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Crystal Reports Tools: Improve Performance While Saving Time and Money |
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Crystal Reports Administration: Disclaimers on ReportsYour responsibilities as a Crystal Reports Administrator include appropriate disclaimers on Crystal Reports your system generates, regardless of whether this is stated in your contract or job description. These disclaimers may include statements about the accuracy of the information or about security concerns. Reports are going to increasingly less-sophisticated or business-savvy individuals.
What to do
A good policy for adding disclaimers is to place these in the database. That way, you can use a program such as cViewMANAGER to assign the appropriate disclaimers the the appropriate end-users and not have to create individual reports over and over to accomplish the same thing.
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. |
Additional thoughts on disclaimersSometimes, people really get carried away with these things. They write dense disclaimers that, instead of inspiring trust, provoke suspicion. The reader asks, "What is this person so afraid of?' Keep the disclaimer relevant and appropriate to both the message and the actual risk. Don't try to cover all contingencies. It isn't necessary, for example, to state that the data are only as reliable as the field personnel. This is understood. It would be necessary to state that the data are from random samples, and the error rate is 5% if that is the case and if the 5% makes any real difference. While many disclaimers exist for legal purposes, in general those aren't the purposes served by a disclaimer on a report. The purpose is typically to clarify or provide a short explanation that prevents misleading the reader. A disclaimer may also serve to reassure the reader. For example, a report shows a big sales slump and it's going out to the department heads. The disclaimer might say, "3rd quarter sales were down due to production issues, which have now been solved." This way, the department heads don't read "Layoffs are coming!" and start the process of jumping ship. One way a disclaimer can have the opposite effect of what's intended when used for reassurance is when it is vague instead of direct. Write these in the active voice, not passive. Keep them short and to the point, so your point isn't lost in a swarm of text. |
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