Tip: Using Summary Information
Tutorial: Working with Specified Grouping
Grouping within Crystal Reports is an easy way to organize like records. In this tutorial, learn how to use "specified grouping" to re-order your report data and make it easier to understand.
Note: This tutorial refers to the Xtreme Sample Database, which is a sample database used by Crystal Reports. If you don't have a copy of this database, you can download it from here. You will need to setup an ODBC driver to point to this database.
Grouping is often used to help analyze report data, as it can draw a clearer picture of what is in the data. For example, you could create grouped report that would show records by state, so all of the sales for a particular state would be shown together.
But what if you want to group on an item not found in the database? Or if you want to re-order the data? Crystal Reports provides a feature called "specified grouping" that will allow you to create your own custom groups to display the data as you like.
In this tutorial, we will look at how to create a specified group using some of the sample data that ships with Crystal Reports. We will create an "Employee Listing" report that shows the country where employees live and then we will create a specified group to group these countries into "North America" and "Europe" respectively.
1. Open Crystal Reports 2008 from the Start menu
2. Select File > New to create a new Standard Report
3. Under "Available Data Sources", double-click the option for "Create New Connection" and double-click "ODBC (RDO)" to open the standard ODBC dialog.
4. Select "Xtreme Sample Database" and click Finish to return to the Standard Report Wizard.
5. Expand the "Tables" section and double-click to select the "Employee" and "Employee_Addresses" tables and then click "Next" to continue.
6. The next step of the wizard is for specifying the links between the two tables. In this instance, both tables have a common key and the link has already been created for you, so you can click "Next" to continue.
7. In the next dialog, select the fields for your report-- to select a field, highlight it in the list on the left and then click the right-arrow button to move it to the list on the right. Select the following fields:
Employee.First Name
Employee.Last Name
Employee.Position
Employee_Addresses.City
Employee_Addresses.Region
Employee_Addresses.Country
And click "Finish" when you are done. You will end up with a simple listing report that matches the fields you have selected.
8. Next, we are going to insert our group-- select the Insert menu then "Group" to open the Insert Group dialog.
9. Using the first drop down list, select the Employee_Addresses.Country field and in the second drop-down box, select "In Specified Order"
10. This will change the dialog to show a "Specified Order" tab. In the text box marked "Named Group" enter the names of your groups, pressing enter after each. In this example, we are going to create two groups-- "North America" and "Europe"
11. Once you have entered these two groups, click to select the "Europe" group and click "Edit"
12. In the dialogue named "Defined Named Group" change the drop-down list to "Is one of" and select the countries of "UK" and "France" and click OK. Repeat this same action with the "North America" group, adding "Canada" and "USA"
Note:
You may have noticed there is also an "others" tab that specifies what will occur when there is a country that does not meet the criteria you have specified. Use the options on this tab to set whether these records will be shown in their own groups, a custom-named group or not shown at all.
13. When you have finished editing your specified groups, click OK to return to your report, which should now show the two groups of "North America" and "Europe" as well as an "Others" group if you took the default settings.
You can use this technique anywhere you have a group inserted into your report.
Note: This tutorial refers to the Xtreme Sample Database, which is a sample database used by Crystal Reports. If you don't have a copy of this database, you can download it from here. You will need to setup an ODBC driver to point to this database.
Grouping is often used to help analyze report data, as it can draw a clearer picture of what is in the data. For example, you could create grouped report that would show records by state, so all of the sales for a particular state would be shown together.
But what if you want to group on an item not found in the database? Or if you want to re-order the data? Crystal Reports provides a feature called "specified grouping" that will allow you to create your own custom groups to display the data as you like.
In this tutorial, we will look at how to create a specified group using some of the sample data that ships with Crystal Reports. We will create an "Employee Listing" report that shows the country where employees live and then we will create a specified group to group these countries into "North America" and "Europe" respectively.
1. Open Crystal Reports 2008 from the Start menu
2. Select File > New to create a new Standard Report
3. Under "Available Data Sources", double-click the option for "Create New Connection" and double-click "ODBC (RDO)" to open the standard ODBC dialog.
4. Select "Xtreme Sample Database" and click Finish to return to the Standard Report Wizard.
5. Expand the "Tables" section and double-click to select the "Employee" and "Employee_Addresses" tables and then click "Next" to continue.
6. The next step of the wizard is for specifying the links between the two tables. In this instance, both tables have a common key and the link has already been created for you, so you can click "Next" to continue.
7. In the next dialog, select the fields for your report-- to select a field, highlight it in the list on the left and then click the right-arrow button to move it to the list on the right. Select the following fields:
Employee.First Name
Employee.Last Name
Employee.Position
Employee_Addresses.City
Employee_Addresses.Region
Employee_Addresses.Country
And click "Finish" when you are done. You will end up with a simple listing report that matches the fields you have selected.
