What were you doing in March of 2004? I can tell you what FRx Reporter 6.7 was doing – being released! Yes, the current version of FRx Reporter has indeed been around for six years and seen ten service packs. It has been compatible with three versions of Microsoft Dynamics® GP. It’s been a faithful friend to many of us in the financial reporting world but all good things must come to an end and at some point we must say goodbye. That time is nearly upon us.
For a few years now, clients have been asking when the next version of FRx is coming out. Last year at Convergence, the announcement was made that a product called Management Reporter (MR) would be the successor of FRx over time. MR version 1.0 had been around for a little while as part of the Performance Point family of products. The Performance Point products transitioned to become part of SharePoint while MR became part of the Microsoft Business solutions family. The plan is that MR 2.0 will be released with Microsoft Dynamics® GP 2010 later this year and replace FRx Reporter. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to use FRx as soon as Microsoft Dynamics® GP 2010 is released. FRx will be supported with Microsoft Dynamics® GP 10.0 for a long time. What it does mean is that when you upgrade to GP 2010 you will have the option to upgrade to MR. Another important consideration is that there are parts of FRx that won’t be immediately replaced by MR 2.0. FRx Forecaster, Currency Translator and Enterprise Reporting won’t be replaced until future releases of MR come out.
All that being said, shouldn’t I be panicking? Shouldn’t everyone be panicking? After all, FRx is being replaced! Nope – not worried at all. I’ve reviewed the beta version of MR 2.0 and it’s much more similar to FRx than it is dissimilar. There are still interchangeable rows, columns and trees. There is still spreadsheet-style navigation. There is a migration for existing FRx reports into MR. Whew! I’m glad to see these similarities that we have grown to love over the years in FRx. I’m also very excited about the enhancements. I’m not going to run down a full list of the enhancements but will highlight three favorites so far and tell you why they’re important.