Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Dynamic Images in Crystal Forms

Sage MAS 90 / MAS 200 ERP Version 4.40 ships with Crystal Reports 11.5. This version of Crystal has the ability to produce dynamic images based on file paths on a Crystal form or report.
This new feature was beneficial to one of our customers who orders products from overseas. Since the vendor is foreign, they may not always understand the product descriptions that are written in English. So an image of the purchased item was added to the item maintenance screen. The item path and image name was dynamically added as a formula in the Purchase Order form, which then displayed a picture of the item on the P/O. This allowed the workers at the vendor to identify the item being ordered by sight.

Friday, September 16, 2011

SageAdvisor -- coming in version MAS 90 and MAS 200 ERP 4.50 and 4.40

Sage is introducing a new "behind the scenes" feature in version 4.50 called "Sage Advisor". This will also be rolled out with version 4.40 as of product update 7, due out later this year.


Sage Advisor is an application that has been used with the Sage Peachtree software for several years. It collects statistics on errors received and information such as operating system versions. Sage uses this information in order to learn more about how to improve the software products, and how to prevent errors that customers receive, but may not report to Sage.

Many other software applications already use this type of non-obtrusive usage statistic reporting, such as Microsoft and Google.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Advanced Scripting for MAS 90 / MAS 200 ERP - jumping to the desired tab

In a prior post, I described Advanced Scripting for MAS 90 / MAS 200 ERP and how it can help a company save time and money. Here is another real-world example:
In versions of MAS 90 / MAS 200 ERP prior to version 4.40, the Inventory Maintenance and Inventory Inquiry screens were very different in look. Inventory Inquiry showed 'quantities on hand' for the item on the first tab. The Inquiry screen in 4.40 and above has a separate 'Quantities' tab, so it takes a couple of clicks to get to it.

To save one customer's user time each day, we added a script to the Inquiry screen such that once a user chooses an item the system automatically jumps to the Quantities tab. This saves the user a mouse click of time for each item they look up.

Monday, September 12, 2011

New Shipping Solution - Sage MAS 90 / MAS 200

In prior posts, we discussed how V-Technologies is no longer offering their Starship Link as of version 4.50 of Sage MAS 90/200. Sage, has, however, chosen a new shipping solution to replace the previous Starship Link.


This means those using Starship will have two options for passing data to and from MAS 90/200:
  • Use the V-Technologies Business Object Interface. This allows the user to start the shipment in Starship, and upon completion it will write back to invoice data entry in MAS 90/200.
  • Use the new Starship Link from Sage (to be released in the future). This allows the user to keep the same workflow as in prior versions of MAS 90/200 and begin the shipment in Shipping Data Entry. Upon the shipment's completion, tracking and other shipment data is written back to MAS 90/200.
These two options will allow users to work the way they need to in MAS 90/200. Stay tuned for more details as Sage releases additional information on the new shipping link in the future.