Before I call Custom Programming

Hi Todd

ODBC works fine for us. I run at least 12 ODBC reports - no problem.

Regards Chris Reed
PWSL


-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Caughey [mailto:caugheyt@...]
Sent: Friday 08 December, 2000 18:38
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: [Vantage] Before I call Custom Programming...


I can't make myself call Custom Programming without checking here first. I
am really frustrated by the lack of useful fields available in the standard
Crystal Reports. I have been told by tech support that trying to ODBC link
to other tables is iffy and that I am stuck with what is provided.

I have two big needs at the moment for additional information on
reports/forms:

1. Must have PO number for subcontract operations print on the Job Traveler.
It would be so easy to get from the PORel table. I actually had it working
once before we went live and then a required version update did something to
it. Our shipping people need the correct PO# for a job when we have many
jobs going to the same vendor.

2.We must have customer comments available for order acknowledgements and
Travelers. I need to add some keyword based phrases to parse for and print
- such as "Ack:Do not mail" or "ShipQty:Exact". and then extract the part
after the colon and print it on the form.

Is it possible to link to other tables? Are there instructions anywhere to
do this? Does every user have to have Merrant ODBC installed? Will Custom
Programming even add info to the .dbf files if I have to go that route?

Thanks,
-Todd Caughey
Harvey Vogel Mfg. Co.
Woodbury, MN
651-739-7373
I can't make myself call Custom Programming without checking here first. I
am really frustrated by the lack of useful fields available in the standard
Crystal Reports. I have been told by tech support that trying to ODBC link
to other tables is iffy and that I am stuck with what is provided.

I have two big needs at the moment for additional information on
reports/forms:

1. Must have PO number for subcontract operations print on the Job Traveler.
It would be so easy to get from the PORel table. I actually had it working
once before we went live and then a required version update did something to
it. Our shipping people need the correct PO# for a job when we have many
jobs going to the same vendor.

2.We must have customer comments available for order acknowledgements and
Travelers. I need to add some keyword based phrases to parse for and print
- such as "Ack:Do not mail" or "ShipQty:Exact". and then extract the part
after the colon and print it on the form.

Is it possible to link to other tables? Are there instructions anywhere to
do this? Does every user have to have Merrant ODBC installed? Will Custom
Programming even add info to the .dbf files if I have to go that route?

Thanks,
-Todd Caughey
Harvey Vogel Mfg. Co.
Woodbury, MN
651-739-7373



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Todd, I too was faced with providing additional info from the customer
table. Perhaps the info you are now storing in customer comments could be
moved to individual fields on the customer VB form. All customer VB fields
that you assign an external name in VB field attributes are included in the
.dbf files that Vantage creates for Job Travelers, Order Acknowledgements
and Invoices. This has worked very well for us. Fields on customer VB
forms that I use include: Freight payment terms (a dropdown list of
choices), Notify on Shipment (Bullet list: Yes-No), Send Invoice (dropdown
list), and several others. You can create upto 10 character fields, 10
numeric, and 5 dates. My guess is you could accomodate most of your needs
this way.
BTW, dbf field names for VB customer fields will start with CM.

Regards
Jim Stetter
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Caughey [mailto:caugheyt@...]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 1:38 PM
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: [Vantage] Before I call Custom Programming...


I can't make myself call Custom Programming without checking here first.
I
am really frustrated by the lack of useful fields available in the
standard
Crystal Reports. I have been told by tech support that trying to ODBC
link
to other tables is iffy and that I am stuck with what is provided.

I have two big needs at the moment for additional information on
reports/forms:

1. Must have PO number for subcontract operations print on the Job
Traveler.
It would be so easy to get from the PORel table. I actually had it
working
once before we went live and then a required version update did something
to
it. Our shipping people need the correct PO# for a job when we have many
jobs going to the same vendor.

