What’s new on the menu for Reporting Services Integration in Synergy?

Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by Sunil Girdhari in Exact Synergy

In this blog post I will explain what’s planned for the next product update. Have you read the highlights of Reporting Services Integration which are mentioned in the blog post Empower your key decision-making? Have you seen this video or read the user guide? It will provide you have a clear picture what the possibilities are with Reporting Services Integration in Synergy Enterprise release 243, which is currently available.

So what’s new on the menu?

Appetizer
Do you want to start with something small to whet your appetite?

With the below small improvements and new possibilities you have more freedom and control on reports.

Link and use more Synergy Enterprise entities in reports, e.g. items, opportunities and more default values
Use same report definition but with different security/defaults by supporting linked reports, instead of creating new reports
Improve management functions (security on report groups, link modules to report groups, hide reports in the report tree view)

Main course
Would you like beef, chicken or fish?

Having reports delivered via email by supporting subscription on reports allows you to view reports in MS Outlook or other email applications.
Viewing reports in multiple web browsers gives you even more freedom and control on how the reports should be served.

Dessert
Interested in pie or some ice cream?

With the possibility to show and compare information from different sources in one report, you can make these key decisions faster.
Together with the support of drill down and drill through you can get a detailed insight, which helps you in your decision making.

Coffee
Anything else?

By supporting more data sources types (OLE DB and ODBC) you can show information from almost any product in your reports.

Are you still hungry or thirsty?
Please let me know what you would like to have via a reply or mail so we can serve you even better.

Photo credit: macten

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7 Responses to “What’s new on the menu for Reporting Services Integration in Synergy?”

Jeroen Gruppen

24. Jun, 2010

Sunil, can you tell us if Exact employees use reporting services webparts on their startpage company wide and what this does to the performance of the SQL server? I can imagine that the load will be considerable since you load the startpage very often during the day…. Can you also start the reports from the dealer/ customer portal?
Sunil Girdhari

24. Jun, 2010

@Jeroen,

We have planned updating to release 243 next month. So I don’t have these figures yet. The load/performance on the SQL Server can be managed in several ways. It’s currently not possible to start reports from the dealer/customer portal. We are doing research on how our customers receive and use this solution, before we start implementing new functionalities.

How is your experience so far?
Jeroen Gruppen

24. Jun, 2010

@Sunil. I like the simple configuration to the reporting services environment. Very nice. I think that the current method of presenting the reports only works with a limited number of reports. If you are using this module company wide, then you probably need more levels in order to structure and present the reports to the users. At Nobel, we are using about 200+ reports with our own Reporting Services addon.

You might want to consider adding more parameter support by allowing custom selects. If Exact decides what fields can be used, you always make the wrong choice.
Erik Monchen

24. Jun, 2010

Jeroen,
we don’t have company wide reports yet as Sunil pointed out, but we are using the reporting services for a select group of people. These reports do not affect the performance on the Synergy database though because the data comes out of an SSAS cube.
In general, as long as the reports don’t contain massive SQL statements, I would think the performance should not be affected so much. When you have for example a couple of pivots on your homepage, there are already quite some queries fired at the database server. If the reports don’t need to be real-time reports but for example reports with data refreshed on a daily basis, you could also consider to take report snapshots during night time and read the reports from the cache during the day.
Sunil Girdhari

24. Jun, 2010

@Jeroen,

Thanks for your positive feedback and suggestion. We will definitely take this into account during our research. Currently only reports will be shown in the report tree view, which you are allowed to view. The rights to view a report can be set by linking a role to a report. We made the assumption that an average user won’t need to view 200+ reports. Let’s see what the result of the research will be.
Dave Meyer

28. Jun, 2010

Yes, this is cool. I have SRS working with MAX and Synergy 243 and have “report packs” coming for MAX and Synergy for MAX.

SRS is a pefect tool to deliver reports, graphs and analystics from MAX, Synergy and Great Plains — or any combination of the three!

Email me for more data on these and we can show you how with a one-day configuration and training session to get existing Synergy or MAX clients up and running fast!
Sunil Girdhari

29. Jun, 2010

@Dave,

Great to hear such positive feedback. I will definitely contact you to admire the result. Cheers!