Pivot Table as a standalone form - Usage scenarios

Thank you for reaching out to the community for input ​@vpanchenko! 

Honestly, the only scenario that I have used direct pivot tables is to assist with creating links direct to those pivot tables to send to users. If the data is filtered by a parameter, such as Sales Profitability Analysis, it is better to have it as a tab on the GI.

A dashboard can show a pivot from a GI, which could replace that usage scenario.

Linking to a shared filter would go direct to the pivot table - Maybe that exists and I don’t know how to use it?

Thank you for your feedback, Keith! Direct linking to a filter is not in the product yet but we have this idea in the backlog.

Like Keith, being able to send links directly to pivot tables would be useful for us. Similarly, being able to use a direct link to a pivot table as a Acumatica menu item is also helpful: Sometimes a GI results grid is useless, but a pivot table based on the data therein is gold.

We’ve never found tremendous value from PivotTables, as we’re kind of sticklers about formatting (also haven’t every spent much time trying to make them look good).  We typically will instead do a GI with groupings that summarizes the data in the most user friendly form, and then use side panels to expose details as needed.

My only use case for the second option - a stand alone form - is when I use the same GI as a source for multiple pivot tables (to slice the same info multiple ways) Otherwise it's too much of a pain to make adjustments to a stand alone pivot table. 

If adjustments are being made to pivot tables, hopefully users will be able to conditionally format a pivot table in the new version, like we can currently do with a GI. 

I’ve been implementing Acumatica for close to 5 years and I can’t say I ever use the Pivot as a Standalone Form. Like others were saying, it’s much easier to incorporate the parameters and different groupings of the “same” pivot table with just using separate saved tabs in the main GI.

I have used both the standalone Pivots and the incorporated in the GI versions for the clients.

The standalone version is also useful if there is a need to expose the Pivot to a dashboard.

In general, I would say that most of the time we are able to build the needed data view with the GI itself, likely 80% of the time. In the other 20%, most of the time it is incorporated Pivot - like 70% or so.

​@vpanchenko Both versions of Pivot Tables in Acumatica have their own pros and cons. What I think ideally we should be able to do with Acumatica PTs are

• Everything we can do in Excel we should be able to do in Acumatica including custom sorting, draging rows and colums around, using on the fly formulas in PTs ...
• As for the the two versions of PTs (Direct creation and creating from GI) that will be great if:
  • We can have the filter section in PTs created from GIs on the fly.
  • We can save the PTs created on GIs as a separate screen if some one has the required permission to do so so it has its own site map node and can be executed without the need to run the GI.
  • The PTs can have the same parameters that underlaying GI has.
  • The PTs GI source (All Records or Filtered ones) can be selected on the fly. Its default still can be All Records though.
  • For administrtion purpose we can see ALL PTs created on GIs whether or not their configuration is Shared (maybe a buil-in screen or GI, I tried using PivotTable DAC but the output is mostly some Guid and I didn’t dig more to see where those Guid are coming from)

If I am to specifically answer the originl question, the PT screen has 3 advantages.

1) It has its own site map node.

2) Can be used in Dashboards as PT and

3) Has Filter section.

If Acu is planning to get rid of this screen then you will need to merge them into the GIs on the fly PTs that hopefully account sfor the above outlined enhancements.