Overview
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.
It's a great reporting tool for your business!
A essential tool for accurate report export from SAP
SAP Crystal Report Review
SAP Crystal is excellent for report building and aggregations
Crystal Clear Formatted Reports in Secure environment with sharing/distribution capabilities.
First time caller, long time user.
Effective for financial reporting, which is accurate.
SAP Crystal overall satisfaction
Crystal Delivers Thousands of Reports Per Week
Decent reporting tool
SAP Crystal Reports review
Powerful document and report automation
SAP Crystal Review
One of my top rated reporting systems.
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
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%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020
$295
SAP Crystal Reports 2020 64-Bit
$495
SAP Crystal Reports 2016 32-Bit
$495
Entry-level set up fee?
- Setup fee optional
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
Software TRAIL DEMO SAP Crystal Reports 2013
SAP Crystal Dashboard Design - Demo video
Features
BI Standard Reporting
Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
- 8Pixel Perfect reports(111) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
- 10Customizable dashboards(97) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
- 10Report Formatting Templates(115) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
- 10Drill-down analysis(115) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
- 10Formatting capabilities(133) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
- 8.6Integration with R or other statistical packages(63) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
- 10Report sharing and collaboration(118) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
- 9.2Publish to Web(89) Ratings
- 10Publish to PDF(131) Ratings
- 9Report Versioning(93) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
- 9Report Delivery Scheduling(96) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
- 10Delivery to Remote Servers(52) Ratings
Ability to deliver reports to remote servers
Data Discovery and Visualization
Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.
- 7.6Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)(51) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
- 8.5Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization(75) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
- 7.8Predictive Analytics(41) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
Access Control and Security
Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.
- 7.8Multi-User Support (named login)(79) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
- 7.7Role-Based Security Model(78) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
- 8.4Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)(78) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
- 10Report-Level Access Control(1) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
- 9Single Sign-On (SSO)(38) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications
Mobile Capabilities
Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
- 8.7Responsive Design for Web Access(60) Ratings
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
- 7.6Mobile Application(43) Ratings
A dedicated app for iOS and/or Android.
- 9Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile(57) Ratings
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another
- 7.4REST API(8) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
- 6Javascript API(35) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
- 7.1iFrames(8) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
- 6Java API(35) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
- 8.3Themeable User Interface (UI)(37) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
- 7Customizable Platform (Open Source)(31) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is SAP Crystal?
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 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
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(558)Attribute Ratings
- 10Likelihood to Renew19 ratings
- 8Availability1 rating
- 8Performance1 rating
- 9.4Usability28 ratings
- 8.6Support Rating21 ratings
- 10In-Person Training1 rating
- 8.8Implementation Rating14 ratings
- 8Configurability1 rating
- 7Product Scalability1 rating
- 7Ease of integration1 rating
- 7Vendor pre-sale1 rating
- 8Vendor post-sale1 rating
- 7Data Visualization4 ratings
- 9.2Data Sources130 ratings
- 8.8Data Sharing and Collaboration125 ratings
- 8.5SAP Crystal Pixel-Perfect Reporting5 ratings
Reviews
(76-100 of 156)Crystal Review
- Invoicing report
- External reporting for client members
- Reports that don't need a great degree of changes
- Making changes in SAP Crystal Reports is hard
- Friendly connections wizard
Deploy and be amazed
- Allows scheduled distribution of reports. This allows our team to capture data and deliver it when it is desired by the team without forcing an internal staff member to have to manually gather the data and distribute it on time.
- Flexibility in destinations. Crystal server allows us several convenient options for delivering our reports and data. This means we have no wasted time by internal staff emailing or sending data to clients or other internal staff, allowing them to focus on more demanding tasks.
- Our biggest complaint is that if a report has to be modified, our experience is that the entire schedule has to be redone for these changes to effectively be delivered to our end users.
Crystal Reports - your Real-Time SAP ERP Reporting Solution
SAP Crystal Reports - a better way to get personalized reports.
- Generally if we connect the SAP databases - it is good to have
- Inter-team communication has improved a lot. With many structured ways of formats, it helped
- There is an additional feature which is fine - scheduling
- The authority of security lies with the developer, which is a drawback
- Client Support needs improvement
- The pricing of the server product is high
SAP Crystal Reports - Best in formatting, sharing BI reports
- The support of SAP is hands down one of the best.
- The easy report handling feature is good.
- Being a SAP product, chances of getting an error is significantly lower.
- It needs great expertise to properly operate this product.
- Too many updates are not good for an average user.
- There are many features that are too confusing.
Analysing SAP CR.
- Rich in features and support system is also good.
- Support various databases and sources like Oracle, MS SQL server, Excel etc.
