Drop Down Menu to include new data

[kieso]

I want the users of my report to be able to assess the results of an individual driver, or a short list of drivers (such as those on their three month trial probation period) but I don’t want them to have to type it in. I’d like to use a drop down menu.

When I work in CREATE PARAMETER FIELD there is an option to SELECT OR ENTER VALUE TO ADD. I went in and highlighted all the drivers we currently have on staff (those that are now in the database), and I was able to create a menu of choices.

My concern is that this approach will not include new drivers as they come on board.

Question 1
Is there some sort of wild card I can use so we’ll see all drivers not just those from before the report was created?

Question 2
What I’d REALLY love is some way of providing a list of only those drivers STILL driving, by eliminating those that no longer work for us and including the new ones.
- Our dispatcher is required to enter relevant information regarding each driver into this database, so if need be I think there's an existing table of active drivers.
- There is also a paramenter field for delivery date range, so just using those drivers that had a run within that range is also a possible approach.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Rodger

 

[IdoMillet]

No wild cards... )
Crystal doesn't support Dynamic Pick Lists.

My DataLink Viewer provides the functionality you are describing, including showing only drivers that are active in the dynamic parameter.

Cheers,
- Ido CUT, Visual CUT, and DataLink Viewer:
view, e-mail, export, burst, distribute, and schedule Crystal Reports.

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

 

[kieso]

No no Ido.... you don't understand

Short responses to my questions are fine, but usually they are twelve word solutions to my novella style questions.... not confirmations that it's impossible

)

I checked out your site, and the idea sounds great, but this report is being run on UPS Logistics' report viewer. I won't be adding anything on to that, unfortunately.

Thanks for the response though. I guess I'll just leave the report with all drivers included, and force a new page for each driver. That way I can just have the dispatcher scroll through till he finds the guy he wants to review and prints a select range of pages.

Not very elegant, but a lot better than the way he's doing it now

Thanks

Rodger

 

[ulicki]

Hi Rodger,

You may want to think about importing a pick list into your parameter field periodically. You could write another report against the database that generates the list and export it to a text file. There is an article on crystal decisions web site on how to do this. You can also import both values and descriptions. So that the value can be the primary key for the driver and the description as the name. You can then have the paramater only display the description.

Hope this helps,

Mike

 

[kieso]

Thanks Mike

The suggestion sounds perfect. Where's the article? I searched on "Crystal Decisions" and didn't find anything.

If a text file is necessary, I think I could even get our AS400 query to write it automatically every morning.

Much thanks again

Take Care

Rodger

 

[chelseatech]

I'm currently developing a utility to do bulk updates of folder of reports to update parameter pick lists, and then save the report again with the updated list.

Keep an eye on my web site. It will be available within a month or so. Editor and Publisher of Crystal Clear

http://www.chelseatech.co.nz/pubs.htm

 

[sbdavis]

As pointed out, adding new drivers dynamically is a problem since CR does not support dynamic pick lists. However, if you want to filter your drivers to just show the ones that are still driving, you can do that by creating a database view, and then using the view name in the pick list. For example:

create view ACTIVE_DRIVERS as select NAME from DRIVER_TABLE where ACTIVE = 'Y';

Then in your pick list use the table ACTIVE_DRIVERS and field NAME. You pick list will now just contain the names of active drivers.

With a little ingenuity, this technique will can be extended to create a single pick list from two tables, where a choice in one table controls the choices in a second table.