2.We must have customer comments available for order acknowledgements and
Travelers. I need to add some keyword based phrases to parse for and
print
- such as "Ack:Do not mail" or "ShipQty:Exact". and then extract the part
after the colon and print it on the form.

Is it possible to link to other tables? Are there instructions anywhere
to
do this? Does every user have to have Merrant ODBC installed? Will
Custom
Programming even add info to the .dbf files if I have to go that route?

Thanks,
-Todd Caughey
Harvey Vogel Mfg. Co.
Woodbury, MN
651-739-7373




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Thanks, I will look into that again. I had checked the fields available a
did not see any reference to the customer table or any user defined fields
in the other other tables. I am assuming that as soon as I define some with
an external name they will show up. That would handle the shipqty (exact,
+/- 10%, etc..) and mail acknowledgement or not very nicely. That leaves
just the PO number for subcontract operations which I suspect will be
tougher.

Again, thanks a lot,
-Todd C.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Stetter [mailto:jimstetter@...]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 1:13 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Before I call Custom Programming...


Todd, I too was faced with providing additional info from the customer
table. Perhaps the info you are now storing in customer comments could be
moved to individual fields on the customer VB form. All customer VB fields
that you assign an external name in VB field attributes are included in the
.dbf files that Vantage creates for Job Travelers, Order Acknowledgements
and Invoices. This has worked very well for us. Fields on customer VB
forms that I use include: Freight payment terms (a dropdown list of
choices), Notify on Shipment (Bullet list: Yes-No), Send Invoice (dropdown
list), and several others. You can create upto 10 character fields, 10
numeric, and 5 dates. My guess is you could accomodate most of your needs
this way.
BTW, dbf field names for VB customer fields will start with CM.

Regards
Jim Stetter
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Caughey [mailto:caugheyt@...]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 1:38 PM
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: [Vantage] Before I call Custom Programming...


I can't make myself call Custom Programming without checking here first.
I
am really frustrated by the lack of useful fields available in the
standard
Crystal Reports. I have been told by tech support that trying to ODBC
link
to other tables is iffy and that I am stuck with what is provided.

I have two big needs at the moment for additional information on
reports/forms:

1. Must have PO number for subcontract operations print on the Job
Traveler.
It would be so easy to get from the PORel table. I actually had it
working
once before we went live and then a required version update did something
to
it. Our shipping people need the correct PO# for a job when we have many
jobs going to the same vendor.

2.We must have customer comments available for order acknowledgements and
Travelers. I need to add some keyword based phrases to parse for and
print
- such as "Ack:Do not mail" or "ShipQty:Exact". and then extract the part
after the colon and print it on the form.

Is it possible to link to other tables? Are there instructions anywhere
to
do this? Does every user have to have Merrant ODBC installed? Will
Custom
Programming even add info to the .dbf files if I have to go that route?

Thanks,
-Todd Caughey
Harvey Vogel Mfg. Co.
Woodbury, MN
651-739-7373




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Todd, One last thing to remember. After you add the VB fields, print/preview
every Vantage report that you are using Crystal Report for. Then open the
reports in Crystal and do a Verify Database. This makes Crytal "see" the new
fields. Otherwise, you could get some unexpected results and/or print
failures.
Regards
Jim Stetter
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Caughey [mailto:caugheyt@...]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 3:03 PM
To: 'vantage@egroups.com'
Subject: RE: [Vantage] Before I call Custom Programming...


Thanks, I will look into that again. I had checked the fields available a
did not see any reference to the customer table or any user defined fields
in the other other tables. I am assuming that as soon as I define some
with
an external name they will show up. That would handle the shipqty (exact,
+/- 10%, etc..) and mail acknowledgement or not very nicely. That leaves
just the PO number for subcontract operations which I suspect will be
tougher.

Again, thanks a lot,
-Todd C.




