Rockton Products

[jonbarr]

We have GP ver 6.00 and shortly will upgrade to 7.5.
We are using Crystal v 8.0 and would like to make these reports easily available to all of our 16 GP users.

Has anyone used the Rockton "Crystal Integration" product, and if so what are your thoughts or comments it ?

We would also like some feedback on the "Auditor" software that they offer.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[winthropdc]

I will start by saying that Mark Rockwell is a good friend of mine and that he is one of the best Dex developers I know.... OK so I'm biassed.

However, I have only ever heard excellent feedback for all of the Rockton products. Most of the products can be trialled with the lesson company, so I would load them and try them out for yourself.

David Musgrave
Senior Development Consultant
MBS Services - Asia Pacific

Microsoft Business Solutions

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights.

 

[jymm]

ok - I am NOT a friend of Mark - BUT can only say GOOD AMAZING things about the products. We use Lookup Pro and think that we got a steal.

I have seen Crystal in action, but opted to not use it as we were doing the same thing pretty much from an intranet application --- the plus side is to come from any window -- and for only $1500 it is a steal.

as far as Auditor goes - I felt that you could get the same functionality from GP 7.5 & 8.0 --- BUT it seems easier to use when I tried out the Rockton stuff.

 

[winthropdc]

I believe that standard activity tracking will only tell you if a particular record has been updated.

However, Auditor can tell you which field(s) in the record have been edited.

David Musgrave
Senior Development Consultant
MBS Services - Asia Pacific

Microsoft Business Solutions

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights.

 

[Luvsql]

Does the crystal product from Rockton actually allow you to create a completely cusomized report that has no link to any parameters in Great Plains and print that, prompting the user for the parameters within the crystal report, or does it have to link to an existing GP report? Our issue is that a very few reports within GP are of use, so we have to create them all custom.

 

[winthropdc]

There are 1225 reports in the v8.00 core dictionary... surely a few would handle what you need... or could be customised to meet your needs...

Anyway, my understanding is that Rockton's Crystal integration does allow your first example, it can be used to link to any report and pass parameters from lookups and other dialogs. The reports can be triggered from buttons or extras menus.

David Musgrave
Senior Development Consultant
MBS Services - Asia Pacific

Microsoft Business Solutions

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights.

 

[jazgeek]

Hey David,

Your comment is the exact reason why there is such a frustration level out there with the product. I know Luvsql personally as we worked together in the var channel. Believe you me, coming now from the customer side I can say without a lie that my company does not run on great plains, it runs on crystal reports and great plains is a tool for inputting information.

From the financial side, GP is great and is by far the best "accounting" package out there. However the distribution and manufacturing offerings are cumbersome and not tailored to the real world requirements.

Perhaps this vaunted Project Green will take the best out of other packages and deliver something that is useable, but I for one am not waiting that long.

I just put out $14,000 worth of enhancements with another $3000 coming fairly soon for manufacturing. Nothing has been done in 3 successive releases to fix or even attempt to fix the core problems with the system.

This is of course my opinion and relates to only my installation and the 30 or so I've been at over the last 7 years.



-----------
and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[winthropdc]

All I can say is make sure you enter your specific reporting needs as suggestions via the link in the bottom left corner of PartnerSource or CustomerSource home.

As a developer (and ex-partner), I have also used Dexterity to generate a number of custom reports for companies, but this is usually a much smaller number than the reports that are used that already exist (even if some are modified).

But I have also managed to find many reports in the core which can be tweaked to satisfy customers needs. With VBA it is also possible modify reports which use temporary tables easily.

David Musgrave
Senior Development Consultant
MBS Services - Asia Pacific

Microsoft Business Solutions

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions

Any views contained within are my personal views and
not necessarily Microsoft Business Solutions policy.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties,
and confers no rights.