Hi all,

This is a general question aimed at all of you developers out there who are using some kind of external tool (forms package, Crystal, AFS, VB/Delphi/C/C++ home-brew, whatever) to access Baan data and produce "pretty printouts".

I'm not selling anything ;-), just trying to get some idea of how other developers get around the (sometimes serious) limitations of Baan printing.

For myself, I've built a whole suite of stuff (in CA-Visual Objects) over the past couple of years for my employers to print delivery slips, invoices, workshop orders, sales orders, labels, etc., accessing the Baan data "direct" from SQL Server via ODBC/ADO and putting bells and whistles on everything.

Now, the managers here want me to put it all back into Baan, no external packages - just like "everybody else out there does it". But is this true? There is, of course, the added problem that if I get run over by a bus, there's no-one else here to maintain the stuff :rolleyes: - but there are other programmers out there...

Over to you for feedback.....

TIA, RobertB

I've written a couple of "pretty" reports using Delphi, and fetching the data from Baan with calls to qptool6.1, thus becoming db independent. Works perfectly for us.

We've got away with using pure Baan apart from our forms software which was included as part of the implementation.

Whether we'd have bought it or not I'm not sure but I'd hate to do without it now as most of the ways of getting this sort of output directly from Baan seem to be a bit involved and not as powerful as a third party solution.

http://www.baanboard.com/baanboard/showthread.php?threadid=7119

We did manage to do all our barcoding and labelling directly from Baan by putting the printer control codes (intermec) directly into the report formats. Again slightly involved but once setup works extremely well.

Slightly changing the subject glad to hear of somebody using Visual Objects our old legacy system was written in Clipper and we did set up a couple of minor systems in VO before Baan swept us away about five years ago.

Hope some of this helps.

Regards
Neal Matthews
Intier Automotive - IT Support Analyst

Hi Neal,

Yes, I'm also using printer-codes (HP, PCL5) in some of our Baan reports. We also had a home-grown Clipper legacy system, hence the VO stuff...

I was looking, just a couple of days ago, at the thread you mention and was interested to see the use of printer macros (which I used to use in the DOS days), and which can also be written in, and sent directly from, Baan using functions like pp$ and spool.buff(). Rather involved and, again, nobody else here speaks PCL5...

However, I hadn't followed up the "Streamserve" link - I'll take a close look at this. Is this the forms software that you are using?

Cheers,
Robert

We use dbform and dbfax from a company based in the UK called Version One.

http://www.versionone.co.uk

They also do a product called dbmail which I have been hoping to get hold of for some time.

The versions of dbfax and dbform we use requires text entry to set up the form definition files but there is now a GUI editor available which will allow you to set up your forms as you want to see them.

Cheers
Neal

Overhere we have the policy to use Baan standard as much as possible.

You don't have to administer additional packages on workstations, you don't have to buy additional licences. Maintaining Baan reports is done at a central location, you don't end up with different versions stored on different workstations.

Futhermore you don't have to bother about security, if you are not able to use a baan db driver your tools roles don't make much sense.

With user defined fonts you can achieve a pretty fancy layout although it has its own problems.

For reports that use data from different applications we use crystal. It's nice but some reports take a lot of time to finish.

Rgrds,
Han

At our company two sites prefer everything in Baan and one site prefers using the Business Objects reporting tool. Also BO is used for anything that crosses our Oracle databases, so somethings we can not do in Baan. It just depends on the customer and the request.

Mark

We have Crystal Enterprise (CE) on top of BaaN.
We use Baan (customised) reports if the report is important and "process" critical. The CE package is used by some superuser who are allowed to make queries themselve (no support from IT department and no guarantee that what they produce is correct).

Robert - also you mentioned Streamserve. That's a nice tool to pretty up things, but involves training on their software, which is kinda complex. Great piece if what you want is not only the pretty docs, but also a Doc Manager, which has programming to make decisions on where a doc goes (Fax, Email, printer), and can have different formats for each, even down to different formats per customer if you want / need / can program. It's also a document server, which holds the docs for later review which is also nice. The server portion makes it very powerful, and we have thoughts that it could be used for EDI, etc, it's still young I think, and unexplored. $$.

Interesting discussion guys.

Surprised nobody mentioned BDN / Toptier which are Good
products left to fend forthemselves.I have worked a little bit on Safari too.

I do love streamserve for all the nice things it can do.Lisa, you explained it very well.Another thing we are doing with streamserve enabled Baan report is attach product specific
quality reports after the Baan report is processed.The options seem endless.I disagree with Lisa that it is still young, just that'
it is a little complex and in the hands of few costly implementers
partners.

Another interesting area is datawarehousing(did anyone say I am
digressing????).with all those Good looking s/w out, management
reporting has come of age.Mark, I did notice your BO mention.

I still feel I have had the last laugh dishing out a Baan report
when the way some users want to look at data is just too complex for the drag and drop (CUBES) software.

Hi Robert,

We have tried our hands at safari but eventually had to dump it because users find it too slow. Currently all our reporting happens through BaaN with a bit of jazz for some reports/Documents ( typically those sent to business partners ) and Excel output for analysis reports.

At present we are actively looking at BO for analytics to support Mid/Top management reporting.

regards,

All,

Thanks to all for your observations - they will, I'm sure, aid us in reaching a better-informed decision on this issue.

tools123, we also used Safari for a while and found it a good product up-front, but a real resource-chewer, so we gave up on it.

Mark, I'll look into the BO tool - is this a Baan, or 3rd-party product?

