Please note this feature isn’t supported by the inFlow team

We don’t officially provide support for this, but you can do this if you have the appropriate skills with databases and/or reports, or can find somebody to help you.

inFlow uses a Microsoft SQL Server database as a back-end database. You can connect to this using SQL Server Management Studio, ODBC, Crystal Reports, Excel, or some other reporting tool to create custom reports. It creates an SQL Server instance named INFLOWSQL on the server machine.

Check your inFlow and SQL version

The steps to connect are different depending on which inFlow version you have, and which SQL Server you have installed.

To check your inFlow inventory version number: 

1. Go to Main Menu > Options > About inFlow.
2. Check the version number at the top.

To check your SQL version:

1. Go to your Windows Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features.
2. Type in “Microsoft” in the search bar on the top right.
3. Look for anything that says “Microsoft SQL Server”.

Generally, it would be either SQL 2005, SQL 2008 R2, SQL 2014, or LocalDB 2014. If you see multiples, you may have more than one program running SQL Server (not just inFlow).

NOTE: Microsoft SQL Server 2014 and Microsoft SQL Server LocalDB 2014 are completely different. Please note and verify which one you have.

If you have Microsoft SQL Server 2014 installed

You will need to run your program of choice (SQL Server Management Studio / ODBC / etc) as an administrator, then use “Windows Authentication” to log in. The server name is .\INFLOWSQL.

This works for any version of inFlow v3.

If you have LocalDB 2014 installed

Unfortunately, v3.2.2 and above no longer allows the connection to the LocalDB database. Please reinstall your inFlow version with SQL Server 2014 by clicking “Customize my installation” > “Server and Client” > “Install using SQL Server 2014”, then follow the steps above for SQL Server 2014.  All inFlow installers can be found here.

*If you have inFlow v3.2.1, it’s possible to connect through LocalDB 2014. 

Please note the following steps only work with inFlow v3.2.1 + LocalDB 2014.

1. Create a shortcut to your program of choice (SQL Server Management Studio, etc).
2. Shift-right-click on the shortcut and choose the option “Run as a different user”.
3. Find and enter the username and password found under the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\inFlow Inventory with the value names AppUserName and AppUserPassword. Usually this is inFlowUser and some random string.
4. Enter “(localdb)\INFLOWSQL” as the Server name to connect to (without quotes).
5. For Authentication use Windows Authentication.

WARNING – We don’t officially support connecting to the database outside of inFlow. We will try to answer any questions as best we can but as this isn’t supported the team is not trained to handle custom reporting and thus we have limited knowledge in this area.

It’s also important to note that making changes to the database outside of inFlow may lead to unexpected problems. Many of the update patches for inFlow will update the database, so if you create some tools that rely on a particular database structure, you should be careful when choosing to update inFlow as changes may cause your tool’s connections to be lost.

For more detailed information please see this article on the database schema for inFlow.