Crystal Reports Administration: Disclaimers on Reports

Your 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.

• On the one hand, this is a good thing because more people have information to work with.
• On the other hand, it is a bad thing because the likelihood of information misinterpretation and misuse is higher.

What to do

1. Evaluate the various audiences of the reports--what is their sophistication level? A CEO is far more likely to understand the limitations and uses of a report than is, say, a junior sales person.
   

2. Ask heads of departments who supply the data (for the target database) what disclaimers would be appropriate for the data. For example, the head of marketing might tell you to include a disclaimer something like, "This report draws on data from random samples, and the error rate is 5%."
    

3. As heads of departments who use the reports what disclaimers would be appropriate for the actual reports. For example, the head of marketing might tell you, "This report does not represent actual product demand trends." Or, the VP of Operations might tell you, "This report is for internal use only."
   

4. Ask for feedback on the reports. Simply call or visit an end-user, and ask that person to tell you what the report means and how people in that department use it. If a misunderstanding seems evident, you know it's time to modify the report and/or add disclaimers.

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. 

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