® ® Adam Jacobson, Red Three Consulting

Who are you? Five Common Data Personalities  Just the data (executives, managers sales guys)  Departmental User – Accounting, Procurement, HR – I need data to do my job.  Super User – I want all the data. And I want to play with it myself  Report Developer  Database Developer And one more (generally only seen during demos)  Dashboard Devotee reportsyouneed.com

Who are you?  Given those description, who are you and what do you do? (or are you just here to get out of the office. I won’t tell). reportsyouneed.com

Who are we?  Data for Finance and Accounting Complex Accounting, Financial, Procurement and Supply Chain Data Reporting, Business Intelligence, Data Integration, Custom Development Using Microsoft Tools – SSRS, SSAS, T-SQL, C#, Excel, VBA. Connected to any data source (SQL Server, Oracle, My SQL, DB2, AS400 reportsyouneed.com

Who am I  Adam Jacobson  First reports were for my family’s retail stores – ShowMe over STS Retail Merchandising system running Business Basic on a Data General  Software Implementation moved toward BI  Focus on Finance is my key Tools: SSRS, Crystal, Qlikview, OBIEE Databases: SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, As400 DB2, MySQL Languages: Cobol, RPG, T-SQL, VBA ERPs – Lawson, Oracle, GP reportsyouneed.com

Why you shouldn’t use us Dynamics GP customers span a huge range of sizes, industries, and needs. There are lots of GP partners out there with more experience than we have.  Focused entirely on GP  You were pretty happy with Quickbooks.  You just want application training.  You want on-going handholding (a better version of GP support). reportsyouneed.com

Why you might give us a try  You have complex accounting/reporting needs (multiple currencies, multiple entities, multiple reporting bases, etc).  Complex reporting challenges.  Data integration challenges Across Systems, Platforms or Partners  You want to become as independent as possible. We want to make you independent. We don’t like CDS (Consultant Dependency Syndrome). reportsyouneed.com

Agenda for Today  What is SSRS and why would you use it  SSRS with GP – what you get  Report Examples 1  Report Bursting  Report Examples 2 - Visualization  How To – Tips and Tricks if folks are using the data. reportsyouneed.com

Some Key Points  TMTOWTDI  I have my own biases We work mostly with mid-sized (50 million to 500 million dollar) companies and occasionally finance department of multi-billion dollar companies Our clients tend to be very nuts and bolts We come in because people are unhappy with what they are getting. (Therapists don’t see happy couples). reportsyouneed.com

SSRS for GP – Why? You already own it- comes with every SQL Server Version currently supported. There are some advanced features available with more expensive versions (BI and Enterprise) but they only become an issue when you have dozens of users No GP License Required. Either server based or CAL license base – driven by SQL Server No software beyond a browser required on a desktop. Yes, it works with multiple browsers (but I will not certify your combination in this presentation). reportsyouneed.com

SSRS for GP – Why? Server Centric – reports aren’t on individuals PCs or shared drives. Bursting Reports to a folder or Connect to any data source Large base of support reportsyouneed.com

SSRS with GP – What do you get?  Reports and Roles Lots of Reports d5-4eef-b5e1-f3dd5b30632b reportsyouneed.com

SSRS with GP  Security Separate from GP Security – Provided by Database Role  Every user who wants to run their own reports Must be setup on the windows server with access to SSRS. Must be defined with SSRS as a valid user Must be granted access to the appropriate folders within SSRS. This allows company level security User must have access to the database reportsyouneed.com

SSRS with GP – Home Page  Walking Through (apologies that I don’t have this on my laptop) reportsyouneed.com

SSRS – GP Company Folder reportsyouneed.com

SSRS – GP Financial Folder reportsyouneed.com

SSRS – GP – Financial – Charts/KPIs reportsyouneed.com

SSRS – GP Example Journal Entry Report reportsyouneed.com

Journal Entry Example reportsyouneed.com

Journal Entry - PDF reportsyouneed.com

AR Days Outstanding Detail reportsyouneed.com

SSRS for GP – What you get  Not all that exciting – very 101 and not what people want. reportsyouneed.com

Examples  You can do many, many things with SSRS.  Our examples focus on common things you may want to do when you are delivering data to end users who may not be core users of Dynamics GP.  These examples are built on the Adventure Works database, not on the GP sample data. But the data is basic item/category/territory data. We’re working on making a full GP based presentation.  If you’d like sample code, please contact reportsyouneed.com

Examples –Part 1 1.Basic Report 2.Basic Report – Excel 3.Basic Report – PDF with Index 4.Drill through to a detail report 5.Interactive Sorting 6.Parameter Based Grouping 7.Subscriptions/Schedules reportsyouneed.com

1. Basic Report reportsyouneed.com This is a basic report where we have hidden the detail information. The detail information shows up by clicking one of the expand buttons. This is useful for end users when you are providing a lot of data and want to show the quick summary and then let folks get to the detail they want on demand.

2. Basic Report – Pushed to Excel reportsyouneed.com What’s nice about SSRS is that when you dump the report to Excel, it retains the groupings. Very useful when users are subscribed to reports rather than using the web site interactively. It would be REALLY nice if SSRS created sum or subtotal functions in the export. It doesn’t. You can consider than a bug or lack of functionality.

3. Basic Report – Pushed to PDF reportsyouneed.com We’ve set up a very similar report but in this case we’ve saved it to PDF. By creating a document map, a user can easily navigate in he PDF without searching through the document itself. If you click on any value in the document map, the PDF will reposition to the matching position in the data.

4. Drill Through To a Detail Report reportsyouneed.com We’ve shown how to hide and show a certain amount of detail within one report. But sometimes, you want to see all the detail—the actual transactions that back up the report. It’s hard to squeeze all that into one report without getting messy. Here, we’ve created a second report which we can drill through. If you clicked on an item code in this report, you would then (go to next slide)

4. Drill Through to a Detail Report reportsyouneed.com See all the detail for the item you chose. Note that when bursting reports, you can send the detail out to end users and allow them to click and run the detail reports interactively if they have access to the SSRS web site.

5. Interactive Sorting reportsyouneed.com This example is often more used by key folks in GP. For example, you are trying to find an invoice, order, or customer. And you’d just like to scan through the data. Here, we have a very simply formatted report. But the first four columns all have double arrows in the header row. By clicking on these arrows, you can adjust the sort of the data.

6. Parameter Based Grouping reportsyouneed.com Formatting reports can be the most time intensive part of the reporting process. If you can use the same report to make many people happy, you’re in good shape. In this case, we are sorting/grouping based on a parameter. In this run, we chose Territory an we see our first total by territory.

6. Parameter Based Grouping reportsyouneed.com In this run, we chose category and received different output. One report – two groupings. So, if someone wants different formatting, you can make changes once. Of course, we’re always worried about creating too many parameters which can confuse users. But it’s good to consider all options.

7. Subscriptions/Schedules reportsyouneed.com We’ve spoken throughout the presentation about bursting report to users. Here’s an example of a report schedule which just specifies a time to run reports.

7. Subscriptions/Schedules reportsyouneed.com And here’s an example of a report using that schedule with output going to a file in Excel format. Note that some advanced features, like data- driven subscriptions, are only available in the more advanced versions of SQL Server.

Examples – Part 2 Visualizations 1)Sparklines 2)Indicators 3)Maps reportsyouneed.com

Examples 2 - Visualizations  There are many kinds of charts that can be produced in SSRS which could fill another entire presentation.  For GP users, the key thing to know is that all these charts and report can be added directly to GP to create a “poor man’s dashboard”. reportsyouneed.com

Visualizations  Caveat: Many (most?) visualizations are initially useless and misleading.  Four Keys to Financial Data Visualization Accept you can’t tell the WHOLE story Think key indicators Data is generally boring – only real change counts. Keep it clean. reportsyouneed.com

Sparkline reportsyouneed.com

Indicators reportsyouneed.com

Maps reportsyouneed.com

Who should be using this?  Can you let your users free with the data?  What does it take to do this? reportsyouneed.com

Understanding GP Data – Table Names  Table Names  Artificial Keys  How to find information  Sample Reports  Hints – what you really want to do to make this work reportsyouneed.com

Understanding GP Data – Table Names  Example Physical Table Name XXXTSSVV SOP30200 Invoice Header XXX - SOP – Module Code – Sales Order Procss T – (3) – Table Type 0 = Master 1 = Work 2 = Open 3 = History (History or sometimes just posted) 4 = Setup 5 = Temporary 6 = Cross Reference 7 = Report Options reportsyouneed.com

Understanding GP Data  Example Physical Table Name XXXTSSVV SOP30200 Invoice Header SS – Sequence – a group of tables that share similar data. SOP30201 Sales Deposit History VV – Variant – number within the sequence reportsyouneed.com

Understanding GP Data  How to find information about these tables – Tools -> Resource Descriptions reportsyouneed.com

Resource Description - Tables reportsyouneed.com

Resource Descriptions - Field reportsyouneed.com

Resource Description - Windows reportsyouneed.com

Understanding GP Data  Victoria Yudin – Dynamics GP MVP Contains selected information about a vast array of GP tables and fields, including informative discussion threads with website users  Joseph Spaur - Dynamics GP Table Reference Contains a large (exhaustive?) listing of tables by series, with detailed field descriptions, and related table lists Accepts beer donations ($5) reportsyouneed.com

Web Resources  Dyndeveloper - ct=Great%20Plains ct=Great%20Plains Similar to Joseph’s site, requires membership to see data  Microsoft resource list - us/dynamics/gp/bb aspx us/dynamics/gp/bb aspx Links to download documentation eConnect Dexterity reportsyouneed.com

Advanced Only  SQL Profiler or Extended Events DBAs only over test databases Especially useful if you don’t have an e-connect. reportsyouneed.com

Contact Questions, Comments, Requests? Adam Jacobson reportsyouneed.com

® ® Adam Jacobson, Red Three Consulting (646) x101