Re: Printing GUI Documents w/ Green Screen Reports -- BPCS-L

If your GUI users have OS/400 Client Access they can click on any spool
file report and get at AS/400 reports without much fuss or bother.  This is
a recurring topic on other midrange lists for which the search engine
against archives might find you useful solutions.  Also see the Midrange
Resources (vendor directory) on midrange dot com.

There are an infinity of inexpensive 3rd party add-ons to enhance delivery
of 400 reports to the GUI destination of choice - internet web site,
e-mail, spread sheet, with manipulation of what rows and columns of reports
might be selected.    Some of these are useful if your need is to schedule
some data collection (we use GO CMDSCDE to schedule some reports that are
not BPCS programs but Query/400 in CLP from BPCS data) that you will want
transmitted to selected people, such as at start of each day e-mail to
selected customers a report on what you shipped yesterday and what you plan
to ship today.

A tiny fraction of the 3rd party solutions do work for green screen users
to do the steps to generate what ends up as GUI.  In most cases they are
not able to access the data in the GUI form, but I do recall one package
that simulated e-mail conferencing purely for green screen world.

I too am 405 CD and did not want much user intervention because I felt that
the process is unreasonably cumbersome for normal users (I wrote a CL to
send a 400 report to a 400 file, which then would be selected by a PC user,
but they had to key to the prompt screen some information transcribed off
of WRKSPLF or WRKOUTQ) but after a few managers had no trouble getting
what's desired via AS/400 Client Access, they indicated no need to spend $
on the 3rd party solutions whose urls I had passed along.

The latest OS/400 upgrade has done some major work with what IBM is calling
e-Output, in which any AS/400 report can get from spool to any form you
want, including PDF.  Some of the process comes free with OS/400 and some
comes at some cost.  I suggest you check that out.  In fact IBM is going
around the country doing seminars on this topic, such as at local AS/400
user groups.

>Hi All,
>
>I'm looking for suggestions on how to print a GUI document w/ an AS/400
>report produced off of an in-house green screen application.  We are on 4.05
>CD (although this is not really a BPCS questions).  I want to do this as
>simple as possible  -- not buy any additional software and/or rewrite any
>applications (we already have Optio, a forms overlay package on the AS/400).
>I also do not want to add a lot of user intervention.  I think I can do this
>by adding a STRPCCMD command to my CL, first producing an executable file on
>the PC to print the desired document.  I'm not sure where we are going to
>store the documents, IFS or on a NT Network drive.  We also haven't decided
>on what format to store the GUI documents in, most likely pdf...  Just
>looking for suggestions.  Thanks.
>
>DeeDee Virgei
>Nelson Stud Welding, Inc.
>7900 West Ridge Rd
>Elyria, OH 44036

-
Al Macintyre (macwheel99@sigecom.net via Eudora)