We have 2 companies on the one database both using APM and Crystal Reports.
We have been very careful when amending forms on one company to make sure that all the alignment for important fields are not moved out of synch between the 2 companies, but this is quite painful.
We have just gone through a process of amending the logo on one of our companies due to a name change and this has knocked all the forms out of synch therefore they do not get picked up by APM or do not have the right information in the right box.
I am presuming this is due to the fact that we are using the same Document Type for both companies, but have different routing lists and recipients for the both companies.
Is there an easier way to use APM for multiple companies and not have to worry about making sure that all the forms for all companies align the same way?
Would it be easier to create multiple Document Types? If so, how do you change an existing “Routing List” to pickup the new Document Type?
Back in V8, using Crystal Reports, I made the logo picture source a calculated field, based on the Company field. That way we only had to maintain one report. The only thing we had to make sure of, was that the physical size of the Logo image files were the same.
Not sure if APM would interfere with that. Are they CR based reports or SSRS?
Hello Calvin. Interesting about the logo being a calculated field but the size of the logo still has to be the same. These are Crystal reports, not SSRS.
Perhaps the answer is to have the encoding (for sake of better words) in the page footer, that way the logo should not affect it. I do like Calvin’s use of the calculated field for the logo.
Back when I worked at a different company with APM, we did just as @ckrusen suggests. Have the logo calculated field in the Crystal report based on the Company field. The logo picture fields do need to be the same size to look best but iirc, you can lock the size of the field in Crystal but that could make the logo look bad.
The image file should be the same size (L x W, in pixels). If one logo is “square” and the other “oblong”, Make the picture field big enough to hold the larger of each dimension. Then create a copies of the logos de-cropped (the opposite of cropping, adding more space around the image) to the size if the picture field.
This actually works great for when the logo changes. You just need to replace the picture file with the new logo (keeping the name of the original pict file).
I guess a simpler method might be to just include all logo’s in the report, and hide the ones that aren’t for the company being used.