Microsoft Great Plains Reporting ? Overview for Developer

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular, partly because of Microsoft muscles behind it. Now it is targeted to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele. Small companies use Small Business Manager (which is based on the same 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 market up to big corporations. There are several reporting tools available and you definitely need to know which one to use 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.

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 company 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 - use it. New report, however doesn't have interface where you would enter parameters - so it is not useful for real custom reports. Another limitation of ReportWriter - you can not do cross-modules report - when you need sales and purchasing info on the same report for example.

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-companies transactions elimination).

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.

Crystal Reports. It gives you unlimited functionality. Obviously flexibility requires you to know 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 file. 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 same technique as when you create standard ODBC connection for GP workstation ? but change default database to targeted company database. Create SQL Query to probe the data ? we always recommend tuning your query and see that you are getting adequate results ? in any case ? Crystal Report is just a nice tool to show the results of your query.

Direct Web Publishing off Great Plains databases ? yes - it is easy now with Visual Studio.Net and you can hire good programmers. This is good - Microsoft Business Solutions products: Great Plains, Solomon, Navision and Axapta will be integrated into so called Microsoft Business Portal - which will have web interface - you can get the idea if you look at Microsoft CRM web client - so direct web publishing is good taste.

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 company, based in Chicago, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Oregon, Arizona, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

---

Manufacturing Outsourcing: Microsoft Great Plains Implementation, Customization & Reporting

Manufacturing in the USA is far away down from mid... Read More

RFID: Strengthen the Position for SAP; United States

SAP Inc., a global leader in client/server enterprise application software... Read More

Microsoft CRM for Corporate Business ? Working Offline

If your company has regional and worldwide operations, you might... Read More

Rapid Application Development - Is it Really a Need of Today?

Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a software development methodology. In... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains PM: Payables Management

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is marketed for mid-size companies... Read More

Anti-Spyware Protection ? Holes in the Shining Armor

Looking at all the ads which promise to get rid... Read More

Is Your Family Protected?

When you think... Read More

About Microsoft Sysprep (System Preparation) Utility (Windows 2000)

The Microsoft system preparation utility for Windows 2000 is a... Read More

EDI: Electronic Document Interchange for Microsoft Great Plains ? Overview for Software Developer/Pr

Microsoft Great Plains - Microsoft Business Solutions accounting and ERP... Read More

HSphere Control Panel Tips and Tricks - Power At Your Fingertips: Part 1

The first topic we are going to discuss... Read More

Professional XP Style Icons in Software and Website Development

Using professional icons in your application or website can bring... Read More

Create ASP in Minutes

DBxtra goes ASPGetting to the information hidden within corporate databases... Read More

MultiNational Corporation ERP Implementation ? Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains

If you look back to the history, you will see... Read More

Groupware: What Works the Way Businesses Do?

GroupwareThe internet is full of 1.5 million to 7 million... Read More

Review on QuarkXpress 6.0

After almost two decades of existence, Quark has become the... Read More

Algebra Help Software

Need help making sense of algebra? Have algebra lectures in... Read More

Navision Attain Database access via C/ODBC in ASP.NET Application

Navision Software was purchased by Microsoft and now it is... Read More

10 Things You Could be Using Photoshop For, But Probably Arent

Most people don't use Photoshop to its fullest capabilities. Here... Read More

Marketing Your WinRunner Team

It won't matter how effective your WinRunner Team is if... Read More

Databases ? How We Love to Hate Them!

You've finally created databases that you can actually use to... Read More

History of Java

The java programming language is becoming more and more popular... Read More

Spyware, Adware, etc. -- Terms and Common Sense

When reading an article where some term is used often,... Read More

C++ Tutorial 1, Introduction to C++

Introduction to C++Why Learn C++?C++ may at first seem like... Read More

Microsoft CRM Data Conversion FAQ

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM data conversion deserves FAQ type of... Read More

An Easy Way to Develop JAVA Enterprise Applications

Research bears that less than 70 percent of development projects... Read More

6 Easy Steps for a Smoother CD/DVD Order

It's all about turn times in the eMedia industry! The... Read More

Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive/Ctree support ? overview for consultant

All of us know that Microsoft bought former Great Plains... Read More

Navision Attain C/ODBC Crystal Report ? Customization Example

Microsoft Business Solutions Navision is main ERP application for European,... Read More

A Time-Saving Programming Tactic that Doesn?t Work

Let's say that you have a software project that's under... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains: Getting New Users Licenses ? Annual Service Plan FAQ

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, Axapta, Microsoft CRM... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Implementation: Verticals - Wholesale Order Entry center ? overview

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has substantial market share and... Read More

Great Plains Dexterity Programming ? Overview For Developer

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more popular,... Read More

Importance of Coding Standards

Programming Help for BeginnersWe write programs to instruct computers. When... Read More