Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009: Professional Reporting

Book Image

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009: Professional Reporting

Overview of this book

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is widely used in enterprises with its enhanced reporting features, but there still isn’t a book that covers reporting in depth, until now. This book will show you what’s possible and exactly how to develop reports for Dynamics NAV 2009. Learn why reports are designed in a specific way and then apply this knowledge to your advantage. Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009: Professional Reporting is an essential guide to understanding the effort involved in creating reports in Dynamics NAV 2009, and all of the available reporting possibilities. Reading this book will result in a better understanding and it will help you save time during development.The book starts with an overview of what kind of reports you can create without a developer using charts, dimensions, and analysis views. The next chapter will introduce the new architecture of Role Tailored Client (RTC) reports and the basics on how to create them or have them generated. Moving on we will discuss data visualization, where you will learn how and when to implement all the available Visual Studio controls. Document reports and other types of specific reports are covered next, and you will get to know all the best workarounds for getting them to work correctly.Knowing other related features is vitally important to obtain a helicopter view of all the reporting possibilities of Dynamics NAV, and the next chapter will introduce Business Intelligence concepts and available technologies that could be used in combination with the Dynamics NAV database. Technology is evolving rapidly and new versions of Dynamics NAV are in the pipeline, so the book will also provide you with a view to the future and how to prepare for it.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009: Professional Reporting
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Role Centers


Dynamics NAV 2009 is all about the Role Tailored Client and the Role Tailored Client always opens with a Role Center page. A Role Center is like a dashboard. It is the starting page in Dynamics NAV 2009 and on it you will find the links to all the kinds of information you are looking for.

This is an example of the Role Center for the Order Processor role:

As you can see, the Role Center contains several panes of information. There's an activity pane that contains cues. Each of these cues represents a pile of documents and the height of the pile and the number on the pile represent the number of documents behind the pile. When you click on the pile, or cue icon as it is called, you are redirected to the corresponding page. On the Role Center page, you can have several other types of panes, but the ones that are interesting from the reporting point of view are the charts. On this Role Center, we can see two charts: the Open Sales Orders per Location chart and the Sales Orders per Date chart.

As a user, you can customize your Role Center. This way, you can, for example, visualize other charts and so customize your Role Center as a personal dashboard page.

For example, the next screenshot shows the Role Center for the President of a small business. Of course, this page can also be customized by the user, for example to include charts: