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GP Reports Viewer Newsletter
July NewsletterJuly 2012
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New - Global Parameters for GP Reports Viewer 
New build of GP Reports Viewer adds Global parameters 

We have just released a new build of GP Reports Viewer for Dynamics GP 2010 that adds Global parameters.  How can Global parameters help your reports?  There are a few ways: 

  • You can now set up default dates for your report parameters dynamically - for example from Beginning of Year to Current GP User Date or from Beginning of Month to End of Month.  This can save your users the time of having to always enter date ranges when running reports.  This can also enable more useful defaults for Report Shortcuts.
  • Global parameters include User ID and Company Database Name, so if you have a need to bring those into your report, this can be done automatically by adding one of the new parameters.

We have recorded a short video to demonstrate using the Global dynamic date parameters.  Global parameters are now available in GP Reports Viewer build 59 for Dynamics GP 2010.  A more detailed description of this new functionality can be found in our User Guide.

Stripping out text from strings in SQL Server
SQL Server syntax to strip out text after a delimiter  

We had an interesting request for a Crystal Report recently and wanted to share the solution.  Our customer is storing a lot of data in the Inventory Item Description, however, they wanted to only show a short description when printing Sales Invoices and Purchase Orders.  

 

The solution was to separate out all the data they wanted to 'hide' with a delimiter and then strip out all the text following (and including) the delimiter in SQL.  The data to strip out was placed inside [square brackets] in the Item Description as shown below:

The syntax to strip this out in SQL is as follows:

  

select substring(ITEMDESC, 1, charindex('[', ITEMDESC) -1)

  

This code determines the index (or character number) of the first open square bracket in the string and then returns the text starting from the first character of the string through one less character than the index of the first square bracket.

Handling 'Blank' Dynamics GP Dates in SSRS

Conditionally hide '1/1/1900' dates in SSRS

By: Mickie Stamm

Dynamics GP stores dates that are considered empty or blank as '1/1/1900', and we often want to hide this value on reports and only show the date if there is a 'real' one to display.  This can be handled in a number of different ways in SSRS.  
 

One way is to use the following expression for the Value property of the textbox in your report:

 

=iif(Fields!YourDate.Value="1/1/1900",Nothing,Fields!YourDate.Value)) 

 

Another way is to conditionally hide the textbox with the date by putting in the following expression for the Hidden property:

 

=iif(Fields!YourDate.Value="1/1/1900",true,false)

 You will want to be careful with this one because you might get undesired results with formatting if this is in a tablix with borders.

Looking for a solution to manage Crystal and SSRS reports inside of Dynamics GP quickly and easily?  An online demo of GP Reports Viewer is available anytime on our demo web page.

If you would like to schedule a live demo of GP Reports Viewer with us, please call 212-254-4112 and choose option 1 for Sales or e-mail [email protected].

You can also download a fully functional trial for the Dynamics GP sample company.  Expiring registration keys are available upon request if you would like to test GP Reports Viewer with your company data. 

Sincerely,  
Victoria Yudin
Dynamics GP MVP (2005-2012)
Flexible Solutions, Inc.
In This Issue
GP Reports Viewer News
SQL Server Tip
SSRS Reporting Tip
Quote of the Month
Quick Links

 

Quote of the Month

"Being easy-going when you have a goal to reach seldom makes the going easy."

 

~Frank Tyger