Creating PDF Reports on Process Server 2

[andersonch]

Hello,
New poster here so hopfully I am not missing any thing.

We just installed PDF Factory for our finance department. This allows them to save huge reports to PDF (saves a lot of trees). The only problem we have is with the daily sales posting. We use Process Server to post our sales (between 800-1100 orders a day) which means we can't use PDF factory to save the sales journal to PDF. Does anyone have an idea on how to get PDF's created using Process Server?

Our Stats
eEnterprise 7.0
MS SQL 2000 DB
Process Server 4 1.5Ghz Compaq ML570 running Win 2000 Adv

Thank you in advance,
Chad Anderson

 

[Nellie79]

I would imagine that you could set up pdf factory on the process server itself. Set that printer up through named printers in eEnterprise for all sales journal postings. The users should then be able to save the docs to pdf.

Or.. eEnterprise already saves all sales journals automatically for you. They can reprint any posting journal by choosing Reports > module > Posting Journals.

 

[RWahlert]

Process server will only print reports to the default printer on the process server machine. If you install PDF Facctory on the PS and make it the default printer you should then be able to print what you need.

 

[andersonch]

Thanks for the ideas. We would like to save the reports directly to a PDF file. I attempted to install PDF Factory on the process server. When the reports are run, they open on the server. This means we would have to go to the server room and manual save each PDF file. Great Plains doesn't recognize PDF Factory like it does with PDFWriter, which means you can't choose save as file and select PDF format.

Just an FYI, I tried to trick the server into saving the reports to PDF by installing PDFWriter on a workstation and the server. This didn’t work. The file naming information is not forwarded to the Process Server. So the file opens up in Acrobat Reader on the server, which mean we would still have to manual save each report.

I may look into having them reprint the posting journal from their desk. That may be the only option till eEnterprise 8.0 arrives. I have heard some rumors that they included a better report generator. We can only dream….

Thanks for all your help.

 

[jymm]

I ran into something similar a while back --- re-wrote the Dynamics reports in Crystal (since Crystal came along with Dynamics) and then used a product called Visual Cut from

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

--- I then have the reports auto generate (as a pdf) to a directory on the server and email to the appropriate external users. Pretty darn slick since now I can automatically give Marketing's reports to the head of Marketing, IT's to IT... and I just sit back and nap since it is all scheduled off of a server.