CRYSTAL CLEAR REPORTING WITH SAP CRYSTAL
Proulx Mfg has utilized SAP Crystal for our reports for several years; We can appreciate SAP personalization to customize the data our …
Starting at $295 per single user license
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What is SAP Crystal?
SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.
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Popular Features
- Publish to PDF (131)10.0100%
- Report sharing and collaboration (118)10.0100%
- Report Formatting Templates (115)10.0100%
- Formatting capabilities (133)10.0100%
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Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020
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SAP Crystal Reports 2020 64-Bit
$495
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$495
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What is SAP Crystal?
SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Server are designed to help users create pixel-perfect, richly formatted, and dynamic reports from virtually any data source – delivered in dozens of export formats, in up to 24 languages. SAP Crystal Reports is a production reporting tool designed to turn almost any data source into interactive, actionable information that can be accessed offline or online, from applications, portals and mobile devices. SAP Crystal Server enables self-service access to
reports, dashboards, and data exploration within a secure infrastructure.
SAP Crystal Features
BI Platform Features
- Supported: Administration via Web Interface
- Supported: Live Connection to External Data
- Supported: Snapshot of External Data
- Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
- Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
- Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
- Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer
Supported Data Sources Features
- Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
- Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
- Supported: Oracle
- Supported: MS SQL Server
- Supported: IBM DB2
- Supported: Postgres
- Supported: MySQL
- Supported: ODBC
- Supported: EMC Greenplum
- Supported: HP Vertica
- Supported: SAP Hana
- Supported: Teradata
- Supported: Salesforce
- Supported: SAP
BI Standard Reporting Features
- Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
- Supported: Customizable dashboards
- Supported: Report Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting Features
- Supported: Drill-down analysis
- Supported: Formatting capabilities
- Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
- Supported: Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling Features
- Supported: Publish to Web
- Supported: Publish to PDF
- Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
- Supported: Report Versioning
- Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
- Supported: Delivery to Remote Servers
Data Discovery and Visualization Features
- Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Access Control and Security Features
- Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
- Supported: Role-Based Security Model
- Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
- Supported: Report-Level Access Control
- Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
- Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)
Mobile Capabilities Features
- Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
- Supported: Mobile Application
- Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features
- Supported: Javascript API
- Supported: Java API
- Supported: Themeable User Interface (UI)
- Supported: Customizable Platform (Open Source)
SAP Crystal Screenshots
SAP Crystal Videos
SAP Crystal Solutions: The Mobile Worker Use Case
SAP Crystal Solutions: Identify and Eliminate Clutter in Your Visualizations
SAP Crystal Solutions: How to Buy SAP Crystal Reports Digitally
SAP Crystal Competitors
SAP Crystal Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux |
| Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
| Supported Countries | Global |
| 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 |
SAP Crystal Downloadables
- Detailed information for SAP Crystal Server 2016’s supported platforms, such as Windows and Linux OS, browser, LDAP and hardware support
- Languages supported with SAP Crystal Reports 2016
- Product features to leverage with SAP Crystal Solutions for the small to midsize business
- Pixel-perfect reports created with SAP Crystal Solutions for small to midsize business
- Business goals to achieve with SAP Crystal Solutions for small to midsize business
- Implementation costs to consider with SAP Crystal Solutions for small to midsize business
- Comparison of features by version for SAP Crystal Reports and SAP Crystal Server software
Frequently Asked Questions
SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.
Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Report Formatting Templates and Drill-down analysis highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of SAP Crystal are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(556)Attribute Ratings
- 10Likelihood to Renew
- 8Availability
- 8Performance
- 9.4Usability
- 8.6Support Rating
- 10In-Person Training
- 8.8Implementation Rating
- 8Configurability
- 7Product Scalability
- 7Ease of integration
- 7Vendor pre-sale
- 8Vendor post-sale
- 7Data Visualization
- 9.2Data Sources
- 8.8Data Sharing and Collaboration
- 8.5SAP Crystal Pixel-Perfect Reporting
Reviews
(26-50 of 156)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 28, 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.
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.
December 06, 2018
SAP Crystal Review
The software is currently being used by our outsourcing department. The software allows the department to create multiple graphical reports for the department to understand how different vendors are managed. The data is exported from different data sources like Microsoft excel and Oracle SQL. The reports generated allows the upper management to understand how different vendors are managed in terms of cost and performance.
- It is a great application to see data from different perspective
- It is easy to connect with multiple database simultaneously
- It is easy to format and users can use wide variety of formulas
- It is challenging to use the system at first but once you pass that learning curve then it is easy to maneuver the application based on your needs
- Converting Crystal Reports to Excel can be challenging as the formatting gets distorted
- Overall, there are no major issues and it is a great tool
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.
November 20, 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 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.
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
Crystal Reports Review
We do not use Crystal Reports for the whole organization. We use it for specific clients. For my project, we use it to send reports based on some filters in PDF format. It contains basically a whole summery or result based on the user's requirements. It makes it easy to develop requirements for a developer and easy to read data for the end user. It is a design tool so you can create and maintain reports and it also has SDK.
- It is a user-friendly tool just like PowerPoint. For example, there is no need to write code for a button, text field, or database field. A developer just needs to drag and drop in the report.
- For the database part you can do some manual table mapping based on your requirements so there is no need to waste time writing along query. Your query part is done by Crystal Reports.
- You can immediately run a report in the tool and see if you are getting correct data and your report output is the same as the user's requirement.
- When you run a report you can see each data field value there itself so it is easy to verify your data
- Crystal Reports has many built-in functions like date and page so no need to write code for these functions just drag and drop. It will work even makes it easy to add an input parameter.
- It needs improvement in database connectivity. Many times the database connection failure issue happens and you have to reconnect the connection again and again
- If your report has more data it will hang the whole tool itself and it will take so much time to get data and you can not do any other work in the tool.
- It should allow a user to do table mapping in one report from two diffident different databases.
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.
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
August 22, 2018
SAP Crystal Reports and Crystal Reports Server
SAP Crystal Server software enables self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration within a secure BI infrastructure that’s quick to deploy. It was used by my department.
- It requires a developer skilled in Crystal Reports’ proprietary language, but one of CR most touted benefits is its flexible, customizable report design.
- Using CR, a developer can create highly formatted, pixel-perfect reports in nearly any layout desired and in up to 24 different languages.
- Like other major business intelligence vendors, SAP typically buys technology instead of innovating it. As a result, a number of interfaces must be used to leverage CR, including a report designer and a dashboard designer.
- Security is built into the report itself, so when you need a report for two different audiences, the developer must modify the security settings for each report- in effect duplicating the report for each person.
August 17, 2018
Feedback about Crystal
Crystal is used for SOX reporting. Client as well as Web via BOBJ. It also acts like self service reporting tool. Its used in IT and business
- Very formatted reporting.
- Self service querying tool on SAP
- Governed SOX reporting
August 16, 2018
Really professional and compatible reports everywhere.
This is the traditional reporting tool that is used in many financial organizations. I have used SAP Crystal Reports 12 in my organization. We can design highly formatted reports using this tool. It can connect to multiple data sources such as ODBC, OLE DB etc. We can create reports with different formats such as pdf, csv, txt, xls, etc. We can also create html, xml reports. The price of this tool is also cheap. We can create detailed graphics, instrument panels.
- There are some written exercises based on SAP Crystal Report that facilitate learning.
- The integration with the different IDE of development are optimized
- It is compatible with the most popular database administrators, MYSQL, SQLSERVER, POSTGRESQL. and more...
- The designer of Crystal is fantastic, drag and drop add-ons to create your report.
- I had a lot of problems and spent a lot of time trying to adjust the space between the rows. I hope that in the future, SAP Crystal Report will make it easier.
- Should block the sizes of pre-established and blocked sheets to avoid leaving the margins.
August 16, 2018
SAP Crystal: still a winner
Used across the organization for writing some pixel-perfect report. It helps on floor where users does not have continuously access to intranet so they user printed reports.
- Connects to a variety of data sources easily
- Stable product & strong user community for help
- Pixel-perfect reporting at its best
- Still two similar client tools causes some confusion to super users
- Some form of ad-hoc reporting features would help
- UI is little aged so better make it contemporary
July 31, 2018
Crystal Reports for Routine Reporting & Analysis
Our organization uses Crystal Reports to (1) automate complex data tasks such as ETL to get ready data for (2) reports that are used by our organization to both drive decision making and to support administrative functions. We use Crystal Reports in conjunction with another BI tool to provide us greater deal in a traditional report product that enables drill down and data views at different levels of aggregation.
- Crystal Reports formulas make it very easy to customize complex reporting requirements. Additionally, Crystal Reports reporting language is easy to learn and use.
- Crystal Reports output of information in a variety of file types makes it easy to consume on any platform meeting a variety of end users' needs from PDFs to spreadsheets to interactive reports with drill capabilities.
- Crystal Reports makes is easy to combine data sets from a variety of sources, and then join the data together in a meaningful way.
- Occasionally, a data source type needs to be changed. This can create an issue when moving the report from one data source to another effectively breaking the link of the fields in one data source as the transition to another occurs. It would be helpful if Crystal Reports created a data migration tool to make the mapping of the old fields to the new more straightforward when data sources need to be changed.
- The ability to drill down on formulas would be an awesome feature, however, I have not seen this ability in any reporting platform.
- We have used some advance BI tools with really slick visualizations, and it would be great to see a similar level of graphical presentations in CR. I have to admit that I have been using CR 2009 until very recently when I upgraded to CR 2016, and I have not had a chance to fully test updated graphics.
July 31, 2018
Crystal Reports is a great reporting tool
We use Crystal Reports across our whole organization. We first were introduced to Crystal when we implemented our ERP system, EFI Monarch, because they had designed a report library of reports they had written for their ERP system using Crystal Reports. Their report library allowed us to create our own Crystal Reports and add them to the library. I love Crystal Reports. It saves us so much time when specific information is requested across our many databases (DB2, SQL, Progress, Excel spreadsheets, XML data, Lotus Notes databases, etc). I haven't found any database that wasn't compatible with Crystal Reports.
- It allows you to connect to virtually any data source. I have used it to write reports using data from DB2, SQL, Progress, Excel spreadsheets, XML data, Access, and Lotus Notes databases. You can also join different database types together in one report.
- The drag and drop layout makes it easy to design your report and easy to select data fields to add to your report.
- When creating a report the Standard Report Creation Wizard walks you through each step needed to create the report and will layout the report for you.
- There is a wealth of online answers if you have a question about how to do something specific in Crystal Reports.
- It would be nice if there was a way to search your .rpt files for a specific field or table using a normal search engine. There are secondary tools available for purchase but it would be nice if there were a way to do this without additional purchase.
- When I first started using Crystal Reports the learning curve was steep. That being said I had never used a reporting tool before. I think if you are familiar with reporting tools the learning curve would not be as steep.
- If you do happen to get an error message they are sometimes very cryptic and require internet searches to figure out what exactly is wrong.
I'm the only user of Crystal Reports in our organization. We use it primarily for production-related reporting from our MIS (via SQL), but it also has heavy use as a business analysis tool. We are able to quickly identify business trends and sales goals.
- The interface is easy to learn and understand, with clear iconography and unambiguous tool names.
- It's easy to connect data from many different sources at once.
- The help section is actually helpful (!) and easy to navigate to find the answers quickly.
- A more powerful search function for where formulas and fields are used in the report, such as being able to see at a glance every instance of {@formula}, be it selection criteria, other formulas or location in the report body.
- Keyboard shortcuts, such as T or Ctrl+T for inserting a text box, S or Ctrl+Shift+S for select expert, etc.
July 31, 2018
Flexible and Easy to Learn
We used to provide many staff members access to run shared Crystal reports that were created by 1-2 report developers, but Crystal no longer connects directly to our Oracle/PeopleSoft database. Thus, our 1-2 report developers still use Crystal for established reporting projects and new one-off projects, but the "public" reports are no longer possible for our staff to run.
- Crystal is very flexible. If you have a unique formatting need for a report, it will be easier to implement with Crystal than most other tools.
- Creating run prompts in Crystal is a more straightforward process than in most other tools I've used.
- You don't need to build queries within Crystal while creating a report. That process has confused me when other tools require it.
- Creating a loop with Crystal is more difficult than I would like.
- In the design template pane in Crystal, you sometimes need to cram objects tightly together to get the report appearance you want. It's hard to see/work with these objects later.
- Crystal no longer connects directly to Oracle/PeopleSoft databases, which is our enterprise system.
July 23, 2018
SAP Crystal Reports Review
A highly featured tool which is used by various people in our organization. With SAP Crystal Reports you can design and deliver meaningful business reports based on data from virtually any source. It saves time delivering interactive and graphical reports which are easy to read and analyze data. Crystal also allows developers to script their custom own sql-based query in the database editor. It is extensive in summary functions, running totals, and a rich formula programming language.
- Reports can also be easily delivered through the Crystal Reports Server or BusinessObjects.
- It is a WSIWYG design tool, allowing you to see what you are doing as you do it. You can customize the design with your own ideas and need.
- Flexible Windows and Web application features support development.
- Crystal can also handle very large volumes of data very well as its processing engines are optimized to do so.
- Rules applied to the selection and manipulation of data can have unexpected results, leading to manual troubleshooting of report design and database queries.
- Working with lines and boxes is not as flexible as, say, Microsoft Word.
- New Users needs training to use it effectively.
- A more intuitive interface for linking databases and database tables would be helpful for those that are new to databases and report writing.
July 21, 2018
SAP report benefits over other software
Reports can be made easily by Crystal Reports according to your purpose and imagination. With the help of WYSIWYG you can design your own template of reports. Crystal Reports delivers design dynamic reports that can be linked to almost any data source. It can be connected to any databases for operation reporting. SAP Crystal Reports easily offers flexibility and adaptability.
- Reports can be very specific and highly formatted. It has an intense amount of format options and other ways to present your view and data.
- Very powerful. Very competent.
- It allows us to create exactly what is needed to support our operations. Crystal Reports allows us to do anything where more user-friendly software fails.
- Crystal Reports takes a great degree of skill, experience to use it. New users should learn first how to use it. An expert's tool.
- There are a lot of updates, versions and a number of features and it is hard to keep track of new updates.
- You need to purchase new feature as you want and you'll realize that you're spending more than you thought.
July 19, 2018
Crystal Reports review
It is being used to generate reports from several different databases and systems. Reports can be created by integrating different systems to support a more robust model.
- SAP Crystal lets us integrate different systems, databases and helps generate better reports.
- SAP has a good UI/Graphical interface that is very presentable.
- It has API's for several other programs and functions to improve efficiency.
- It has limited GIS functionality.
- GIS is one area which can be improved.
- A business user cannot leverage CR; it takes the skill of an experienced CR developer- which drives up the cost.
- Security is built into the report itself, so when you need a report for two different audiences, the developer must modify the security settings for each report. This results in work duplication.
We currently use Sap Crystal Report for Sage 300 CRE to set and develop a custom report for the accounting team, headboard members and for the estimating team to achieve the insights of our business progress from the financial basis to the operating level. We have been working with this software for almost 5 years and from my personal perspective, it has a wide toolset to manage, deliver, be more collaborative with your team and set complex reports and feed BI dashboards.
- The integration using the connection as ODBC, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, etc.
- Price is relatively inexpensive compared to other tools on the market.
- Create complicated reports with the ability to adjust display and format to the level of detail that only financial experts can easily manage and get the most of those reports.
- Not intuitive – takes a skilled developer to write a complex report, so be aware to manage several consults or even the basic structure of financial report development.
- Microsoft Updates, .NET updates my cause crashes in the reporting services so many times and it takes days to correct the issues, that you have to read carefully before you apply updates this can turn things against you.
- The learning curve is considerable small, but if you don't know SQL and understand the basics of relational databases you'll have to dig into a proper training that is fair to manage a large range reporting tool.
July 19, 2018
Not the Cadillac, but still Very Nice.
We are currently using SAP Crystal Reports as our main report building engine for our CRM system. I have not integrated it into other systems yet as we have not needed the metrics available through Crystal Reports. The main business needs that this software serves is it allows users that are not well versed with SQL to understand the data and build a report to show what information they have a vested interest in.
- The UI is done very well and easy to grasp for not tech people.
- The available charting functions are easy to configure.
- Some aspects of building a report are not very intuitive. I don't have a specific example off-hand, but I know when I first started with the software I was using Google and user forums a lot to figure things out.
- When the platform changed the infrastructure of the reports making backward compatibility a problem it put stress on us to upgrade to meet supported versions with a vendor.
Crystal Reports is used by the IT Director and System Administrator to create and present customized reports to Managers, End users, and customers. We utilize Prophet 21 software for managing our wholesale distribution (and counter sales) business, and Crystal Reports allows us to modify customer forms and internal reports as needed to present information concisely and correctly!
- Allows us to generate custom formulas to present complex data in an accurate format.
- Provides a comprehensive means to modify font types, sizes, and formats to present to internal and external customers.
- Allows us to present data from multiple SQL database tables and views, and allows us to customize formulas if data is not stored in the SQL database.
- Formatting of fields and text boxes allows consistency among sections.
- Would like even more flexibility in exporting reports to Excel, although I understand Microsoft has some control over this.
- Still difficult sometimes to line up boxes/fields vertically across multiple report sections.
- Drawing lines sometimes present issues when spanning multiple sections.
July 18, 2018
It does a lot, but it can take a long time to do it
We use Crystal Reports to generate reports in the form of PDFs and also online reports of usage of our products, along with generating invoices, quotes, packing lists, and other terms and conditions agreements with our sales and support of our order fulfillment processing. We use this product across a range of multiple sites and products.
- Detailed invoices calculating shipping, installation and delivery
- A central point for developers to generate templates for end users
- Flexible range of output
- The way you design templates is kind of hodge podge
- Unpredictable output from time to time
- A bit confusing for non-technical people, requires a lot of trial and error