- Sharing report with SAP Crystal is easy with good security
- More complex reports are time intensive.
- New user finds a lot of difficulties in creating reports.
- Sharing a report in an organisation is very important, and only a single person can edit in one time. Mailing the report is not a good idea, there should be a option of using cloud-based sharing.
1) Reports look clean and professional.
2) Integration with databases helps a lot.
3) The customized template as a user wants, easy to create and make an attractive look.
4) Visualisation of data in different ways - graphical or in simple words.
- Groups Easily
- Displays graphs and statistical info easily
- Allows for formatting
- De-Duplicating data can be done through groups easily
- Can use with SQL query/subqueries to improve performance
- Shuts down in the middle of work often
- Can lose work if you don't save constantly
- Does not allow for subqueries within Crystal, must use SQL and combine with Crystal
Less appropriate - when a lot of subqueries/data are used, it doesn't allow you to pull segments of data, only doing regular joins. If you have huge databases it can shut down.
Shuts down out of the blue with no notice. Often results in losing work. Very frustrating.
SAP Crystal Reports - easy for the end user
- Pulls data from existing ERP to create an easy to use and helpful report for manufacturing orders.
- Can pull data from a variety of data sources without a lot of code.
- They make our life easier by providing us with an option for building legible, useful and good-looking reports!
- Not easy to use for the average user - it requires a developer to create the reports.
- They can be slow to load sometimes (this may not be indicative of the actual Crystal Reports, but in my experience, they can load pretty slowly).
My New SAP Crystal Reports Review
- Built-in functions
- Report formatting
- Solutions
- Don't really have anything for improvement yet as some of the challenges were with the ERP's database design
SAP Crystal Server – Collaborative reports
- It is great to generate reports that can be shared with many users, who can also collaborate on them.
- The reports are easy to develop and deploy. There are lots of customizable options that can enrich your reports. The ability to generate scheduled reports is also a very good feature as it allows you to have complex and high demanding reports generated at a specific time.
- As an SAP product, it is very affordable, making it a good value for the money product. Other products with same features can be more expensive.
- Graph generation has some limitations that can be a bit frustrating sometimes.
- The customer expects to create business presentations from their reports, which could be a simpler process if they could export reports and graphs directly to PowerPoint.
- Customers always ask for a way to geta a feature like freeze panes in Excel. In large reports where scroll down is needed this feature is very important for the users.
- As a selling point of view, the UI of SAP Crystal Server could be improved with more modern layouts and themes. SAP have been improving this important part on products like SAP Fiori, but need to widen the range of products where layout is important.
Newbie Review of Crystal Reports
- Pulls data via SQL or their own interface
- Provides useful parameters to filter through your queries
- Provides style options to template with
- Could provide more design options.
- It's not quite pixel perfect, and lining up fields can sometimes be tedious.
Review the stars
- Create highly formatted reports
- Connects to an array of data sources
- Integrates with a range of applications
- Not Business User-Friendly
- Licensing Model is Confusing- and Costly
Crystal Reports: A Future Contender?
- Layout & Formatting
- Grouping
- Sorting
- Aggregates
- Custom Calculations
- The ability to rotate images
- Export to Excel
- Some versions attempted to 'intelligently' auto rotate on print preview & printing
Crystal Reports - An Older Tool that is Still a Great Choice for Non-Bleeding Edge Environments
At my company (Engineer to Order Manufacturing/Capital Equipment) we use Crystal Reports as our primary tool for operational reporting and some executive dashboarding. This is in combination with SAP's Business Objects platform which provides on-demand web delivery as well as batch scheduling of the reports.
Primary resources for report development/maintenance reside in IT (two developers) but there is also a cadre of power users who have been trained to use Crystal. These power users are seeded throughout the organization and are backed up by the IT staff.
Our organization utilizes an overall ERP solution (Oracle's JD Edwards/EnterpriseOne) as well as other packages such as Microsoft's Dynamics CRM, EtQ's Reliance Quality Management system, etc.
Rather than have a separate reporting mechanism native to each application we have chosen to follow a path of using one tool (Crystal) that is capable of working with the data from all of our applications and that can integrate data across applications/databases.
With Crystal/BusinessObjects we deliver information to internal staff as well as deliver information to customers and suppliers.
It provides a means of crafting pixel-perfect forms and reports that support the professional image we strive to convey.
- Combine data from multiple data sources.
- Truly database agnostic - SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Sybase, Access, Teradata, Essbase, Excel files, etc.
- Formatting allows very detailed control of how data is presented on the screen/page.
- Extremely flexible in data selection.
- Complex requirements can be met/satisfied (depending on knowledge/capability of the designer).
- Drill down capability.
- Multiple delivery options/formats (native, PDF, Excel, Word, CSV, etc.).
