CE eBrochure of Reports 1

[jedownsjr]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to combine multiple reports that are published in CE in some manner so that they can all be printed at one time in order? The issue here is that we have many reports and users do not want to have to go into each individual report, view it then print it, then go on to the next report and so on. The goal is some way to combine all reports into a single print queue or single view, like an online eBrochure of sorts to eliminate repetition. A way to combine multiple reports into one PDF document to print would be ideal. However, reports must run overnight instead of on demand, and printing may be to printers not within our network. I'm open to ideas using just CE or involving code.

 

[rhinok]

CE10 offers the ability to create and schedule Report Packages. These do exactly what you want. Check out the following features list:

http://www.businessobjects.com/global/pdf/products/crystalreports/cr10_feat_ver_ed.pdf

~Kurt

 

[rhinok]

Sorry, wrong link:

http://www.businessobjects.com/global/pdf/products/crystalenterprise/ce_whatsnew.pdf

~Kurt

 

[jedownsjr]

Thank you for your reply. This is good information which will be helpful in evaluating our upgrade to CE v10. Unfortunately, we are using CE v8.5 and are tasked with providing this online package using our current version. Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[LMCRYER]

Its not the best way to do this - but I've seen it done (and it works)

Go into the first report that will run (inside of Crystal Reports, not CE) and then add in page footers on the bottom.
Insert each of the other reports within a new footer, and do NOT link them to the master report.

This will cause them to print out all together, one after another, when pushed to CE.

I did this with some of our stuff and used this "big version" in a hidden area (unavailable to the users) and schedule it to run overnight and print out. No problems so far, and its been running for 3 weeks now.

LMC

LMC cryerlisa@hotmail.com

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[bdreed35]

You might think about using Events from within CE 8.5.

You can sort of daisy chain those report together making them dependent on the one before.

Basically, create a Schedule based Success event for each report that you want to print in order.
When you schedule the first report, make sure you use one of the "with events" options under the schedule tab.
Set the first report to run at a certain time, and then fire the event after it runs.
Schedule the next report for the same time, but make it wait until the first reports success event fires before it will run. Make sure that you also fire a seperate success event when that report completes.
Continue this process for as many reports as you need.
The last report in the chain does not need to activate an event.

This isn't the best way to do it, but it just might be what you need.

~Brian