Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA

    Hi,


    I've been a reader of these forums for a while now, though this is my first actual post. I couldn't find a suitable sub forum for my request, so apologies if this is in the incorrect forum.


    I've pretty much taught myself Excel VBA over the past few months and though I wouldn't say I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination I would say that I know what I'm doing.


    My request concerns our ERP software, M1 by B&G (Bowen and Groves) and at the moment the only way we have of getting data out if is to export to an excel file, which can be cumbersome. I assume that I can use objects to "speak" direct to M1, but object handling for applications is something I know very little about. I think I can identify the field names, etc from looking into the code of the various screens that are used but I do not know what the syntax would be for communicating with them and pulling out the data.


    Do anyone on this forum have any experience with the M1 ERP software?


    Thanks in advance!
    Andy

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    No, but do you have direct access to the back-end database?

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    It might be. When we've looked at ERP systems before, the vendors/developers have always either offered direct access to the database or a webservice if hosted remotely. They also usually offer the db schema to allow you to write custom sql and query whatever you like.


    It might be worth asking your vendor what options they have, custom queries are pretty standard in software of this type so I'd be surprised if they don't offer some way of extracting data.

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    OK, thansk for the advice.


    I had hoped that it was something I could easily (ish) do as I know the address/syntax to hyperlink to (for example) a specific purchase order. I had assumed that it would just be an extension of that address to get the info from one of the fields in that page.


    If it's any use the address would be M1:Object:PO:xxxxxx, substituing the PO for whatever screen you wanted to look at.


    Thanks
    Andy

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    Sorry, completely lost ;)


    Is this a web based erp system? If so do you host it, or is it hosted for you?

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    No, it's not web based, but I get the impression that not a lot of people use it!

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    lol it's probably worth asking your vendor what options you've got - I can guarantee that you won't be the only person to ask. I'd be amazed if there's no way of pulling custom data out of it - most ERP systems need to integrate to other systems so this is pretty much a fundamental requirement.


    M1:Object:PO:mad:xxxxx is interesting though, in what context would you use that?

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    I'd enter this into the address field at the bottom of the edit hyperlink window in excel.


    For some reason I can't attach or add a screen dump of the window to show you, but hopefully you know what I mean.


    It works fine, and in this example the hyplink would open the purchase order window with what ever order number I substituted for xxxxxx

    Re: Bowen and Groves M1 ERP software & communciation with Excel via VBA


    Ok tbh I'm not sure, I've never seen that way of getting data from an application before.


    I'd recommend asking the developers/vendors the best way of doing it - they will probably have documentation :)

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login