mrc Fills Reporting Gap in Product Lineup
April 27, 2022 Alex Woodie
Finding the right reporting tool can make you feel like Goldilocks searching for the right bed or bowl of porridge. Some of the reporting tools are too technical and hard to use, while others are too simplistic and don’t offer enough functionality. Chicago-based software developer mrc thinks it has found just the right combination of functionality and ease of use with its new Report Designer.
m-Power is a low-code development platform that supports IBM i and other Java platforms. While the software is not a full-blown integrated development environment (IDE), it can provide the capability to quickly generate Web interfaces, dashboards, reports, portals, and mobile apps for existing IBM i applications.
The latest update revolves around Report Designer, the latest addition to the m-Power suite. The company has aimed to split the difference between reporting tools available on the market. Some of these tools are quite powerful, but they’re too complex for the average user, it says. Other reporting tools are simple enough to be used by non-technical users, the company says, but they lack features found in the more complex options.
Report Designer represents a third approach that fits between these two options, mrc says. The company says the new tool “packs powerful reporting capabilities into a simple step-by-step interface” that allows any employees to create reports in minutes, regardless of skill level.
mrc offers a mix of advanced functionality and usability with its new Report Designer.
The software supports multiple report types, including interactive reports, dashboards, and Web pivot tables. It includes more advanced features like conditional color-coding, drilldown dimensions, data filtering, and custom calculations, the vendor says. Users can create reports in minutes, without the need for coding.
Report Designer sits between two other reporting capabilities offered in m-Power. On the low end, the company offers Data Explorer (DX), which lets users explore data and create basic reports without any help from the IT department. At the high end, mrc offers more advanced reporting functions in m-Power itself, including deep customizations, the ability to modify code, and the ability to embed the reports into other applications.
“We had one overarching goal when creating the Report Designer,” mrc director of software development Tyler Wassell stated in a press release. “We wanted to make sure that m-Power provided something for everyone when it came to reporting and I think we hit that goal. Combined with m-Power’s existing reporting capabilities, everyone can get something out of the reporting experience.”
The company is holding a webinar about m-Power on Thursday April 28, at 1 p.m. CT. You can register here.
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