Filter Ratings and Reviews
Filter 474 vetted SAP Crystal reviews and ratings
Reviews (1-25 of 149)
February 18, 2020
Crystal Delivers Thousands of Reports Per Week
We use Crystal Reports to generate over 200 standard reports for various data topics from our record-keeping system. These reports can be for the business or for our customers. We generate thousands of reports each week that are then delivered to our clients. Crystal is used within our organization. The enterprise has a variety of reporting tools in use. We have been using Crystal Reports for over 18 years on our team.
- Complex queries are supported through the use of stored procedures. Because of this, we are able to create very complex reports to satisfy consumer needs.
- User-friendly formats are supported and we can display these reports online.
- Running multiple queries without using stored procedures.
- We need to have developers write SQL code. Drag and drop type report creation can be difficult to accurately create without writing SQL. SQL relationships must be clearly defined for the drag and drop to work. This makes sense, otherwise, how would the tool know what the relationships are?
February 15, 2020
SAP Crystal Reports review
We use SAP Crystal to automate and generate a set of reports that are usually exported as PDF files directly to the user's email inboxes. Occasionally users also login to the Business Objects Server to access their reports in that format. We run Business Objects scheduler to schedule the reports to refresh usually once a week.
- Clean format for PDF is nice
- Connects to database to refresh queries
- It's quite clunky setting up a page footer or report footer.
- Headers are similarly hard to set up
September 17, 2019
SAP Crystal Reports good option for the value
SAP Crystal reports is naturally embedded into SAP B1, we use it across the organization and have over 100 different reports created at the time, all these fill our departments with crucial information about their KPIs, we use Crystal for lot of different reports from a range of very visual reports with charts and colored graphics thru text/numeric grids filled with information, all are viewable from our SAP client.
- Excelent integration on SAP B1 client install
- Very easy for the user to access / export reports data
- User permissions/controls to enable/disable unwanted users to access the reports
- If IT department has no previous knowledge of crystal reports they will need training in order to start using it
- It would be great to have objects integrated on the reports
November 06, 2019
Presentable reports with many integration and visualization options.
It is used as a tool to visualize reports that are generated in our developed applications. It facilitates us to be able to display rich information with images, tables, colors, and graphs. It has an excellent form designer by using drag & drop controls to give the shape we want to each of the reports. The viewer also allows us to print the information or export it to other common formats such as PDF. It integrates very well with Visual Studio IDE.
- It has many interesting tools and functions when used with Visual Studio IDE. This allows us to integrate many features of the IDE to design each visual element using drag and drop controls to customize reports
- We have been able to make successful connections to diverse data sources including SQL Server, MySQL, local and in the cloud
- You can perform complex queries by incorporating SQL statements
- There are no limits as to the type of data or objects that I can use. I can format the changes, add mathematical and logical functions, also add images configure the color fonts, all in design mode
- There is no backward compatibility with versions of previous reports. Some updates could cause data loss
- New versions take a long time to arrive
October 31, 2019
SAP Crystal Reports - Still great but slowing down
SAP Crystal Reports is used throughout our company. It allows us to present consistent and branded reports to all of our internal and external clients. It also allows us to have standardized cost reporting. Prior to implementing SAP Crystal Reports, we had different sites presenting clients with their own custom cost reports. Many of these were done in Excel and there was no consistency across our organization. SAP Crystal Reports has replaced those and now we provide one consistent and branded report.
- Crystal Reports allows us to create a consistent template for all of our reports.
- Crystal Reports and Server allows us to house a repository for all of our reports to make them easy to find and update when necessary.
- Crystal Reports can connect to a wide variety of data sources.
- Crystal Reports can be a little daunting when first implementing. There are a lot of nuances in learning how to truly master this software and it can be frustrating at times.
- There are a lot of features in Crystal Reports that do not always work as expected. You may find yourself searching the Web for how to get the results that you want.
- Crystal Reports does not provide updates on a regular basis. New concepts and ideas may be a while in implementing.
- The initial setup can be frustrating. There are times when you need to go outside of the install package to make it work with particular data sources, etc. It is not always a 100% install.
February 15, 2020
Decent reporting tool
I used SAP Crystal for report visualization. The graphs in the tool are outstanding with strong information telling ability combining with tables and images. Apart from the graphs, it is designed to be very interactive so you can drag and drop directly to control and tailer the shape of the graph to your needs.
- Integration
- Connection
- Hard initial setup
- Unstable
January 09, 2020
Powerful document and report automation
We use SAP Crystal to generate documents in our ERP system for things such as sales, purchasing, invoice, manufacturing documents, and automated shipping labels. The whole organization uses crystal reports in a way because it links into our ERP system. We no longer need an external company to do our documents, reporting as we now have the ability to do it in house. Crystal Reports allows us to produce highly customizable documents and reports for any business case.
- Advanced formulas.
- Producing automated PDF documents.
- Lining up formulas with database fields.
- Occasional crashing.
January 07, 2020
SAP Crystal Review
Crystal is used enterprise-wide for pixel-perfect reporting. We have both on-demand reporting use cases, and scheduled reporting via email or logging in to report inboxes. It is used against multiple source systems for all areas of the business, including clinical, financial, and operational. We generate PDF, Excel, and CSV based outputs.
- Pixel perfect reporting.
- Enterprise grade stability.
- Dated technology.
- There's a lack of web-based development for Crystal reports (though it exists for WEBI and the like).
December 07, 2019
One of my top rated reporting systems.
SAP Crystal Reports software is used within the organization for creating reports from several hundred external resources. I would not say it is an easy task to do this through the software. However, the contribution level of the system's ease of use to our research process is really huge and we really don't have any alternative. We are not even searching for one.
All of the reported materials are tweaked, edited, gathered, modified in the system itself. The formatting and the conditional output of the reports are really good and we could find no equal software to this from the perspective of the reporting. All in all, this is a well structured and easy-to-use system with extensive functionalities which can help in crucially reducing work-time by managing some necessary reporting tasks.
All of the reported materials are tweaked, edited, gathered, modified in the system itself. The formatting and the conditional output of the reports are really good and we could find no equal software to this from the perspective of the reporting. All in all, this is a well structured and easy-to-use system with extensive functionalities which can help in crucially reducing work-time by managing some necessary reporting tasks.
- Easy to use UI. Basically, even a non-technical user can learn to do everything in a week.
- The speed of compiling the data.
- Useful templates.
- Easy interface for integrating the data in the system from external sources.
- Scheduled reports.
- There are some specific points in the system which might become buggy or not easy to use, thus, require support.
- A lot of functionalities to learn for new users.
September 15, 2019
Crystal -- Good software if it is still 2005
Many custom reports are developed by our IT department to serve our various departments. At this time, it is largely used for legacy reporting and for personalized, highly formatted emails. Many of our older reports are written using Crystal Reports. We are gradually phasing out those reports and moving to SSRS.
- Page formatting.
- Query generation.
- Capturing requests at runtime.
- Connecting to the database is complex and error-prone.
- Scripting is done in Visual Basic for Applications, and can be hard to debug.
- Changing the database underneath it can lead to problems getting back in sync.
September 03, 2019
SAP Crystal is a life saver
SAP Crystal is mainly used by only 2-3 people within my company. It helps me tremendously tweak Viewpoint reports just enough to get them to include all the info we need when we need it. I have used Crystal at least once a day for almost 5 years now. If not every day, then at least once or twice a week. As far as our business problems that it helps address, it has helped us save a ton of money on not having to request custom reports through Viewpoint. We are able to take a canned report out of Viewpoint, add a new data line, or remove or even combine data to show it the way we need it. It has saved me a ton of time, and I would recommend it to anyone. I am excited to learn more about Crystal and how it can continue to help me grow and excel.
- SAP Crystal is easy to use and easy to learn it makes pulling data out of Viewpoint easy and quick.
- SAP Crystal has a ton of strengths when comparing weaknesses. One of its strengths is the speed of it. It pulls data super quickly.
- SAP Crystal has a little room for improvement in combining data tables and making it a little less confusing.
December 11, 2019
Crystal
We use SAP Crystal reports inside our BI reporting in SAP Business Objects. We have multiple reporting options inside the Analytics, and the usage we give to SAP Crystal reports it is to cover those "fixed" reports which need to have a corporative style to be sent in or out the organization.
- Predefined Reports.
- Corporate style guide.
- Not for user to create the reports is a complex tool which needs IT assistance.
June 11, 2019
Efficient reporting tool with endless possibilities
Crystal reports help us to pull automatic reports out of various databases directly (without importing into Excel first and running pivot tables) and display relations in the data. As long as there is a common data field (a campaign ID, for example), the reports are done in seconds across all the connected data sources. This exact process used to take at least an hour when done manually.
- Seamless parsing of data across different data sources.
- Ability to create sub-records and drill-down feature for granular data analysis.
- Complex queries or SQl statements are done in seconds.
- The export of reports to Excel is very cumbersome and the results are difficult to format.
- The design of reports and the graphical features (e.g. charts) feel quite rigid.
- The learning curve for a non-programmer is incredibly steep, making Crystal a specialty tool.
We use Crystal reports in our credit risk reporting function within the IFRS9 accounting standard to pick up specific delinquency reports at a customer level which needs to feed into disclosures on a quarterly basis. The idea is to receive canned reports by monitoring the amortization profile of customers and which goes as a feed to risk managers in creating early warning list by using specific credit utilization behavior.
- Great visualization for static format & precise tasks: For presentation to senior management /ex-co/vendors where concise decisions need to be made, Crystal is a nice choice to slide data into presentable views.
- Diverse data source connect: We have used it to write reports using data from DB2, SQL, Progress, Excel spreadsheets, XML data, Access, and Lotus Notes databases. It can also be used to join different database types together in one report.
- It uses the "recurring bands" structure for page layout which is efficient and fungible for generating different types of reports. Crystal doesn't require that we set up a metadata layer before creating reports and provides direct access to tables and dimensions.
- It is not very user-friendly for learning as during designs and debugging the error decryption is tedious and hard to figure out.
- When using sub-reports embedded in the main reports for different views of the same data sourced from multiple tables, this makes the process crazy slow. This is annoying and needs severe improvements.
- The visual capabilities need to seriously catch up with respect to market competitors. Security is also a concern at times while accessing data.
SAP Crystal reports is an integrated business intelligence platform that allows users to write reports, display KPIs and other metrics from data preserved in your database. SAP Crystal is used by various departments in our organization such as research and development, operations and human resource departments. The software has streamlined our decision making process and it has helped us make meaning out of our preserved data.
- Customer support is available 24/7 helping new users embrace and learn how to use the software efficiently.
- The reports generated are usually in many formats from formulas, cross-tabs and sub-reports thereby helping us understand our data.
- Can generate reports from data obtained from any virtual source
- The one-time fee paid per user is a bit high and may discourage small and mid-sized companies with many users not to acquire the software.
- A stable internet connection is required for the software to function well.
- There is no free trial plan of the software and it ought to be available to help in piloting purposes.
February 27, 2019
Review Of Crystal Reports
We use Crystal Reports to track and report on many types of data, but primarily to track expenses related to open cases of our law firm. Accounting uses it to report on case expenses like copy costs, long distance charges, travel expenses etc ...) These reports then accompany the final cost leger for each client.
- SAP Crystal Reports has great 3rd party support that extends its out of the box capabilities
- SAP Crystal Reports can connect and use almost any data type
- Crystal Reports connects to all ODBC or OLEDB data sources. You can also connect to older mdb files and even allows you to get data from windows file folders
- Crystal Reports charting engine is ok but compared to some other visualization products available it is behind the times.
- Crystal Reports uses a proprietary format for its data storage, using an open format (like XML) would be much better
- You cannot add add a structured table object to the page layout, you can only use lines and boxes
October 16, 2018
Long-time User of SAP Crystal Reports
I use Crystal in a number of ways:
1. I answer a lot of questions about Crystal in online forums - the SAP Community forums as well as a few others.
2. I train our clients in how to use Crystal, not only the standard SAP classes, but also one I've created that walks through the most-asked questions from the forums and what their solutions are.
3. I personally use Crystal for a number of different tasks, including analyzing data when I do security reviews of clients' SAP BI Platform and SAP Crystal Reports Server systems.
1. I answer a lot of questions about Crystal in online forums - the SAP Community forums as well as a few others.
2. I train our clients in how to use Crystal, not only the standard SAP classes, but also one I've created that walks through the most-asked questions from the forums and what their solutions are.
3. I personally use Crystal for a number of different tasks, including analyzing data when I do security reviews of clients' SAP BI Platform and SAP Crystal Reports Server systems.
- In addition to linking together tables and views from the database in order to get data into your report, Crystal allows you to write your own SQL queries using an "Command". This feature allows for the use of very complex queries to get data for your reports.
- Crystal can connect to MANY different types of databases. It has native connections available for a number of them, including Oracle, and will connect to almost anything else using either ODBC or (less common) JDBC.
- Subreports, when used correctly, are a powerful feature for bringing additional data into a report.
- There are SDK's available to integrate reporting into either .NET or Java applications and websites.
- The option to export to Excel is very picky about report format to get a clean export. Once you know the tricks for setting up a report for this export, it's not hard to do, but it can be very tedious if the report has a lot of elements. This is the way it's been for years and SAP has indicated that it's not something that's going to be changed.
- Crystal requires that a user knows how the data they're reporting on is configured in the database - it's not really suited for a "casual" user, but for someone with at least some technical skills in relation to databases. This is not something that can or should necessarily be changed, but it is something that potential users need to be aware of.
- Other than new types of database connections, SAP has indicated that they will not be upgrading any functionality in "classic" Crystal. They instead have chosen to focus on upgrades to Crystal for Enterprise. The problem with that is that it requires the SAP BI Platform - either SAP BusinessObjects or SAP Crystal Reports Server.
- One of the major things that's not being upgraded is the Charting libraries, which were last updated in the early 2000's, before SAP purchased Crystal. So, Crystal doesn't have newer chart types available.
November 19, 2018
Old Reliable, as in 'Works great but showing its age'
We currently use SAP Crystal reports to create reports. Our ERP did not come with built in reports so we had to create all our reports, for the company from scratch. This is used company wide from production to finance. It addresses the main concern of getting information from our ERP into a manageable, readable format that users can use to disseminate information
- Reliable software
- Constant support
- Def not going anywhere
- Its interface, while it's a workhorse, is not going to win any beauty pageants
- Adding graphics and charts to a report feels cumbersome and VERY antiquated
- It shows its age sometimes
October 15, 2018
Power hidden
I'm a Business Consultant. I give training of "Crystal Reports." I think this is a very robust application. It has a particular form of work that you need to understand in order to obtain good results. I would like them to improve the different types of graphs. Easy access to help, with samples of functionality. For a programmer of reports in "Crystal Reports," you need good training and to know something of database terms.
- Easy to create reports
- Combined with SAP BO security you can access different users with different roles
- Can add easily any comments about your data. Even I think I can use CR for generating infographics
- I recently only use CR for training
October 05, 2018
Getting great results from your data with Crystal Reports
I like Crystal Reports because it has the ability to pull data from many sources into 1 report. For example, I pull data in from Excel, text files, Access databases, and SQL databases, and Crystal can use all of those and many other data sources, and pull them all into 1 report. It follows the relational database model, so the tables can be linked together on common fields, even when they are from different data sources. It allows you to make totals, running totals, charts, grand totals, and your own calculations. It has many built-in functions. I like the ease of use, and how you can get results pretty quickly, and yet it can handle large amounts of data.
- Gathering data from many sources
- Linking tables together on common fields
- Subtotals, running totals, calculations, grand totals
- Charts
- Filters, sorts
- It needs to bring in more data types, and newer data types. For example, it can use XLS Excel files, but not XLSX Excel files.
- More chart types.
January 27, 2019
A tool that cannot be renounced
SAP Crystal is one of the best tools for doing business intelligence. Thanks to it we can build clear, efficient reports in a short time with a considerable saving of time and energy. What does this mean? A huge cost savings of course and more time to devote to our customers!
- Build clear efficient reports in a short time.
- Broad connectivity with diverse data sources.
- Support scalable content delivery.
- The selling price should be lower.
- The performances could be better.
- Assistance could be more available.
September 07, 2018
Make your reports stand out
We use it across the whole organization for generating reports on prospective financial investment opportunities and also for collecting data from various vendors and sources. It's really helped in managing these sources and feeding them into one place saving us a lot of time and effort.
- Customization for reports
- Allows multiple users to feed and draw data
- Flexibility
- Expensive
- Hard to setup
February 08, 2019
Crystal Reports for your business
Crystal Reports is used for creating reports and graphs working synchronously as a team. I and my team analyse and fetch data from various clients for which we have setup and installed networks for as a part of projects. After that we send all the data to technical team and data analyst to log it into crystal reports. We then analyse and create reports in Crystal reports. It is really helpful if we want to manage a lot of data. It makes easy for us to give presentation on projects.
- Merge and log data very easily.
- User interface is good.
- Different types of fonts and graphs and charts to analyse data easily.
- Hard to learn. It took a lot of time to learn this software.
- Database used as a source is quite difficult. We always have to contact technical team for that.
January 19, 2019
SAP Crystal Reports for Your Business
SAP Crystal is used by the different departments of our organization. We have different teams in our organization and they use SAP Crystal reports for their own purposes to meet different needs. As we deal with many websites, data increases day by day and we have to create reports for the some. To do that we have to use different products for reports and data management. SAP Crystal's reports helps to reduce our efforts.
- First of all, its design is very good and easy to use, so it does every task very well like box formatting.
- Its GUI is great and can create graphs in reports of any kind very well. We can also share them with anyone.
- Mobile device compatibility
- Text formatting can be done in all languages by the SAP Crystal reports tool, mainly right to left text formatting. It is very useful as a few of our clients are from other countries and use languages which are written right to left.
- We can use our database and queries with SAP Crystal reports too and save our reports in different formats
- As far as I know, it takes a little more time to learn this tool in the beginning. I personally faced a hard time using for the first time and when I teach other junior staff members they took a lot of time to learn it.
SAP Crystal is in use by different departments in our enterprise. The primary users are the financial dept and other folks who need custom reports created and ran no matter which department they are in. It is bundled with our ERP solution and helps to provide additional reporting capabilities that SSRS may not be able to.
- Deep integration with our ERP solution which provides the ability for the customers to create their own individualized reports.
- The central management console provides a single place to create, import, modify, etc reports.
- Integration with SQL server that allows for comparison to SSRS reports.
- Complex and involved installation provides a lot of custom features but is not the easiest software to implement.
- Enterprise product which includes enterprise sized licensing costs.
- Integration with the ERP can be simple or as complex as you make it, all depends on the requirements.
SAP Crystal Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
About SAP Crystal
Categories: Business Intelligence (BI)
SAP Crystal Screenshots
SAP Crystal Videos (4)
SAP Crystal Downloadables
- SAP Crystal solutions for small to midsize businesses
- Detailed information for SAP Crystal Server 2016’s supported platforms, such as Windows and Linux OS, browser, LDAP and hardware support
- SAP Crystal Reports 2016 User Guide
- Languages supported with SAP Crystal Reports 2016
- Data sources and connections tested with SAP Crystal Reports 2016
SAP Crystal Integrations
SAP Crystal Reports for Visual Studio, SAP Crystal Reports for Eclipse
SAP Crystal Competitors
Pricing
- Has featureFree Trial Available?Yes
- Has featureFree or Freemium Version Available?Yes
- Has featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?Yes
- Entry-level set up fee?Optional
| Edition | Pricing Details | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| SAP Crystal Reports 2016 - Full version | $495 | per user |
| SAP Crystal Server 2016 1 NUL | $869 | per named user |
| SAP Crystal Server 2016 5 CAL | $8,744 | per 5 concurrent users |
| SAP Crystal Reports Viewer 2016 | $0 | per user |
| SAP Crystal Reports 2016 - Upgrade | $295 | per user |
* SAP Crystal Reports 2016 Viewer allows you to view static data within a SAP Crystal Reports file. * SAP Crystal Reports 2016 - Full version allows you to create powerful, richly formatted, and dynamic reports from virtually any data source, delivered in dozens of formats, in up to 28 languages. If you already have an older version of Crystal Reports, buy a license for SAP Crystal Reports 2016 - Upgrade at a discounted, upgrade price. * SAP Crystal Server 2016, 1 NUL includes 1 license of: SAP Crystal Reports 2016 - SAP Crystal Server 2016 - SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2016. * As an add-on to SAP Crystal Server 2016 1 NUL, SAP Crystal Server 2016 5 CAL allows you to support a wider, intermittent audience of end users, up to five logged on at the same time.
For the latest information on pricing, visit https://www.sapstore.com/solutions/99043/SAP-Crystal-Reports-2016
SAP Crystal Support Options
| Free Version | Paid Version | |
|---|---|---|
| Live Chat | ||
| Forum/Community | ||
| FAQ/Knowledgebase | ||
| Social Media | ||
| Video Tutorials / Webinar | ||
| Phone |
SAP Crystal Technical Details
| Deployment Types: | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems: | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application: | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Languages: | English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Thai, Czech, Hungarian, Slovakian, Turkish, Romanian, Slovenian |