Crystal Reports Administration: Exporting Reports

You have to get your Crystal Reports to the end-users. It's not a problem to run a report every so often. But, as demands for reports go up, you find yourself unable to keep up.

How do you solve this problem? One solution is the Crystal Reports export. This doesn't seem too bad. You can manually export a report any time you want. Just go to File | Print | Export. That's fine, for one report. But, what if you have many reports?

Exporting reports manually means you quickly reach the saturation point and end-users complain. An automated approach will not only make your users happy, but it will in all likelihood save your job.

Let's look at the automated Crystal Report export and distribution choices you have.

• Business Objects' (formerly Crystal Decisions) Web-based product. This product is their answer to reports export and distribution. But, it's not for everyone in terms of functionality. And, it's very expensive. Still, you should take a look at it and see what you think.
   
• A scheduler that runs as a Windows application. The star in this field is a product called cViewMANAGER. It dominates this arena, because it does everything a scheduler should do. Read more about it, here.
   
• A scheduler that runs as a Windows service. The only product that does this is cViewSERVER. A service gives you some automation advantages. And cViewSERVER is built on the .net platform, which makes it a product of the future. But it's here now. Read more about it, here.

Another aspect of Crystal Reports distribution is having a CR license or a viewer for each report recipient. A windows-based report viewer is a very cost-effective approach. The best of all such viewers is cVIEW. Read more about it, below.

A final note. Don't confuse reports distribution with data distribution. Simply arranging data nicely on a page fails to provide users with the high-level, actionable information they need. At the very least, use formulas to produce aggregates.

To turn an existing data distribution system into an information report system, ask users what key things they really need to know. Then present those things in your reports. If you design with drilldown, then those who want to peek at the data can.

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.