FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

ONLINE SERVICES

ONLINE SERVICES IN GENERAL

How much does it cost?

ThorApps Online Services use a pay as you go usage model and a Payment Plan like a mobile phone plan. Payment Plans start at $100 per month and all plans include all features and unlimited users.

Which plan is right for me?

Only compute usage and data storage is charged to a customer's Payment Plan, so we encourage you to use our $50 trial valid for 30 days to have a feel of how much data you consume and choose the plan that suits you best. Once your monthly plan limit is reached, you can either continue using ThorApps services, with additional usage charges applied to your invoice or have the services disabled until the next payment period begins. To check how much data you have consumed, please go to Account Settings (Cog on the top right corner), then click on Usage Report.

How do you calculate my usage?

Usage is calculated by compute time. The average cost per minute for BI Service is U$S 1.3 and for ListSync is U$S 0.13.

How can I buy a plan?

Please download our Purchasing Guide to manage paying for your ThorApps Online Services subscription.

What currency am I charged in?

You are charged in the currency relevant to the local data center you are hosted on. In Australia this is AUD in the United States this is USD and so on.

Can I get a free trial period?

Yes, we provide every customer a free $50 credit valid for 30 days on their account on the first install to trial one single product or have full access to our suite of apps. The trial will be de-activated when you have consumed the $50 or ended the 30-day period, whichever comes first. Once the trial is de-activated, your reports will still exist, but your access is revoked. You will require a valid Payment Plan to regain access and create or export new reports. If this isn’t enough for your requirements, please contact us on info@thorapps.com.

Can I change my plan?

You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your Payment Plan any time you want. To do so, please go to Account Settings (Cog on the top right corner), then click on Payment Plan. Payments are calculated and processed on the 2nd day of the calendar month for the previous calendar month.

How can I cancel my plan?

If you wish to submit a cancel request for your ThorApps services, please contact us on info@thorapps.com and a representative will contact you in within 24 hours.

Do users need to sign in to use the apps?

Once signed in to their SharePoint Online environment users, receive no further sign in prompts.

Can you ensure my data remains in my local region?

We are limited to using Microsoft Azure data centers, but please contact us for your specific requirements.

Can I add more people from my company to the same ThorApps account?

To add more emails to your account, please navigate to your Account Settings (cog on the top right corner), click on Billing Contacts and then Add New. All emails listed on your Billing Contacts will receive updates about product usage and payment information.

What support does ThorApps provide?

Support agreements can be tailored to meet the unique needs of an individual client. Either direct via ThorApps or your authorised support partner.

Is it secure?

Yes, please contact us for specific queries.

What browsers are supported?

Internet Explorer 11, Chrome and Edge.

Do you have more questions?

Please contact us by an appointment booking or emailing info@thorapps.com.

BI SERVICE

How can I install the BI Service app?

Please download our Installation Guide to install BI Service from your SharePoint site through the App Store. If you have more questions, please submit your query on our Support page or contact us on info@thorapps.com.

How can I set up an environment to use BI Service?

All ThorApps Online services support the concept of “Environments” and allow you to access common content managed by our Apps from multiple Site Collections. This feature allows you to keep a level of separation between different Site Collections. Please download our Environment Set Up Guide to set up your environment.

How can I create and export an SSRS report?

Please download our User Guide to learn how to create an SSRS report using Microsoft Report Builder or Visual Studio 2017 and publish it to the BI Service Report Library.

Can I use my own SSRS environment?

Yes. There are some restrictions you’ll need to acknowledge for us to ensure our BI Service app continues to run reliably.

Can my users create their own BI Service reports?

Yes. Reports are created using Microsoft Report Builder or Visual Studio SSDT extensions, both are free.

Can I join, filter and aggregate SharePoint list and project data in report queries, like I would in an On-Premise environment?

Yes. When using our ListSync and ProjectSync apps to extract Project and SharePoint list data, you can use all the power of SQL server to analyze your data and present it with our BI Service app.

Can you use a shared data source to create reports?

Yes, you can. To learn how, please download our User Guide.

How can I uninstall the app?

Please download our Uninstall Guide to learn how to uninstall BI Service.

Can I get some sample data to trial BI Service?

We provide a copy of the Microsoft AdventureWorks sample database on Azure with connection details in our Quick Start Guide. Please be aware this is for demo purposes only and the credentials may change at any time (but will also be updated in this guide).

BI Service Tutorials

LIST SYNC SERVICE

How can I install the ListSync app?

Please download our Installation Guide to install ListSync from your SharePoint site through the App Store. For further information, please submit your query on our Support page or contact us on info@thorapps.com.

How can I create lists with ListSync?

Please download our User Guide to learn how to create and expose a SharePoint list for reporting, create Reporting Schemas and reflect SharePoint lists in a SharePoint Online environment.