8. Next, we are going to insert our group-- select the Insert menu then "Group" to open the Insert Group dialog.
9. Using the first drop down list, select the Employee_Addresses.Country field and in the second drop-down box, select "In Specified Order"
10. This will change the dialog to show a "Specified Order" tab. In the text box marked "Named Group" enter the names of your groups, pressing enter after each. In this example, we are going to create two groups-- "North America" and "Europe"
11. Once you have entered these two groups, click to select the "Europe" group and click "Edit"
12. In the dialogue named "Defined Named Group" change the drop-down list to "Is one of" and select the countries of "UK" and "France" and click OK. Repeat this same action with the "North America" group, adding "Canada" and "USA"
Note:
You may have noticed there is also an "others" tab that specifies what will occur when there is a country that does not meet the criteria you have specified. Use the options on this tab to set whether these records will be shown in their own groups, a custom-named group or not shown at all.
13. When you have finished editing your specified groups, click OK to return to your report, which should now show the two groups of "North America" and "Europe" as well as an "Others" group if you took the default settings.
You can use this technique anywhere you have a group inserted into your report.
Free Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010
SAP has released Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 and has made it free for Visual Studio developers who are looking to integrate reports into their .NET applications.
This new version provides developers with the ability to leverage features from the Crystal Reports 2008 release, as well as a new WPF viewer (shown below) for integrating into applications that use the Windows Presentation Framework.
You can check out what's new for in this release from the PDF available here. And you can download your own copy from: http://www.businessobjects.com/jump/xi/crvs2010/default.asp
This new version provides developers with the ability to leverage features from the Crystal Reports 2008 release, as well as a new WPF viewer (shown below) for integrating into applications that use the Windows Presentation Framework.
You can check out what's new for in this release from the PDF available here. And you can download your own copy from: http://www.businessobjects.com/jump/xi/crvs2010/default.asp
Tip: Setting the Default Formula Syntax
Crystal Reports 2011: Give'em what they want!
There are few things I look forward to more than a new version of Crystal Reports—and I am in luck, as Crystal Reports 2011 is just around the corner. They say that with BusinessObjects software, there are “integration” releases and “innovation” releases, and Crystal Reports 2011 is definitely a step forward in the right direction, providing tighter integration with SAP data sources, but there are still some features that hardened report developers and end-users are going to love
And first and foremost, is the new Excel 2007 export format. In a perfect world, users would be content to view their beautifully formatted reports online, but alas it is not a perfect world. The comment I most often hear is “Great report design, can I export that to Excel?” (To which I roll my eyes in the back of my head like I am having a seizure)
Unfortunately, users love to export their Crystal Reports to Excel, where they can chop, change and re-arrange the data as they see fit. Crystal Reports has always had an Excel export, but with Crystal Reports 2011, this has been updated to support Excel 2007 and produces .XLSX files which can have up to 1 million rows in them. In addition, this export format uses compression technology to make smaller file sizes.
So if your users are clamouring to get at their report data set, they are going to love this release! And make sure you remind them that while Crystal Reports 2011 does provide a great export format for Excel, they could be using LiveOffice and cut out the exporting step all together. If you are going to use Excel, might as well use it the smart way!
And first and foremost, is the new Excel 2007 export format. In a perfect world, users would be content to view their beautifully formatted reports online, but alas it is not a perfect world. The comment I most often hear is “Great report design, can I export that to Excel?” (To which I roll my eyes in the back of my head like I am having a seizure)
Unfortunately, users love to export their Crystal Reports to Excel, where they can chop, change and re-arrange the data as they see fit. Crystal Reports has always had an Excel export, but with Crystal Reports 2011, this has been updated to support Excel 2007 and produces .XLSX files which can have up to 1 million rows in them. In addition, this export format uses compression technology to make smaller file sizes.
So if your users are clamouring to get at their report data set, they are going to love this release! And make sure you remind them that while Crystal Reports 2011 does provide a great export format for Excel, they could be using LiveOffice and cut out the exporting step all together. If you are going to use Excel, might as well use it the smart way!
Bringing Flash to the iPhone
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368965,00.asp
In what has to be good news for Adobe Flash developers (and Xcelsius developers as well,) Apple has eased it's restrictions on the tools that developers can use, meaning the Adobe crowd can once again export their applications for use on the iPhone. What will this mean for Xcelsius? Stay tuned for more details.
In what has to be good news for Adobe Flash developers (and Xcelsius developers as well,) Apple has eased it's restrictions on the tools that developers can use, meaning the Adobe crowd can once again export their applications for use on the iPhone. What will this mean for Xcelsius? Stay tuned for more details.
Tip: Set your default formula language in Crystal Reports
Are you tired of setting the formula syntax you want to us every time you create a formula? By default, the formula editor will use the Crystal syntax option but you can change this to default to basic syntax by selecting File > Options and then clicking on the Formula Editor tab. You can then use the drop-down at the bottom of the page to select your default formula syntax.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)