Crystal Reports: Text Rotation

Continuing our series on features in Crystal Reports version 8 (and later), here’s a simple one. It’s on the same form as the Tool Tip text. You can select any field or text object and rotate it to print at 90 or 270 degrees.

We can see this being useful on narrow columns, and it’s definitely got application in the headings on cross tab reports. A simple to use feature, but also very effective.

One key to this is avoiding a cluttered look. If you have a longish text, reduce it in number of characters rather than in font size or font width.

Also, be careful you don't create a vertigo-inducing effect in the final results. You want something aesthetically pleasing and easy to read. If the user must strain, play eyeball games, or guess at meanings, you can consider the report ill-designed.

One solution to a dizzying display of rotated text is to delete some things from the report. It's better to leave information out of the report than to cram so much into the report that nobody reads it. When deciding what goes into a report, answer these questions:

• Who is receiving this report, and why should they care?
• What is the real focus of this report?
• What is essential in fulfilling the purpose of this report (leave out all else or put it behind a drilldown or put it in another report)?
• What is the relevance of this report to a specific business goal, and why?

Text rotation is often used to make complex tables fit onto a page, width-wise. The solution to complex tables in a business intelligence report is to make them simple tables. Use text rotation to make the tables more eye-pleasing or to improve them aesthetically. Do not use them to shoehorn data into what is supposed to be an information report.

What does this mean? You need to ensure your reports contain business information, not business data. They need to be decision tools, not intermediary data sources.

The data approach

The normal approach is to start with the database and push data to the users. No matter how you dress up data, you still have data. You do not have information. Data are raw materials and information is a finished product.

Suppose you walk into a Toyota dealer and say you need transportation. Do you expect to walk out of there with a container of parts, or to drive out of there in a car? That is the difference between data and information.

When you shove data at people, they try to assemble the data into information. Which is why you have all these folks wasting millions of salary-hours manipulating spreadsheets instead of doing the jobs they are paid to do. Which is why you have information silos. Which is why you have all sorts of other problems, which is why your job is less secure than it should be.

End-users need analysis, trends, conclusions, snapshots, summaries, thumbnails, overviews, projections, comparisons, and other things that are very different from data. When they don't have those things, out come the spreadsheets.

The report approach

Instead of starting with the database, start with the business questions. Talk with the senior executives (who may or may not be on your existing distribution list), and ask each one to tell you what the top three business questions are. If they give you more, that's OK. Compile a list, and see what data you would need for you to answer those questions with your reports.

Next, repeat this process with the people who are already on your distribution list. You are now ready to determine what will be reported.

Why talk with the senior executives, first? Those are the folks who run your company, so figure out what they want. Providing that helps secure your job and future raises in no small way. But it also helps you build the correct framework for your entire process, so that all users are marching to the same tune. You have to start at the beginning, not in the middle. By definition, middle managers can't see the big picture.

This raises another point. Surveys conducted between 2005 and 2008 showed that senior executives rarely have an accurate picture of their organization or the conditions under which it operates. They have a much rosier view, because people generally try to please them. These same people lack the time to dig through the data to see the real picture. In most companies, senior executives also lack the skills to do so. This means the data-oriented reports they get are essentially useless. If you are in charge of those reports, what does this say about your value to the company?

If you provide the senior executives with the business information they need, and you provide middle managers with the business information they need plus the business information the senior executives are working from, how do you think this will affect the effectiveness of management to make good decisions?

Instead of working from the detail level up, work from the information level down. Determine what information people really need. Then, use the power of Crystal Reports to assemble that information from the data you can get.

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