Windward Core Reviews

Document generation based on a structured format originating from different source applications, such as CRM, WMS, MES, and ERP systems.

End users receive the reports they dreamed of.

The integration with MS Office is an advantage, creating a better user experience.

In addition, the ability for users to have design and layout control is very important because it allows them control over the design and layout of their reports, without the help of IT.

They should add a document distribution solution on top of the document generation capability. It should allow us to send the generated document to a certain recipient (e.g. customer contact’s email address) based on a business-rules management system. That system would allow the end-user to manage a relationship between a document template and its recipient (email, fax, document repository, etc.).

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Very good.

Straightforward.

CapEx fits our requirements, OpEx is higher due to the 20% service and maintenance cost, where we normally pay 15%.

Several solutions.

So far, we have only created a few templates in a pilot project: two for our foundry department and one for our quality control department. Our data source is a REST service call. Output in PDF format.

Our output performance requirements, when making our decision regarding a solution, were more than met by the product offerings.

We did not consider building a custom solution. Our vision and strategy are based on the use of commercial, off-the-shelf, standard, packaged solutions. If those do not exist or do not fulfil our requirements, we build our own solutions. In this case, there were multiple alternatives available.

Regarding advice, the success of the product hinges on training the key users in using all functions of the product.

Generating PDF documents as well as Excel and Word documents, between 20 and 40 templates. The content of these documents is mainly for producing insurance quotes, policy, and claims documents. Data source is XML.

It means we can let our clients maintain the templates directly, without our involvement. Previously, it was very messy and clients were not happy with the costs of maintaining and updating templates.

Managing templates through MS Word, as non technical users can manage output.

Also, it is very important from a sales point of view for users to have design and layout control, as our clients don’t want to be locked into relying on technical staff to do changes.

It needs better support for upgrades and more control over layout of elements.  Upgrades tend to break existing output. Elements do not position where expected due to insertion of blank lines and page breaks. It takes time to fix these through trial and error.

Sometimes, but very rare.

No issues with scalability.

Excellent.

We previously used our own solution based on iText but wanted something easier for non-developers to use.

Initial setup was in between straightforward and complex. We had to do quite a bit of work to migrate all templates into Windward format and to build an admin panel to let our clients access the templates to update them.

The main issues were because our clients' own Word templates, that they had been using for manual PDF generation, were not very well set up. For example, inconsistent use of styles, mixed use of tabs and spaces to line up elements, and in some cases, including massive images.

iText and Jaspersoft.

We were looking for generation to average three to five seconds. Our main requirements, though, were being able to have non-developers create templates and generate Word and PDF formats.

To others who are looking into implementing Windward, the main advice would be to really simplify and clean up your Word templates first.

The primary use case is to create different reports.

We connect using SQL Server.

It saves our time in designing reports. It creates better layouts and performance. We already have more than 20 templates.

We output PDF and Word formats.

Creating dynamic table of contents (TOC) based on dynamic data in different reports. We have different reports generated by users. After generating the report, the user will modify it and add some pages to it. Thus, we need to be able to update the table of contents.

In all other reporting tools, the table of contents is generated based on bookmarks of everything the user wants in the TOC. That means page numbers in the TOC generate at runtime and, if you modify the report, you can’t update the TOC. But AutoTag, follows same tags as Microsoft Word, and you can update the TOC any time after generating your report.

Designing different reports with a variety of features, such as a graph, TOC, using different conditions (like if, then, else, and loops), and layout controls, are essential in report designing.

The tool does not support macOS documents. 

AutoTag generates only Microsoft Office docs. If you try to generate a report on the macOS, you will get error. You can open a saved report on macOS but you can’t generate it directly on macOS.

I cannot suggest more improvements at this stage as I am a new user. 

We are using this tool in a pilot state. There are no issues at the moment.

No scalability issues.

Technical support is very good. They reply immediately and follow-up with any questions.

We previously used C# codes for generating reports. Due to upgrading technology, we decided to use a better tool.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We evaluated Intelledox, Stimulsoft, Crystal Reports, and DevExpress.

After evaluating different reporting tools and inquiring some Windward clients, we decided to opt for this tool. 

We did not consider building a custom solution.

A useful, easy to use product, which has a lot of features for designing reports.

Our primary use case is for reporting.

MySQL is our source on the cloud.

We can develop any report at least five times faster.

We only have four templates right now. We are planning to create 40 more. Most of our reports are operational reports. 

Output performance is very important. We output PDF and Word formats. We will be using Excel format soon.

