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Windward Arrow for SharePoint

Overview

Windward Arrow extends SharePoint to deliver a complete enterprise reporting, document management, dashboard and business intelligence system. Arrow for SharePoint lets a community of users easily and securely design, run and share reports.

Target Users

SharePoint users looking for a powerful reporting, document generation or B.I. system need capabilities that SharePoint alone doesn't provide.  Arrow 3.0 turns SharePoint into a unified, comprehensive and easy-to-use system.
Use cases include:

• Full-featured enterprise reporting with workflow and scheduling
• Robust enterprise document generation, content management and document production
• Powerful dashboards that non-programmers can create effortlessly
• Simple-to-use business intelligence centered on the Microsoft Office user interface

In all of the above cases, users design reports, documents or dashboards in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

What Arrow Provides:

An Enterprise Reporting System

An enterprise reporting system encompasses the processes of designing, generating and distributing reports. Reports are simply ways to present data and include items such as invoices, inventory tallies, financial statements, insurance policies, customer account summaries, product usage reports, and even certificates and letters. Arrow 3.0 is an extension of the Microsoft SharePoint System that transforms SharePoint into a comprehensive enterprise-level system for reporting, and it helps solve a need for automation that is missing in SharePoint. 

Arrow 3.0 Reporting Functionality

• Automation
• Collaboration
• Scheduling
• Version control
• Indexing
• Workflows

Arrow 3.0 Reporting Uses

• Automatically save multiple versions of templates and auto-generated reports
• Index all reports, allowing for fast searching for key phrases in documents and templates
• Apply workflows to reports and templates, which enables the ability to set up complex business rules for the lifecycle of documents and templates
• Access, update and view  all reports and templates by multiple people
• Schedule reports to be generated at specific times and tasks to be emailed at specific times
• Ensure general automation of business processes

An Enterprise Document Generation System

Document generation is an automated way of producing (ie. generating and distributing) a document. The user creates a template; when the document is generated, specific information populates the template. Examples of documents generated include letters, forms, and contracts. Arrow 3.0 merges a template created in Microsoft Office document with data from your database or other data source and generates documents in a wide variety of formats.
Arrow 3.0 Document Generation Functionality

• Automation
• Collaboration
• Scheduling
• Version control
• Indexing
• Workflows

Arrow 3.0 Document Generation Uses

• Make documents easier to find, distribute, create, and enforce business rules upon
• Generate documents in a wide range of formats, including DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, XML, HTML and even printed hard copies.
• Automatically save multiple versions of documents
• Apply workflows to documents, enabling the ability to set up complex business rules for the lifecycle of documents and templates
• Access, update and view  all documents by multiple people
• Schedule reports to be generated at specific times and tasks to be emailed at specific times

Enterprise Dashboards

A dashboard presents information in an up-to-date visual summary, allowing you to make critical business decisions. Arrow 3.0 lets you design and preview dashboards and then display them in SharePoint.
Dashboard Functionality

• Automation
• Configuration
• Step-by-step wizards
• Sophisticated formatting

Dashboard Uses

• Design and preview dashboards in Office with AutoTag, Arrow's template-design tool
• Create dashboards without programming expertise or knowledge of software development or database administration
• Display dashboards exactly where you want in SharePoint
• Set dashboards to automatically refresh for up-to-the-moment information

Enterprise Business Intelligence

Business intelligence, commonly referred to as BI, is the information that helps a business gain insight into its operations. It includes functions such as reporting, analytics and data mining, and its goal is to support better decision making.  Arrow allows companies to harvest in-depth data and generate BI reports for internal and external use.

BI Functionality

• Drill-down capability
• Detailed Reports
• Wide range of available data sources
• Data security

BI Uses

• Connect multiple, dissimilar data sources and quickly and simply and define the relationships between data sets, no matter how convoluted they are
• Drill in on specific data via a familiar and user-friendly interface
• Select data in a narrative style, which is natural to an individual's approach in focusing on desired data
• Present meta data as you wish it displayed and described
• Display selected data in a spreadsheet with critical numbers represented by a gauge in a summation cell for each row
• Generate reports on your schedule that can be delivered to multiple individuals in a variety of ways, including via email, a URL, or direct to a printer

Arrow 3.0 Features

Here's what you get in Arrow 3.0.

The AutoTag Report Design Tool

One of the biggest expenses in the report creation process directly correlates to the design tool's ease-of-use. Arrow's AutoTag component allows users to design templates in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Because Microsoft Office is a suite of programs most business professionals already know how to use, there's little learning curve. Windward customers report that creating and revising reports is at least 10 times faster than other reporting systems.

Data Layout

Users don't need to learn complicated code in order to insert data into their reports and other documents, because wizards and drag-and-drop functionality connect templates to their data sources. Windward handles a variety of data sources, including SQL databases, XML files, and Excel spreadsheets.

Report Generation and Scheduling Capabilities

Users can run reports with the click of a button from within SharePoint, and they can generate documents in a wide array of outputs. Plus, a flexible report scheduler allows users to run reports whenever they are needed.

Related Products

Windward Reports' AutoTag Max

AutoTag Max is a stand-alone desktop reporting system separate from Arrow. An enhanced version of AutoTag, AutoTag Max does everything AutoTag does. It also lets users:

• Schedule reports to be run automatically and on your timetable
• Email up-to-date reports to customers, clients and colleagues
• Save unlimited iterations of a report, automatically

The Windward Reporting Engine

The Windward Reporting Engine connects a template to its data sources. It is similar in functionality and capabilities to Crystal Reports and SSRS but has additional functionality. It generally runs as part of a server-based application and can produce hundreds of thousands of reports per day on a single server.

• Java reporting engine
• .NET reporting engine

About Windward

Windward Reports was created by Windward Studios and both companies were named for founder David Thielen’s childhood home on the windward side of Oahu, Hawaii. It is headquartered in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. In 1994, Windward Studios was an innovative game development studio. Its first product was the popular and highly-rated real-time strategy game Enemy Nations, which is now offered for free. The Windward Reports' suite of reporting software programs was released in 2002.

Windward Reports' user group now spans 65 countries and all continents except Antarctica. It has more than 500 customers whose applications include financial statements, inventory reports, product-usage reports, purchase orders, invoices, training certificates, timesheets, and licenses.

You can learn more about Windward at our Reporting Blogs.

External Links

• Business Week - Make Some Noise
• Java Reports - Report Writing Simplified
• eWeek - Windward Aces Reports
• DevSource - Windward Reports Simplifies Your App's Reporting
• BCBR - Windward #3 In Fastest Growing Small Companies
• YouTube - Cubicle War video
• Windward Reports
• Arrow 3.0 Documentation
• Arrow Ideas & Suggestions
• Windward Support Forums