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>[Is it possible to link to other tables? Are there instructions anywhere to do this? Does every user have to have Merrant ODBC installed? Will Custom Programming even add info to the .dbf files if I have to go that route? ]

Todd,

Yes, you can link to other tables in a 'canned' crystal report with .dbf files, but only through a subreport. I don't know of any instructions to do this, but I can try to explain it. Yes, every user who prints the report has to have the Merant ODBC installed, which can add some complication to the process. We checked with Custom Programming to add one field to a .dbf file in a table that was already included in the Purchase Order Entry report. They quoted $700 for Vantage 3.0 and another $250 if we upgraded to 4.0. The field we needed was in PORel table. The PORel table was already in the report, but they had left off the "RecQty" field, which we needed in order to send amended Purchase Orders to our Vendors.

Here's how I linked via ODBC.

The problem with linking comes with the fact that ALL fields are converted to Strings in the .dbf table. Whereas, the key field I was working with in PORel was a numeric field. With Crystal, you can link to a formula through a subreport. So, you create a formula in the main report which converts the Key String Field to a Number. In Crystal 8 this is the ToNumber(x) function, where x is the string.

So your formula would simply be named, for instance "ORDER#,"
and the formula would be "ToNumber(PORel.OrderNum)"

This formula, ORDER#, is what is linked to PORel.OrderNum in your subreport. Then you can share variables across reports, or simply have the field your looking for in your subreport and place the subreport in the appropriate spot in your main report. If you use the subreport field in a formula in the main report, you will need to use a shared variable. This gets a little more complicated because of the timing of processing subreports, but is possible.

Hope this helps, and contact me if you have more questions.

Troy Funte
Liberty Electronics




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Not the right fields in the dbf files? Ha ha ha. Epicor should just let the end user (system admins) choose which Vantage fields are available to Crystal Reports "dbf" files. This has limited us many times, and it is a seemingly easy thing for them to fix! If any progress programmers are reading this, how hard would that be? I realize you would want the dbf to remain small, but may you could add one desperately needed field, and remove an unused one - so you end up with the same number of fields, thus the same size.

It just seems wierd that some Epicor employee sitting behind a desk would know what information is important for *my* company to have on a form. Just imagine the increased flexibility we could have in that area! This concept of "flexible programming" could really please a lot of people.

Is there an open issue with this I could add my name to? If not, maybe it does not bother most people. Feedback anyone?

John Mueske
Hiatt Manufactuirng, Inc.
SBS 4.5 - Vantage 3.00.632



>Todd,
>
>Yes, you can link to other tables in a 'canned' crystal report with .dbf files
>
><snip>
>
>Troy Funte
>Liberty Electronics


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
John, I agree whole heartedly with you. I don't even think the size of the
dbfs is an issue at all. Consider that the Crystal reports which are fed by
these dbf from Vantage are all actually forms dealing with a limited number
of records. OK, the invoicing tables and POs could contain quite a few
records but nothing that would overwhelm 99.999% of the PCs we (Vantage
users) are using. What would be the harm of including ALL the fields from
the tables exported for Crystal? That way, Epicor could not limit what we
do with OUR data outside of Vantage. After all, isn't that what they are
really doing? Just my 2 cents.
Regards
Jim Stetter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hiatt Manufacturing, Inc. [mailto:hiattmfg@...]
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 4:43 PM
To: vantage@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [Vantage] Before I call Custom Programming...


Not the right fields in the dbf files? Ha ha ha. Epicor should just let
the end user (system admins) choose which Vantage fields are available to
Crystal Reports "dbf" files. This has limited us many times, and it is a
seemingly easy thing for them to fix! If any progress programmers are
reading this, how hard would that be? I realize you would want the dbf to
remain small, but may you could add one desperately needed field, and remove
an unused one - so you end up with the same number of fields, thus the same
size.

It just seems wierd that some Epicor employee sitting behind a desk would
know what information is important for *my* company to have on a form. Just
imagine the increased flexibility we could have in that area! This concept
of "flexible programming" could really please a lot of people.

Is there an open issue with this I could add my name to? If not, maybe it
does not bother most people. Feedback anyone?