PDF and Word reports are so easy to create.

It is very important for users to have design and layout control. We create a lot of custom reports for our customers, so flexible and ease of use are critical.

AutoTag needs to be web-based, so our customers can create reports from our web.

Most of the issues are our fault because we did not understand the products.

Not yet.

The usually the response is within one hour. The technical support will WebEx with you. I rate them as a 10 out of 10.

We used a custom solution. A custom solution needs a lot of work.

It took us a week to get everything set up. It was because we were busy and could not focus on it. 

Windward technical support was helpful.

They are fair and flexible. They are willing to work with your current architecture to make sure you have the best deal.

We evaluated a lot of other options, but this is the best for our architecture and the easiest to integrate with our app.

The Windward solution was very fast to rollout, and it is proven. A custom solution costs a lot of money to build.

You will need a Windows machine to install AutoTag. AutoTag is the key. Once it is setup, your reports will be running without any issues.

Allow law firms to create template documents based on data drawn from our application. Allow bank users to create reports based on their debt portfolio

The template documents are all legal documents created during the collection process of a foreclosure file. We have developed a couple of dozen templates so far.

The templates used to have to be filled out individually for each file. We currently have over 5000 files active in our system, so this saves the user a lot of time.

AutoTag, because it integrates with MS Word and makes it easy for our users to create template documents and reports.

We have multiple banks using our system, and they all have different formatting needs. AutoTag allows our users to design the templates based on differing needs of the banks. So the ability Windward provides for users to have design and layout control is important.

I do not have enough experience with it to give an accurate answer. It works great compared to what he had, and the support we have received has been fantastic.

One thing I haven't found a way around so far: Is there any way to avoid AutoTag loading in Word/Excel each time? I need to use it from time to time - quite rarely. AutoTag affects performance of Word/Excel. I do not want to install/uninstall AutoTag each time I need it.

No issues with stability.

Have not run into any issues.

Excellent, to this point.

Custom solution, as noted elsewhere in this review.

It was straightforward, nothing complex.

We looked at a couple of others, although I do not remember the names.

I have just started using the product within the last six months and would give it a rating of eight out of 10, currently.

We connect to a SQL database using JSON and output using Word, Excel, and PDF. Our output performance requirements, when making our solution decision, were integration with MS Office suite and the ability to create documents and reports. We did build a custom solution and it was very limited and restrictive.  We needed something with more options that integrated better with MS applications.

It is a good product, and I would not hesitate to recommend it.

Generic reporting.

As of now we don't have a lot of experience with this tool because we have only been using it for one month. So we haven't made much progress, as an organization, with it yet.

I think it is a very flexible tool, that is one reason it is valuable for us. But the graphics and pictures in the reports are the most important.

The ability for users to have design and layout control is also very important for us. This is why we chose Windward. 

Maybe just one thing: We would like to shrink these reports into one page, because there is a lot of free space on one page, but we cannot shrink it into the one page to be shorter. This is one thing we would like to change.

No issues with stability.

I think this is fine, but for now our external provider is doing prioritization for us so we don't have experience with this. But I think it is flexible enough. For now, we haven't had any problems with scalability.

We have not used tech support yet.

For now I have only had experience with Crystal Reports.

We were searching for something that is suitable and pleasant for our customers, user-friendly and so on. This was the most important requirement for us. We did not consider building a custom solution. We went with a package solution because our external vendor recommended it to us. They said that this is the only option, that they are working only with Windward and it is the only option for the IT system we are using.

It was not complex.

Right now we have four or five reports in our production environment. In our test environment we have an additional three or four. We are connected with an application from the Dorsum Wealth Management platform and we use the database from that system.

I have recommended Windward to two IT providers, but I haven't had any feedback for now. But I would recommend it. It provides very good-looking, flexible, and nice reports.

Our organization generates large reports. These are documents of around 200 pages. Our organization accredits hospitals, and we send surveyors into hospitals who then survey according to certain standards, and they write up a very large report. It's those reports that go out to the member organizations, so our use case is very large reports, but not necessarily a large volume of them. 

It really hasn't improved our organization at all. We had a report-generator before, we have a report-generator now. It just means we're on a supported platform. Whereas before we were running services on something that we didn't actually have adequate support for, this new product does. 

When it came down to the crunch, all the products we evaluated generate reports and were pretty easy to use. The support from Windward was one of the primary considerations. Even though we're based in Australia we did get good support for them, even considering the difference in time zones, and cost was another significant factor as well, it was competitively priced.

