9 replies to this topic

[Kelvin Rapley]

Hi Everyone,

 

We're very keen to get hold of an Excel SSO.

 

Is anyone using the SSO that ProIV provide and what is their experience of it?

 

Has anyone developed their own version and is it available to be purchased?

 

We are running version 7.1.9 on a Linux Platform.

 

Regards,

Kelvin

[Ross Bevin]

Hi Kelvin,

 

Yes, we are using the Excel SSO supplied by NGA (ProIV) extensively. It works very well, is reliable and fast. The only drawback is that it can only create Excel 2003 spreadsheets. This is a problem when you want to create a worksheet with more than 65,536 rows. We have worked around this by creating a new worksheet for additional rows. We are running in a Windows environment but I assume it will work in Unix as well; you need to check with NGA. My understanding is that you will need to buy it under 7.1. When version 8.1 is released I believe it will be bundled free with ProIV.

 

Regards

Ross

[Kelvin Rapley]

Hi Ross,

 

Thanks for the information - it sounds exactly what we are after and would save us a lot of time.

Unfortunately our account manager at NGA has said that they are unwilling to sell any SSOs to us:

 

"The SSO's that were built for specific customer requirements are not available for resale".

 

We will not be in a position to upgrade to 8.1 for quite a while so we're a bit stuck. Given NGA's reluctance to help us out by selling us their Excel SSO we were wondering if anyone else had developed their own.

 

Regards,

Kelvin.

[Ross Bevin]

Hi Kelvin,

 

Your account manager is wrong. The Excel SSO was developed by NGA for general sale; it was not built for a specific customer. They did a webinar a coupler of years back from the Irvine, CA office trying to promote it and the PDF SSO (a fantastic product I might add). Contact Michelle Truran at michelle.truran@ngahr.com or +1 (949) 748-7306 and she should be able to arrange things for you.

 

Let me know how you make out. I can send you a global function I wrote that handles all of the output to Excel from any report or update function.

 

Regards

Ross

[Kelvin Rapley]

Hi Ross,

 

That's excellent news - I'll let you know how I get on. If I'm able to get hold of the Excel (& PDF) SSOs your global function would be most welcome.

 

Thanks for your assistance, much appreciated,

Kelvin.

[Kelvin Rapley]

Hi Ross,

 

Unfortunately, Michelle was no help. She said that:

 

"PROIV has elected to include the SSO functionality as part of standard distribution of the PROIV product effective with the Version 8 release. As a result, the SSO’s are no longer available for resale separately and they would only be available if/when Version 8 is purchased.

I assume that you are aware that Version 8 was successfully launched in December 2014 so the best course of action is for you to to contact your respective account manager to further discuss procuring Version 8 if you require the SSO functionality as your account is out of my territory. "

 

As far as I'm aware this is incorrect and the SSO functionality will only become available in version 8.1 which has not been released yet. This means the SSOs are not available at all at the moment.

I can't help wondering if NGA are aware that the SSOs are a very useful way to extend ProIV so they have packaged them up as part of version 8.1 in order to make version 8 a more attractive proposition. 

We have been asking NGA about the availability of SSOs for a couple of years, since we started using the email SSO provided with version 7, and they never told us what was available.

I would be very interested to hear anyone else's experience in trying to purchase SSOs.

 

Regards,

Kelvin.

[Ross Bevin]

Hi Kelvin,

 

That's unfortunate you didn't know about the SSO's earlier before the V8 launch. My guess is if you asked them for the SSO's as a prerequisite for upgrading to V8 they would make them available to you prior to the V8.1 release at the end of the year. There is not technical reason why they couldn't.

 

Regards

Ross

[Kelvin Rapley]

Hi Ross,

 

Thanks for your input on this issue.

 

We did indeed suggest that if we could purchase the SSOs now, we would commit to taking V8.1 later in the year. We were surprised to receive an email saying that SSOs were not available for resale, because as you say, there is no technical reason for this. As a customer with over 300 run time licences and a relationship with ProIV (NGA) going back 25 years we were disappointed that they should take this stance.

 

Regards,

Kelvin

[Ross Bevin]

Hi Kelvin,

 

I would escalate your request further up the chain of command. With your commitment to the product I find their response a little disconcerting.

 

Regards

Ross

[Kelvin Rapley]

Thanks Ross,

 

I'll let you know how things pan out.

 

Regards,

Kelvin