Crystal Integration

Now you can harness the power of Crystal Reports in your Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) solution! Crystal Integration takes the headaches out of launching Crystal Reports by giving you fully customizable control to launch any Crystal Report from within Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains), including 3rd party products. Besides fantastic ease-of-use for end users, you can save tens of thousands on costly Crystal licenses, because Crystal Integration does not require a Crystal license on deployed workstations.

Crystal Integration is a product designed to launch Crystal Reports directly out of Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains). Many businesses using Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) tap into the reporting power of Crystal Reports. Before Crystal Integration, users had to launch separate reports outside of the Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) environment. Now, users can launch Crystal reports from within Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains). To the user, the integration is seamless -- which means they need less training or awareness of Crystal Reports because the reports appear to be part of the accounting system.

Crystal Integration launches Crystal Reports, it does not replace existing Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) reports. However, Crystal Integration allows you to launch a Crystal Report directly from within the Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) interface. For example, if you have a SOP invoice written in Crystal Reports, you can launch the report directly from the SOP Entry screen (or anywhere else for that matter).

Features include:

This fully-functional product can be downloaded for free and works indefinitely in the Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) Test Company. Once you have completed your evaluation, you can contact your Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) reseller to purchase a registration key to unlock the features in your production companies.

The Auditor

Ever wish you could track who changed information in Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains)? Who changed the payment terms on this invoice? Why is the check description missing? Who gave this employee an unauthorized raise?

Auditor is a simple data-change management tool which tracks field and record-level changes to your system by user. Now you can answer the Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why of your system data. Auditor tracks old and new values of data fields, who changed them, when they were changed, and optionally can require a note for users to explain why they made a change.

And with integration into Smartlist, reporting and security is a snap. Features include:

This fully-functional product can be downloaded for free and works indefinitely in the Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) Test Company. Once you have completed your evaluation, you can contact your Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) reseller to purchase a registration key to unlock the features in your production companies.

• What data can be tracked with Auditor?  Auditor can track data changes, specifically old and new field values, on any table or window in Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains), including any 3rd party product. Auditor will capture who made what change, when, where, and optionally why the change was made. Additionally, Auditor will capture additions or deletions to any table throughout Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) or any 3rd party product. (3rd party products must be Dexterity-based and not web-based.

• Are there a lot of system resources used for Auditor? How does it affect system performance? Auditor is a simple background process that has no noticeable effect on performance. During data entry and processing, users cannot type fast enough to slow any processing of audits. In rare cases, if an audit is set up to track changes to records that are being batch processed, such as posting, you may see up to a 5% slowdown in the process. For instance, if it takes 10 minutes to post a batch of records, with Auditing you may see that process take an additional 30 seconds.
  
  One potential slowdown that could be encountered is a server slowdown should the audit log fill up and overtake a SQL server. Basic planning and system maintenance of the audit log will prevent any issues arising from the audit log growing too large

• Who can access the data once Auditor is setup? Within Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains), audits can only be viewed with Smartlist. Standard Smartlist security can secure this Smartlist object at the level appropriate for your environment. A purging and export utility window, whose security is defined using standard Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains) security, will allow a user to export audits to an xml file. Finally, all audits appear in a single system table in the database, from which users with appropriate access can report.

• What reporting capabilities are built into Auditor?  The primary method for viewing audits is through Smartlist (formerly Explorer) within Microsoft Dynamics GP (Formerly Great Plains). There is an Audits object added to the Smartlist tree view. Standard Smartlist security can secure this Smartlist object at the level appropriate for your environment.