ISTech Support Forum - All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer

deburr Senior Member Posts: 487 Gender:	All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer 02/04/09 at 14:34:59 I'm trying to learn how to use the report writer and it occurs to me that there may be some great wealth of knowledge that might be shared by the masters... Would be great to have one area to find info on modifying RTM's.
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kkmfg Senior Member Ghost of the code Posts: 411 Gender:	Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer Reply #1 - 02/04/09 at 14:52:04 This sounds like an excellent use of the wiki.
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GasGiant Administrator How can I help? Posts: 1523 Gender:	Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer Reply #2 - 02/04/09 at 16:21:47 Excellent, yes... but who will start the HOWTO article? We seem to have a dearth of writers.
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deburr

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #3 - 02/05/09 at 06:13:29

My first thought was the wiki also but I don't know if it would work as good as the forum for getting answers to specific questions. It would be a great place for someone to write a general article.

My thought for having a separate subject on the forum is that RTMs will pertain to every module for everyone going forward as classic completely transitions to EVO-ERP.

The help that comes with the report writer, doesn't make sense to us non-programmer types. We rely on Crystal Reports to get what we what we can't get with pre-configured RTMs. The help that comes with Crystal is written at a level that is understandable to the common computer user. I think there will be a lot of questions using Report Writer depending on the skill level of the user.

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Steve Cyr
Deburring House Inc.
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PSQL 12

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GasGiant

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #4 - 02/05/09 at 06:46:23

This work into my current project a bit. I need to add a forum section and I would like to reorder some things at the same time, mostly to put Problem Reports near the top. On that note, here is my first pass at reordering this "Evo-ERP and DBA Classic" section:

User Polls
EvoERP Flash Videos
Problem Reports - Repeatable
Problem Reports - Sporadic
Manufacturing
Items
Sales
Accounting
Systems Manager
Payroll
Bar Code & Hand Held Interface
Evo Menu & Evo~ERP
RTM Reports Editing
Evo2Web Extension
Installation
Suggestions for Updates
General Topics
Local User Groups
IS Tech Symposium & Training
Program Offerings
Jobs
Source Code & Programming in TAS

I would move the EziJobs/Next Gen forum to the "General" section, since it is neither DBA nor Evo. Thoughts?

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deburr

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #5 - 02/05/09 at 13:31:35

Looks good to me.

Do you know of anywhere that I can get help now? I went to the ADDSUM TAS website but that didn't help. I looking for some basic information to start modifying RTMs by adding summary fields or just trying to understand the capabilities or limitations of the process so I don't waste time trying to make an RTM that is impossible and should really put the effort into a Crystal Report. I looking for some prose as apposed to a list of definitions or functions that is in the help file.

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Steve Cyr
Deburring House Inc.
EVOERP
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PSQL 12

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GasGiant Administrator How can I help? Posts: 1523 Gender:	Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer Reply #6 - 02/05/09 at 13:46:42 Allen (NovaZyg) and Michel (JEMM) are the only two resources I know. I struggle through a few simple changes to RTMs, but mostly I bypass them and make browser-based reports.
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NovaZyg

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #7 - 02/05/09 at 13:58:28

The way the Digital Metaphors Report Builder (RTM's) are designed into TASPRO 7 it is not a report writer, it is more of a Report Template for Printing. There are a lot of things the full Report Designer can do, but as it is implemented you can only add fields to an existing layout, no calculations or summary fields. So my suggestion to you is to design your own with Crystal in this case.

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Allen Landry
Evo~ERP

EvoERP and DBA Classic always Beta's of the Latest versions.

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deburr

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #8 - 02/05/09 at 14:31:10

Thanks Allen

I have been hunting around and I think I found a pretty good learning system at:

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/download/learning_reportbuilder.html

I'm going to give that a try. At least I will probably learn what I can't do so I don't waste time. The 125 Page PDF is written so the common man can understand. Looks pretty good at first glance.

