The status of a plurality of service orders is summarized. A first data
set that includes a plurality of records corresponding to service orders,
such as requests for initiation of telephone or other communications
services, is imported into a database application. At least one query or
test may be executed on the first data set to generate a second data set
that includes at least part of the first data set and one or more labels
that have been appended to at least some of the plurality of records in
the first data set. This second data may be imported into a spreadsheet
application so that the spreadsheet application can automatically
generate a summary of at least some of the data contained in the second
data set.