Simplanova Report Designer

Simplanova conducted a survey among 22 countries all over the world to find out what problems Microsoft partners face creating reports in NAV.

• 74% of respondents are spending 0.5 – 4 hours to develop 1 list type report
• 65% are spending 4 – 16 hours to develop 1 document type report.
• More than 50% of partners do not have a dedicated developer team for developing Dynamics NAV reports, but using Simplanova Report Designer you do not need to have a dedicated team.
• Simplanova Report Designer saves up to 92% time for Dynamics NAV report building. Our tool is simple and intuitive to use and does not require any special expertise for special software skills.

Simplanova Report Designer meets the Dynamics NAV market needs and solves many problems developers have now. You can find other Simplanova’s tools and services here.

Simplanova Report Designer vs NAV development environment.

Faster way to design the report Dataset structure:

1. Select and add all Dataset items at once.
2. When selecting, SRD is showing only relevant table fields – they are already filtered.
3. Add captions for Dataset items automatically with just a click of the mouse.
4. Standardized Dataset properties.
5. Field captions can be changed automatically.
6. In SRD you can change the Dataset as much as you want and the changes will reflect in the Layout section, i.e. if you delete a table, the related textboxes in layout will disappear. In NAV Development environment if you delete something from Dataset then it will result in errors in layout (in Visual Studio).
7. Data compression.

Simplanova Report Designer vs SQL Report Builder/Visual Studio.

Faster way to design the report Layout:

1. Expert knowledge is not required: Simlanova Report Designer (SRD) does not require expert knowledge for how to design RDLC layout. With SRD it is enough to setup the layout logic and the complex data grouping is done automatically. We’ve actually used Dynamics NAV classic report concepts – header, footer, body sections.
2. Forget tiresome workarounds in Visual Studio
   Workarounds which are used in RDLC reports are supported automatically and do not require manual work or any kind of special knowledge, for example:
   • SRD has straightforward Report Header and Report Footer building (no VB workarounds);
   • Setting up Dynamic Headers and Footers is easy and fast;
   • Adding TransHeaders and Transfooters does not require any workarounds.
   • Reset page numbers – you can easily add a property for reseting page numbers.
   • Aggregate functions (sum, count, average, running value) are available. In contrast: in standard you have to use expressions for counting sums but in SRD you simply select the property.
3. Preview add-in (visual representation of a report).
   The add-in allows you tracking changes real time.
4. Modify the layout with a click of a button:
   • Convert Dataset items to sections and textboxes (“Add to layout” Button).
   • Apply various properties for multiple parts of layouts at once: fonts, font styling, padding, sizing, borders, colors, pictures and much more.
   • Add dynamic visibility expressions (for hiding sections and textboxes).
   • Simple element placement using group elements.
   • Element floating (to left, right or center of parent element).