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I am not a GP expert in the least, and have very shaky understandings of it as a whole, but I do a lot of the report writing in SSRS from the GP tables. Within GP 10, we have always been using forms for such things as invoices, bids, picklists, etc., using the GP Report Writer. I've had to modify these a few times which I found very difficult to accomplish. My question is, is this normal? Or are people using SSRS instead? I would love for us to be able to port over to SSRS if that is an option, because I have vastly more experience in that side of things. We started with GP 8 and it was all handled with consultants who are no longer in association with our company.
Pardon the extraordinarily vague question, but I'm looking for a general broad answer to start with...basically, is it normal practice on new installs to use the embedded GP Report generator for printed forms such as invoices, sales orders, etc.? Is there a better option?
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im new to GP 10 and report writer. Regarding your easy or cosmetic changes: when i make a change in report writer how do i publish the change in GP 10.0.
for example SOP Blank Invoice Form, I add my logo and looks correct in report writer but when i go back GP10.0 its like no change took place
In my experience, there are two categories of requests for changes to reports such as Invoices, Orders, PO's, etc.:
1. EASY - Small or cosmetic changes like moving fields slightly, adding a simple logo, deleting one of the columns, etc. These changes are quick and easy to accomplish in Report Writer and typically are either very inexpensive to have done by a consultant or can be done by in-house staff with minimal training/research.
2. NOT SO EASY - Complicated color logos, redrawing of the entire layout, addition of complicated logic or external data, the need to add auto-growing fields (for example for notes), the need to do multiple logic passes (for example to print something like Page X of Y), etc. For these types of changes, it is sometimes more effective in the long run to spend the money and/or internal resources to recreate these reports in SRS or Crystal and even possibly purchase a product that lets you print these reports directly from GP. Something else I would consider in this category is lots of constant little changes. That's not very common, but it does happen in some businesses. Where in and of themselves all the changes would be easy Report Writer changes, but because of the volume of them, it starts getting unwieldy...especially if each change has to be done 4 times (for example - Invoice, Return, Historical Invoice, Historical Return) whereas in Crystal or SRS you can have just one report and logic that changes behavior based on the type and status of transaction.
So there is no one answer to what's better or what companies typically do, it should depend on the specific needs you have. I have not done a formal count (although that's not a bad idea) but I would estimate that about half of our customers either don't have any changes at all to the Report Writer reports or have very minor changes. The other half have some pretty complicated requirements and are using Crystal or SRS reports we've created for them.
Agree with all, as a final note, I believe that Accountable Software has a product call Forms Printer that will allow you to use Crystal Reports and SRS reports as a substitute for the dexertity based modified reports in GP. http://www.accountable.com/
JC
I'd agree with David. For all your customer and supplier facing reports, I'd definately use the report writer. All of our customers use the report writer for this. Even one customer who needs to combine GP SOP invoices from three different companies on the one printout! - Even if you have some developments, you can always copy the report formats into the seperate development dictionary as alternate dynamics reports. I know the report writer can be a hard to get your head around at first, but stick with it. One bit of advice for modifying reports (especially SOP invoices)...delete nothing, just make the fields you don't want, invisible.
Hi Nic
My personal opinion is that the document type reports such as Invoices, Orders, Purchase Orders, etc as well as the transaction logs (edit lists) etc. are best printed from the internal report writer. That way no external applications are required.
For data mining / analysis, you will probably find an external tool more powerful, such as SQL Reporting Services or Crystal Reports.
Moving forward (next version), I believe that the documents will be printed by dumping data as XML from the report writer and letting Word format it nicely.
David Musgrave [MSFT]
Escalation Engineer - Microsoft Dynamics GP
Microsoft Dynamics Support - Asia Pacific
Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions)
http://www.microsoft.com/Dynamics
mailto:David.Musgrave@online.microsoft.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/DevelopingForDynamicsGP
Any views contained within are my personal views and not necessarily Microsoft policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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