Crystal Reports for Microsoft Great Plains

Microsoft Business Solutions ? Great Plains is designed to meet and extend the needs of small and mid-size organizations for its business success. Its comprehensive accounting and business management applications also provide businesses with capabilities to customize various modules of the Great Plains software to fit to their specific needs. Because of these potentials, Great Plains has been targeted to the whole spectrum of both horizontal and vertical clientele.

A number of industry-specific applications integrate well with Great Plains. This allows for more flexibility and unparalleled access to information that aids in decision-making and analysis of performance.

Crystal Reports is a report-writing software that can integrate itself to Great Plains' database. It goes beyond the report creation process of Great Plains' own Report Writer. As a developer, Crystal Reports will help your client access decision-driving information to aid in managing their businesses more effectively. So, how do we use Crystal Reports to extend Great Plains Report Writer?

Great Plains Table Structure

When a business entity is processed, the information is written onto the Great Plains database tables. This can be found by launching Great Plains, then: Tools > Resource Description > Tables. Find the appropriate Table:

RM00101 ? Customer Master File

SOP30200 ? Sales History Header File

Create ODBC Connection

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is an integration tool to connect a client application to an ODBC-compliant database. It allows exchanging information among databases and easily integrates with a wide range of present systems. Great Plains uses the ODBC drivers installed by Microsoft SQL Server.

To create an ODBC connection to a Great Plains company database, one common way is with the use of the Data Source dialog box. It prompts you to connect to the appropriate data source. Choose the company database that you are targeting that contains the data needed for your Crystal Reports report generation.

SQL Views

Microsoft SQL Server has a virtual table that you can access to minimize the complexity of looking at links in Crystal Reports itself. By referencing the view name in a Transact-SQL statement, a user can access this virtual table and retrieve the data for future selection to be applied into Crystal Reports.

SQL Stored Procedures

There are instances wherein you will not be able to pull all your needed data into one view. In this situation, you would need an SQL stored-procedure ? defined as a group of Transact-SQL statements compiled into a single execution plan. With the help of a stored procedure, you do not need to access individual tables to use in Crystal Reports.

Calling Crystal Reports via VBA/Modifier

It is possible to call the Crystal Reports engine from one Great Plains application to do a process with the use of Modifier and VBA. For example, you want to print a Crystal Reports invoice in Great Plains from the Sales Order Processing window, use Modifier and VBA to call up the Crystal Reports engine.

SQL Query

Using SQL Query Analyzer can help in making sure you are getting adequate results in your report generation. In addition, it debugs stored procedures and query performance problems. It can also copy existing database objects and locate, view or work with these objects within the database.

Need more information?

Contact us: 1-866-528-0577 or help@albaspectrum.com

For customization work and advice, please contact Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Chief Technology Officer. His works include development of applications with the use of Dexterity, SQL, C# .NET, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK.

Divine Rigor is the Technical Writer for Alba Spectrum Technologies USA ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), a Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company. We are based in Chicago with locations in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York and contacts in international markets.

© Jan 2005 Alba Spectrum Technologies USA

---

Microsoft RMS Customization ? PO Items Receiving in Great Plains

Microsoft Retail Management (RMS) and Microsoft Great Plains are retail... Read More

Vlans

In order to implement VLANs in a network environment, you'll... Read More

MySQL for Beginners ? How to Create a MySQL Database

Whether you are an experienced web programmer or a complete... Read More

Best Practices In Choosing Network Monitoring Software

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Hawaii (HMSA) found itself... Read More

Explore the Internet in a Whole New Way

For a long time now Microsoft's Internet Explorer has ruled... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains POP: Purchase Order Processing ? Overview For Consultants

Great Plains Purchase Order Processing (POP) module makes up one-third... Read More

Great Plains Sales Order Processing and Invoicing Modules ? Tips For Consultants

We'll give you non formal view, based on our consulting... Read More

Does Microsoft have any real competition?

Does Microsoft Have any Real Competition? Copyright (c) 2003 Gregory... Read More

Microsoft C# vs. VB.Net

Hi, Guys,I believe a lot of programmers are trying to... Read More

Microsoft CRM Customization ? Programming Closed Email Activity

Microsoft CRM is CRM answer from Microsoft and attempt to... Read More

Microsoft CRM: Implementation, Customization, Support ? Consultant Overview

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is present several years on the... Read More

Microsoft CRM Integration & Customization: SharePoint Document Gateway

MS CRM is very close to document workflow automation, including... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Remote Support - Overview

Microsoft Great Plains is now standard mid-market ERP application, serving... Read More

Is Your Family Protected?

When you think... Read More

Off The Record - Tips For Picking Recording Software

Need software to record your voice, streaming audio or musical... Read More

Microsoft CRM Integration with Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS) ? Overview

Microsoft Client Relation Management system (Microsoft CRM) and Microsoft RMS... Read More

What to Do if All Screensavers Fun is Grayed Out?

Finally, you have some time to personalize your desktop with... Read More

Cisco Certification: Five Things To Do DURING Your CCNA Exam

There are plenty of articles out there about how to... Read More

Crystal Reports - Geterogeneus databases: SQL Server, Oracle, Unidata, Btrieve ? Tips For Developer

Crystal Reports is the most flexible tool on the market... Read More

XML Parser and Their Types

XML parser is a software module to read documents and... Read More

How a Bug Challenges to a Software Professional

It is really interesting that a bug can create problem... Read More

Most Dangerous Types of Spyware are on the Rise: How to Choose the Weapon

Bad News - the Threat is Bigger than it SeemedHow... Read More

Microsoft CRM Integration With Microsoft Office Documents ? Overview For System Integrator

Microsoft CRM is CRM application, maintained and supported by Microsoft... Read More

An Easy Way to Deal with Email Viruses and Worms

If you feel intimidated when someone tries to teach you... Read More

Microsoft CRM Customization

Microsoft CRM customization techniques are very diversified and based on... Read More

Reloading Windows XP

If you have been running Windows XP for a couple... Read More

C++ Tutorials: 3, Program Flow (If, Else, While, For)

Program Flow is what you think it is. How the... 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 ? Consulting in the Post-Recession Time

New post-recession era has new features, which didn't exist in... Read More

Getting Technical Support Help Online

Sometimes your PC will start acting strange for no apparent... Read More

Causes of ERP Failures

ERP is the acronym of Enterprise Resource Planning. Multi-module ERP... Read More

Internet Faxing Service Review

The Internet is reshaping every form of communications medium, and... Read More

Need of Document Management System (DMS)

Document Management or Enterprise Information Management is perhaps one of... Read More