Crystal Reports
May 10, 2016
Crystal Reports
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SAP Crystal Reports
We use Crystal Reports as a cross-division software platform that is used for reporting purposes. Crystal Reports is used to visualize transactional data that was formerly only presented in a CSV format.
- Ease Of Use
- Minimal Change Between Version (no need to relearn each release)
- Fast processing
- No ability to cancel report through code
- Hangs on slow db connections
- Oracle odbc randomly crashes app
- SSRS
SSRS lacks the ease of report designing that Crystal Reports has.
SAP Crystal Feature Ratings
Using SAP Crystal Reports
5 - Support, Analytics, and Intelligence
1 - One user who is extremely familiar with SAP Crystal Reports.
- More reporting
- Drill down reporting
- Customer delivery
- Ease of use
- Simple info graphics
- Ability to export to different formats
- Ability to connect to diverse data sources
- Ability to drill down/summarize
- Geographic mapping
- Barcode integration
- Drilldown
Evaluating SAP Crystal Reports and Competitors
Yes - SSRS due to difficulty of use. We wanted to replace it due to the fact that the only people who could develop reports for the software were developers. Crystal Reports allowed us to transition this task to our support teams. Crystal Reports also provided the most bang for the buck in terms of online resources.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
It all comes down to price when you need to implement across multiple users. We needed to implement for a handful of users and despite the cost of a single client, it was much cheaper in the end when you consider training time. Crystal also has a lot of help available online.
Test more software and look at the server version of Crystal Reports. Consider having in house demos of each tool and creating the same report across each one so we can see where each one truly shines and where each one fails. We would also evaluate multiple datasources up front as opposed to waiting until the software was purchased.
SAP Crystal Reports Implementation
- Implemented in-house
- Professional services company
Due to NDA cannot specify the answer to this.
Yes - There were two phases. One) Proof of concept with the sofware and 2) actual implementation.
Change management was minimal - The API is not the greatest due to lack of some key features (like stopping the report through code). This has been a known bug since the Seagate version of the software and will likely not change in any future version at this point.
- Lack of resources that document .net API
- Parameter conventions are a bit strange
- Difficult to incorporate a csv type data source
SAP Crystal Reports Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Quick Initial Response | Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times |
No - Not enough users or issues to warrant cost. Maybe in the future if we continue to expand on the number of users who use the software daily.
Yes - Yes and yes. The support group got back to us within a day of the initial problem and issued a hot fix within several months.
Was unable to get a connection to ODBC running on a Windows 10 machine. They went above and beyond finding the correct drivers for me
Using SAP Crystal Reports
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Easy to use Well integrated | Slow to learn |
- Creating a difficult report
- Drop down analysis
- Geographic charting
- Info graphic creating
- Charting
- Grouping/Aggregates
- Multiple data sources in one report
- Exporting to pdf and having page not cut off
- Switching between integrated security and mixed mode