Most of the countries in the world have specific unique local business needs and legal requirements. Oracle Applications is being used in more than 140 countries, and in order to attend some of those local business and legal requirements, Oracle has added to 11i a new set of functionality and parameters called Localizations.

Oracle Applications was designed to support the business and the legal requirements in United States. In some other countries, the Local Oracle Office has developed and supports Localization, therefore, Localization is applied to the country that was originally created for.

Brazil is one of the countries Oracle has support Localization. This country has a lot of different legal requirements, so Oracle has created the “Brazilian Localization” to support those. Additional configuration at some functional module is necessary (GL, FA, PO, OM, INV, CE, AP, AR Billing, PAC) and there is also a new module called RI (Integrated Receiving) which is just used in Brazilian implementations. To have an idea, there are close to 300 process variances required or affected by the Brazilian localization.

When planning any global roll out of Oracle functionality, in order to support the planning effort to install a particular Localization of Oracle Applications, it is recommended at least a high level assessment of the business operations. Localizations can never been forgotten in a Global implementation. There are a lot of ways to implement the Multi Organization structure where can be design to work with different currencies, have a look at our paper talking about the Multi-Org enhancement feature at this link.

If you need help, please give us a call: 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918

Andrew Karasev is technical consultant at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally. We are serving clients in LATAM and Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Salvador, Manaus.

help@albaspectrum.com

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is written in Great Plains Software programming tool: Great Plains Dexterity. Dexterity in turn was built with conception of graphical cross-platform transferability (in time – 1992 – mostly Mac and MS Windows). Plus Dexterity had database abstraction level (through C programming language). The result of such a shrewd future-looking architecture – Great Plains ReportWriter has multiple restrictions and drawbacks.

Let’s first look at the advantages of using ReportWriter:

• Seamless integration with Great Plains forms – the most typical scenario – you modify SOP_Long_Invoice_Form or SOP_Blank_Invoice_From and then print your invoices with modified form – usually with your logo and changed formats and positions of the fields

• Parameters Entry Forms. Each existing report (Reports section) has associated parameters entry form. Restrictions:

• No Cross-Modules links. You can not associate report with the tables from non-related modules. For example you can not have Sales Order Processing (SOP) and Purchase Order Processing data on the same report (you actually can – but you need Dexterity programmer help)

• Custom Reports. You do not have parameters entry interface for your custom reports, but you could use restrictions to restrict the selection. Custom reports could be used to export data from Great Plains in text (and then Excel format)

Advanced ReportWriter programming

• Rw_ functions in Great Plains Dexterity. When you need cross-modules data on the same report (Bill of Lading, which you could produce on the base of Picking List) you need to move the report you want to customize into your custom DYNAMICS.DIC and fill the gaps with RW_ functions – these are allowed to be placed on the report with parameters

If ReportWriter doesn’t do the job:

• Crystal Reports. Current version 8.0 and 8.5 (July 2005) are MS SQL Server based, where Crystal Report could work at will and produce all the desired links – we recommend you to base Crystal Report on SQL Stored Procedure or SQL View. You call Crystal Report engine via Modifier/VBA – you need Customization Site Enabler license. If you are on Great Plains Standard version: 7.5, or Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise 7.0, 6.0, 5.5 or 5.0 Btrieve/Pervasive SQL/Ctree – you need to install Pervasive SQL driver (or Faircomm driver for Ctree)

Good luck with implementation, customization and integration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 866-528-0577 or 630-961-5918! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew is Great Plains specialist in Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) – Microsoft Great Plains, Navision, Microsoft CRM Partner, serving clients in California, Minnesota, Illinois, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Canada, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia