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Forums User Experience Lawson Add-Ins for Microsoft Office

Is Query wizard useful?

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bgodwin
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10/3/2007 5:57 PM
Our GL group writes some queries with 'report writer' and states that it is complicated to some extent. They want to run the Addins for some things. I'm not an add-in fan (could not easily figure out how to join tables, etc). I write queries by the SQL language from scratch.

Could the GL people utilize the query wizard for queries involving more than one table? Is it reliable? Is it best for simple queries or is it robust?

(I know that with the upload wizard, we had issues where it would state that something was uploaded when in the database, it actually was not. We lost faith in using the upload wizard - when we have to we always run a sql query on the table to doublecheck the upload.)

Deleted User
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12/28/2007 5:23 PM
Our GL folks use several Add-In Queries to monitor budget and Asset Management. They love it. I'm in Procurement and it annoys me. I much prefer to just build it myself in Access.

As for the false readings in uploads - I love uploads. But they are just as false as the screens themselves. For example - if I go to PO20 and click Change without doing anything, the message "Change Complete - Continue" cheerfully displays even though nothing has changed. If I make changes to the line but do not use FC C and hit change - the same thing occurs. Similiarly if you upload a change but the mapping misses, the Change command will say "Change Complete" and do nothing to the record.

We additionally learned that certain cell formats will play havoc with the mapping and insert tabs. So we gotten into the habit of Edit -> Clear -> Formats prior to uploading as well.

We regularly upload in Procurement for several screens:
IC11, IC12, PO25.6, RQ01, RQ04- New records and changes
IC12.2, PC10, IC20, IC21, IC24, RQ10 - New records
And backorder cancelations to PO20.

As I said, I love uploads and would be lost without them.
k-rock
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12/28/2007 6:15 PM
Add-In Query Wizard would be OK for simple queries. You can use more than one table at a time but the mapping has to be setup by the wizard. The query wizard is slow and is limited by Excel to only 65000 lines (2003 and earlier).

Does your company have any sort of query/reporting tool with direct table access? Business Objects, Hyperion, Cognos, LBI? If you have any of these, you could build some template queries/reports that allow further customization by the user. This would be the route I would suggest. The end users shouldn't be required to know how to join tables and write SQL, but they should be allowed to enter parameters.