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Well I’m at Convergence (Microsoft’s end user conference for their business users) and I want to share the latest news about FRx and Management Reporter’s future.
If you use one of the 4 Microsoft Dynamics ERPs (GP, SL, AX or NAV):
- If you currently use FRx, you’re ok to stay on FRx 6.7 for a number of years to come, and you can move to Management Reporter on your own timeframe, or as soon as the integration is written.
- Management Reporter will eventually replace FRx.
- Microsoft is targeting the next releases of the ERPs for Management Reporter. So MR will probably be available with GP11 (I’m hearing summer/fall 2010) and SLx and AX6. Don’t know yet about NAV.
- New clients purchasing the next release ERPs will have the option of Management Reporter only.
Forecaster lives on until it’s merged into Management Reporter.
If you use one of the many other ERPs that FRx integrates with, such as Sage, Epicor, Viewpoint, Expandable, and a host of others:
- My understanding is that FRx contracts have been extended through December 2010 for sales. After that point, FRx will go on extended support until 2014. (Meaning after that, it’s toast.) (Correction on 3/14/09: I just learned that there is no support through 2014. Support ends December 2010 and that’s FRx’s End of Life.)
- Whether Management Reporter will be an option is solely up to your ERP software publisher.
We’ll get the official announcement tomorrow morning, and there may very well be more information forthcoming. Stay tuned!
This post is a supplement to my two upcoming Convergence presentations on FRx Best Practices. There just isn’t time to cover everything, so here’s a laundry list. The items in bold I’ll be covering in more detail next week in New Orleans. Meanwhile, here you go:
- Prevent corruption by Compacting the Spec Set regularly (once a week when used often). Get users out, then File>Compact FRx Database>Current Spec Set Database.
- Prevent corruption by saving a catalog before it is generated if a change has been made to the catalog.
- If system issues prevail, compare the workstation FRx version to the server FRx version. They should be the same. Help>About.
- IT nightly backups should include at least SysData and IO_Data.
- Create a set of Font Styles with a company name prefix. For instance, for company FW, set up and use the font style FW Bold (instead of using Arial,10,Bold) anywhere that needs a bold font. This allows everyone to use the same font more consistently across all reports.
- Export a spec set or report(s) daily when developing reports.
- Use a separate spec set for testing and/or report development, leaving the original reports intact.
- Make sure your reports are designed for Drilldown: check Detail Level in the catalog and avoid NP rows where possible.
- Use a footer with the catalog ID and date/time.
- Most of the time, the Filename on the output tab should equal Catalog ID.
- Use a check total to ensure accuracy.
- Use open row, column, tree, and catalog icons for navigation.
- Use comments liberally (with NP or REM rows) to explain logic.
- Italicize NP rows or columns: it makes it easier to follow your work!
- Tieouts: use view subtotals to drilldown on the check total to see amounts by account, then export current selection to excel if needed.
- Use Launcher for nondesigner users.
- Grab reports from FW Demo spec set (either by Save As or Export/Import).
The cat’s out of the bag: sounds like FRx will be around for a while. One can only hope!
Per Doug Henschen in an article for Network Computing yesterday “…the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and applications unit…will continue to develop its Forecaster and FRx products for forecasting, budgeting and financial reporting.” Here’s a link to the full article which contains a good bit of information regarding the recent announcement on the ‘reshuffling’ with PerformancePoint Server.
So that it seems that FRx and Forecaster and Management Reporter are returning to the Dynamics team. For the last year or so they’ve been with the Office team.
Much more information to come in the March 2009 timeframe, but I’ll post what I hear in the meantime. What great news!
Last Friday, Microsoft announced that in the summer of 2009, the PerformancePoint Server (PPS) brand will cease to exist. The significance of this is that PPS is the application that houses Management Reporter which is Microsoft’s replacement for FRx.
So if PPS is being discontinued, what happens with Management Reporter? Is FRx still alive? While I don’t know with certainty, I have some suspicions and I hope to hear more news this week.
And there should be a lot more news in the March 2009 timeframe. Stay tuned.
They keep it interesting, don’t they!
The last day for early registration for Convergence is rapidly approaching. Convergence is Microsoft’s conference for end users of its 4 ERPs (GP, SL, AX, and NAV). Anyway, until midnight pacific time on January 14th, the early registration fee is $1,195. After that, it goes up to $1,495. (Update on 1-14-09: the discount offer has been extended to January 21, 2009.)
(Update on 2/5/09: For Registration Alert Members, Microsoft is extending the Early Registration rate up until the event.)
It’s in New Orleans this year. New Orleans just happens to be one of my favorite places on earth, and I’ve been many many times, so I thought I’d share a couple of my favorite French Quarter haunts. More »
Today’s post is courtesy of Kim Leonard. Kim is on the support team for FRx at Microsoft in Denver and volunteered to provide this information. If you’re creating title pages manually in Word, this will be a fantastic time-saver. Thank you Kim!
To Create a Title Page using PORTRAIT Orientation
Row
These settings will vary depending on where the Title is to display on the page. The following settings will place a 3 line Title with blank rows, then a date, 3 more blank rows and additional notes in text on the page below the date: More »
I just found this workaround for the CS currency rounding issue. Found it on the FRx forum at microsoft.public.com. By default, FRx adds the currency format to the 1st row of every report. SP10 has not been allowing the rows with CS to round properly.
The commenter was wondering why some of her reports rounded on the 1st row and some did not. I have wondered the same thing! I haven’t tested this yet but wanted to get it out. Here you go:
“I discovered one difference that apparently changes how the 1st row currency symbol and the whole dollar rounding from the catalog affects the report. If the 1st line of the row is blank or has a DES format code, the 1st row of data rounds correctly with the currency symbol. If the 1st line of the row contains data it gives the decimal places and needs the workaround and will show $0 even if “Display blanks for zero amounts” is checked.
So I just added a blank NP line in the row and my first line now includes the $ and rounds to the whole dollar. Don’t know why that works but I’m thankful it does!”
I’m thankful that the commenter shared her discovery!
If you want to know more about the currency rounding issue, please see my post at FRx SP10: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
Today’s post is a very quick overview of the setup of FRx’s currency translation module. This is an extra-cost add-on module used to, uh, translate foreign currencies.
More »
This post is another that comes from Jeff Cutting, a lead developer of FRx. It was originally posted as an answer to a question about FRx Security, Solomon and SP10 (in my SP10 post), but there is plenty of non-Solomon specific information. I thought it valuable enough to have its own post! Thank you Jeff. —Jan
I’m going to give an overall explanation of FRx security to help anyone that might be interested (for any GL), and then I will drill into the specifics for Solomon. More »
Earlier this week, I wrote about how to divide headcount by the period number. This post can be found at How To Divide Headcount by the Period Number. In the realm of “there’s more than one way to get downtown”, today I’ll revisit using the period number in calculations. Today’s method uses a link to Excel to pull in the period number.
This writeup is provided compliments of Jeff Cutting, a lead developer of FRx and its successor, Management Reporter. THANK YOU, Jeff! More »
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