Any suggestions/ideas to improve CR charting/graphing?

[Dan3D]

As the author of the one-and-only graphing add-in to Crystal Reports, I've gotten a lot of good ideas over the last couple of years from monitoring this forum and seeing what common frustrations programmers face with the charting component in CR. In rough terms, about a 1/3 of these frustations insprired "solutions/features" in our CRChart product, 1/3 of them could not be implemented because of limitations in the way we get data/information from CR and the last 1/3 are on the "maybe" list for the future.

But to the extent the nice moderators allow it, I'm quite interested in hearing about the most desired abilities/improvements. If there is any sort of consensus, I will work diligently to make sure they become features in our next update.

Thanks,

Dan @ 3D


Dan Weingart
OEM Technical Manager
Three D Graphics, Inc.

http://www.threedgraphics.com

 

[paulmarr]

Hi Dan

Thanks for asking - as a report designer - I am constantly frustrated with business users ordering up graphs that can be accomplished in Excel easily but are either harder or impossible in Crystal.

Stuff like:

- Multi value axis
- the ability to create my own custom legend labels -because Crystal wants to use the formula name (for example @profitmargin) instead of the giving the designer the option to change it (I often have to create my own legend to suit the report using text objects for labels and colour legend)
- extra option to place the data label in more locations particularly in the legend when it is not a pie chart or below the baseline and above the axis labels.
- The ability to format the unit of measure - "$" "%" something dynamic that can pick up the formatting from the data.

- A solution to the absolutely terrible workaround required to chart a Sum of a sum (A Summary based on another) Perhaps changing the processing position of the graph until the end of the 2nd pass might then allow this?

Once again thank you for giving us the opportunity to give you some feedback. Please continue to develop this part of the program - it is generally excellent and we all want to continue to improve the tool!

cheers
paulmarr

 

[IdoMillet]

Dan,

First on my list is improving the GUI so it is easier to find and set various options.

Cheers,
- Ido

view, e-mail, export, burst, distribute, and schedule Crystal Reports.

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

 

[lbass]

A few I can think of off the top of my head:

1-Removal of the "Sum of", etc., or symbols like "@" in the chart titles/legends.

2-Charts in groups show "For" followed by the group instance, and sometimes with an inexplicable gap between "For" and the group subtitle. These group subtitles also wrap and overlap the chart. These things can manually be changed, but after refreshing, the problems appear again. I've stopped using the group subtitle for this reason, and instead create one in the main report.

3-The ability to use dates for grouping to maintain chronological order, but display the dates in a different format.

-LB

 

[Dan3D]

Thanks for the excellent ideas!

To the extent that you can post "examples" (from CR, Excel or the web) please do, as sometimes its hard to convey in words the visual result you are trying to obtain. You can send these to crchart@threedgraphics.com

Paulmarr, you already CAN override the labels on legends (in CR10 or higher I think). Just right click on the label and one of the menu items is something like "define label"

Ido, I have no control over the gui :-(
That part is maintained by BO. I can only control the charting library the GUI talks to.

-Dan


Dan Weingart
OEM Technical Manager
Three D Graphics, Inc.

http://www.threedgraphics.com