Problem With SOP Word Templates

I’ve recently been working on a Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 implementation project for a client.

We created custom Word templates (Reports » Template Maintenance) for POP Purchase Order Blank Form, SOP Blank Quote Form, SOP Blank Order Form and SOP Blank Invoice Form without problems and granted access to the relevant companies.

To test the new Word templates we printed the documents to screen so we could quickly see the result. The POP Purchase Order Blank Form worked fine but when it came to the SOP documents we had a problem. When printing any of the SOP documents as Word Templates, instead GP printed the Standard Report Writer reports.

I tried this on a total of four systems; two PCs at the client site, and the demo company on my laptop and two additional laptops at work (each with their own local installations of GP).

My laptop exhibited the same problem as the machines at the client site but the other two laptops, belonging to colleagues on the Business Development team, worked fine and generated the Word Template when sent to screen.

On the machines with problems, only when the reports were also saved to file did the send to screen actually produce a Word Template report rather than the Standard Report Writer ones.

I did some investigation and eventually pinned the problem down to a setting in Template Configuration (Reports » Template Configuration);

On client site and my laptop I had disabled the setting Allow printing of standard report when template is available as we wanted to make sure the Word templates were being printed (the Business Development team laptops were still in the default state).

Once this setting was re-enabled the Templates can be produced straight to screen without also having to send a copy to file.

It puzzled me that the POP Word Templates worked fine with the setting disabled but SOP didn’t. I’ve logged this on Microsoft Connect so I can get some feedback and hopefully a resolution.