Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is specific to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical advertise clientele. Small businesses
utilize Small Business Manager (which is based on the identical
technology Great Plains Dexterity dictionary and runtime), Great Plains Standard on MSDE is for small to midsize clients, and then Great Plains serves the rest of the sell
up to big corporations. There are several reporting tools available and you definitely positive need
to know which one to make use of
for different types of reports.
If you are developer who is asked: how do we create report for Microsoft Great Plains read this and you will have the clues on where to look further.
1. Great Plains Report Writer (ReportWriter) this is built-in reporting tool. All the original report in Great Plains are written in ReportWriter. ReportWriter itself is Dexterity module. You should use this tool if you would like to modify existing Great Plains reports, such as Blank Invoice Form - here you can place your business
logo, change the positioning, fonts, colors, etc. ReportWriter will allow you also do new reports - simple option if you want to export all the records from one Great Plains table - make use of
it. New report, however doesnt have interface where you would enter parameters - so it is not useful for real custom reports. Another limitation of ReportWriter - you might
not do cross-modules report - when you positive need
sales and purchasing info on the identical
report for example.
2. FRx. This is excellent tool when deal with financial reporting - it works on the General Ledger level (Balance sheet, P&L, Cash Flow Statement, etc.). It also allows you to do multiple companies consolidation - when you do consolidated Balance Sheet (with inter-businesses
transactions elimination).
3. Smart List - Export to Excel this is nice feature in Great Plains - you could create a list with simple criteria and then export it to Excel.
4. Crystal Reports. It gives you unlimited functionality. Obviously flexibility requires you to understand
Great Plains table structure: Launch Great Plains and go to Tools->Resource Description->Tables. Find the table in the proper series. If you are looking for the customers it should be RM00101 customer master document
. If you need historical Sales Order Processing documents they are in SOP30200 Sales History Header file, etc. Create ODBC connection to GP Company database. Use the identical
technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation but change default database to distinct company database. Create SQL Query to probe the data we always recommend tuning your query and see that you are taking adequate results in any case Crystal Report is just a nice tool to show the results of your query.
5. Direct Web Publishing off Great Plains databases yes - it is brain friendly now with Visual Studio.Net and you might
hire workable programmers. This is grand - Microsoft Business Solutions products: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta will be integrated into so said Microsoft Business Portal - which will have web interface - you might
get the idea if you look at Microsoft CRM web client - so direct web publishing is effective taste.
6. SQL Queries. If you have SQL background - this is great field for you. You know - with properly formatted SQL query you can realize simple EDI export/import for the integration with legacy systems.
Happy designing! if you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com
Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization business
, based in Chicago, California, New York, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com, he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.
akarasev@albaspectrum.com
