February, 2005

 

In This Issue:

Outlook Address Book for Crystal Enterprise

APOS Freeware

New Name - APOS BI Tools

APOS BI Tools for BusinessObjects XI

InfoScheduler - Powerful New Feature!

Instance Manager - Powerful New Features!

Object Manager - Powerful New Features!

Case Study - Cover-More Insurance, Sydney, Australia

APOS BI Tools Suite

Outlook Address Book for Crystal Enterprise *Schedule With Your Emails

Now, AddressBook Gateway is more powerful than ever, with a new capability to call your local Outlook Email Addressbook, right from the schedule page of Crystal Enterprise. As well, if you're using Microsoft Exchange, your users will be able to schedule in Crystal Enterprise using any email address that they have available through their Outlook Addressbook!

 

For a 2 minute audio/visual overview of this exciting

new Outlook Address Book integration, simply click here to visit our

web site where you can run the demo.

 

If you're considering moving to BusinessObjects XI, this exciting new scheduling enhancement will be supported for that platform as well.

This new Outlook integration is in addition to these powerful capabilities introduced in our last newsletter:

Active Directory Lookup - Direct Active Directory email address lookups from ePortfolio makes email integration easier than ever before!

ODBC Datasource Lookup - Direct ODBC datasource email address lookups now allow easy integration with your database.

If you want to check out how AddressBook Gateway can help your

organization, please visit here to request demo download instructions and our current price list.

APOS Freeware *Yes, It's True, Software, No Charge

We've developed a variety of useful tweaks and solutions for Crystal Enterprise™ that we offer on our web site. Note that APOS Freeware is provided complimentary and without support.

Visit here to download any of these freeware solutions, now there are 6:

ActiveX-Viewer-Filter *New!

Simply add these 2 CSP pages to ePortfolio v.9/v.10 to display the select wizard and the search wizard buttons in the ActiveX viewer. This allows the user to search and filter both on-demand reports and saved report instances. Now available as freeware, simply download this tool and try it out!

Plug-Ins Installer - identify and install missing Crystal Enterprise v.8.5/v.9 plug-in components.

ePortfolio Tree Menu - csp pages that provide a tree style presentation of Crystal Enterprise folders.

Update User Preferences - bulk update of preferences settings for all Crystal Enterprise users.

ePortfolio Events tab - adds 'Event dependency' support to the standard ePortfolio Schedule page.

ePortfolio Reschedule button - 'Reschedule' right from the standard ePortfolio History page.

New Name - APOS BI Tools *Add-In Software Identity Change

Since APOS started developing creative extensions to Crystal and now Business Objects software, we've called our software 'Add-In Software'.

From now on, our products are called 'APOS BI Tools', a recognition of the Business Intelligence world we live in and the reality that our products are in fact, tools to help our customers maximize on their investments in business intelligence. The same products and customization services with our continuing commitment to quality support - just a new name!

APOS BI Tools for BusinessObjects XI *Development Update

We're working away at migrating our APOS BI Tools to BusinessObjects XI, we will shortly be starting a beta program with our customers.

If you're interested in participating in our beta program for APOS BI Tools for BusinessObjects XI, please let us know.

InfoScheduler for Crystal Enterprise *Powerful New Feature Added

InfoScheduler's feature list continues to grow, here's the latest . . .

Expanded FTP Upload Support - more options are now supported for batch scheduling to an FTP destination using Crystal Enterprise. New fields are now available for setting the FTP destination specifics.

InfoScheduler is recognized as the leading batch scheduling tool in the business, with your batch schedules developed and maintained from within Microsoft Excel. Combine this with the ability to load externally generated csv files, consider evaluating InfoScheduler for those repetitive batch scheduling needs.

If you want to check out how InfoScheduler can help your organization, please visit here to request demo download instructions and our current price list.

Instance Manager for Crystal Enterprise *Powerful New Features Added

Instance Manager supports more powerful re-scheduling of reports, plus with its cool new integration with APOS InfoScheduler, batch scheduling is more powerful than ever:

Export Instance Properties - new support for multiple data sources so you can perform analysis on more complete instance information

Re-schedule with Edit - now more powerful - you can select a group of already run report instances and then edit specific instance properties before rescheduling . . .

• Database Logon - modify database userid/password info
• Destination - change to any CE supported destination
• Format - change output format to any CE supported format

• Schedule - change to any CE supported schedule - hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, calendar, etc

• Events - change event settings

Export Properties for InfoScheduler - FTP Server Name and FTP Port are now also supported. Exports selected report instances properties to an external CSV file, formatted for importing into APOS InfoScheduler for subsequent editing and bulk scheduling.

If you want to check out how Instance Manager can help your organization, please visit here to request demo download instructions and our current price list.

