NCC has been using Windward products as the reporting component of our land information system for over a decade now. It has always worked well for us, and we're planning to continue using it following a major system upgrade this coming year. Customer service and tech support has been great over the years, so we're pretty happy. Their developers have been responsive to requests from us regarding certain features, which is really nice.

Integration into Microsoft Word is great. Very easy connection to our corporate SQL Server databases, and report authoring is very intuitive. Our developers have no issues working with the engine component either.

We've had no real issues with the software suite since we acquired it.

When I was first tasked to find a new DocGen provider I muted my mic on Teams and cursed. Then I hit the internet and kept seeing a name pop up in the best of list round-ups, Windward. In the search for the perfect DocGen solution, I learned that simply searching for dynamic document generation turned up a lot of results that made it hard to find what we were looing for. I found that if I looked specifically for dynamic document elements, my search was greatly narrowed down and Windward allows for the most dynamic document elements of any other provider I looked into. Their test documents revealed that they were considering nearly every test case I was hoping to prove out. So, immediately they reduced my investigation time, by being so upfront. They can control for tables, images, text, colors, graphs, whole pages of a document and all of the elements within the document with variables in the data I pass. We had a use case scenario they said they had never heard before and sat with us to work through the problem and then came back with alternate solution that was perfect. Windward not only has exceeded any expectations, but they've absolutely impressed me with their service and their feature-rich product. As a company, we wanted a solution that could take us to the next level. Windward has helped us create proposals for our clients that look like they were crafted by hand specifically for that client. Windward makes our company look great.

Windward has more features than we ever could have expected. I'm truly amazed at their granular document control features, the pride they take in their product, and the level of service they provide. They worked with us through the two week trial as if we were paying customers. I found their price to be half that of their next closest competitor in features. And I love that we have unlimited document generation. I couldn't find that with any other competitor. The designer application as a Word plugin really speeds up the process of the template creation and allows me to get a template created by another team, like the marketing department, and then add the data within the same document.

Biggest con is that they are not cloud based for Windward Core. However, they understand this and worked with us to make sure that the setup was clean and easy, and honestly the server requirements are so low they could be run on a laptop (or a tablet, but let's not get crazy). However, the trade off is the price and the unlimited document count. Also, though we had security concerns, at first, it became obvious that we didn't need to be concerned because you don't pass them any data. So, what was a hard sell for my team, became a huge positive, to me.

We're thrilled to have found this product! We recently finished a large PHP project and used Windward Reports (Autotag and Javelin Rest Services) as the reporting engine. Much of those reports employed some very large and complex scenarios. "Many" logical branches (If, Case, Loops). What the reporting package didn't have, we were able to create and add in the form of our own C# custom functions to fill the gap to handle everything from JSON Arrays to specialized functions to manage complex English linguistics. The ability to create a live report (WYSIWYG) right within Word, use styles and native MS Graphs lets Windward reports really shine through! You'll love it! While we built our reports upon one data source (MySQL), the package itself easily handles dozens of data types to import and work with. The speed at which we are seeing these reports generate is also worth noting. Extremely fast considering the number of iterations for the number of calculations. Autotag (the report designer add-in) also allows for variables to easily get passed into the reports and lets you create PODS to share variables and data you've used between users and designers. The real magic though is their fantastic support team backed by some A1 developers. What we didn't understand, Windward always explained to us and if something didn't work in the product, support made sure we had a work around or the product itself was able to perform at the required level. If you're looking for a reporting solution that backs onto Microsoft Office, can be built in as a service to run independently or from a user workstation (Autotag), I highly recommend you check out Windward Reports before investing time in other products! Of course, every rose has a few thorns and Autotag is without exception. We did find a few things! 1. Expect a learning curve. Debugging a report or figuring out why a report might not run can be challenging as your reports grow in complexity. 2. Graphs do not always appear as they should when output into PDF and other formats. However, Windward is addressing this now developing a new PDF engine to output with. 3. If you use a lot of complex formatting and styles, expect some challenges and minor nuances.

