ChatGPT has been making waves in the tech industry, with many hailing it as a game-changing innovation in the field of artificial intelligence. While some may argue that there is still room for improvement, there is no denying that leveraging ChatGPT in the right ways can lead to significant improvements in outcomes and efficiency. We recently used ChatGPT to convert a large and complicated Excel file into a streamlined tool for a client by leverage a winning combination of ChatGPT and VBA Code.
28,000,000 Data Points
We have a client that sells a product for indoor agriculture equipment controls that collects a ton of data (18 environmental data points per minute, 24/7, on average for 12 different grow rooms, over a 3-month grow period, for various measurements including temp, humidity, CO2, and others). This amounts to about twenty-eight million (28,000,000!!) data points. The client wanted to provide a simple tool for their customers to be able to download their grow room data and plot it in a graph to view performance throughout the grow cycle.
Even Excel Ninjas Can Hit Their Formula Limits
Our team is full of Excel ninjas, so we believed it would be a relatively simple exercise in Excel. As we got into the project nuances, it turned out that the automated transformation of the data proved to be quite complicated given a user may enter the data in various forms. It became evident that excel formula based automation would render the Excel file too large to operate with more than 1 grow room of data (reminder: there are 12 grow rooms on average per customer), and we would need to leverage VBA code to manipulate the data in a more efficient way.
No Coding Experience? No Problem. You’ve Got ChatGPT
The lead person on this project decided to leverage VBA, even though he was a novice in the VBA language. He started by using the code from a prerecorded macro, but it wasn’t working. That’s when he turned to ChatGPT. He plugged in his code directly to ChatGPT, asked what was wrong with it, and in a matter of a couple of hours he was able to complete the full project. He went from near zero VBA coding knowledge, to developing a relatively sophisticated VBA workbook that can digest all the data noted above (approximately 28 million cells of data), parse it, and organize it to present it in an easy to use graphic interface for customers.
While there are clearly lots of issues to work out around AI, the future is here, and we’re embracing the positive impact it can deliver for our clients.
From VBA Noob to Pro in 3 Screenshots
(1) Feed ChatGPT The Original Code:
(2) Review Analysis:
(3) Grab The Corrected Code and Test It:
