Tools Used:InfoScheduler (with Crystal Enterprise™ 9.0)Background:With 8,000 employees and offices that span 60 locations across 25 US states, plus Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico, Outsourcing Solutions Inc. (OSI) - headquartered in St. Louis - is the nation’s leading provider of receivables management services. OSI’s revenue exceeded 600 million dollars last year. The use of enterprise wide technology, like Crystal Enterprise, plays a crucial role in OSI’s proven leadership and dominance it its field.Business Issue:• Significantly reduce time and effort to reschedule hundreds of reports after software upgradeWhen OSI decided to upgrade their Crystal Enterprise environment from version 8.5 to version 9.0, it became quite apparent that the manual effort to reschedule hundreds of previously scheduled reports after the upgrade was going to be a manually daunting and time consuming task. Mr. Petry knew this because of an incident that occurred during a Labor Day holiday last year. Crystal automatically ran the reports on that day, but the source database anticipated the holiday and knowingly did not update its information. This disconnect led to the manual rescheduling of the reports - and the redeployment of a critical resource. “We had a contractor working on other aspects of these reports, scheduling them for distribution for a quick deployment after the holiday,” recalled Mr. Petry. “Unfortunately, because the reports ran prematurely, we had to redeploy the contractor to reschedule all the reports after the database was updated the day after the holiday. It took him nearly 10 hours to do this through the existing scheduling tools in CE,” he said. And he added: “Since then, the demand for reports has grown significantly. We now have about 350 on-line users and over 1300 different types of reports. It was imperative to find a better way to schedule and maintain hundreds of reports with minimal resources.”Solution:• Use the APOS InfoScheduler Add-In Software toolWhen Mr. Petry found out about InfoScheduler, he wanted to know if this tool would do the job. He evaluated the product and the demo version quickly proved its value. InfoScheduler turned out to be a quick and inexpensive way to solve what was potentially a costly problem. “We were able to bulk reschedule reports after the upgrade with minimal staff and in a very short period of time. Using report parameters fed in via InfoScheduler, we are able to quickly set up and maintain the scheduled instances,” he said.Results:• Reduced report scheduling set up time from hours to minutes, resulting in significant gains in time and resourcesAnytime you can reduce an activity from hours to minutes, it gives you the chance to reduce costs while optimizing staff usage. “InfoScheduler has saved us time, money and - more importantly - raised the productivity of my development staff. I can use the critical skills of my staff for real value-add activities,” said Mr. Petry.To read the full Outsourcing Solutions case study or view others, visit here.
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 special needs like migrating existing report schedules from Seagate Info to Crystal Enterprise. to request additional information on Seagate Info migration services.Business Objects Annual User Conference *User Event of the YearWe hope you're joining us in Dallas on Nov 7 - 10, 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 shown for the first time! Visit here for additional information and to register. New Features for Current Products *Stay Current For current release notes on all our Add-in solutions, visit 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 . . .
Distribution Server v.10
Dynamic Parameters v.10, v.9 InfoScheduler v.10, v.9
•
Changed Object Search tree view to list view
to enhance drill down capability Instance Manager v.10 • Added "Copy to Folder" support on recurring instances KPI v.8.5 • New tables and CSP files added to support capturing enhanced user information - Last Updated, User ID, User Name, PasswordExpiry (number of days until the password expires) KPI v.10 • Business Views design content metadata and analysis capability now available Object Manager v.10, v.9, v.8.5
• Search feature enhanced to verify that the
current user logged on to the APS has access
to the queried objects APOS Suite of Add-In Solutions *Extend Crystal Enterprise One of our challenges is keeping our customers and colleagues current on the APOS suite of Add-In products as it grows. Visit here to request demo download instructions and our current price list. Administration - System Monitoring . . . DocAssist - report design content analysis & repository tool 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 . . . Instance Manager - administrator power tool 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 Business Calendars - customized calendars for report 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 Frequently Asked Questions Visit 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.
(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 SA. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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