In part 1 of this series, we talked about the benefits of Business Intelligence in today’s competitive environment. Between fierce competition and a down economy, wouldn’t it be nice to start with a program that is free? That’s where Jet Report’s free self-service reporting solution Jet Express for GP comes into play.
What is Jet Express of GP?
Using Jet Express, business users can create reports in minutes, with no advanced programming skills required.
· Jet Express pulls information directly into Excel from Microsoft Dynamics GP.
· Data in your reports can be refreshed with the click of a button, so you always have up-to-the-minute information.
· You can combine data from any table, view or field that you have access to in Microsoft Dynamics GP — and pull it directly into Excel. Then, using standard Excel features like PivotTables, charting and custom styles, you can create smart and compelling reports. And with the click of a button, the data in your report is quickly refreshed.
How do I get and install it?
The site also has dozens of pre-built Jet Express reports that you can download to help you get started. Make sure you download for the correct version of MS Office you are running — either 32-bit or 64-bit.
To install, right click on the install package and run as administrator. You will be stepped through the following screens.
Once the installation is complete, start Excel and click on the “JET” ribbon and then click on “Data Source Settings”
From the window that appears, we will be adding our SQL server name and company database information.
After we have created the connection, we need to build our sales report. Click on the “Table Builder” button in the “JET” ribbon to make the “Table Builder” window appears.
Next, we want to select the table or view that we are going to use for our report. I have created a custom view named “view_SOP_Line_Items” for this blog that I will be using.
Once I select the view, I then select the columns that I want to use for my report.
I then click “ok” and click on the “Refresh” button on the “JET” ribbon to produce the results in the screen shot below.
From here I want to make the report a little more dynamic for the users that may be viewing it. To do that, I insert a pivot table based off of the Jet Express data and then insert Timelines, Slicer and Pivot Charts.
The end result is a refreshable dynamic report.
Wow, that was a lot, but well worth it! Hope you enjoy it. If you would like help with this or the SQL scripted used, please contact sales@ktlsolutions.com
In Part 3, I will the Use Sales Order view used in Part 2, to perform Market Basket Analysis in Excel 2013.
