Components

Vivid Reports Flex uses Microsoft Excel® as its work space to create and to view your reports. This enables you to harness all of Microsoft Excel®’s functionality with the added advantage of being able to distribute your reports as standard Microsoft Excel® files. Leveraging Microsoft Excel®’s functionality to format, chart and highlight important information and get your reports to look the way you want. With Vivid Reports Flex, you can generate professional looking reports and so much more, all within a familiar environment.

Vivid Reports Flex seamlessly delivers information from any ODBC database directly and securely to Microsoft Excel®. Use Flex to connect to vital information captured by the world’s most popular ERP including Microsoft Dynamics®, Epicor, Sage, Oracle and SAP as well as other systems you may be using for sales, order management, payroll and HR, CRM, and inventory.

The Simple Designer window allows you to quickly build a report and control panel.

Vivid Reports Flex includes a full SQL designer, GUI and support for all SQL commands. SQL expressions are developed using Transact-SQL. The results can be previewed and exported into Microsoft Excel®.

Reports defined in Vivid Reports Flex have numerous options providing you with full control over the report generation. You can control which data source is accessed, the SQL expression, the destination, output formats, insertion methods, links, subtotals and input parameters.

Automation is used to run through a set of tasks listed in an Automation Table. It can be used to send values (parameters) to target worksheets and refresh/generate reports on those worksheets automatically to quickly produce and distribute reports. Reports can be generated, emailed, and printed (PDF). The email automation feature is currently only compatible with Microsoft Outlook®.

Automation tasks in an Automation Table can be automatically run at scheduled times (e.g. daily, weekly, or monthly).

A very powerful feature of Vivid Reports Flex is that the SQL expression you define can be made into a Microsoft Excel® formula giving you the ability to instantly modify expressions with Input Parameters based on changes you make in Microsoft Excel® or using a Control Panel, making your SQL dynamic.

This concept can be applied to any aspect of the SQL expression including the columns you would like to select (SELECT), the tables and servers that are being accessed (FROM) and the filter conditions you wish to apply (WHERE) as well as many other applications. This allows the same SQL expression to be easily reused by many users without having to modify or customize the SQL expression going forward. The SQL expressions will run more efficiently and put less demand on your servers since only the records that are being requested are being returned to Microsoft Excel®.

A Control Panel allows you to dynamically refresh a report with your desired input parameters. It is defined using the Panel Builder or Simple Designer windows.

Linking allows you to go from one Flex Report to another Flex Report while passing values from the first report into the second report as Input Parameters which extends your analysis capabilities and insights. Effortlessly navigate your information even if that information resides in multiple systems. Drill-down into your information without having to import the data into Microsoft Excel®, only the data you want to analyse is pulled into Microsoft Excel® in real-time. The Flex report that is linked to can be viewed in Microsoft Excel® or in a screen.

The Library is a cloud-based solution for storing SQL expressions. You can save SQL expressions to the library and then access the SQL expressions as a reference. It’s very useful when you want to reference the same SQL expression source in multiple reports or a base SQL expression as a starting point for developing a report.

We wanted to make Vivid Reports Flex as easy and as affordable as possible and this extends to our User Types as well. There are only two types of users and you can tailor each to further control exactly the functionality that each user profile will have. The first type of user is our Viewer license that allows someone to dynamically change report parameters and refresh live information. These users can also link to other reports for analysis. The second type of user is our Builder license that allows someone to administrator the software as well as build reports, KPIs, and dashboards within Microsoft Excel®. Each installation of Vivid Reports Flex must have at least one Builder license in order to create and manage reports.

Adds the functionality to store and capture external data from Microsoft Excel® and write it back to the Flex Server where it can be used in reports or shared with other team members. Flex Data is great anytime you need to communicate or capture information through team collaboration such as sales forecasting with your sales team. Flex data can also be used to store extra information that is needed to create a report such as rates for calculations, parameters, or report options, etc.

User Management is centrally administered. An administrator can reset passwords and define what functionality a user is permitted, and reassign licenses as required.

Connection Management is centrally administered. Unlimited data connections and authorizations are permitted. Data connections are defined and assigned to the applicable users.

Vivid Reports Flex has a multi-level robust security model. User profiles can be customized to control exactly which functionality each user profile will have. Data connections are encrypted and must be assigned to a user to be accessible. Report definitions are defined and encrypted using a unique customer key preventing unauthorized access or changes.

The Vivid Flex Server is used to store Flex Data. It is used in conjunction with the Flex Data Saver Add-On which adds functionality to store and capture external data from Excel and write it back to the Flex Server where it can be used in reports or shared with other team members. It is hosted on a cloud Microsoft Azure® solution.