- Needs easier means to access Cloud Data.
- Current version still only has partial support for reading/exporting to Microsoft Office's latest formats.
- Current owner of Crystal Reports has not improved its feature set significantly for some years now. It's actually in a "maintenance mode" in my opinion.
Well suited for operational reports and static analytics.
If looking for the type of dashboards where a user can play what if games by sliding a slider control, etc., this is not the tool.
Also if your company's applications are in the cloud or heading that direction Crystal is probably not your tool (although I don't know what one would be at that point).
- Once you know how to use it, it is an incredibly powerful report editor.
- Makes custom database reports easy compared to Excel and other tools.
- Setting up rows in the reports to match the rows in the linked database is amazing when you're making list reports.
- The documentation is poor. Unless you are willing to pay for training don't expect to be able to write an amazing report just using the built-in docs.
- The design looks old. Everything feels like your working in 2007 not 2017. It has almost an identical feel and flow to Visual Studio 2008.
- Crystal Reports in general feels like an outdated technology, but we use it because no one has made anything better. Why there isn't a similar business oriented markup/html product I don't know. But since they are really the only good option and most ERP/Finance software already has it built in we use it.
- It's expensive for what it is.
- Provides the flexibility to choose the data you want to include from any table in your database and better enables you to understand the structure of it.
- Allows for the customization of grouping of data records through development of formulas through a built-in programming interface.
- Through the creation of sub-reports with parameter links you can combine separate customized data reports into one report file.
- Through the programming interface, you can create formulas to summarize data from a subreport and include that value in the main report body, thus, developing a summary report from data of a variety of different subreports.
- It would be nice to have sometime of functionality that would better detect an improper linking of two or more tables. Sometimes I don't know that I have an improper link until after I run a report and realize data records are repeating.
- Sometimes the pass through of formula values from multiple sub reports to a main report can be in error based on the placement of the sub reports in relation to each other. It would be great to have functionality that warns you about those issues.
- There should be more intellisense provided in the formula interface when creating conditional statements.
- Crystal Reports is really only limited by the creativity and knowledge of the report builder.
- It's versatile, and can work with any database or data set that can export into Access or something similar.
- It's a great way to get people to generate their own reports. Sure they can be intense to build, but once that's done, anyone can use them.
- It's not something you can just pick up and start using, you'll need someone who knows what they're doing to build your reports.
- I wish it were possible to use formulas in parameters.
- I also wish there were a way to automatically link all tables at once, instead of having to set the join for each table individually. This can get quite tedious when you're working with a lot of tables.
- Very flexible with different inputs. Can work with any ODBC connection.
- Extremely customizable and powerful. With sub-reports I can create any report I desire even they are somewhat time intensive.
- Beautiful. The reports I am able to produce from Crystal Reports are clean and professional. I receive complements on them all the time.
- The learning curve can be steep. A background in Excel formulas is helpful. Crystal's possibilities are limited really only by the user.
- More complex reports are time intensive. This is, however, to be expected.
- The programming language is unique to Crystal and though similar to Excel still requires learning and is easily confused with Excel when you shift from one back to another or take a break from Crystal.
SAP Crystal Reports for Basic Users
- Can make a report very visually appealing
- Can access data from different sources
- Can write SQL directly for data pulls
- Writes inefficient SQL
- Needs more robust cross tabs
- Slow
- Extracts data which can be compiled and analyzed.
- Combines various data sets into useful reports on demand.
- Writes the SQL statement for the user making building reports simpler.
- I honestly cannot think of a single recommendation I can make to improve this product.
Better Reporting, Less Effort
- Generates professional looking reports
- Scheduled reporting
- Can choose destination of reports
- Dashboard needs updating
- We have had some security issues for different users
- Difficult to use for new users
Answeing your reporting business needs the right way
- The product has been around for a while and there is enough literature out there for learning and mastering its capabilities
- Intuitive graphical user interface
- Fast customization options and powerful formula tool
- Great web integration features
- Might take awhile to master and programming knowledge may allow bringing the product to the next level
- Some graphic elements could be improved
- Prone to bugs
Get it done with SAP Crystal Server
- Report generation
- Scheduled reports
- Great report templates
- Fair amount of training required for new users
- Glitches with importing data at times
- Training given was inadequate for some users
Crystal Clear Reports
- Schedule reports
- Real-time reporting
- Clear reports that are easy to interpret
- Less user-friendly than other reporting software - that's why we use it for scheduled reports instead of switching over to only use SAP Crystal Server
- Integration issues
Great results if you have the knowledge
- Very easy to create customised reports
- Great for running weekly progress reports
- Mobile integration
- The UI could be improved
- We had a few problems with importing data