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Output Designer
- Thread starter oz1
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- Jan 1, 1970
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From what I understand, our site is only the second customer for Output Designer. The original product was designed to print things like POs that need to look more professional than other types of output available for Mims. While I think it has a lot of promise, the product is best considered to be in early beta testing. Some of our POs can be rather lengthy and Output Designer doesn't handle long inserts well at all. After a couple of dozen records are inserted into the template document, MS Word slows down to a halt as it works to resize and reformat the report after every insert. Tim Boughen, a Senior Consultant with the Tequinox branch of Mincom in Brisbane, wrote the product. He demoed it for me on my trip to Australia last November.
Basically, you output your rdl report using XML tags to a particular directory, a service running under NT picks up the XML document and merges it into an MS Word template. For most kinds of report, it works fairly well. It doesn't handle our big POs, though. We have gotten a couple of updates since the first of the year. I'll let everyone know when Bim gets all the bugs out.
Basically, you output your rdl report using XML tags to a particular directory, a service running under NT picks up the XML document and merges it into an MS Word template. For most kinds of report, it works fairly well. It doesn't handle our big POs, though. We have gotten a couple of updates since the first of the year. I'll let everyone know when Bim gets all the bugs out.
Hi, my name is Tim Boughen. I designed Output Designer as it is known today late 1999. We initially wrote the product in VB6 and todate 4 sites are running with tis version. Since then, the C++ version has been under development and is expected to be shrink wrapped within the next few weeks.
Cheers
Cheers
- Thread starter
- #4
Hummm.... I've been writing MIMS output to MS Word using XML for about a year now using Unix slow filters. I have noticed that Word tends to fail catastrophically at about 230 pages of output (and we have a lot of MIMS reports that are that large).
Are those of you who are using Ouptut designer seeing this problem, or is it something that I don't understand about MS Word?
Glen Colbert
gcolbert@RAG_American.com
Are those of you who are using Ouptut designer seeing this problem, or is it something that I don't understand about MS Word?
Glen Colbert
gcolbert@RAG_American.com
Tim,
Can you tell me if the new version of OD can be used with MIMS4.1? I understand that the current one only works with 4.3
Oz1: OD is not limited to PO, should do almost anything
Glen: my understanding is that the problem relies with Word not at all with Mims or OD. Users of OD would have seen it if they created long reports. Maybe one way to overcome it would be to split report files in smaller batches before being supplied to Word. This could be done from MIMS by using selection filters on the report request screen.
Can you tell me if the new version of OD can be used with MIMS4.1? I understand that the current one only works with 4.3
Oz1: OD is not limited to PO, should do almost anything
Glen: my understanding is that the problem relies with Word not at all with Mims or OD. Users of OD would have seen it if they created long reports. Maybe one way to overcome it would be to split report files in smaller batches before being supplied to Word. This could be done from MIMS by using selection filters on the report request screen.
There are now 5 sites running either the initail VB6 prototype version or the new C++ version. The applications running live are
Purchase Orders (Printing/Faxing)
Work Orders/Job Cards with Attachments
Remittance Advices
Invoices
Payslips
Expediting Letters
In regards to MS Word (230 Page limit), I don't think even Microsoft known the limitations of Word
We have had success in generating up to 1000 page documents, why anyone would do this is beyond me, but yes, we have had lots of success in utilising undocumented features of Word.
OD is also independant to MIMS, i.e., you could interface it to any app that gens XML.
As far as MIMS version, we have a current 4.1 client using OD. We could even use it with earlier releases as the only component of MIMS that makes it all work is rptsubs.mac
Cheers
Purchase Orders (Printing/Faxing)
Work Orders/Job Cards with Attachments
Remittance Advices
Invoices
Payslips
Expediting Letters
In regards to MS Word (230 Page limit), I don't think even Microsoft known the limitations of Word
We have had success in generating up to 1000 page documents, why anyone would do this is beyond me, but yes, we have had lots of success in utilising undocumented features of Word.
OD is also independant to MIMS, i.e., you could interface it to any app that gens XML.
As far as MIMS version, we have a current 4.1 client using OD. We could even use it with earlier releases as the only component of MIMS that makes it all work is rptsubs.mac
Cheers
It looks like Output Designer finally works as advertized. I'm working now to install on our testbed the rdls necessary to be able to fax our expediting letters through Output Designer using Faxination. We're supposed to have it up and running in production inside of two weeks.
Gregg
Gregg
Geeslin,
Please keep us posted with your progress; we're keen to find out about your degree of satisfaction with both OD and Faxination; have you been using this faxing product for long" Have you been using alternative faxing software and what was your experience?
Please keep us posted with your progress; we're keen to find out about your degree of satisfaction with both OD and Faxination; have you been using this faxing product for long" Have you been using alternative faxing software and what was your experience?
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