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Confused about Management Reporter User Roles & Licenses?

Management Reporter (MR)  is the primary application used by Microsoft Dynamics ERPs to generate financial statements. MR is separately installed and then configured to integrate general ledger balances, general ledger reporting periods and application security information from the ERP into the MR data mart for financial reporting. MR can be integrated to any of the Microsoft Dynamics ERP – AX, NAV, GP and SL, and can pull data from multiple databases into the same MR data mart. For example, if your organization has one business unit using AX and another using business unit using GP, MR can pull integrate both into a single data mart for consolidated reporting.

MANAGEMENT REPORTER COMPONENTS

1. Reports Library – Stores, organizes and secures generated reports.
2. Report Designer – Client installation used to design and generate reports to the Reports Library.
3. Report Viewer – Client installation used to organize and view reports previously generated to the Reports Library.
4. Web Viewer – Allows viewing reports previously generated to the Reports Library without an installation of any MR components.
5. Management Reporter Configuration Console – Maintains integrations to ERP applications and related Management Reporter Services.

MANAGEMENT REPORTER LICENSING

When used with AX, MR and its components are not licensed separately. Instead, MR licenses are provided with AX licenses. For each Enterprise AX license purchased, customers get a corresponding Administrator or Designer license in MR. For each Functional AX license purchased, customers get a corresponding Generator or Viewer license in MR.

MANAGEMENT REPORTER SECURITY

MR users are authenticated using Active Directory domain accounts, and each user’s security in MR is determined by that user’s security within AX. If a user has access to Company A in AX, but not Company B, MR access will mirror that.

To understand what users can do in MR, let’s first look at the user roles within MR:

1. Designer – Designers are allowed to design and edit report building blocks, and to generate reports, using Report Designer. Designers can also view reports using Report Viewer or Web Viewer. Other tasks may be assigned to designers, as determined by the Management Reporter Administrator.
2. Generator - Generators are allowed to generate from within Report Designer and to view reports using Report Viewer or Web Viewer. Other tasks may be assigned to generators, as determined by the Management Reporter Administrator.
3. Viewer – Viewers are allowed to view previously generated reports using Report Viewer or Web Viewer. Viewers are not granted access to Report Designer.
4. Administrator – Administrators are allowed full access to all Management Reporter tasks.

Assignment of the above roles to each MR user is determined by the security assigned to the user in AX.

At the most basic level, there are 5 security privilege’s in AX that correlate to one of the 4 MR roles. If any of these privileges is assigned to a user within AX security, that user will automatically be assigned the corresponding MR user role. If a user has multiple of these privileges assigned, that user will be assigned the MR role corresponding to the highest level of access of the assigned privileges. For example, if a user is assigned both the AX security privilege that allows an MR role of Viewer and the AX security privilege that allows an MR role of Generator, that user will be assigned a role of Generator in MR.

Similarly, if a user has different security privileges in different companies in AX, the MR role assigned to that user will correspond to the highest level of access, and that level of access will be granted to that user in all companies in MR. For example, if Toby’s AX security allows a Generator role in Company A and a Viewer role in Company B, Toby will be granted the MR role of Generator in both Company A and Company B. Users cannot be a Designer in one MR company and a Generator in a different MR company.

There are 8 default security roles in AX that have access to one or more of the security privileges that determine a user’s role in MR. A user assigned to one of these roles in AX will be granted the corresponding role in MR. The table below illustrates the relationship between AX security privileges and MR user roles, as well as the relationship between AX default security roles and MR user roles.

For questions regarding Management Reporter security, please contact Stoneridge Software today.

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