Sending Report over E-mail. Scheduling.

Hi Everyone,

Today's topic is automation and integration.
How to send a report over the e-mail?
First let's choose a report we want to send, lets take Aged AR:

Then we can use a Send button on top to manually send it over e-mail. It works fine for one-time send.

Then enter e-mail address into mailer screen:

Resulting e-mail will get delivered into recipient mail box.

What if we want to schedule printing of this report every morning for a list or recipients, like our AR department. Then we have to go back to report and:

1. Create a template with specifying address to send:

 2. Choose this template from the list and click "Schedule template":

3. Set up a schedule for sending at particular time/date/event:

Then we setup hours and conditions if any, in my case I setup daily at specific time.
Then at that time we will get an e-mail with report:

All the best,
Sergey.

Sending Notifications.

Hi All,

One of the common questions, when implementing automation for operations is - how can we send an email notification to a person that such and such is happened?
It could be for example Purchase Order is created and we want short e-mail to get send to procurement chief.

Using Notifications in Acumatica is a natural answer to all that.

Task: I want to send a notification to Steve Church once the purchase order status is changed to Open (meaning PO is approved/printed).

Step 1. We should set appropriate e-mail to the user Steve Church

Step 2. Now need to create a notification in system manager.

Please note, Screen ID should be Purchase Order, since we want changing of the status in THIS screen to trigger a notification event. In the Message body I want to be mentioned that system should include actual PO number that was created, so I use standard Template Notification syntax of ((fieldname)). I also want actual PO Form to get attached to my e-mail, so user can review it, I just added Data Source: Report with format PDF.

On the next tabs I mentioned Event Conditions, Addresses, Parameters, which are self explanatory:

3. Now we have to decide if we send these notifications using a schedule or manually calling a process. I wanted to use a manual process, but schedule can be added that will trigger it every say 1 minute.

4. Now we can finally go to the Purchase Order and "open" one, to see what will happen:

After it was saved lets take a look at Send Notification screen. My note is pending (since I was lazy to create a schedule) so I run the process manually:

5. Enjoy reading e-mail

Have Fun,
Sergey.

Sales Order Import, including Multiple Orders.

Hi Everyone.

What to do when we need quickly and effectively import numerous data into ERP. We can use Integration Services, embedded into our product. Lets go through 5 minute process of importing.
Where we are going to import. Sales order screen in Acumatica ERP.

From where we are going to import our orders? From Excel file.

What need to be done on Acumatica to achieve it?
First we should create Data Provider and attach our file to it. In theory we can use different means of data provision. From Salesforce web site, from comma separated file, from SQL directly etc. So we should tell the system where are data coming from.

Then we should attach our file to it and indicate in the File Name value column internal or external link to it

I used internal link to the file sitting inside Acumatica DB:

Last step for provider is to fill up the schema which is done by pressing these two buttons subsequently on the Schema tab:

Next step will be to map columns inside the file and our screen. This is done inside Import Scenario screen.
I am going to show resulting screen. Basically on the left are fields from the screen and on the right are values from our import file:

Now we can run the import:

And here is the resulting Sales Order:

Well, this is good to import one single order, but what if we have multiple orders in a file?
And what if it includes the same customer in couple of orders?

Solution is very siple, lets amend column [Number] in our source file or simply amend data, prepared for the import to split 5 lines into 3 different Sales Orders.

Here is what I changed in a data representation inside Acumatica:

Please note that I am using column Number as sequential number for my orders, not as actual Sales Order number, that will be issued by the system automatically.

Based on what was amended, it should end up with 3 sales orders. SO #1 and SO #3 for customer ABARTENDE and SO #2 for customer ABCSTUDIO.

Lets run the import for it and here is the result:

Works like a charm.

Have a great day,
Sergey.

Quick Way to Troubleshoot a Report.

Hi Everyone,

Report is usually connected to one or many data sources, in Acumatica they are represented by Data Access Classes (DAC). Sometimes DAC is not really what we have in SQL database. DAC may have calculated synthetic fields, added during its [long] life. DAC may also have additional fields from other tables.

For example: FABookHistory data access class has field CreatedByID which corresponds to field in its main table from SQL DB, but also it has field CreatedByID_Description, which is coming from joined table with user names.

And all of us, are professionals with SQL of course. :)
If something goes wrong with our report what we can do?

1. Run SQL Profiler and try to catch query our report is running.

Well its ok, except if we trace it on production environment with multiple users printing similar reports or simply loading the server with their requests. I am not saying Profiler is a bad choice, it is OK, but sometimes it may be difficult to trace.

2. We just added a much simpler way to get SQL query report runs. And this query will include all the parameters we added to report. Here is how to see it.

First, run the report with all the parameters

Second, once you saw the report outcome, press Help->Trace

Third, find on the trace block that responsible for our query

Copy that query to clipboard. Then you can either paste it into your Query Analyser or use one useful tool to format it before. Magic Tool

Be Happy,

Sergey.

Hardware Upgrade? Compatibility Issues?

Hi Guys,

Recently I got a call from one of the legacy ERP system (Solomon IV) customer. They are still using software released in late nineties. It is no longer supported by Solomon or Microsoft.

On the client side they are using Windows XP. Solomon IV works fine with XP. But once we upgrade the PC, operating system will also get replaced. Most of the current laptops are supplied with Windows 7, and option to run XP in virtual mode seemed not to be the best.

Really, what are they upgrading their PCs for, to run a slow VM with XP???

So the only path for them seemed to be an upgrade to the latest version of that Solomon software line... Migrate all the customizations to that new version. Reinstall the client software on their PCs. Retrain the people to use new version... Looks like a full scale upgrade with a small implementation attached.

But what will happen in 5 years’ time, when the current version will age and require replacement due to hardware upgrade? Should we invest in customizations upgrade and migration, reinstallation etc.? Again? Just because of the Hardware Upgrade?

We proposed them to think about upgrade to Acumatica instead.

WEB based system do not require any specific compatibility with the hardware. And when you decided to buy new gadget, Acumatica will start working on it right away.

It does not require local client installation; as long as you have a WEB browser you can use it.

Cloud deployed ERP would be even better solution, not only clients became independent from Hardware Upgrade issues but the server as well.

They are thinking about it and if it turns to be a win, I will let you know.

All the best,

Sergey.