Crystal Reports Tips and Tricks

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Crystal ReportsTips and Tricks

• Session 604

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Agenda

• Introductions
• Formulas
• Conditional formatting
• Parameters
• Graphing
• Subreports
• Multi-pass reporting

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Agenda (continued)

• Views
• Exporting
• Aggregates and Marts
• Disparate Data
• OLAP data sources
• Semantic layer
• Discussion

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Introductions

• Name
• Area of responsibility
• Experience with Crystal Reports

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Formulas

• Used to address info needs not met by your data
• Can be used to
• Extract data from a field
• Combine text with data in a field
• Do date functions
• Do mathematical functions
• Do string functions
• Using a variable
• Acts as a placeholder that gets set
• Referred back to
• Formulas that use formulas

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Conditional Formatting

• Adjust the formatting based on conditions you set
• Format both fields and sections
• Change font and color
• Modify the appearance of records based on
• Content of a particular field
• Result of a formula

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Parameter Fields

• Customize report output without making any
  changes to the actual report
• Can be done by people who do not have the Crystal
  application or even web users
• Parameter fields could be
• Numbers, Date Ranges, Select or Multiple Values
• Used for
• Values on the report, selection formulas, setting
  sort criteria, or criteria for conditional
  formulas
• Sort by Parameters
• Group by Parameters

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Graphing

• Graphs simplify display of data
• 15 different charts to choose from
• Bar
• Line
• Area
• Pie
• 3D Riser
• Funnel
• Doughnut
• And more
• Can graph on multiple criteria

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Sub-Reports

• Two different types of sub-reports
• Un-linked
• Linked
• On demand sub-reports

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Views

• Created by using SQL
• Simplifies user reporting
• Data access is done at real time
• Appears as additional tables in database

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Exporting

• Sending reports to a non-Crystal reports user
• Variety of output formats
• PDF and RTF are best for maintaining WYSIWYG (
  what you see is what you get)
• May want to suppress headers and grouping
  depending on what the target application is

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Aggregates/Marts

• Created by using SQL
• Simplifies user reporting
• Data access is done at the time the aggregate is
  created
• Appears as additional tables in database
• Can greatly increase performance based on summary
  of data

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Disparate data

• Crystal has the capability to report on data from
  multiple sources of data
• Join on common data elements
• May be done with two or more data sources

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OLAP data sources

• Crystal has the capability to use OLAP data
  sources for reporting
• Can significantly increase efficiency in
  reporting
• Multi dimensional sources include
• DB2
• Hyperion
• Microsoft
• Holos

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Build a semantic layer

• Allows you to customize your data for your
  customers
• Rename tables and columns
• Remove unused data elements
• Create fields from formulas
• May use Crystal Dictionary for this

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Items for discussion?

• Common problems
• Discoveries you have made

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Questions?
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Thank you!