rather than measured traffic or an observed execution. [6] [7] [8]

The repository publishes this work under the MIT licence, which permits reuse and modification subject to its conditions. That openness has immediate value: the steps can be inspected and provide a starting point for adapting the process. Execution still depends on the services called by the flow definition. Running a version elsewhere would require connecting email, storage and an execution engine capable of carrying out the same operations, then checking the results. This is an inference from reading the package; we have not carried out such a migration. ^[7]

An exported file can retain dependencies

The guidance for planning teams offers an export to Excel and explains its scope. Users receive most of the information about each message, including its SharePoint location, but only a count of its attachments. The workbook can subsequently refresh its data from the source. A copy of the table therefore preserves links and values. Recovering the complete record also requires retrieving the messages and attachments to which they refer. ^[8]

The guidance exposes a quieter dependency. If an officer manually opens an email before collection, they are instructed to mark it unread again so it will be processed. The service combines software with a working convention. A team changing tools needs to decide how to preserve that selection rule, prevent omissions and handle retries. These decisions affect the reliability of the consultation process alongside the contents of an exported table. ^[8]

Microsoft provides tools for moving applications within its own environment. A solution groups application components; a connection reference links those components to an authenticated connection. On import, connections and permissions must be appropriate for the destination environment. A flow can restart automatically when the requirements are met. Microsoft’s documentation therefore provides deployment mechanisms with defined scopes and prerequisites. ^[9]

Power Platform pipelines automate some of this work, checking connections, variables and dependencies in advance. Microsoft nevertheless specifies that solutions do not contain the data held in Dataverse tables, its application data service. Other transfer operations can handle that data. This limitation concerns Dataverse; the planning tool examined here stores its records in SharePoint. In each case, teams need to identify separately how the application definition travels and how its data travels. ^{[10] [7]}

Portability takes several operational forms here. A table can be copied, files retrieved, and a program redeployed using the available tools. The service becomes useful again when those elements work together and the right people are authorised to use them. An export promise becomes more precise when it specifies which of these results it guarantees.

Working habits become processing rules

Schleswig-Holstein offers an instructive account of this human element. In its report to the state parliament on 19 March 2026, the government said that, while preparing its email migration, it had found users assigning categories to messages to represent stages of work, particularly in shared functional mailboxes. It planned a dedicated function in Open-Xchange to meet that need and improve tracking. ^[13]

A coloured category can organise collective work. Alongside preserving message text and attachments during a migration, the team needs a way to track how far each item has progressed. The German report describes a requirement discovered in actual working practices. It sets out a programme of adaptations, with dependencies and uncertainty in its timetable. We treat it as a record of the project in March, without assuming that work was complete by October. ^[13]

Keeping a service running can also require adaptation within the same supplier’s products. In its comparison updated on 23 September 2026, Microsoft states that the new Outlook for Windows supports neither VBA macros, COM add-ins nor the Outlook object model available in the classic version. It documents other approaches to automation, including Power Automate and Microsoft Graph, an interface to several Microsoft services. Their suitability depends on the task. Automations built for the classic client consequently need to be reassessed when making this change. ^[14]

Software choices have consequences over time. An integration can make a team substantially more effective today, then require adaptation as the product or the team’s needs change. British government guidance on technical cloud lock-in recognises this trade-off: integrated services can speed up delivery, simplify operations and provide security capabilities. It calls for weighing those benefits against the time, skills and costs involved in changing supplier. ^[15]

Taking responsibility for the whole process

These cases suggest a way to assess an exit through the submission or case that the administration must process to completion. For a budget, the sequence runs from entering data to an accepted submission and review. For a consultation, it runs from receiving a message to retaining, classifying and handling it. This is our interpretation of the documented mechanisms, taking account of their different scopes.

A practical assessment could start with a set of fictional records prepared with staff who know the procedure. It would vary the situations that matter: a missing attachment, a wrongly identified institution, a message already opened, a change of responsible officer. Teams could then compare expected results in the old and new environments, including rejections, access rights and opportunities to correct errors. This proposed method has not been carried out. It would locate the necessary adaptations in observable operations.