Lisa, thanks for the lowdown on streamserve - we'll look into that.

We will be using crystal for a few reports, but I'll guess we'll do most things in Baan itself. As an aside, I've just managed to create a font with some company graphics using High-Logic's Font Creator Program (http://www.high-logic.com/fcp.html) - after playing around a few times with the tool, very good results can be obtained. Follow the various forum threads to see how user-defined fonts may be used in reports.

RobertB

because there are some posts whith references to Safari:

Here the statement from BaaN for Baan 5.0 b/c users:

From portingset 7.1c.02 it is not possible to use Safari Reporting tool. Because of technical reasons it is no longer possible to integrate it with Baan.
This affects both BaanERP5.0c as well as BaanERP5.0b customers. Alternative is to use Crystal Reports

Greetings
Andreas

RobertB

Mark, I'll look into the BO tool - is this a Baan, or 3rd-party product?


Buisiness Objects (http://www.businessobjects.com/) is a third party product. I think it comes with some pre-established Baan universes. It is a pretty robust tool - it is really good for power users. Power users can create some good reports from the data.

Mark

No one has mentioned Impromptu is it not popular? We use it extensively however it has tied up one of our IT guys completely! It seems that the regular users don't really understand the system well enough to generate their own reports, which to my mind is a shortcoming of these reporting tools. (the sample database is usually extremely simple and really fools most into thinking that extracting data from Baan is as easy!)

Regards,
Rupert

I know of some installations in germany where the cognos tools are used very intensive.
Not only Impromptu, which is the Reportwriter but also PowerPlay for OLAP.

Don't remember exactly, but i think there is an IT-Company which has developed several so called agents espacially for the connection of Cognos Impromptu and Baan.
What i already remember is
Userauthorizations of Baan can be Used
Domaindescriptions in local language can be used
and some more stuff.

The whole thing is (or was) offered by Baan as BI4Baan.

A couple of our power users have been using Cognos/Impromptu, but it can also slow things down a lot, especially when OLAP cubes are used. And even then, you have to know what to do with the data when you've got them (or is "data" singular? ;) )

RobertB

We started implementing Cognos tools a year ago.
We are using impromptu & power play.
Impromptu is an excellent transaction level reporting tool.
Power Play is Cognos's OLAP tool.
Mapping the Baan data into Impromptu and Power Play can be quite time consuming, but once you have Impromptu reports, and Power Play cubes developed and working, it is very nice.

We are currently using it for sales reporting.
I would like to use these tools for:
- purchasing
- commissions
- Ship on Time Complete
- inventory
- on line P & L.

Cognos has a well developed mature product, that can be used with any data source. The down-side is that it can be quite complex and time consuming to set up.

We have Cognos-Impromptu in use (just version 5, no support contract!) and have heard that Cognos is a strategic partner of SSA Global. Can someone comment this?

Has anyone experience with higher versions of Impromptu or PowerPlay?

Thanks for your reply.

Frank

We don't have any 3rd party tool.
We usualy do it with help of Visual Basic+Word or Excel!

Frank/jroberts,

hi Guys,

Cognos seem to indicate that they are in Beta testing with Baan Customers, you guys are already using Cogons with Baan, could you help me with any documentaion ( install/configure/userguide) for Cognos ( Improptu/powerplay/ReportNet) with Baan.

Appreciate any help guys.

I know that SSA is a Cognos Partner \ Reseller, so they may have already created some reporting with the cognos applications that can purchased 'pre-assembled'.

When you purchase the cognos applications, they provide lots of solid documentation, and their support website has an excellent knowledge base.

We are using Oracle Views to access the Baan data directly in our Oracle databases. This has some distinct advantages, the views are easy to create and maintain, your field names are meaningful ('Order Number' instead of 't$orno') and you can do a lot of data cleaning \ formating in the view itself.

We pulled the views from Oracle into impromptu, and then into PowerPlay Transformer. It is a very circular process,
- build a prototype
- users test
- users add \ change requirements
- re-design prototype
----repeat. ------

We have used the 'Cognos Script Language' (very similar to VBScript) to automate the distribution of :
- sales reports
- supplier forecasts
- daily sales to budget figures
to over 100 individuals (via e-mail) now, either on a daily or weekly basis.

Good Luck,
John

Hello Robert,

We use a add on program which can be used for adding logo 's and other stuff to your print job.
It uses the standard baan report which has only been altered to use true type fonts like arial, (the basic data is still genereated by baan), and the adds overlays to the print job the wat you want it to be.

The user prints only to a special printer, which in fact is a virtual printer on a printer server, and the program does the rest.
You can create your own overlays very easy in word, excell or whatever.

Most important. IT IS VERY CHEAP in relation to other programs.

One thing you have to consider: It only wirks with laserjet printers , that have a PCL5e driver available.

If you want more info, send me a message ...

:-) thieu

Are there a lot of Cognos users with Baan in the North America region?

Any new customers after SSA officially started to support it?

Robert,

On the webside www.versionone.nl you can see (in english) how the Version One software is integated with BaaN. This is the product Neal mentions in his answer as the one they use at the moment and are happy with.

It is a server based tool. end users can operate via BaaN. Therefor you dont have the problems with authorisations etc. that Hans Brinkman mentions.

The tools allows you to reformat the document, add logo's, fonts, create barcodes, print, fax, email, sms, xml the output automatically, scan and retrieve incoming documents etc etc.

If you are interested feel free to contact me