Quadrant Shrinks OS/400 Report Sizes with New Formatter

by Alex Woodie

Quadrant Software has introduced a new software utility that it claims reduces the size of OS/400 reports by 75 percent or more without losing any information. The new product, called Formatter, works with Formtastic Fusion5, Quadrant's electronic document management system for the iSeries, to eliminate redundant headers and footers and to rearrange other report components to make reports much smaller and easier to read and understand.

In an ideal world, you should only need to say something once. However, with the report formats used by many application vendors, the same information appears on every page of the invoices, purchase orders, and receipts that their applications generate. While there might be a compelling reason to run these headers and footers on every single page, there are equally compelling reasons not to, such as reducing paper waste and easing eye strain.

Enter Formatter. Quadrant Software says its latest creation can be used to eliminate much of that wasted paper and ink, and to make it easier for readers to find relevant information. Formatter features a Windows GUI with two panes. The first pane shows the original spool file, while the second pane is used to create the templates that will "format" the spool file into a trimmed-down version of its former self.

Formatter gives users several options for accomplishing this task. It lets users reduce or eliminate headers and footers from all pages, except for the first or last page. It allows multiple detail lines to be recreated as a single line based on the logic of the data, while combining secondary detail lines. It also allows summary pages to be printed only on the last page, it recalculates page numbers, and it allows reports to be switched between portrait and landscape orientation. The software does all this, and more, without RPG programming, Quadrant says.

Formatter reduces report sizes by three-quarters or more, according to Quadrant. For example, Formatter could be used to configure a report so that the total, freight charges, and special instructions appear only on the last page of a 10-page invoice, instead of on every page, thus creating more space for invoice detail data and reducing the total number of printed pages. Similarly, a five-page purchase order could be reformatted so that the "to" and "from" addresses appear only on the first page.

Companies that implement Formatter benefit in several ways, Quadrant says, including saving paper, ink, postage, and time. For the recipient, the condensed reports are easier to read and reduce eyestrain (not to mention back pain for those really big reports!). Thanks to the integration between Formatter and Formtastic Fusion5, Formatter can also be applied to reports sent using the e-mail and fax components of Quadrant's electronic document distribution suite, thereby bypassing the printing requirement.

Formatter requires Formtastic Fusion5 Version 5.2 and OS/400 V4R4 or later versions. The new software will start shipping on December 22. Licenses for Formatter start at $1,995, and Quadrant says it will throw in three free document templates for all Formatter purchases made by Friday, December 12. For more information, go to www.quadrantsoftware.com.

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