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Steve Cyr
Deburring House Inc.
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EMI Ann

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #9 - 02/24/09 at 13:53:17

YES! But more than a topic section, I would like to see an improved report writer system in DBA/Evo. NO-ONE should have to buy Crystal or any other product. RTM modifications allow you to change the appearance of a report, but not it's actual sort stack architecture. The user defined reports are also limited, because of the way the primary sorts are categorized and pre-selected for you. I actually have an ancient, ancient DOS invoice program that, while it doesn't do anything but stuff directly related to invoices, has a great report design system. Within each section, such as receivables, shipping, backlog, etc., it has a list of all the data fields, with a chart sort of layout that allows you to choose which items you want to include, the primary and secondary sort order orders, and what order you want the stuff to appear in. Then, when you get the report the way you like, you get to save it with the name you want. You can design something like up to 10 reports in each of 10 categories. This would be awesome in DBA/Evo, and could possibly make it more appealing to more people. If anyone who is in a position to write the code to put it into DBA/Evo would like me to email the program to them to play with, let me know. It is an ancient "MySoftware" thing, MyProductInvoices, version 1.0.1.
Thanks for continuing to make DBA/Evo better all the time!
Ann Luce

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EMI FILTER COMPANY
Clearwater, Florida
EVO-Erp 2015.1, Win 8.1 Pro, Win 2008 network

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kkmfg

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #10 - 02/25/09 at 14:50:10

I'm no huge fan of the built in report editor either. Not the single greatest piece of code ever written. But, it seems to work well enough for the most part.

For those things that it does not do there is obviously Crystal Reports. For those of us who dont' want to pay for CR there are programs like

OpenRPT:
http://www.xtuple.com/openrpt

JasperReports:
http://jasperforge.org/plugins/project/project_home.php?group_id=102

OpenReports:
http://oreports.com/

And the list goes on. Actually, Jasper is embeddable but it's JAVA and I'm not too sure how easy it is to extend TAS with thirdparty code.

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

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GasGiant

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #11 - 02/26/09 at 06:14:40

There is also the (gasp) MS tool that most people already have: Excel. Most of our financial reporting is done in Excel by choice. Our CFO starts with the Evo numbers and then gets all kinds of creative with things in Excel.

The report editor for RTMs that we have in Evo is really more of a forms editor. Good for changing layout, setting up boilerplate, etc., but the actual report is a pre-programmed, canned affair. If you really want custom RTMs then IS Tech offers that service.

Then there are geeks like me who prefer to live in the triple dubya world and just write web apps with custom reporting lips sealed

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kkmfg

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #12 - 02/26/09 at 07:15:27

Well, we don't have Microsoft Office nor do I plan to ever purchase it. If I could get Evo and Worldship to reliably run in WINE it would be bye bye windows. I'm not about to be named MS's MVP of the year.

But, the OpenOffice spreadsheet program works pretty much the same. I don't really like spreadsheets though.

Doing web based forms can be good too. This also has the built in advantage of allowing for remote viewing if one were so inclined. But PHP wasn't really designed for such a use... I've done a bunch of PHP coding and it seems like using it for tons of reporting could create a heap of hard to read code. Not to mention that the combo between HTML and PHP has got to be harder to modify than a form based report system like CR or Jasper.

I think that a mixture of web based reporting and form based printed reports is the way to go. Some things lend themselves to a web based approach and some things to a form based report. I have not used JasperReports but it looks interesting and I wonder if maybe it's a good free alternative to CR.

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

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kevind

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #13 - 02/26/09 at 09:03:51

I have always used Crystal Reports since we already have it.
However, since version 8, they removed the Compiled reports option that worked really well
for me when I needed to supply someone with easy to run report at their workstation.

Well, I just re-discovered "Report Manager".
WOW Shocked

, this product has really matured.

It includes a visual report designer and easy ODBC connectivity.
Configurable Report Parameters, Dynamic parameter lookup, expression evaluator (like crystal formulas).

It also includes a Report Compiler that generates an .exe that encapsulates the report!!! Yea!!

This .exe could be directly called by the EVO menu, or could be included as a menu item in the classic menu
by using THIS utility on the Wiki.

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Kevin Damke
Spectronics Corporation
ISTECH 2004.1 7/26/13 SP1 - 20 user
Evo-ERP Build 7/25/13 T7 -7i R6 - 3 user
(Prev version was 2004.1 10/24/12)
(All Patches Installed as of 7/26/13)
Pervasive 2000i SP4 - Crystal Reports V10

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kkmfg

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Re: All in favor of a catagory for Report Writer
Reply #14 - 02/26/09 at 10:00:31

Quote from kevind on 02/26/09 at 09:03:51:

Well, I just re-discovered "Report Manager".
WOW Shocked

, this product has really matured.

Interesting! It also has Delphi components. TAS is written in Delphi so maybe that would aid in getting the two to work together.

It seems like there are a lot of good choices out there.

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
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Poll
Question: Would you like to see a catagory dedicated to RTM's.
Yes, sounds great! No, too many catagories already. « Created by: deburr on: 02/04/09 at 14:34:59 »