How can I set up an environment to use ListSync?

Can I use my own SQL environment (either on-premise or on my own Azure subscription)? How can I buy a plan?

Yes. There are some restrictions you’ll need to acknowledge for us to ensure our ListSync app continues to run reliably.

What about performance impact? Will ListSync slow my SharePoint Online environment down?

No…well, not enough that you’ll notice anyway.

Some additional minor load is added to your environment, but it's negligible.

How can I uninstall the ListSync app?

Please download our Uninstall Guide to learn how to uninstall ListSync.

ListSync Tutorials

PROJECT SYNC SERVICE

Can I use my own SQL environment (either On Premise or on my own Azure subscription)?

Yes. There are some restrictions you’ll need to acknowledge for us to ensure our ProjectSync app continues to run reliably.

How can I install the ProjectSync app?

Please check out our Installation Guide to download and install ProjectSync to your SharePoint site through the App Catalog. For further information, please submit your query on our Support page or contact us on info@thorapps.com.

How can I update database tables with project data?

Please download our User Guide to learn all the steps required to edit Service Accounts, Entity Type Sets and process Project Data.

How can I set up an environment to use ProjectSync?

How can I uninstall the ProjectSync app?

Please download our Uninstall Guide to learn how to uninstall ProjectSync.

ON-PREMISE PRODUCTS

ON-PREMISE PRODUCTS IN GENERAL

How much does it cost?

ThorApps On-Premise Products use an annual virtual CPU license pricing model. Each product has a rate per virtual CPU on the SharePoint Servers. Please contact us for a quote.

Can I get a free trial period?

Yes. All ThorApps products for SharePoint On-Premise are fully functional for the first 30 days for free as a trial period. If this isn’t enough for your requirements, please contact us, ThorApps will be happy to assist.

What support does ThorApps provide?

Support agreements can be tailored to meet the unique needs of an individual client. Either direct via ThorApps or your authorized support partner.

Do you have more questions?

Please contact us by an appointment booking or emailing info@thorapps.com.

REFLEX REPORTING

Isn’t it enough just to query the SharePoint content databases directly – why do we need Reflex Reporting?

There are three major issues with using the above approach:

Querying the SharePoint content database directly voids support from Microsoft as it can cause table locks and prevent SharePoint from working correctly.
The report author has to figure out which field to access as SharePoint stores all list content in a single table with fields named like nvarchar1, nvarchar2 or datetime2, datetime3.
The report author has no control over the reliability of the content the report reads, and users can change the fields in lists, breaking reports and providing users with invalid information.

Reflex Reporting solves these problems, by creating a reporting database specifically for reports to read the content. The reporting database is made up of tables that represent the list structures defined in SharePoint and use easy to identify field names (i.e. the same field names the user sees in a list).

Why should I choose Reflex Reporting – doesn’t SharePoint web services provide everything I need to produce reports?

SharePoint web services has the following issues:

You can’t query content from list instances across a site collection.
The sorting, grouping, and summing functionality is very limited
SharePoint web services is very slow to execute because queries must run through XML, web services and then SharePoint before eventually hitting the SQL database and then the data has go back through the same channel again before the report can read it.
It’s slow to develop because the report author usually needs to manually craft a SOAP request (web service call) in a text editor. (i.e. no designer)
The report author still has no control over the reliability of the content the report reads, and users can change the fields in lists, breaking reports and providing users with invalid information.
This solution is not migratable. SSRS does not provide a SharePoint list connector or support SOAP requests to SharePoint Online lists.

Reflex Reporting avoids these problems, by allowing the report to query content directly from a SQL server database, providing all the performance and functions of SQL server (i.e. table indexes, sorting, grouping, summing etc). Virtually all reporting tools provide report authors with an easy to use interface to query SQL server tables and most report authors know and understand how to create a SQL query.

PROJECT INTEGRATION ENGINE

Why is the Project Integration Engine a better option than hiring a developer?

Project Server integration has traditionally been done by hiring a software developer to build a custom component using the Project Server PSI to integrate between Project Server and other line of business systems or integration services, e.g. SAP.

The PSI is a set of web service method calls that only a software developer can leverage, but there are quirks and limitations (eg. only a limited size of change can be uploaded; some elements are managed through simple datasets while others are custom XML strings, add operations must be separated from update operations, it is complicated!). The result is buggy, flaky integration components and a Project Server implementation project that’s goes way over budget, over time and has limited functionality. More often than not hiring the right developer is rare and the developer finds themselves well out of their comfort zone.

By wrapping the PSI in a user-friendly interface, the whole process is altogether much more straightforward, cheaper and more reliable than hiring a developer.

With PIE, integration is simplified and managed by a Project Server Consultant or Administrator.