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Infor LX Tips, Infor LN Tips, BPCS Tips, Baan Tips, Infor M3 Tips & Infor ERP News

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Infor ERP Tips & News from the Experts

Infor LX | Infor LN | BPCS | Baan | Infor M3

Infor LX & BPCS Tip of the Week: Trim Leading Zero

George Moroses 0 45858 Article rating: 5.0

In LX 8.4, an enhancement has been included to allow for the expanded Company fields to have the leading zero truncated.

To trim leading zeros, CEA515B is called during macro resolution to trim the leading zero based on the position in the Zero Trim file (GZT). The Zero Trim file contains all the company number fields currently defined in the CEA Cross Reference fie (GXM).

This enhancement provides year over year comparison in financial reports and eliminates the need to setup new companies in programs such as Alias Definition. Financial programs trim the leading zero on Company fields, such as Company 010, on subsystem transactions to process as Company 10 during CEA macro resolution. Clients who prefer to retain the Company value as 010 on financial reports can clear the GZT file.

Infor LN & Baan Add-ons: Need a reason why you should barcode your inventory? How about 8 reasons!

Kathy Barthelt 0 31960 Article rating: 5.0

Top Eight Benefits of Barcodes

Barcodes are often overlooked as a method for cutting costs and saving time. A valuable and viable choice for businesses looking to improve efficiency and reduce overhead, barcodes are both cost-effective and reliable.

Crossroads RMC offers RMClabel which can be tied to any data collection system, or run stand-alone. Create barcode labels with 1D

Infor LN & Baan: Data Collection

Be honest. Does your business REALLY operate in real time?

Kathy Barthelt 0 37628 Article rating: 5.0

Do you have up-to-date real-time information on labor, machine time, and parts consumed? How accurate is your data? Can you get an accurate picture of what is going on across your operations at any time?

If not, Crossroads data collection solution should be considered. By combining sessions, eliminating duplicate entries and using available information to complete a transaction, Web Collect, formerly RMC3 extends the Infor LN and Baan applications to ensure efficiencies and timely information flow and reporting. 

Consulting News: Are you familiar with your Infor LN / Baan System Log?

Kathy Barthelt 0 35814 Article rating: 5.0

Data about the system and the application is stored in a system log. The system data includes information about:

  • The application environment
  • Any reorganization of tables
  • The available free disk space
  • The back-up schedule
  • The user data reports
  • The updates
  • Changes in the system
  • The error messages and solutions

Are you comfortable with reading your ERP system log? Have you checked it lately? Need help interpreting if your system may have a problem? Contact Kathy Barthelt today and one of our expert technical consultants can help to put your mind at ease and make sure your system is running as it should.

Infor LN & Baan Tip of the Week: Warehouse Blocking – LN 10.7

Kathy Barthelt 0 57706 Article rating: 5.0

The functionality to block a warehouse for inbound or outbound transactions has been enhanced. A check for blocks is performed not only during receipt and shipment confirmation, but at multiple stages in the process. In addition, you can specify these blocking options for the inbound and outbound processes:

• No

• Yes

• Interactive

For example, if Blocked for Inbound is set to Yes, no inbound actions are allowed in the warehouse. Consequently, users cannot confirm receipts, generate and put away inbound advice or storage lists, and perform inbound inspections. 

If Interactive is set, during a non-automatic warehouse inbound procedure, warnings are displayed which offer the user a choice to either cancel the action or continue. Batch or automatic inbound processes continue, but the corresponding reports and logs make note of the blocking. However, in all scenarios, receipt confirmation is not allowed.

The same rules are applicable for the warehouse outbound procedure steps. The restriction for receipt confirmation also applies to shipment confirmation.

For warehouse transfer orders, not only the ship-from warehouse is checked for outbound process blocks, but also the ship-to warehouse. This prevents situations in which goods get stuck in transit due to inbound procedure blocks that apply to the destination warehouse. Now, the transfer process is already blocked during outbound.

Partner News: Are you up to date on all of the sales tax changes that have gone into effect this year?

Crossroads RMC 0 33289 Article rating: 5.0

Like it or not, requirements for collecting sales tax change monthly and keeping up with those changes requires someone to be “on it” full time. Fortunately, Avalara handles all of that. Learn How >

Contact us to learn how we can take this burden off your plate and ensure that you are 100% in compliance, 100% of the time.

IDF News: Multi-Language Support

George Moroses 0 23594 Article rating: 5.0

IDF capabilities have been enhanced to provide support for many description elements to be displayed in the user’s language. MLS address and description information has been added to Vendor/Customer/Item business objects. Users can add/remove information as needed. Those display icons that do not have MLS fields on them may have MLS objects already created that can be used to add MLS field to those display icons.

Scope: The following multi language description fields are now available in IDF. To show them, select the multi-language field for the desired IDF panel.

