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
(1-25 of 31)Crystal Clear Formatted Reports in Secure environment with sharing/distribution capabilities.
- Highly formatted reporting capabilities.
- Pixel oriented perfect reporting for printing.
- Embedding of dynamic images/logo or barcodes for customized reports.
- Easy to share with other users.
- Dragging and dropping the elements into the canvas to fit in pixels is sometime difficult.
- Exporting the report in Excel looses formatting.
- Learning curve of Crystal is difficult for consultants as it's a bit tricky for data connections.
Only in case where you need row columns based reporting where you can see data in excel like formats you should not go for SAP Crystal Reports.
First time caller, long time user.
- Fairly easy to learn the report designer. Even for people without strong database knowledge.
- Ability to reuse existing report components.
- Can design reports targeted for printing (can cleanly handle pagination).
- Can report from multiple data sources without the need for a data warehouse.
- Better handling of imported images from a database. Need to maintain aspect ratio.
- Add option to disable grid lines.
- Changing data source on same server needs a little TLC. Still have to change each table instead of just updating the connection.
- Pivot Table formatting.
- Chart formatting.
- Importing formatted text from MS Word.
- Support for HTML text formatting.
Fun backdoor functionality to be able to execute stored procedures to updated data within the database and provide results without the need to build custom application solutions.
Not very useful for exporting to MS Word for contracts that need further editing. Pivot tables and charting capabilities are very simple when compared to MS Excel and are only used when basic functionality is needed.
SAP Crystal Reports - Still great but slowing down
- 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.
Efficient reporting tool with endless possibilities
- 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.
- 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 Review
- 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
Really professional and compatible reports everywhere.
- 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.
Crystal Reports is a great reporting tool
- 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.
Flexible and Easy to Learn
- 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.
- 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.
Crystal Reports is not for casual users, but provides an excellent tool for professional report design.
- Crystal is very good at presenting the data exactly how you want it. There is a robust set of options for formatting and presentation.
- It can connect to a wide variety of data sources. We primarily use SQL sources. As a DBA, I generally prefer to have Crystal access views rather than people writing direct queries, but the option is there to do both.
- There are lots of options for data manipulation once the data set is in Crystal. For example, if you pull some raw data out of a sales table, there are a great many ways to calculate, manipulate, and transform the data into whatever you need.
- The learning curve in creating content in Crystal Reports can be steep. This is not a tool that I feel should be wielded by casual users.
- Crystal isn't great anymore for ad-hoc reporting. At one point in my career, I used Crystal for ad-hoc reporting, but with the advent of web-based and visual reporting tools that can be wielded by the general user population, I wouldn't even think of going to Crystal for one-off type reports.
- Crystal Reports doesn't have its own scheduling component. So you'll need to either code up or buy a separate solution for report distribution.
Simple and practical in its general use
- It enables the creation of reports through a simplified and useful visual interface. During the creation of the reports you can already have a view of what is being set up.
- Ease of reporting, with the possibility of using data of various types of connections to the most varied types of databases.
- It supports large amount of data, processing them efficiently and quickly.
- Its formulas can be easily created, with a language based on SQL its use is very simple.
- It has a good help menu with many examples to use its formulas, which is very useful in several moments of its use and also facilitates its learning.
- The use for graphing sometimes is not simple, since the data type often needs to be very standardized to be accepted in the use of graphics.
- Information on solving more complex problems is more difficult to find among the community of users who use the program.
- The lack of local training can make it difficult to learn advanced items, even though their use is simplified in general.
Crystal Reports is your friend!
- Custom calculations and filtering - it can be complicated to program, depending on how your input tables are linked, etc., but pretty much anything is possible.
- Design - Most of our reports are fairly simple, but you can get pretty complex with the display of reports, with spacing, page breaks, color, etc.
- Coding - The formulas use a SQL-based language, which is fairly easy to navigate. There is also a UI that enables users to create formulas without direct language of code, but familiarity definitely helps.
- The newer version (XI) stalls when it processes multiple "gift summary" fields from Raiser's Edge. I'm not sure if this problem exists when connecting to any other software, but we had to re-code a number of our reports so that these "gift summary" fields were used in sub-reports, then fed back to the main report. Once we did that, the report ran instantly and didn't stall.
- The UI is not very user-friendly for non-coders. I think it's fine, but there is a pretty steep learning curve for new users.
- There are very few opportunities for training on Crystal Reports at an advanced level. If you want to learn more about the program, and you already have an intermediate level of experience with it, you'll basically just have to teach yourself.
SAP Is a very good product for creating reports
Each custom report is used by one or more users at the company. SAP makes it very simple to create and maintain our customized reports for our inventory system.
- The program is pretty intuitive to use
- There is a really good tutorial section on the website
- Integrates well with our inventory system
- Adding a new table from a database could be a little easier
- Moving data around reports tends to take a little more effort than what seems necessary. I do like that I can move by using arrow keys, just don't like the way things sometimes snap into position
Combining reports can have some issues. I like using SAP Crystal Reports, but when I need information from a different table, it can be hard.
It addresses the issues experienced by inferior products not being able to share, distribute, and run needed reports (high volume) on a daily basis.
- You can easily navigate within the Central Management Console to access a plethora of very powerful functions i.e. (Security, Users, Groups, Scheduling, Distribution, Delivery Formats, Business Views, Triggers, etc.)
- In my previous experience outside of SAP a lot of products are very difficult to learn and apply. SAP Crystal Server is laid out in a very intuitive way and it makes learning and application fluid.
- End users can easily access the end user portal and view, schedule, run, and distribute reports with the click of a mouse. This allows data to flow much more efficiently throughout the organization.
- SAP Crystal Server allows a seamless connection to your organizations production data which allows for a smooth transition from basic reporting to publication in a few short steps.
- I would like to see graph features to be improved. SAP has made leaps and bounds over the years and I know they will get there.
- I would like to see SAP products bundled for a more turn key solution.
- Easy formatting, drag and drop.
- Relatively similar GUI to Word, very developed GUI.
- Well-documented, easy to Google.
- Not intuitive - steep learning curve.
- Need to be able to have a sub-report within a sub-report. This is a major missing piece.
- Need to be able to copy sub-reports and paste.
- Less appropriate for serious programmers who don't need the GUI.
- Great for highly formatted reports
- Bad for analyzing lots of data
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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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
SAP Crystal Server - Be organized, stress-free, and on the cutting edge with this product. Get things accomplished!
- Generates reports
- Organizes files and information.
- Easy to use and intuitive.
- Affordable.
- Feature rich.
- Easy to use but slight learning curve which could be improved.
- Updates create delays sometimes.
- Some features have limitations such as graphs.
- Incorporating into websites could be made smoother.
MInimal user but happy with reports I do use
- Report building
- Getting specific information from databases
- The help feature for on the go help could be better
- Well suited to financial statements
- Less suited to pulling net vs. gross numbers
- Easy access to information across various tables.
- One time set up that can be refreshed as needed.
- It required additional programming to pull the same information from various sources because it would not recognize different data with the same column headings.
- Learning curve for the first time was challenging.