Crystal Reports Basic Training

[sewilj]

Not sure if this is the right Forum for this but I'll put it out into the playing field anyway.

I have been tasked with providing basic Crystal Reports training to about 5 supervisors within my department (it’s been highlighted by a consultant that no-body else really understands what I do with Crystal). None of these are particularly IT literate; they can all use Office and other basic software so I do not want to baffle them with science. My direct manager has been on a 3 day Crystal Reports training course but has remembered little from the course as it appeared to be too unstructured, and went into too much detail. I wanted to just stick to the bare basics and thought that I would train them on the following (not necessarily in order)

Connecting to the Data source. This will be done through a Crystal Dictionary to keep things simpler.
Adding Groups
Totals and sub-totals
Parameters
Report Formatting
Suppressing/Drill Down
Select Expert
Sort Order

As many of you who participate in these forums are Crystal Reports Trainers and Advanced Users I thought it might be good to pick your brains. I need to keep things basic so have limited the topics to the above. Is this too much for a basic course, or not enough?

I will be putting the training material together myself but can anyone give me any pointers on the best way to do this?

How long should the course be? I would like to keep it between half to a full day - is this possible with the topics above?

Is using a dictionary the best way for database connection for new users? As far as I can see it would appear to be so, but I could be wrong?

Any useful advice would be greatly appreciated


Lewis
United Kingdom

 

[kenhamady]

Since CR dropped support for dictionaries in v9, and is already rumbling about v10, you might want to create views in the database for them to use. That gets you out of covering tables and links in the beginning. The rest is can be covered in a day and looks like a pretty good start.

Ken Hamady, On-site Custom Crystal Reports Training & Consulting
Public classes and individual training.
Expert's Guide to Formulas / Tips and Tricks / Guide to Crystal in VB

http://www.kenhamady.com/

- tek@kenhamady.com

 

[Jacque]

A few years ago I was tasked with providing crystal training, it went very well and was well received. We did 2 half days, to allow attendies to be able to maintain their normal workload and not be away from their jobs for an entire day.

Ask for report suggestions prior to the class, using the tables/views for these might make it easier for your students to grasp.

If time permits, creat an unformatted report, very generic report using their suggestion to take with them. It will provide them something applicable to review and recreate.

Jacque