Updated: Wednesday, 30 June 2021 at 09:23AM
Author: Eric Vasbinder
Viewpoint continues to invest in the power and capabilities of our ERP solutions, including Viewpoint's Vista ERP. Over the past few years, we have invested in various architectural improvements to Vista, improvements which can now take a massive step forward with the impending release of 2020R2. Vista 2020R2 contains a number of improvements, including support for Single Sign On through Viewpoint ID for our cloud customers, and more. However, one of the more anticipated and powerful capabilities in 2020R2 is a 64 bit architecture!
With a 64 bit architecture, users will see the ability of Vista to handle larger data sets improve, as well as greatly improved compatibility with modern rich client software packages, such as Office 2019 x64 and Microsoft 365. We envision that the advantages of 64bit Vista will be so extensive over time that eventually the majority of our customers will be using a 64bit install of Vista. However, this will take time. As such, just like Microsoft did with the release of 64 bit Office, we will be defaulting to 32 bit Vista upon install for the next few releases to ensure continued compatibility with legacy applications, such as 32 bit Office. For our cloud-based customers, this means that when you re-install your Vista 2020R2 Vista client, the installer will choose 32 bit by default. The same holds true for on-premise customers.
Of course, we encourage our customers to consider the use of 64 bit Vista, due to the number of advantages to it, and the fact that we see 64 bit Vista as part of our future. To use a 64 bit version of Vista however, our customers will need to ensure that other components in their infrastructure are updated as well. For example, 64 bit Office is required to be installed in order to take advantage of 64bit Vista.
If you would like to upgrade to the 64 bit world with Vista, you can perform the following steps to update your client infrastructure to allow for the use of the 64 bit Vista client:
Uninstall previous client-side Microsoft Office 32 bit applications from each workstation.
Uninstall Vista's old, 32-bit client and 32 bit Crystal Reports libraries from each workstation.
Ensure your scanner is using 64 bit drivers and software.
NOTE: Many scanner device vendors advertise their software as being compatible with Windows 64 bit, however, this does NOT meant that the drivers or software provided by the vendor are actually 64 bit.
Please follow one of the methods in the following FAQ article to determine if your software is truly 64 bit: Determining Microsoft Office and Scanner Compatibility with 64 bit VRL
Install and configure Microsoft Office 64bit (e.g. Office 365 x64, etc.).
Install Vista's client for 2020R2, taking special care to select 64 bit as your client install type.
If you encounter any issues with 64 bit Vista, please let us know through a support ticket.
We are extremely excited to usher in this new chapter in Vista performance and scalability and we hope you are too!