Sage 100

What's your trick for ensuring that paperless office works on a workstation after upgrading to the latest Sage 100 release.

I've found that relying on running Sage 100 WKSETUP as administrator is very hit or miss and I don't believe Sage will ever resolve/improve the process.

Is PL_Advancedoptions.UI the only way to ensure that a workstation doesn't come up with one of the myriad of paperless office errors? And, if so, what's the bulletproof way to know paperless is working for each workstation?  I'm pretty sure ( though willing to admit I'm not 100% ) that I've seen instances where I can use the "Test" option from the PL_Advancedoptions_UI and have that succeed and still have paperless fail.

TLDR - Why hasn't Sage come up with a program - even better if it's built into workstation setup - that tests both the driver and that the paperless paths are accessible? 

If the customer is not on a remote desktop solutions these workstation setups become a pricy project as they are very time consuming.

PS - After 25+ years of this program running on thousands of desktops why has there never been an evolution to a cleaner workstation setup that does not require visiting individual workstations and uninstalling old clients, reinstalling new clients, knowing exactly what components of Sage ( Crystal, eFiling ) are actively used at that workstation by that user. Manually running paperless office driver install and testing. Shouldn't the millions of dollars of annual subscription have helped somewhat? Am I the only one embarrassed to STILL be doing this tedious work? 

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Wayne Schulz
wayne@s-consult.com
Schulz Consulting
(860) 516-8990
CT
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I've resigned myself to running the PL_blahblah as part of a new workstation (running Sage itself AS ADMIN when doing so).  I include it in my instructions to IT doing the workstations, as well.  I don't believe I have had one fail doing it that way on the new workstations.

To test, I run the GL Account listing for 1 account to Paperless - seems like the quickest report I can run.  This also helps me double-check that they are setup for Paperless Reports, as I still find some folks setup with Register or Forms only and not Reports.

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Beth Bowers
(269) 358-0989
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Honestly I just wait for the client to contact me if they encounter an issue, as that is simply expected as part of the users' Upgrade Testing.  Plus that proves to me they're actually performing Testing as instructed/required.  But I do proactively test 'printing' a report re: Crystal errors/issues.  

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Brett Zimmerman
Net at Work
Greater Boston Area
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-02-2025 09:07
From: Beth Bowers
Subject: Sage 100 Workstation Setup and Ensuring Paperless 100% Works After Upgrades

I've resigned myself to running the PL_blahblah as part of a new workstation (running Sage itself AS ADMIN when doing so).  I include it in my instructions to IT doing the workstations, as well.  I don't believe I have had one fail doing it that way on the new workstations.

To test, I run the GL Account listing for 1 account to Paperless - seems like the quickest report I can run.  This also helps me double-check that they are setup for Paperless Reports, as I still find some folks setup with Register or Forms only and not Reports.

------------------------------
Beth Bowers
(269) 358-0989
------------------------------

Usually, we make sure paperless for reports are turned on and setup for the main company. This is the least intrusive option since it doesn't change the screens with drop downs or prompts or displays PDFs instead of printing. You just dropdown the printer to paperless. We can set it and keep it on without causing a lot of issues if the customer prefers to not use Paperless. After we upgrade or install a client machine, we login as us (running client "As Administrator" and go to company listing and print to paperless. After it prints, we confirm that we can open the PDF. This is testing:

• User can log on
• Company is accessible
• Printing Reports work 
  • Crystal works
  • access to path for reports work
  • ODBC work (sotamas90 or MAS_Reports)
• Paperless works
• Viewing PDFs work (do we need to install/fix adobe)
• Running "As Administrator" for the first time is to just cover our bases if there are any permissions issues.

Takes an extra 3-4 minutes per machine to do it, if that. After doing it for a while, you can do it in about a minute.

This has worked well for us and most of the time we have issues is when the IT group used by the customer installs or upgrades and doesn't follow this process. We end up having to go through fixing issues.

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Todd Martin
MBA Business Software
https://www.mbabsi.com
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-02-2025 10:26
From: Brett Zimmerman
Subject: Sage 100 Workstation Setup and Ensuring Paperless 100% Works After Upgrades

Honestly I just wait for the client to contact me if they encounter an issue, as that is simply expected as part of the users' Upgrade Testing.  Plus that proves to me they're actually performing Testing as instructed/required.  But I do proactively test 'printing' a report re: Crystal errors/issues.  

------------------------------
Brett Zimmerman
Net at Work
Greater Boston Area
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 01-02-2025 09:07
From: Beth Bowers
Subject: Sage 100 Workstation Setup and Ensuring Paperless 100% Works After Upgrades

I've resigned myself to running the PL_blahblah as part of a new workstation (running Sage itself AS ADMIN when doing so).  I include it in my instructions to IT doing the workstations, as well.  I don't believe I have had one fail doing it that way on the new workstations.

To test, I run the GL Account listing for 1 account to Paperless - seems like the quickest report I can run.  This also helps me double-check that they are setup for Paperless Reports, as I still find some folks setup with Register or Forms only and not Reports.

------------------------------
Beth Bowers
(269) 358-0989

Original Message:
Sent: 1/3/2025 11:39:00 AM
From: Todd Martin
Subject: RE: Sage 100 Workstation Setup and Ensuring Paperless 100% Works After Upgrades

Usually, we make sure paperless for reports are turned on and setup for the main company. This is the least intrusive option since it doesn't change the screens with drop downs or prompts or displays PDFs instead of printing. You just dropdown the printer to paperless. We can set it and keep it on without causing a lot of issues if the customer prefers to not use Paperless. After we upgrade or install a client machine, we login as us (running client "As Administrator" and go to company listing and print to paperless. After it prints, we confirm that we can open the PDF. This is testing:

• User can log on
• Company is accessible
• Printing Reports work 
  • Crystal works
  • access to path for reports work
  • ODBC work (sotamas90 or MAS_Reports)
• Paperless works
• Viewing PDFs work (do we need to install/fix adobe)
• Running "As Administrator" for the first time is to just cover our bases if there are any permissions issues.

Takes an extra 3-4 minutes per machine to do it, if that. After doing it for a while, you can do it in about a minute.

This has worked well for us and most of the time we have issues is when the IT group used by the customer installs or upgrades and doesn't follow this process. We end up having to go through fixing issues.

------------------------------
Todd Martin
MBA Business Software
https://www.mbabsi.com
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 01-02-2025 10:26
From: Brett Zimmerman
Subject: Sage 100 Workstation Setup and Ensuring Paperless 100% Works After Upgrades

Honestly I just wait for the client to contact me if they encounter an issue, as that is simply expected as part of the users' Upgrade Testing.  Plus that proves to me they're actually performing Testing as instructed/required.  But I do proactively test 'printing' a report re: Crystal errors/issues.  

------------------------------
Brett Zimmerman
Net at Work
Greater Boston Area
------------------------------

Sage's lack of creative attention to this is quite frustrating. IMO the roots of this go back to failures in imagination and budget for Engineering back to the time when they came up with Framework and then ... did NOT dump Providex. 

But this is our Reality and it won't change.

However, customers in Cloud instances have a very different experience. One installation and you're done. If something does go wrong, simple troubleshooting in only ONE place. 

The irony of putting up with on-prem installations for whatever excuse customers and/or their IT providers make is that they WILL lose that on-site "control" and support revenue stream sooner or later when the firm switches to some cloud solution when the next CEO/CFO/Controller arrives. We all have strong business incentives to nag our on-prem customers to move to SPC or equivalent in 2025.

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Jerry Norman
Smartbridge Partners
(512) 653-7498
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