• Item Description

• Warehouse Description

• Customer Name

• Vendor Name

• Vendor Accounting Type

• Company Name

• Currency Description

• Country Description

• General Ledger Account Description

• General Ledger Segment Value Description

 

Impact: These IDF programs are new or were updated to support multi language functionality:

• Account Segment Value MLS Extension

• Bank Branch MLS Override

• Bank MLS Override

• Company MLS Override

• Country Extension MLS Override

• Country MLS Override

• Currency Extension MLS Override

• Currency MLS Override

• Customer MLS Address Override

• Customer MLS Note

• Customer Order Class MLS Override

• Customer Terms MLS Override

• Enterprise Item MLS Note

• Enterprise Item MLS Override

• Freight Term MLS Extension

• Note MLS Line

• Sales Representative MLS Address Override

• Vendor MLS Address Override

• Vendor MLS Note

• Warehouse MLS Address

What problem is OTTO addressing?

George Moroses 0 27366 Article rating: 5.0

Most manufacturers are being pressured to reduce delivery lead-times and rely on their planning systems to meet their commitments. This works very well if everything happens as planned. But planning by itself doesn’t make things happen, people and processes make things happen. This acceleration is putting tremendous pressure on key users like planners, schedulers, buyers and production supervisors. Not only are they struggling to meet daily commitments and relying on “brute force” solutions to get the job done but they can actually become unrecognized production constraints. Planning is more important than ever but is no longer sufficient to meet current challenges because the real challenge in meeting commitments isn't planning but in making plans happen.

This is where OTTO comes in - Learn More>

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Tips:  LX | BPCS | M3

This enhancement provides additional views, additional order and line details, improved navigation, and additional capabilities to the IDF Customer Order Inquiry cards and to customer order-related business objects such as Allocations, Customer Invoices, Inventory Transaction History, Promotions, Drop Shipments.

Enhanced Order views based on user roles such as customer service, warehouse/logistics, salesperson/commission, data analysis/management reporting

  • Improved sort, select and filter capabilities
  • Enhanced navigation, data organization and data display
  • Improved customer service access to all transactions throughout the entire customer order life cycle – from quote to order, related invoices, and any RMAs, return orders, related credit memos
  • Improved grouping of related fields
  • New cards to present additional order and order line details
  • Consolidation of cards and card details when appropriate
  • Enhanced Display and Maintain capabilities for drillback to related customer, ship-to, item, carrier, terms, and other master file details
  • Improved display of dates, times and applicable time zones when Region Code time zone support is implemented
  • Multi language Description, Name and Address fields displayed in user’s language, if defined, else in base language

This enhancement provides search capabilities on segment value description in Segment Value List window (WINGSVD).

Segment Value List (WINGSVD):

  • Converted to a standard subfile
  • New action code 10=Search

This makes it easier to locate segment values when defining segment values in Model Account Builder or Alias definition. In addition, WINGSVD has been redesigned as a subfile to enable WebTop grid capabilities.

Last

Tips: LN | Baan

George Moroses

Infor LX & BPCS Tip: PowerLink

PowerLink is a Windows-based client for end-users within the Infor Development Framework (IDF). PowerLink allows exports/imports from/to the ERP database, but how much do you really know about it? Here is some helpful information about PowerLink.​

Why does PowerLink sometimes fail to export all records?
There's not a finite amount of records that PowerLink can export. However, PowerLink export was never intended to handle large volumes of data. It was designed as a quick snapshot of a fairly small subset and a simple view of the user's PowerLink card. 

What is the maximum amount of data that can be exported?
The maximum number of records is only limited by the system resource like memory, etc. When the system runs out of resources, an OutOfMemory error should occur. In previous testings, we have exported +1 million records, although the size of records differs greatly between business objects, the total size of the data could be an issue. For larger volumes of data, customers should investigate other tools such as the iSeries Access "Data Transfer from iSeries Server" feature to download directly to Excel.

How do I know if the size of the data is an issue?
1. When exporting to an external file (text, HTML) then importing to Excel: You can easily check the output (text, HTML) to see if the intermediate output has all the records. This can be done by visual inspection or through the use of column totals. Simply compare between the output and what you see in PowerLink. If the exported file has all the records, then the problem is definitely Excel.
2. When exporting to clipboard, then copy/paste to Excel: There is a clipboard export size limit that is controlled through client preferences. Check the exported data in the clipboard, and see if it contains all the records or only partial records due to the size limitation set in client preferences. If limited, change the client preferences using Customize from the Main browser > Preferences > Miscellaneous tab > Limit Clipboard Export, and try the export again. If the clipboard has all the records the problem is in Excel, which we don't have jurisdiction over.

Suggestions for improving the export process. 

  1. Reduce the number of columns seen in the view. This will serve to reduce the data being exported and may increase the number of records that can be exported. 
     
  2. Reduce the complexity of the view. If the view has one column that lives on a related object, then it has to build SQL behind the scenes to get that related record. If all of the columns come from a single business object, then the processing will be significantly faster.
     
  3. Export to HTML, which can be opened directly by Excel, Access, and many other programs. This reduces the processing of the export formatting because PowerLink needs only to put begin and end tags around each data element. This will also preserve column alignment when Excel or other programs open the file.
     
  4. Unless you are exporting a fairly small volume of data, export to a file, not clipboard. Clipboard is held in memory until the entire view is read, and records are written to the file as they are retrieved.
     

 Also see KB 1357068 for more information about testing your view.

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