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

Useful tips and techniques


There are a couple of things you should think about when developing reports for a customer. Applying these simple techniques will make sure your reports have a similar look and feel and so will become easier to use and more user friendly.

Many of the tips I present in this section are not applied to the example reports used in this book. This is because these reports are used as examples to explain certain aspects of report design. In real life, you should pay attention to and spend time on the look and feel of any report you develop. In the end, like a website, the perception of a report is made in the first few seconds when the user sees it for the first time. It is not difficult to improve the look and feel of a report, but it is often not a priority on the to-do list of most developers.

Use a title, page numbers, and show applied filters

If you want to improve the readability of your report then add a title to it. You can do this by clicking and dragging a text...