June 16, 2016

You need Noetix!

Darlene Mack

Senior IT Reporting Analyst

Epicor Software Corp (Computer Software, 1001-5000 employees)

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When I joined Activant in June, 2008, Noetix was used across the entire organization. When Activant merged with Epicor the Activant employees continued to use Noetix, but it is not used by the entire Epicor organization. Noetix is a reporting tool, and as such, it provides data to users. Initially it was set up for use with Oracle and a home-grown Activant software package, Guardian. At this time reports continue to be written on those two platforms but we have also added reports for Softrax and Epicor E10. This makes Noetix a one-stop shop for our reporting needs.

Pros and Cons

Noetix makes reporting easy. Users can combine vtables (the Noetix term for its views), add or delete columns, add filters or parameters, sort, add totals to columns, all from an easy to use interface. It comes with a very large number of already written reports for all areas of Oracle reporting, but it also allows for custom vtables to be written, for Oracle or any database, to expand the number of available reports.
Noetix has an Excel add-in that is marvelous. It eliminates the need to run a report in the web application and export to Excel. The add-in can run very large reports, up to a million lines. Once a report is run in Excel, it can be saved, and then refreshed whenever needed. It's a really good tool.
Noetix is flexible. Joins can be added to existing Noetix vtables and also to custom vtables, to give users a large amount of data configurations to choose from. It also allows users to create calculated fields to any report.
Noetix is easy to administer. Users can be added or removed and grouped by the level of permission. Although, in our case, it validates against Oracle, the level of security is dictated by Noetix.

I like the fact that the output is standard, but I would like to be able to move columns around on the output screen, rather than having to go back to the editing screen, move the columns, then rerun the report.
Drag and drop of columns would be nice on the edit screen. Currently if you add a column to a report, it automatically goes to the bottom. Relocation of the column has to be done a line at a time. I would prefer to be able to grab the field I want from those available, and drop it into the report where I want it.
When adding a filter (or parameter), the available fields automatically come up in alphabetical order, but on the columns screen, they don't. They come up in the order they actually are in the query. That means, when creating custom vtables, to have the fields in alphabetical order, one must put them that way. It would be nice if Noetix put the fields in alphabetical order for the user.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you desire to 'empower' employees to create or edit their own reports, Noetix is a great tool, though I am not particularly an 'empowerment' person. In my experience most people have enough work of their own, so to tell them they now have to create their own reports can cause problems. If someone is available, like I am, to create the reports based on user requirements, then the report can be shared with the user and they can make changes as needed. I have several users who use the same report over and over for slightly different applications, and they are happy to make the small alterations, but creating whole new reports can seem like a daunting task. I tell my users I don't want them to become frustrated. If they want to try on their own, fine, but don't waste more than half an hour, and if you start to get frustrated, stop and IM me. Ninety-nine times out of 100 I already have a report that will give them exactly what they need. I've done extensive training, and find it's quite easy for users to pick up.

Alternatives Considered

I believe Noetix is much easier to use than either Crystal Reports or InfoMaker. When I worked with InfoMaker I used to say it took 5 minutes to get the data and 5 hours (and sometimes days) to make it look good. The same can be true for Crystal Reports. Noetix has a standard format, and most people export to Excel anyway. Who prints reports? So formatting is not all that important.

Other Software Used

Toad for Oracle, Skype for Business, Cherwell Service Management

Noetix Feature Ratings

BI Platform

N/A

Supported Data Sources

N/A

BI Standard Reporting (2)

N/A

Customizable dashboards: N/A
N/A
Report Formatting Templates: N/A
N/A

Ad-hoc Reporting (4)

N/A

Drill-down analysis: N/A
N/A
Formatting capabilities: N/A
N/A
Integration with R or other statistical packages: N/A
N/A
Report sharing and collaboration: N/A
N/A

Report Output and Scheduling (4)

N/A

Publish to Web: N/A
N/A
Publish to PDF: N/A
N/A
Report Versioning: N/A
N/A
Report Delivery Scheduling: N/A
N/A

Data Discovery and Visualization (3)

N/A

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.): N/A
N/A
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization: N/A
N/A
Predictive Analytics: N/A
N/A

Access Control and Security (3)

100%

10.0

Multi-User Support (named login): 100%
10.0
Role-Based Security Model: 100%
10.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete): 100%
10.0

Mobile Capabilities (3)

N/A

Responsive Design for Web Access: N/A
N/A
Mobile Application: N/A
N/A
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile: N/A
N/A

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

N/A

Data warehousing
Reports for other software programs
Expand the number of users

Business Processes Supported

Contracts
Financials
Distribution and Procurement

Innovative Uses

Writing reports for software other than Oracle
Making data more readily available to the executive team

Operating Systems	Unspecified
Mobile Application	No

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