February, 2004

 

 

APOS Freeware *Yes, It's True, Free Software

We've accumulated a variety of useful tweaks and solutions for Crystal Enterprise that we're planning to offer on our web site, stay tuned as we add more this year. Note that APOS Freeware is provided at no cost and without support. Click here to download the first one, more to come in coming months:

ePortfolio Reschedule button - for Crystal Enterprise v. 8.5/9

Now you can easily provide users with a 'Reschedule' capability right from the standard History page in Crystal Enterprise.

Case Study - Fairfax County Public Schools

"The big thing for us was the speed we were able to implement so many things without having a ton of developers to do it. That really saved us. We would have had a problem if we did not have the APOS software tools," recalled Gary Policastro, Coordinator, Data Services, Fairfax County Public Schools.

 

APOS Tools Used:

View Time Security, Dynamic Parameters (with Crystal Enterprise™ 9.0)

 

Background:

With more than 166,000 students, an area of nearly 400 square miles, 241 schools and centres, over 22,000 employees, and an operating budget of US$1.6 billion, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is one of the largest employers in Virginia. An early visionary in the application of technology, FCPS relies heavily on computers for instruction, staff communication, and information deployment. The network infrastructure includes over 800 servers that support internet access, email, and administrative support across well over 70,000 desk-tops.

 

Issues:

• Improve decision making throughout the school division

• Improve communications for the community at large

 

When governments demand that public schools use more data to measure and evaluate programs and education; when they implement new initiatives like “No Child Left Behind”; and when the community wants more information about their schools....enlightened school systems like FCPS look to technology for answers to strategic and operational issues.

 

In fact, FCPS is considered to be a premier K-12 school district in the nation because it long ago recognized the importance of technology in education—not only to enhance learning, but also to track and improve its strategic and operational goals. FCPS first wanted to let its school leaders—principals, school board members, administrators, teachers—gain easy access to data they needed (such as school enrollment, attendance, demographics, standardized test results, course marks, and so on) at any time. FCPS also wanted to let school leaders create customized views of the data for planning, implementing, and assessing educational programs and operational strategy.

 

By making this information more easily and more readily available, FCPS knew that the decision makers would have a well-rounded picture of their school’s performance to help facilitate improvements. And, of course, to communicate timely and accurate information to parents and other interested people. “We wanted to give our school leaders a user friendly one-stop-shop across the enterprise to support their decision making and communication activities,” said Mr. Policastro.

 

Solution:

First, APOS used their View Time Security product to implement report bursting through row-level security. In addition, APOS created dynamic filters so that users could further filter the instance down and focus only on the information they need. The filter construction screen that was presented to the users displayed only the choices that users could choose according to their security level. They could save filters and reuse the filters as often as they like on multiple reports. Users can, for example, view three different reports containing data for a specific school without having to repeatedly select that school. In other words, the dynamic filters gave users a personalized interface for report instances—based on values they were allowed to use. “For example, a principal only wants to see his school data, not the data from all the other schools. We have a lot of pre-generated instances which includes the structure that we have in the school system. So we used the APOS View Time Security product to limit what principals could see out of the generated instances. In addition, they could use the dynamic filters to build a filter that they could apply to the instance for other views,” mentioned Mr. Policastro.

 

FCPS also wanted increased on-demand dynamic reporting capabilities that could handle a large number of cascading parameters: For example, the 5th parameter may depend on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th parameters to display an accurate option list. So APOS implemented its Dynamic Parameters product. Here, when users run an on-demand report, they get a dynamically-generated, personalized and cascading list with potentially multiple parents. They could choose values from these list and then run the report based on those values. “In a way, this gives our users something akin to a query system. They can choose anywhere between 12 and 16 parameters from which they can filter the data they want,” said Mr. Policastro.


 Results:

The FCPS solution is a complex system. “We have a large system, approximately 17 million rows. Correlating all this data is not easy. And the Crystal products have certainly met our expectations here. We wanted to put information in one spot and make it easy for a wide range of people—from casual users to knowledge workers—to gain access and use the information to suit their needs. The Crystal products helped us meet these requirements”, said Mr. Policastro.

 

The APOS View Time Security and Dynamic Parameters Add-In software proved to be an ideal complementary solution to Crystal Enterprise. “These Add-In Software tools gave us the ability to let our users see what they wanted to see and what they were allowed to see without having to write a lot of code”, said Mr. Policastro. “Besides, the APOS-Crystal relationship is as close to a one-stop shop as you can get,” he added.

 

To read the full Fairfax Case Study or view others, click here.

APOS Newsletters *Now there are 2!

We're pleased to announce some exciting improvements in our newsletter program. More case studies of real customer experiences. More information about what's new in the world of Business Objects business intelligence solutions and enhancement products. In an effort to better inform our customers and partners on APOS products and services, you can subscribe to one or both of these newsletters:

 

Add-Ins Software News - published every 2 months with a focus on APOS Add-In software and it's role in business intelligence solutions. You will continue to receive this newsletter but if you don’t want to receive Add-Ins Software News or would like to add someone else to our email list, just drop us a note at news@apos.on.ca.

 

Solutions News - published every 2 months with a focus on the APOS role in business intelligence, specifically utilizing Business Objects solutions like Crystal Enterprise.

Crystal Decisions User Group for North America (CDUGNA) *Crystal Event of the Year

We hope you're joining us in New Orleans on May 26-28, 2004 - a number of APOS team members will be there and participating! If you're attending, please look us up at the Vendor Fair where we're showing all our Add-In solutions - with some new add-in solutions being show for the first time! As well, please look for the track sessions we're presenting in and participate if you can! Click here for additional information and to register.

APOS Web Site On-Line Demos *New On Our Web Site

We're preparing on-line demos of our solutions, to allow customers evaluating our solutions an easy way to get a high level overview of what it looks like, key features, etc.  Click here to see an online demo/overview of our newest Add-In solution - AddressBook Gateway.

Self-Service Support Portal! *Launch Successful

Announced in our last newsletter in December, our self-service support portal has gone live and met with positive response from our customers. Now our add-in customers and those evaluating our tools can search for answers to common questions regarding our tools as well as create and monitor their own cases on line!

To register, simply e-mail support@apos.on.ca and request a portal password. You will then shortly receive your password by email, to allow access to this exciting new support offering.

Crystal Enterprise v.10 Support  *Beta Versions Now Released

We're pleased to announce the availability of all of our current products for the Crystal Enterprise v.10 platform. Note that our Business Calendars solution is still supported but ends its short but very useful life with Crystal Enterprise v.9.

 

Click here to request the beta version of any of our current solutions for the powerful new Crystal Enterprise v.10 platform.

Migrating from Seagate Info to Crystal Enterprise? *We Can Help

Some aspects of migrating from Seagate Info to Crystal Enterprise are challenging. APOS has the tools and experience to assist with common needs:

• convert InfoViews (Seagate Info) to Processing Extensions (Crystal Enterprise)

• migrate existing report schedules from Seagate Info to Crystal Enterprise

• business calendars for scheduling reports

Click here to request additional information on Seagate Info migration services.

Business Objects Update *Crystal & Business Objects Roadmap

All the signs point to an exciting future for us all as Business Objects gradually integrates the best products of Crystal and BOBJ into a comprehensive lineup of business intelligence solutions.

 

As a long time Crystal partner, we're committed to adding value to this new product line; we're excited about the future!

New Features for Current Products *Stay Current

For current release note information on all our Add-in solutions, click here to login to our new self-service portal, and then Search our new knowledgebase for all articles containing 'Release Notes". Here are some highlights of recent updates . . .
AddressBook Gateway - New CSP pages prompt users without e-mail addresses to enter one; new CSP pages to fully integrate with other APOS products; a new check box to restrict e-mail addresses to the displayed list only.
Dynamic Parameters - Added a "Connect" button which allow users to create, test, and save a connection string in the Edit Sources screen.
 InfoScheduler 9 - New "E-mail" button that integrates InfoScheduler with AddressBook Gateway, to allow a user to easily insert e-mail addresses into InfoScheduler e-mail fields.
KPI 9 - Added a new check box to include/exclude the scanning of SQL statements for reports with no passwords, a performance feature.
Object Manager 9 - Added an "Edit" button to the View Time Security screen which allow users to create, test, and save a connection string.
Object Manager 8.5/9 - New "Depth" field in the list which is used to optimize the application of security rights on the Security Maintenance screen.

View Time Security - Added an "Edit" button to the View Time Security screen in Object Manager to allow a user to create, test, and save a connection string.

APOS Suite of Add-In Solutions *Extend Crystal Enterprise

One of our challenges is keeping our customers and friends up to date on the APOS suite of Add-In products as it grows. Click here to request demo download instructions and our current price list.

Desktop Application Tools . . .

DocAssist - report documentation & repository tool

InfoScheduler - power batch scheduling from Microsoft Excel

Instance Manager - administrator power tool

Object Manager - report promotion, object management, security maintenance

Server-Based Add-Ins . . .

AddressBook Gateway – integrate your address book with ePortfolio scheduling

Business Calendars – customized calendars for report scheduling

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

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

Instance Monitor - email notification of failed instances

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

RunTime Manager – availability time windows for Crystal Enterprise components

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

Development Tools . . .

Processing Extension RAD – fast track processing extension development

Frequently Asked Questions

Click here to see our latest FAQ list summarizing many of the needs our customers have been asking for help with in our various add-in solutions.

 

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 our Add-In solutions as a fast-track foundation for a specific customized solution.

 

 

APOS Systems Inc.
Head Office: 1228 Rose Street, Cambridge, ON, Canada N3H 2G3
Tel: 519.653.8537 - Fax: 519.653.8567
Branch Office: 30703 Blueridge Drive #13,  Abbotsford, BC, Canada V2T 6M8
Tel: 604.864.0766 - Fax: 604.864.4291
Email: apos@apos.on.ca - Web: www.apos.on.ca

 

This newsletter is published every 2 months, if you don’t want to receive future newsletters or would like to add someone else to our email list, just drop us a note at news@apos.on.ca. If you have any compliments or suggestions, we welcome those too!

 

(c) 2004 APOS Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Crystal Decisions, Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Analysis, Seagate Info and Business Objects are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.