I think it's a bit more intuitive to use on the AutoTag feature, so that's a positive, but from the end-user perspective it generates a report exactly as we want it, so in a timeframe that's the same as before. I don't know if that's a good, or a bad, is it middle of the road. It meets our expectations.

It's pretty early stages. We haven't got any constructive feedback yet.

It wasn't about stability. We had a couple of "teething" questions, and that was more about usability, how do we use the product. That was a learning on our side. Windward were really good in that, they did a screen-share with us, and actually worked with us to identify the problem and come up with solutions, so that was quite good. Again a very positive thing from Windward. 

We ran multiple reports concurrently, to the volume that we're likely to see, and had no issues. Again our workload is quite unique in that it's not volume-based. We only have 800 potential users. 

Exemplary. We have called a number of times, and normally it starts off with a "log-a-support-call" through their system. It gets acknowledged, we get an email acknowledgement of what's going on, they get in contact very quickly. They don't run a 24-hour service, but I think it's actually extended business hours, so they do cater for our requirements, being on the East coast of Australia. In the mornings we tee up with their afternoons, of the previous day.

Our previous report-generator product, it performed just as well. As I mentioned before, they're large reports but small in volume. It's not like we're processing one or two-page documents and doing hundreds of thousands of them. These are 200-page documents and they're ad-hoc; so a user would select it, run a report, and then a report would be generated. I think we're getting performance around around 45 seconds for a 200 page document, and most of that was the actual running of the query. 

I don't think we can actually build a report generator from scratch, so that's why we went with Windward. We were using Microsoft SSRS before, which was no longer supported by the vendor, and we also looked at another Australian-based product that does something similar, but we ended up going with Windward really for the level of support we got from them during our proof of concept, and also the printing as well.

It was quite straightforward, I don't think we actually had any issues. We did put it on the test system to begin with, and we didn't have any issues that I can recall.

I can't advise anybody about pricing and licensing, but it was competitive. We went and looked at the market and, for us, it met our requirements.

A lot of things we did look at were all volume-based, so it was a case of you buy a license to generate this many reports a year, and that's not something that I'm particularly interested in because it doesn't give you any idea - if we have future growth, or if we have a lean year - for budgeting reasons it's more difficult. With Windward it's a straight out license fee, whether we generate one page or we generate a million, it makes no difference.

Intelledox, that's an Australian-based company and does similar things - probably more expansive than Windward, has a lot more features - but features that we wouldn't need anyway. We're only looking for a report-generator, and it was on a per-page basis, so that was one of the reasons why we didn't chose that.

In our case, the ability for users to have design and layout control is not really important. The reports are pretty standard formats, these are agreed to well beforehand, so once they're designed we don't really go back and modify them that frequently.

We probably have half a dozen different templates and, as I mentioned before, they're very large, comprehensive documents. Most of it's textual, some embedded graphics and tables.

In terms of data sources, we just connect to our SQL server.

They were really helpful with the proof of concept. They offered free licenses. I think the initial license is a two-week one. They went out of their way to help us, and we requested two extensions, so we actually ran a bit of a longer evaluation, but in the end we certainly signed with them. They've been really helpful, from the account manager all the way through to the support people. 

The word of advice is: Try before you buy, give it a good run, see if it actually does meet all your needs. If something is not right, let them know, see if it's something that they know about, or if it's something that's on their future roadmap to address. 

Previously we were running reports from SQL Queries and formatting the outputs in Powerpoint Presentations, Word Documents or Excel Spreadsheets. Due to large growth, our reporting needs both externally and internally were taking too much time from the Management Information team to run on a daily basis.

Since the installation of Autotag, users are now able to run reports either for their business area or for their external clients with the MI team assisting on creating the templates. This has delivered huge time savings across the business allowing more time to focus on development and growth opportunities.

The template designer is by far the best feature within Windward Autotag. You build the reports in the Microsoft Applications that you already know, and simply add tags which draw the data in where you need it. The learning curve is very low due to this and also serves as a great way to introduce our junior members to SQL queries.

As Autotag constantly upgrades it does more post processing on the documents. It is still lightning fast for most reporting needs, however for some of the more complex reporting we have noticed a small slow down over previous versions.

Customer Service:

The customer service at Windward is absolutely top notch. Every time I've had a query they have always responded promptly and in a friendly yet professional manner.

Technical Support:

The technical support team is one of the best technical support teams I have ever dealt with. I can keep track of the status of my technical query at any time by logging into their site. They respond very promptly and they really work hard to break through any technical issue.