Crystal Reports Administration: Defining Terms and Data

What does that field really hold?

When you design that new report, it is always important to confirm you are using the data your users expect. This may seem obvious, and that's part of the problem. What is obvious to you may not at all be what the user has in mind, and what is obvious to the user may not even make sense to you.

We all familiar terms that can mean different things to different people. The same term can even mean different things to the same person at different times.

Let us give you an example, to help illustrate the concept.

At a customer site, we were making some improvements to a sales report. Some new sales people had been hired. They were immediately being credited with the historical sales for the customers they had been assigned.

The report had been designed with the "sales person" being the person currently assigned to that customer. The report was really useful for the new sales person to take to the customer to discuss their sales history and their plans for the future.

But the owners of the company had a different requirement. They needed a report to display the actual sales made by each person so they could pay commission for the sale. It wouldn’t really be fair to allocate commission based of the current customer assignment.

Thankfully there was a sales person field in each transaction record. We designed the report using a parameter so they could select which field they used for each run of the report.

It was important to use a terminology that every one agreed on. We settled on "Current Sales Person" for the person assigned to the customer, and "Historical Sales Person" for the person allocated the actual sale when it happened.

Be sure to ask if there's any other possible definition, when given a field name or data requirement. Just as in this example. "Do you mean the sales person who made the actual sale, or do you mean the present account manager?" Don't ask just one person. Ask two or three people who will use the report, and perhaps also talk to their first-line supervisor.

After you've done this quick research, decide what labels you'll use and exactly what you'll pull from the database. Meet with those same people you spoke to earlier, and walk through a sample to show how these selections will affect the report. Get agreement or  correction before actual live implementation.

This extra work may seem like a hassle. But it shows you're a team player, and it prevents you from creating a problem that could be a major headache later on..

This article is copyrighted by Crystalkeen, Mindconnection, and Chelsea Technologies Ltd. It may be freely copied and distributed as long as the original copyright is displayed and no modifications are made to this material. Extracts are permitted. The names Crystal Reports and Seagate Info are trademarks owned by Business Objects.