Sage have just posted their Sage 100 ERP FRX Conversion Utility Assistant into their private partner file area. This utility assists users in converting FRX reports to Sage MAS Intelligence 4.5 reports.
Sage MAS Intelligence is Sage’s rebadged (and since acquired) solution from Alchemex. Although marketed as a replacement to the since retired Microsoft FRX Report Writer, SMI is widely viewed as a good Business Intelligence tool and a complex financial report writer.
The release of this conversion tool is meant to ease users in migrating their FRX reports to SMI and remove some of the grumbling people have about complexity of SMI.
The documentation explains in a little more detail what role the FRX Conversion Utility Assistant plays:
The FRx Conversion Assistant is a utility that is designed to aid Sage Business Partners and consultants in transitioning customers from Microsoft® FRx 6.7 to Sage MAS 90/200 Intelligence 4.50 (Only available for Sage MAS 90/200 4.50). As with most conversions this utility does not perform an automatic perfect conversion but rather speeds up the recreation process for existing FRx reports within Sage MAS Intelligence (SMI). As Microsoft FRx and Sage MAS Intelligence provide Financial Reporting in a different manner there is often no direct way to directly convert concepts found within Microsoft FRx to SMI as there will be different mechanisms to handle the same concepts within the two applications.
System requirements (as noted in the conversion guide accompanying the utility):
- Microsoft FRx 6.7 Service Pack 11 (6.7.11027)
- Sage ERP MAS 90/200 4.50 ProvideX or MAS 200 SQL 4.50
- Sage ERP MAS 90/200 Intelligence 4.50 or MAS 200 SQL Intelligence 4.50
- Active Manager License
- Active Report Designer Site License
- Active Connector Site License
This utility will only work if SMI 4.50 is installed. As Reports from FRx are converted into Report Designer enabled reports within SMI you will need to have obtained a license for the SMI Report Manager and Report Designer components to use this utility. Additionally to cater for consolidated FRx reports, this utility requires an active Connector license to be obtained. If converted reports only draw data from one company then customers can import them against the regular (non‐consolidation) ‘MAS Auto Connect’ connection within SMI.
Sage Partners can download the utility from the Partner File Center
