1. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Tracey Wright & Cale Tanguay

2. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Session Outline
Smartlists vs refreshable Excel reports
Smartlist Designer
Publishing a SLD report to Excel
Create your own data connection
Other “report in Excel” tools
Jet Reports
Smartlist Builder/Excel Report Builder
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

3. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

4. Smartlist vs Refreshable Excel
Refreshable Excel Report
Needs a Dynamics GP license
Available outside of Dynamics GP
Security controlled inside of GP
Security controlled by SQL
“Go To” drillbacks to GP transaction
Drillbacks typically not used
Flat file
Totals, charts, graphs, pivot tables, sliders
Exports to Excel
Ummm… it already is in Excel
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

5. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Added in Dynamics GP 2013
Create new smartlists from scratch or build off an existing smartlist
Great for table joins, calculated fields, default filters
No programming required
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

6. Using Smartlist Designer
Select a view(s) or table(s)
Select the fields you want
Join tables/views if necessary
Preview the data
Filter the data if desired
Save the smartlist
Grant security to others
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

7. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Views vs Tables
Views are virtual tables
There are many, many views already available
Views join multiple tables for you
Ex. Accounts Transactions view combines both Open and History GL transactions
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

8. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
DEMO
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

9. Smartlist Designer tips
Consider logging into GP with an administrator account (sa or DYNSA) as custom smartlists are tied to the user ID.
Custom smartlists can be exported and imported
Choose only the fields you want, rather than all fields in a table or view
For complex table joins or filters, consider building a new SQL view
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

10. Existing Smartlists in Excel
Your existing Smartlists are available in Excel when published
Obtain Smartlist data without logging in to GP
Typical Location for our customers:
GPShare > Reports > Excel Reports > Reports
There will be a separate folder for each company
These are refreshable and you may utilize Excel features
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

11. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Publish Smartlists
Publish Smartlists built using Smartlist Designer
DEMO
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

12. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Publish Smartlists
Excel Reports must already be deployed to use the Publish feature
Feature was first available in GP 2015
Only Smartlist Designer queries built using SQL views may be published (i.e. will not work with queries built using SQL tables)
User publishing must have read/write/modify permissions to the folder
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

13. Create a Connection to GP data in Excel
Data > Get External Data > From Other Sources
From SQL Server
Enter Server name, select the appropriate database, select any one table, and browse to a location for your data connection if desired.
To change the tables to the SQL query from your Smartlist Designer window, go to:
Data > Connections > Connections
Select ‘Properties…’, choose the ‘Definition’ tab,
change the ‘Command Type’ to ‘SQL’, then paste
the query in the ‘Command Text’ box
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

14. Other options to work with GP data in Excel
Microsoft Excel – PowerPivot
JetReports – Jet Express
eOne - Smartlist Builder & Excel Report Builder
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

15. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Excel’s PowerPivot
Excel Add-in available for Excel 2010 and 2013
Included in Excel 2016
No longer limited to Excel’s maximum number of rows for data as it can handle very large data sets
Combine data from different sources
Publish to Sharepoint 2010 Environment
DAX language (Data Analysis Expressions)
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

16. Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer
Excel’s PowerPivot
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

17. Jet Reports – Jet Express for Excel
Free software available for download (Excel add-in)
Link: express-excel-microsoft-dynamics-gp/
Works with GP 9.0 and up, Office 2007 and up
Jet Reports also offers other products with additional features at a cost: Jet Professional (formerly Jet Essentials) and Jet Enterprise
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

18. Jet Reports – Jet Express for Excel
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

19. eOne - Smartlist Builder & Excel Report Builder
Smartlist Builder allows users to add any GP data to a Smartlist
Some features that you won’t find in Smartlist Designer (or with limited functionality) include:
Modify default Smartlists
Combine work, open, and history tables
Create Go To’s
Reorder columns
Column formatting
Add fields as available but hidden by default
Excel Report Builder allows users to build real-time Excel reports on any GP data
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

20. eOne - Smartlist Builder & Excel Report Builder
Extend Excel with Smartlist Designer

21. Any questions?
David S. Pumpkins

22. traceyw@prophet.ca calet@prophet.ca