Object Manager for Crystal Enterprise *Powerful New Features Added

Object Manager delivers many features to help busy administrators, here's the latest new feature just added:

Disconnected System Promotion - creates groups of Crystal Enterprise objects such as reports, folders, scripts, which can then be copied as a group, to other, disconnected Crystal Enterprise systems. A terrific tool for administrators with development, qa and production environments.

If you want to check out how Object Manager can help your organization, please visit here to request demo download instructions and our current price list.

Case Study - Cover-More Insurance *Cool Customer

"My manager and I are very interested in implementing a cost-effective solution for emailing as many as 70 reports daily for our external users who do have access to our Crystal Enterprise system. The APOS Distribution Server product is the solution we were searching for," said Narayan Khanal, Software Developer at Cover-More Insurance, Sydney, Australia.

Tools Used:

Distribution Server

Background:

Cover-More Insurance Services, the largest independently-owned insurance broker in Australia, specializes in travel insurance. With 15 years of consecutive profitability, it is obviously an established and well run organization. Managing over 800,000 travelers each year takes knowledge, skills, and up-to-the-minute, accurate information. So Cover-More relies on an extensive array of Crystal Reports to ensure its management, sales, and financial staff is on top of all issues. 

Business Challenge:

· Cost-effectively automate internet delivery of reports to external customers

The technical staff at Cover-More faced the challenge of deploying a substantial number of reports to external customers without violating their existing licensing restrictions. To get around these restrictions, technical staff modified the reports daily and emailed them to their customers. The manual effort required to deploy these reports was unsustainable, with current resources. Since they could not invest in additional licenses, the technical staff needed a way to automate the daily distribution of these reports in a cost-effective way. “Changing the licensing agreement was too expensive, while manually modifying reports and then emailing them was proving to be unacceptable,” said Mr. Khanal. “We needed a less costly way to deliver these reports to our external users on a daily basis,” he added. 

Solution:

· Use APOS Distribution Server to extend Crystal Enterprise report distribution functionality 

Cover-More technical staff was quickly convinced the APOS Distribution Server was the right choice to automate the delivery of reports to its external user community. Nearly 70 external customers now get their reports as and where needed. For example, Cover-More initiates many events that are strategically targeted at increasing sales of their products. Sales personnel want to know what sales are being generated, while management looks at trends. The ability to send these reports quickly and easily to external users gives them these crucial bits of information. “If it wasn’t for Distribution Server, we cannot possibly give our clients the reports they need without burdening our resources,” said Mr. Khanal.

Results:

· Protected investment

· Improved productivity of technical staff 

External users receive the sought-after reports without the need for Cover-More to expand the existing Crystal Enterprise licensing structure. This translates into a very cost-effective solution from an expenses perspective. Technical staff can focus on more value-add activities, rather than manually modifying reports-and then emailing them-on a daily basis. “This was the only solution that allowed us to run the reports and distribute them to our external customers without additional expensive investments,” said Mr. Khanal.

To read the full Cover-More Insurance case study or view others, visit here.

APOS BI Tools Suite *Extend Crystal Enterprise

One of our challenges is keeping our customers and colleagues current on the APOS BI Tools suite as it grows. Visit here to request demo download instructions and our current price list.

Administration - System Monitoring . . .

Instance Monitor - email notification of failed instances

KPI - who is viewing which reports, license usage analysis, server activity monitoring

Administration - Scheduling . . .

Bursting Manager - burst a large instance into small ones, burst one report to many

InfoScheduler - power batch scheduling from Microsoft Excel

Administration - Instance Administration . . .

Archive Manager - report instance archiving with business rules, with restore capability!

Instance Manager - administrator power tool for managing large instance systems

Administration - System Administration . . .

Object Manager - report promotion, object management, security maintenance

RunTime Manager - availability time windows for Crystal Enterprise components

Extending ePortfolio . . .

AddressBook Gateway - integrate an addressbook with ePortfolio scheduling

Dynamic Parameters - SQL-based, user-specific pick lists, cascading parameters

Extending Distribution . . .

Distribution Server - email link, email content, failure notification, distribute on alert

Subscription Manager - allow users to manage their own report subscription

Row Level Security . . .

Processing Extension RAD - fast track processing extension development

View Time Security - row level data security without C++ development

Suggestions, Requests, Unique Requirements

If you have a unique reporting system requirement, let us know. We love to work on special projects and regularly save our customers a lot of time and money by using APOS BI Tools as a fast-track foundation for a specific customized solution.

 

Head Office: 285 Fountain Street South, Cambridge, ON, Canada N3H 1J2
Tel: 519.653.APOS(2767) - Fax: 519.653.8511
Branch Office: #10 - 35537 Eagle Mountain Drive,  Abbotsford, BC V3G 2Z4
Tel: 604.864.0766 Toll Free: 866.629.APOS(2767)  Fax: 604.864.4291
Email: apos@apos.on.ca - Web: www.apos.on.ca

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