1. The ease and speed of the design of our document and report templates. Directly from our Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), we have our analysts designing the templates. 2. Linking to numerous data sources and enabling of ODATA querying. 3. Wrappped as a webservice can be used by any 3rd party system in your organisation to become your universal document and report generation system. 4. Bring reporting capabilities to legacy and new systems.

Documentation could be updated for even more improved guidance in more complex templating and integration projects

Great experience working with Winward. Very responsive team, They really care about your experience. Most of the time I am dealing with very complex situations and they never brushed me off. Great product, great support and I see that product is changing all the time to evolve to better and better version.

I like the ease of implementation to most applications on the market. It is very intuitive to use within well established Microsoft office Desktop applications like Word, Excel and Power Point. Most of the time Admin Users don't even need programming background to get started.

Like any other products bugs come up once in a while but Winward Customer Care team along with developers are doing superb job handling each situation with exemplary attitude.

The experience has been excellent! Support is superb!

This service is easy to use. I have worked with windward for nearly 2 years now and each version gets better. They update nearly every 2 weeks and the integration with Word and Excel makes it easy to create reports with some advanced Microsoft Word features such as Charts.

They documentation was not great although in recent months documentation has taken a full overhaul and is getting better each day.

Creation of complex business documents, from various database datasets.

Full features of Word with rich set of rendering features, especially on variable sized, multidimensional arrays.

Initially the online documentation was somewhat difficult to navigate

Windward studios is an interesting product if you want to flexible yet sound template making without the help of IT. The support team reacts very quickly although they can not always accommodate.

Windward offers the possibility to let skilled users create and maintain templates for their organization without the help of IT, unless new data input is needed.

We had some issues with license pricing being far less attractive in an otherwise beneficial technical setup, without change in number of users.

Implementing Windward to manage our invoicing and customer communications is a breath of fresh air! Unlike XSL templates, anybody can easily create and update templates using the Report Designer. It is a piece of cake – it didn’t require me technical knowledge or even a formal training… just applied simple logic and it was like something I’ve been doing for years! As a portfolio lead and business analyst, I’ve seen quite a lot of applications/tools that end up making the business adjust to satisfy how the application works. But not Windward, it is an application that adjusts to work for the business!

I like that even a non-technical person can use the product. And that the licensing model is perpetual!

Having the Report Designer integrated with MS Office is a PRO. However, it is also a CON because of MS Office's limited design capabilities.

I've been using windward studios for over 7 months now. i was having problem on how to edit my documents and customize it, however with winward studios i've been able to do my job in a very effective way. it also helps me create templates easily.

N/a i didn't find anything in particular that i did not like, beside a bit more tools on templates creation, like pictures, backgrounds, and formats

The Windward report designer has many features allowing our business analysts to create the report/document templates need for our business. Also, the Windward RESTful engine is very easy to implement and integrate with other systems. Windwards support is excellent as well.

Needs better support for JSON data sources.

We love the simplicity of making templates in Word, and if we need to make changes its as simple as opening, editing, and re-saving the template. The hardest part is the configuration but it only has to happen once and it was easy to find help. We produce a lot of dynamic content that has strict brand guidelines, other tools did not respect the layout, colors, and image quality. This is the first tool we found that can meet all our needs.

I think the designer is the strongest part of Windward. Template creation is easy and I can re-use my styles and branding from other Microsoft Word documents. Its nice that I don't have to relearn a new tool and when Ive gotten stuck the customer support is very responsive.

It takes a little bit of technical skill to get the database configured.

Quick to use but powerful and customizable. Easy to integrate with a nice API.

Really great people behind the scenes who are willing to help and knowledgable about how to best utilize the software.

In the set up we had a few questions on some very detailed modifications and the customer service was amazing!!!! It was very easy and turn around time on customer request was the best we have experienced.

The AutoTag add-in our analytics team uses for reporting has significantly improved our analysis productivity and helped us to view metrics which aid management in making better data-driven decisions.

I like using Windward. I like the drag and drop features, it connects easily to our database and integrates well with 3rd part apps like Office.

It integrates well with Office and it is beginner friendly to understand how the logic works.

I would look more documentation for intermediate to advanced users.