It could also clarify responsibilities. A local team can change its tools, while the collecting body decides which data structure it accepts. A supplier may deliver an executable application, while another party retains the sources and the knowledge to maintain it. Choice becomes more practical when these connections are documented, business rules remain understandable and a team has the resources to change them. The British guidance specifically recommends replaceable components and maintaining skills, while assessing both the benefits and costs of those choices. ^[15]

The “+” sign in the care institution’s workbook and the unread status in the planning mailbox show how office tools take on part of a public procedure. Replacing them means recovering what those actions accomplished for staff and for the people or bodies receiving their work. Reversibility, the ability to leave and restore a working service elsewhere, becomes tangible when that knowledge can be put to use.

Next: the full cost of leaving, including licences, application migration, running systems in parallel, training and the lasting capacity to maintain them.

Sources and limits of the investigation

Documentary investigation conducted on 9 October 2026. The CNSA requirements cited concern the 2025 reporting cycle; distributed formats changed in 2026. The ministry’s current ZIP download returned an anti-bot check and its contents were not inspected. The CNSA and ATIH systems cover different institutions. The British flow definition was read statically in the public package linked by GOV.UK, at the revision specified below. This describes a published program, without establishing its current configuration at the City of London or its reliability in production. We conducted no interviews, internal audit, platform tests or migration tests. Savings reported by the actors are not used as an independent measure. The diagrams explain documented mechanisms; the cover is a conceptual illustration.

1. CNSA, EPRD 2025, instructions for completing the standard templates, version 2, February 2025, pages 3, 5, 8–10 and 16. Format, Excel requirement, macros, sheet generation, consistency of submissions and rejection risks. The FHF publication of 21 February 2025 identifies the notes as originating from the CNSA.
2. French Ministry of Solidarity, funding reform for care and support institutions, page updated on 18 September 2026, accessed on 9 October. Published templates include XLSM versions; their availability does not constitute a test of compatibility with office software.
3. ATIH, EPRD-PGFP 2026 user guide, sections 3.4–3.6, 3.8 and 3.12, pages 7–14. Excel and CSV macro, browser entry, third-party import, validation checks, Excel review report and exchange specification.
4. Microsoft Learn, Controlling one Microsoft Office Application from another, 19 January 2022; LibreOffice Help, Working with VBA Macros, accessed on 9 October 2026. Example of Excel controlling Word and partial VBA compatibility.
5. MHCLG, Using automation to save time processing consultation responses, 27 February 2025. City of London case, comment volume and team feedback; benefits attributed to those involved in the project.
6. MHCLG, automation overview and installation and testing guidance, 27 February 2025. Optional use, Microsoft 365 prerequisites, daily collection, storage, connections and optional acknowledgement.
7. Digital Land, Planning consultation email processing 1.0.0.13 package and MIT licence, revision dated 27 March 2024, accessed on 9 October 2026. Archive linked by GOV.UK guidance; JSON flow definition in Workflows: connectors, recurrence, unread selection, storage, attachments, acknowledgement and marking as read. This revision fixes the material examined in our static analysis.
8. MHCLG, Planning teams: access automated email responses for local plan consultations, 27 February 2025. Excel export, links, attachment count, refresh and handling messages opened manually.
9. Microsoft Learn, Use a connection reference in a solution and Import a solution, accessed on 9 October 2026. Authenticated connection, reference, permissions and conditions for restarting imported flows.
10. Microsoft Learn, Overview of pipelines in Power Platform, updated on 30 September 2026. Deployment prevalidation and “What do pipelines deploy?” FAQ: data in Dataverse tables is excluded from solutions.
11. Microsoft Support, Split an Access database, accessed on 9 October 2026. Separation of tables and application interface; section on restricting front-end changes and the ACCDE format.
12. The Document Foundation, How to connect to a Microsoft Access database, accessed on 9 October 2026. Scope of the connection: access to tables, with Access application forms and reports outside its scope.
13. Schleswig-Holstein, parliamentary report on Open-Xchange, Umdruck 20/6328, 19 March 2026. “App Suite 4 Teams” section: categories used to represent workflows, planned adaptations and timetable uncertainty.
14. Microsoft Support, Feature comparison between new Outlook and classic Outlook, updated on 23 September 2026; Microsoft Learn, VBA, macros, and custom flows alternatives, 7 August 2025. VBA, COM and OOM support, and proposed alternative approaches to automation.
15. GDS and CDDO, Managing technical lock-in in the cloud, page updated on 3 September 2026. Benefits of integrated services, trade-offs with portability, replaceable components, skills and preparation for changing supplier.