Let’s face it! Building Microsoft Dynamics NAV reports in the Role Tailored Client (RTC) is really a hard work. It requires extensive training, many hours of practice, knowledge of common pitfalls and workarounds. Things like adding a picture at the top of the page in a report requires serious work and knowledge. Even though it’s quite clumsy, at least it beats the Classic reporting in both functionality and performance.

Simplanova Report Wizard can keep the simplicity of building NAV reports with less effort and at the same time having the power of RDLC NAV reporting. There is no need to install any third-party tools, staying in the Dynamics NAV platform. Report building should be just as simple as building NAV pages. For this reason we have created Simplanova Report Wizard, where you simply build a structure, which consists of groups and controls.

Simplanova Reports Wizard  maintains the well-known structure (using NAV pages to edit reports, same approach to building the dataset) and to allow the capability of classic reports together with the simplified workflow (page designer analogy). Simplanova Report Wizard allows developers to build a report from scratch, using the well-known terminology and approach, starting off the dataset tree – defining tables, fields, text constants and then using them in a page-designer like manner. Building table-based sections (header, footer, body) in a tree-like manner. Adding fields, captions, constants inside the sections and building their flow using grid-layout group elements.

We will try to give a basic example to understand more how it works. Let’s assume we want to build a report, listing sales documents and their lines underneath.

The two parts to build the report would look like this. Dataset:

• Label – Sum

• DataItem – Sales Header

• • Column – Document Type
  • Column – Document Type Caption
  • Column – Document No.
  • Column – Document No. Caption
  • DataItem – Sales Line (linked with Sales Header on Doc. Type and No.)
    • Column – Type
    • Column – Type Caption
    • Column – No.
    • Column – No. Caption
    • Column – Quantity
    • Column – Quantity Caption
    • Column – Amount
    • Column – Amount Caption

The second part is the layout. We will build it in the following  tree manner:

• Header Section – Sales Header

• • • Textbox – Document Type Caption
    • Textbox – Document No. Caption

• Body Section – Sales Header

• • • Textbox – Document Type
    • Textbox – Document No.

• Header Section – Sales Line

• • • Textbox – Type Caption
    • Textbox – No. Caption
    • Textbox – Quantity Caption
    • Textbox – Amount Caption

• Body Section – Sales Line

• • • Textbox – Type
    • Textbox – No.
    • Textbox – Quantity
    • Textbox – Amount

• Footer Section – Sales Header

• • Textbox – Sum Label
  • Blank
  • Blank
  • Textbox – Sum (Amount)

Please note, that there is no need to specify coordinates, because all text boxes are arranged in a column like layout by default (from left to right). Notice the blank elements, which are there as placeholders and the sum being the sum of Sales Line table Amount field.

Your developers can set the coordinates manually if they wish, but the simplest workflow is just laying down the text boxes the same way like you are used in Microsoft Dynamics NAV pages.

Check the video how we create a sample Sales Order print out in Simplanova Report Wizard here 

Simplanova team feels very excited about the new tool – Simplanova Report Wizard. We have been developing our tool stack for many years and we have been developing Simplanova Report Transformation tool since 2014. It is capable of transforming up to 90% of a Classic report to RTC report automatically. We have been working with report development and upgrades since 2013 and our developers have practice working with RDLC reporting since the Role Tailored Client has been first released. We have created Simplanova Report Wizard using the best practice from our developers and our partners needs. We want our partners to have the best experience using our tool and forget extensive training, many hours of practice, knowledge of common pitfalls and workarounds they used to have building reports with 3rd party tools. Simplanova Report Wizard can keep the simplicity of building NAV reports with less effort and at the same time having the power of RDLC NAV reporting.

Simplanova Report Wizard will be launched at the major NAV events in autumn. Partners will be able to see a demonstration at Directions North America, September 25-28 in Chandler, AZ, USA, at Directions EMEA, October 12-14 in Prague,  at NAV TECH DAYS 2016, November 17-18 in Antwerp. Do not miss a chance to see it live!