John Mueske
Hiatt Manufactuirng, Inc.
SBS 4.5 - Vantage 3.00.632




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
John Mueske wrote:
It just seems wierd that some Epicor employee sitting behind a desk would
know what information is important for *my* company to have on a form. Just
imagine the increased flexibility we could have in that area! This concept
of "flexible programming" could really please a lot of people.

John,
This one really isn't a simple one to solve. Vantage goes through some
pretty fancy footwork to get the info turned into a dbf file. Figuring out
which fields "everybody" wants would be a real trick. Besides, if they give
you everything you want, how are they going to charge you for custom
programming?? And remember, you can get most of the info you need from the
export utility - its just not fun to go through the extra steps to get what
you want. So the question you have to ask is, "Should I spend the money on
customizations or just take the time and effort to get the information the
hard way?"

One last thing: remember that Epicor is not the only source of custom
programming. Check out the links page on eGroups.

================
Steve Sanders
Delta Centrifugal Corp.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
John,
It's not very hard for them to dump all the fields. In fact, we use
temporary files from vantage to write large reports for item availability,
scheduled shipments, etc. The size of the file is not an issue because there
are not multiple instances in the vntgwork directory. We have reports that
will generate a 15mb temporary file that we just delete after printing to
save space.

Tahnks,
Mark Charamut

President
Caesar Development Services, LLC
Epicor Independent Solution Provider
mcharamut@...
www.caesardev.com
(860) 667-3540

> Not the right fields in the dbf files? Ha ha ha. Epicor should just let
the end user (system admins) choose which Vantage fields are available to
Crystal Reports "dbf" files. This has limited us many times, and it is a
seemingly easy thing for them to fix! If any progress programmers are
reading this, how hard would that be? I realize you would want the dbf to
remain small, but may you could add one desperately needed field, and remove
an unused one - so you end up with the same number of fields, thus the same
size.
>
> It just seems wierd that some Epicor employee sitting behind a desk would
know what information is important for *my* company to have on a form. Just
imagine the increased flexibility we could have in that area! This concept
of "flexible programming" could really please a lot of people.
>
> Is there an open issue with this I could add my name to? If not, maybe it
does not bother most people. Feedback anyone?
>
> John Mueske
> Hiatt Manufactuirng, Inc.
> SBS 4.5 - Vantage 3.00.632
There is a utility available that will create dbf files from Progress. I will track it down over the weekend and post the URL on Monday. After that you are on your own.

"Hiatt Manufacturing, Inc." wrote:

> Not the right fields in the dbf files? Ha ha ha. Epicor should just let the end user (system admins) choose which Vantage fields are available to Crystal Reports "dbf" files. This has limited us many times, and it is a seemingly easy thing for them to fix! If any progress programmers are reading this, how hard would that be? I realize you would want the dbf to remain small, but may you could add one desperately needed field, and remove an unused one - so you end up with the same number of fields, thus the same size.
>
> It just seems wierd that some Epicor employee sitting behind a desk would know what information is important for *my* company to have on a form. Just imagine the increased flexibility we could have in that area! This concept of "flexible programming" could really please a lot of people.
>
> Is there an open issue with this I could add my name to? If not, maybe it does not bother most people. Feedback anyone?
>
> John Mueske
> Hiatt Manufactuirng, Inc.
> SBS 4.5 - Vantage 3.00.632
>
> >Todd,
> >
> >Yes, you can link to other tables in a 'canned' crystal report with .dbf files
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >Troy Funte
> >Liberty Electronics
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> We no longer allow attachments to files. To access/share Report Files, please go to the following link: http://www.egroups.com/files/vantage/
> (Note: If this link does not work for you the first time you try it, go to www.egroups.com, login and be sure to save your password, choose My Groups, choose Vantage, then choose Files. If you save the password, the link above will work the next time you try it.)

--
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PROComputer Systems Fax 613 591 3924
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Specialists in Progress Software development since 1985