Management Reporter: What You Need to Know Before Installing and Migrating from FRx

So you’re excited about the features of Management Reporter and ready to migrate from FRx.  You’re up and running on GP 2010.  You’ve read the Management Reporter documentation and think you’re ready to tackle the project.  You feel well-prepared and ready to start running reports in a couple of hours.  Right?  Wrong.  Here are some things I wish I had known before performing my first FRx to Management Reporter migration.

• Login:  It’s hard to find this written out in plain terms.  Here’s the deal:  Login for MR is done via Windows Authentication/Active Directory.  However, once you’re in MR you connect to the databases via SQL authentication using your Great Plains login.  Very confusing and can be time-consuming to “troubleshoot” if you don’t understand how it works.
• The installation documentation tells you to set up a new domain user for Administration of Management Reporter.  Since MR uses Windows Authentication for login, you must log into the workstation/server as this new user to log into MR as the Administrator and perform all the setups. This is well documented.
• However, user licenses are named users, NOT concurrent users.  So a user cannot even begin to log in to Management Reporter unless logged into the workstation as one of the named MR users (user type of “Designer”, “Generator”, etc.) as set up within MR by the MR Administrator.  AND, remember this:  the MR Administrator user takes up one of your “Designer” licenses as Administrator.   This can be a real problem if you don’t have many “Designer” licenses.
• If you don’t have Microsoft Office installed (specifically Microsoft Access) on the workstation/server on which you’re installing Management Reporter, you need to install a download or you’ll get an error saying “microsoft.ace.oledb.12.0 not registered”.  You will also get this if the wrong version (64-bit versus 32-bit) is installed.
• You can only migrate one FRx specification set to one Management Reporter installation.  If you have multiple specification sets, you must first combine them in FRx because any subsequent migrations from FRx to MR will overwrite existing reports.  (This is documented in the migration manual.)
• Believe it or not, you NEED YOUR .G32 FILES from FRx for the migration.  It uses them to read account index information.  So even though deleting .G32 files is usually the first step in anything having to do with FRx, don’t do it in this situation. 
• If you have multiple company databases, migration can take quite a while.  First, you have to set up all the companies in MR and there is no way to do this en masse.  Then, once companies are all set up, migration of reports runs for quite a while.

Let me finish by saying that Management Reporter is a great new financial statement reporting software package and has many advantages over FRx.  First and foremost, it’s SQL based instead of being an Access database.  That alone is worth its weight in gold.  The ability to create reports via a built-in wizard and store reports in cohesive groups, along with a host of other features makes it a product many are anxious to implement.  However the installation, migration from FRx and implementation are not as easy as the documentation leads you to believe.  Hopefully these tips will make your experience with Management Reporter implementation a lot easier. 

At Intelligent Technologies, Inc., we have a staff of experienced professionals to help you with your reporting needs.  We have offices in both Greensboro, NC and Raleigh, NC; however, we have remote access capabilities to assist you regardless of where you are located.  Contact us directly to discuss how we can help your business run more smoothly!

 Beth Hodge, Microsoft Business Management Solutions Professional

Intelligent Technologies, Inc.

Management Reporter: What You Need to Know Before Installing and Migrating from FRx is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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