A first look at Management Reporter

As you probably know by now, Management Reporter is replacing FRx Reporting with the upcoming release of Dynamics GP 2010. I have heard concern from a lot of customers and consultants, because they know FRx and are worried about having to learn a new product.

I have finally had a chance to look at a beta copy of Management Reporter and it looks like it will be a great solution. Needless to say I cannot cover all of the features and benefits of Management Reporting in this short article, but I do want to cover a few of them.

First, it still uses the building blocks we have grown used to using in FRx. Rows, Columns and Trees.


You may also notice from the screen shot that the interface is very different from FRx.  The interface is very similar to Outlook and Dynamics GP.


The new interface includes both navigation panes and toolbars.


One item that is nice to see is "Undo/redo". 




The row definition window looks very familar and includes the same information we are used to entering in FRx.

Here is an example of the Column Definition window.

The Report Catalog from FRx has been replaced by the Report Definition.  It is simply a change in the name as the information and fields are very similar to the Report Catalog.


Some of the other new features with Management Reporter are:

• Column Page Breaks
• Ability to insert graphics into headers and footers
• Report Libary - a centralized storage facilityor your published reports

The first thing our consultants wanted to know was, "Will Management Reporter run on a 64 bit system?"  The answer is YES!!!!  Management Reporter is developed using the Microsoft .NET Framework and C# for native 64-bit support.

Management Reporter also is designed around a multi-tiered architecture with server-side processing.  This will allow the users to generate and process reports using server resources to dramatically improve performance and free up workstation resources while reports are processing.

I have only spent a short time looking at Management Reporter, but I am impressed by what I have seen.  I believe customers and consultants are going to be happy with the new solution.