It’s not working, any suggestions? FRx6.7 sp10

Not a very satisfactory situation when you are trying to convince a client that Microsoft is a serious contender that takes reporting seriously.

Regards,

Geoff

Did you apply SP11 to an existing WebPort installation? If so, you do not need to install BCL easyPDF 6.0 – WebPort will continue to work with the previous version (3.11). BCL easyPDF 6.0 can be installed if you install WebPort from the new FRxWebPort.msi we released with SP11. That MSI can be installed on Server 2003 and Server 2008, but is only required for Server 2008 installations.

As for the lack of 64-bit support – there are a number of technical limitations that prevent us from supporting FRx 6.7 on 64-bit Windows. FRx is not a C++ or .NET app that can simply be ported over. Beyond that, there are issues and limitations we encountered with interoperation between the VB6 and .NET code in WoW64 that are not simple to overcome. Therefore, the solution for running FRx in a 64-bit environment is one of the following:

Report Server/WebPort – Use a 32-bit Server 2003 or Server 2008 VM. Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 include Hyper-V and the licensing allows you to run one (Standard), four (Enterprise), or unlimited (Datacenter) VMs. Hyper-V makes this easy to accomplish without additional cost and overhead. Alternatively, you can continue to use Report Server and WebPort on an existing, older server – those components do not require a lot of hardware, and they should be running on their own server anyway.

Clients – Use a 32-bit operating system on an older machine OR on a newer machine – you can still install 32-bit Windows on a newer 64-bit computer. Alternatively, use Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise. XP Mode will allow you to install FRx on a 64-bit version of Windows 7 – FRx will simply run on an XP VM in the background while still appearing to the user as if it’s running on Windows 7 itself. Windows XP Mode was created for this very purpose.

Management Reporter has just been released as a Beta for Dynamics GP. It will be released for the other Dynamics ERPs as we sync up with releases for those products.

Thank you,
Jeff

Firstly, I am unable to install the easyPDF Printer Driver from the msi package as per the installation instructions. I get a message saying “The setup program cannot be used unless Microsoft FRx 6.7 Webport is installed”. Clearly (since the Webport upgrade process created th BCL directory in which the easyPDF driver msi sits) Webport is installed. I am logged on as an administrator and am stuck. I can’t give this to clients if it doesn’t work.

Secondly, what is the story with no 64 bit support. The world is moving to 64 bit, my laptop is 64 bit and we have no 32 bit servers. We have moved our clients to 64 bit servers (as per Microsoft). the use of Virtual Machines is just a workaround not a fix. Do you seriously expect us to go to paying clients and tell them to either use Virtual Machines or keep old 32bit machines running if they want to use FRx? Their reaction will not be positive. Either FRx needs to support 64 bit or Management Reporter needs to become available and needs to support all of the Dynamics ERP’s. Anything else is simply not good enough and totally unacceptable.

Regards,

Geoff

Hi Jason,

Microsoft FRx released Service Pack 11, R11670, for all Sage Products. However, Sage Software will put the Service Pack through their own certification process before releasing it to Sage customers. Service Pack R11670 is posted currently for all Sage Products on the Microsoft Download Site, http://www.microsoft.com. To download Service Pack 11, go to the Microsoft Download Site, http://www.microsoft.com, click Downloads and Trials, then Download center. In the Search field type in, FRx 6.7. This will return all listings for Service Pack R10670 or R11670 depending on the General Ledger System (Service Pack 11 has not been released yet for some General Ledgers).

Regarding the Good/Bad/Ugly, I can give you highlights for Service Pack R11670 as follows:

•Windows 2008 and Windows 7 will be supported with FRx 6.7 SP11.
•The FRx WebPort will be supported with Windows 2008 and Windows 7. A separate download is necessary to install FRxWebport SP11 to be supported on Windows 2008 and Windows 7. This will be available on MS Downloads (the same place where all the FRx Service packs are stored) eventually but not currently uploaded yet. Windows Vista will continue to be not supported with FRx WebPort.
The new WebPort installation will work on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. In addition, the Web Printing functionality has been updated to work with BCL easyPDF 6.0 (our previous version was 3.11). If customers install SP11 on an existing 2003 server with BCL easyPDF 3.11, it will continue to work fine. If you set up a new server (2003 or 2008), you will be able to install WebPort from the new installation and install easyPDF 6.0 and it will work with both 3.11 and 6.0.
The new WebPort installation is an MSI and as stated it will be available on the Microsoft Download Center. The installation works the same with updated permissions such as correctly adding the IUSR_ for IIS6 or IIS_IUSRS and IUSR for IIS7. One additional highlight is that you can now select either Windows Authentication or Anonymous Authentication during the installation and it will create the WebPort virtual directory according to what you selected.
•Office 2010 will not be certified in this cycle. However, there was some limited testing and it does work.
•64-bit version of Windows will not be supported. Customers will have to use Virtual Machines. A new feature in Windows 7 allows users to download Windows XP Mode. This is a new feature in Windows 7, available in Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise, provides a licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 in Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) format. When installed with the proper integration components, it allows you to run Windows XP in its own virtual machine, separate from the host Windows 7 installation. The location for the download and additional information about XP Mode is available at this URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx.
•The previous issues with percentage and dollar formatting using CS are resolved in this service pack, along with other fixes in the service pack listed in the Release notes.

Thank you,
Kim [MSFT]
**This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights

Thank you very much for keeping us updated on this. It makes a huge difference to us and our customers that you and your team are looking at all the posts out there and are not only responding, but taking them into consideration for development.

Thanks again,
Victoria

Thanks again for the explaination!
Alan

I have some additional information I can provide on this, and hopefully some better news.

The CS functionality has a pretty lengthy history that goes all the way back to FRx 6.5. In SP7 for FRx 6.5, we fixed a bug in which a column mask was overriding the CS in the row format. This was where we established that, as a row option, CS overrides any column formatting mask or option (except for a percentage mask). Unfortunately, the original fix did not take into account various other combinations, and we’ve received (and fixed) a number of related bugs since. This includes combinations of CS with column masks, CS and SR (suppress rounding), CS and B0 (print blank for 0 amounts), CS with non-US currencies, and several others. There have been CS-related changes in several service packs, but the most impactful appears to have been the change made in SP10. It was at that point that we made CS work exactly as it was documented – it always uses the currency format from the International Format, regardless of rounding or any other setting. Of course, we obviously broke it with regard to percentage masks in the column (which remains the one exception to the rule).

With SP11, the area of code that handles CS and some of these combinations has been rewritten. This was a particularly nasty area of code that had seen many fix-break-fixes in the past, so I am hopeful that the new code will work much better. The new code also now supports rounded forms of the currency mask from the international format, so CS will combine with the catalog rounding (and still respects the spirit of the documented functionality). We’ve retested all of the previous CS-related bugs with this new code, and all of them are still working as expected. For example, CS won’t override the column percentage mask, CS with an SR will override the catalog rounding, and CS with a non-US currency symbol will work correctly.

I can’t promise that no one will find bugs with the new code, but we at least know it works for all of the previously-reported scenarios, and it works better than it has in previous releases. We’re also making sure we do much better testing in this area so that hopefully we don’t release the same kind of issue again.

I want to say that I really appreciate the comments brought up on this entry (particular by Jan and our customers). I read all of the comments (on this site and on the FRx newsgroup), I share the comments with others in my group, and I keep the feedback in mind when we’re working on FRx service packs. We can’t always do as much as we’d like, but we do take the feedback seriously.

Thank you,
Jeff [MSFT]
Software Development Engineer