How to qualify data prior to running and inform user...

[bessebo]

This may be more of a Crystal Report question that a CE questions but, if so, please let me know. We are running Crystal Enterprise 9 and a report request came to me requesting that I generate a certificate (basically a report with a certain format that will be sent to a customer) based upon input of some prompts. Two of the prompts will be Starting Serial Number and the other will be Ending Serial Number. From this information I will have to generate a series of sequential serial numbers beginning with the Starting Serial Number and finishing with the Ending Serial Number. Not rocket science here... My issue comes with the fact that a user could inadvertently type in an incorrect serial number which could result in a HUGE report. Or a user could type in a larger number for the begnning number than the ending number. So, I need to have a way to prompt back to the user when they input bogus data. I'm not sure how to approach this. It sounds like it would not be a straightforward report and would require some development using the SDK. Any help I would certainly appreciate. I still want the interface to be Crystal Enteprise, if at all possible. I have developed some VB code in the past that prompts for data and prints a Crystal Report but I would like to stay within the framework of Crystal Enterprise. Any ideas, opinions, sample code, direction would be appreciated.

Regards,
Bessebo

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
IMHO, the best way to handle this would be in code ( in a csp page ) to prompt for the 2 numbers, run value, range and validity checks, and only if they are the way you want them, pass them to the report itself..
OR
You could build a formula in the report to check on the same kind of stuff ( first lower then last, limited span between, etc) and set a flag - use that flag to show an error message ( an otherwise supressed text item on the report) or to let the report run as normal.

hth,

 

[bessebo]

TurkBear,
I really have no idea how to start with this. I would like the framework to be still within Crystal Enterprise. Have you done such a thing before within CE, assuming that the user is logged into CE and has clicked on the Schedule button to run the report. Developing CSP pages is not a skill of mine and any sample code or more direction would be helpful. I would like to handle it in this fashion. That is a good alternative solution to just pass an error message and print that on the report. I would actually do that within a stored procedure but somehow I would love to spit back an error right when the prompts are entered rather than when the report completes and they have to open it up to view the error.
Any test code or more help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Bob

 

[Turkbear]

Hi, If your users are accessing the report by ePortfolio, then the code solution will be too complex to implement - too much code would need to be added to the existing csp pages.

If they are not using 'view on demand' , the formula option might not be viable either, since they would not see the error until the report actually ran ( unless the always use run now )

Sorry, but since we use custom csp,asp and javascript for our user interface, I don't know how to modify the ePortfolio pages to get what you need.

 

[bessebo]

Sounds like it might make sense to use custom csp, asp, and java rather than using their shell... I'll probably use the error message option that they will see after it runs...

Thanks