[b]Methods of distributing Crystal Reports with minimum fuss[/b]

[Nassy]

Hi everyone,

I currently have Crystal Reports 9 Advanced which I may upgrade to Crystal 10. I am designing a set of reports which I would like to store in different folders on our network, each folder with different permissions for different users. What I am not so sure of however is how to allow these users to view these reports. Whichever method I use it is vital that the end user can input parameters to filter the report results from live data.

So... Can anyone tell me what is the easiest way to achieve what I want? Which is best out of these options:

a) Install third party Crystal Report viewers on different
user machines
b) Install the Crystal client on different user machines
(obviously this will cost - I would need to find out about licensing)
c) Use the viewers that come with RAS

I am not sure about the 3rd option as ours users won't be accessing reports via a web interface until later on. I also understand that calling the RAS viewers from a web interface involves some coding knowledge and is not that plain sailing. My boss however has said some things about the Win forms viewer . Does anyone know if I can use this viewer to achieve the results I want?

If anyone can give me some pointers on this it would be great as I find this whole reports distribution issue very confusing and looking at the BO website just confuses me more.

Nassy

 

[synapsevampire]

One option that you omitted is Crystal Enterprise, but again, that's web based and if your users cannot use the web, then this and RAS do you no good.

I would suggest that Crystal Enterprise is the easiest, and the most expensive.

Here are some good 3rd party viewers:

http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html

I'm most familiar with:

http://www.milletsoftware.com

-k

 

[Nassy]

Hi

Thanks for the quick response. Really appreciate this. Crystal Entreprise is too pricey for our organisation at the moment - they may consider it later on but not at this stage in the project.

So one more quick question: I think I may go down the third party viewers route. I have already looked at the one by milletsoftware and it's great. Do you know anything however about the Win forms viewer ? And is it merely just another web-enabled viewer like the other RAS viewers? Only ask as my boss has said he thinks using this viewer may be the way forward but actually I find little mention of it on the BO website.

Otherwise I will strongly recommend to my boss that we use a third party viewer.

Thanks again

Nassy

 

[Madawc]

You could always add a password parameter: something the user has to enter correctly to get the data they wanted. If they make a valid request but with the wrong password, they get a warning message.

Madawc Williams (East Anglia)

 

[Nassy]

Thanks. I may password protect my reports as well as putting them in various folders.