Windward Core Reviews

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. 

• Word and Excel template generation
• Ability to integrate with our application

Our reporting tool is now fully integrated with our application, appearing and behaving as part of the application.

Report layouts can be done by less technical staff.

Some graphing capability could be improved and differences in layout for different formats (Word, PDF, etc.).

3 years

No. Drop in the WAR and call the API.

None

We generate a fairly low volume of concurrent reports, so not an issue.

Excellent. Always got a response within hours and fixes or guidance quickly.

Excellent

Yes, we used Oracle BI Publisher. Windward integrates easier, has a better Word template builder (Publisher didn't have Excel or PowerPoint template builders), and better licensing options to suit us.

Simply drop in the WAR file. We had to do work on our end to secure the data we pass in to Windward.

In-house

We bought on a x number of reports generated per month basis, which suited us as we have a lot of infrequent users and monthly reports (a lot of reports are run within 1 or 2 days).

Pentaho and Oracle BI were the main contenders.

Out and IF tags

It was used to automatically generate documents/emails for printing and distribution. It would use an XML source passed by the system and then rendered into a static document.

Two that I found:

1. Was limited by XML path restrictions. There were a couple of times I wanted to do something in the formulas which was prohibited by XML path but okay to do in Excel and the product is sold as being able to do whatever Excel can do in terms of formulas.
2. The wiki is useful but it could be expanded so much more! I had to do so much translating from Excel -> Autotag where the wiki could have gone into more depth. Imagine something with more scope like the Microsoft Excel how to guides. Much more in depth and gives you various examples of how power Autotag can be.
   

I've used it for two and a half years.

Sometimes with the activation key.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Very good - I think they needed to be more up front of needing XYZ before you even submit as there was sometimes a bit and back and forth with questions around versions/correct XML etc.

Very good.

No previous solution used.

In-house.

Cannot comment accurately but it would be very good.

Be sure that you trial it and it meets your needs.

Report server.

It just replaced a previous product we were using.

Ease of use.

I've used Windward Autotag for four years.

Confusing licensing agreement.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Their customer service is quite good.

Their technical support is quite good.

We did use a different solution and we switched because Windward offered better maintenance and upgrade path.

The workstation deployment and license allocation was a pain, but the server component was easy. A salesman told us we could have concurrent usage license, that is also how the protection seems to work. Then they decided we could only buy named user licenses. Most of our user community used the product quite infrequently so we were far from impressed.

We implemented it in-house.

Not easy to calculate, it replaced something that was written in house and was proving to be a pain to keep current.

40 licenses for Autotag, plus a server and annual maintenance.

No other options were evaluated.

The primary use for the solution is that we create legal agreements for our clients by using data within our database.

They're usually legal agreements, they could be negotiation documents, all about what's called right-of-way, which is asking people for use of their property for electrical lines and gas lines, etc. That's what it's used for across all of our client base. In terms of the number of templates we have, it has to be in the thousands, because of the number of clients that we support with the solution.

It's hard for me to say because we've had this product ever since we started our solution. We really could not have started our business, quite honestly, without a document generation engine like Windward. We couldn't have done it without it.

The ability for it to be integrated into our software solution and the AutoTag tool that allows us to quite quickly create and update the templates themselves.

Also, the ability for users to have design and layout control is very important because, as we all know, things change and regulations change, so they need to be able to modify things as the business changes.

We've been working with Windward and the executives over there over a number of years and they've been quite flexible and helpful with all of our challenges.

If I were to think of one thing - and this is really an opportunity, not something that's a deficiency - a lot of clients that want to use this don't have the technical background for the SQL portion of gathering the data. If Windward were to make a more user-friendly SQL extract front-end, that would help a lot of clients to leverage the application a lot more.

Yes, we have encountered stability issues, but I think they were more when we were changing from one licensed product to another, and how we configured our system. We had some issues with the licensing, but that was resolved by Windward a long time ago.

I have not seen any scalability issues, I have not seen a performance issues. Usually when we do, it has to do with the SQL portion of it.

They are good. They give us the information we need to help troubleshoot where we are at.

I don't believe we had another solution at the beginning. We started, and have stayed, with Windward.

The setup was straightforward.

It is absolutely worth the value. 

They have flexibility, depending on what you're looking for from a buying standpoint. The current pricing models are quite flexible, with the ability to use it on an as-needed basis, or to get a perpetual license that covers a customer that might have extensive needs. I think it's pretty good.

We solely connect to our own solution database, our geoAMPS right-of-way database. We create PDF, Word, and Excel for the most part.

We did not consider building a custom solution because we wanted to be able to concentrate on our core business, which is supporting our customers. And we wanted to concentrate on their businesses, not on the document generation itself, so we looked for a third-party solution that concentrates on document creation.

In terms of advice to others who are considering this type of solution, first, really confirm what your volume is going to be, and pick the solution that best meets your volume needs. If you're close to the higher volume level, that's what you should pick because that will reduce any kind of interruptions.

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.

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.

The ability to generate a template from an MS Office application is invaluable, it makes things far easier.

Since we moved from using a self-built reporting engine to a hybrid engine which uses the Windward solution as it's primary reporting engine (some reports still have to be done the old way unfortunately, but that's the nature of our business), running out new reports is significantly quicker, meaning we can get new reports to customers far more quickly.

Autotag can be a little confusing for new users, however doing the training webinars will get them on their feet in no time.

About 9 months.

Not really, the integration into our systems was straightforward.

No, we've not had any problems at all.

No, we did create a synchronised and flattened reporting database which allows us to provide as many reports as necessary without impacting main system performance though.

Very good.

Very good.

We used an in-house solution which was tailored very much to what we required. However it wasn't flexible enough to provide us with what we needed without lots of code changes. Therefore we looked for alternatives.

It took a few days of self training and integration, but was straightforward.

In house.

Unknown at the moment, we'll see when customers next enter a renewal period.

The prices might look high, but they aren't that bad. Look at scout as well for a "per report" pricing model.

BIRT and JasperReport.

It's a good solution, which allows you to build reports quickly over multiple data sources. I would advise you to download a trial and take a look.