Hey there!
I know there are some of you out there that have chosen to build your renewal forms in SSRS. I hope you're reading this right now. :)
I'm starting to understand why Tess tells us you have to build custom forms in InfoMaker. But I really, really, really don't want to. So I want to know how you guys did it? Did you manage to get full functionality with it (if so, how?!) or are you missing pieces and have learned to make do without them?
I'm struggling with a few things in particular. I'm sure I'll stumble across more gotcha's as I go so feel free to share your experiences even if I haven't asked about them specifically.
If you have any knowledge on:
1) How to get the SSRS form to call the appropriate sproc at the beginning (there are two I'm seeing - TP_GEN_ONE_REN_NOTICE and TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES). I'm not super handy with InfoMaker so I'm not seeing how our current form calls those either. All I can see is the link to our local procedure that generates the appropriate data for us (and neither of those is executed within our local procedure either). But they are definitely being called somehow. I ran a trace and can see that it happens. In a nutshell, I'm currently missing that first step where the new set is generated and don't know the best way to get it in there.
2) How to generate the SSRS report from Subscription Summary for an individual customer. I got an error telling me I had an invalid data object selected. We do a big print of all of our forms for mailout but then frequently print one off forms at the box office or at our renewal table in the lobby at concerts. It seems silly to have an SSRS form that is new and fun being mailed out but we have to print the previous InfoMaker form if we need it reprinted individually. Unless you avoid Sub Summary all together and made your SSRS report something that could be run for an individual and accessible to the staff? Wouldn't be my first choice but........
3) Literally anything else you can tell me that may help me going forward with this project. I feel like I'm so close to having this thing finished and awesome but I'm just missing these last few (but critical) things.
Thanks and feel free to message me offline if you'd prefer!
Bethbhawryluk@winspearcentre.com
We do fixed seat sub renewal invoices in SSRS since 2012, iirc. The underlying sproc didn't change all that much with the move from IM to SSRS; making the new report in SSRS was about 90% of the work of switching (our renewal forms are complex and unforgiving re: spacing).
Beth Hawryluk said:How to get the SSRS form to call the appropriate sproc at the beginning (there are two I'm seeing - TP_GEN_ONE_REN_NOTICE and TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES)
We used to use a technique similar to custom print button order acks: within your custom sproc, you run the standard sproc (in this case TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES), sending all of its output to a temp table. From there you can do whatever else you want with that data: in our case we added additional data, skipped some we don't use, and sent the results to a custom table, from which we do the actual invoice printing.
As of 2014 we don't even bother with TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES.
Beth Hawryluk said:How to generate the SSRS report from Subscription Summary for an individual customer.
Not sure we're talking about exactly the same thing, but the only data I've found that I needed to update here was the fields date_last_ren_notice_generd and no_of_ren_notices_generd in T_CUST_SUBSCRIPTION_SUMMARY. The other data appears to populate the Subscription Summary window without my intervention.
Thanks so much for the feedback, Chris!!
Chris Jensen said:within your custom sproc, you run the standard sproc (in this case TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES)
I was thinking of a similar approach but was worried about any repercussions that I wasn't initially seeing. It's comforting to know that this has worked for you! Our local procedure does 99% of the heavy lifting already but we currently rely on TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES to generate the set. So I've been missing that initial step so far in my testing.
As for my comment about Subscription Summary, I was actually wondering if anyone has successfully integrated their SSRS renewal form with the Print Now button for renewal notice in the sub summary screen. We do a big batch print to mail out to our subscribers but if they call/come in person and don't have their form physically there to hand to us we simply print a one-off form from their sub summary. When I attempted to print an SSRS form from this window I received an error stating it had an invalid object. If it's not possible to have an SSRS form linked to that Print Now option then I'm toying with two possible work arounds. One, we point it to our old InfoMaker form and live with the fact that these one-offs won't look the same as our current form. Two, I create a secondary report that the end users have access to where they can enter a customer number and season to generate one renewal notice.
Beth Hawryluk said:was worried about any repercussions that I wasn't initially seeing.
It's been a while, but eventually I looked closely at TP_GEN_ALL_REN_NOTICES, and most of what it does is create rows in T_NOTICE et. al. that we don't use since we use a custom renewal invoice report. So, as above, I abandoned it.
Beth Hawryluk said:create a secondary report that the end users have access to where they can enter a customer number and season to generate one renewal notice.
A oneoff renewal invoice generator would be complicated here, since, again due to our complex renewal forms resulting in only one invoice-renewal-capable printer in the building, but if you can make it work at your org, the above sounds like a great idea.