APS Reporter/SP & SPF Integration

Deploying reports to a large number of end-users can be a logistical headache, you need to either deploy the software to a large number of PC's in your organisation, or perhaps provide access through a Citrix system, and then you need to train end-users in the software, and manage software upgrades, etc. Fortunately, if you're working with SPF, there is a simpler way.

APS Reporter/SP can be integrated with the SPF Desktop Client and the SPF Server to provide a seamless experience for the end-users. Reports are accessed through the SPF Desktop Client, generated by APS Reporter/SP, and then displayed to the user.

From the end-user's perspective, the reports appear to be generated by SPF. There is no additional training required, software is not deployed to end-user PC's (only the SPF Server), and upgrades are simplified.

Our YouTube channel has a couple of videos that demonstrate the integration, both from an end-user's point of view, and also from a developers, and I've included a brief description below.

Architecture

The recommended configuration is to install the APS Reporter/SP application on the SPF Server, and to implement some SPF customisations.

The details of the implementation vary from site to site (APS can provide sample source code for the SPF customisations) however in general the process is as follows:

1. The SPF user requests a report through the SPF menus, and the request is forwarded to the SPF Server
2. The SPF Server receives the request, and passes it through to the APS Reporter/SP application
3. APS Reporter/SP connects to the required database(s) and generates the requested Report
4. The Report is returned to the SPF Server
5. SPF Server returns the Report to the SPF Desktop Client for display

From the end-user's perspective, the Report is requested and generated on-the-fly and then displayed.

Report Selection

Reports are typically configured as Main Menu options, or as right-click Menu options.

For example, a simple report to display the Roles assigned to each User could be added to the Administration menu as follows:

Selecting this option sends a request through to APSR to generate the Report, which is then returned as a PDF file for display:

Alternatively, the Report could be added to the right-click menu of certain classes. For example, in the display below a list of Roles has been shown, and the Right Click menu contains an option to show the Users assigned to the Role.

The user has selected the ProcessEngineer role as shown:

In this case, the same Report is generated on the fly, however it is now filtered by the selected Role (ProcessEngineer) so only Users with that Role are displayed:

Various other options are available, including generating reports from 3rd party databases, and handling Reports as Documents in SPF. I'll cover some of these in my next blog post.

If you'd like to see more, check out the following YouTube videos.

This one shows various integration options from the end-users perspective:

And this one shows some of the configuration required to implement the APSR Reports.

APS can provide the source code for a sample integration and assist in customising it for your site.

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below, or for more information, contact me at one of the links to the right.

Regards,

Brian Raynor.