Running Crystal Reports from within Great Plains

[greese]

I have Crystal Reports 10 and have made several reports with it to run aginast my Great Plains companies. The reports run great, the problem is that I am the only one who can run them because I am the only one with Crystal on my computer. It's getting old runnning more and more of these for the people in my office.

What do I have to do to make it so other users can run these Crystal reports themselves, choose parameters etc from within Great Plains.

From searching the threads, it looks like this is possible, but I didn't see anything covering how to do it. If any of you have gone down this path before and can point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

greese

 

[Luvsql]

With Crystal 10, you don't get the web deployment CD that you would have gotten with previous versions. I have all reports on a website and have their URL's setup as shortcuts within Great Plains (cheap and easy way). However, since you're using 10 and don't have the web deployment CD, you could purchase a product that links a crystal report to a specific Great Plains report, then uses those parameters (eg. if you have a SOP Invoice in crystal, you could have Great Plains use the Crystal Report instead of the Great Plains one for whatever the invoice the user chooses). The only problem with this is it won't work with customized reports that don't link to Great Plains core reports.

We purchased Crystal Reports Advanced, which came with the web CD that allowed us to deploy via website. It was only $1500 Cdn for version 9. That could be something to consider.

 

[greese]

Crystal 10 came with a CD for Crystal enterprise 10. Is that the web deployment CD you are talking about? I have not given it much of a look but that it seems to have somehting to do with deploying reports on a web server

 

[Luvsql]

Yes, that's it (I assume you bought Crystal separately from Great Plains then, as they don't ship CE). We use the deployment of reports on a web server as it servers most of our purposes. If you need to link the parameter from a crystal report to a parameter a user chooses within Great PLians, you will need to add on some vb code or purchase a third party that will do that for you.

 

[snoopdougie]

You can purchase a 3rd Party product called Crystallizer
(

http://www.synergistixcorp.com/products/crystallizer)

-- they have a demo download if you want to test. I think it is used more for replacing GP invoices and other business forms with Crystal ones.

The other option requires some VB/VBA programming knowledge:

You can add the Crystal 10 viewer ActiveX control to a user form in Great Plains VBA and use it to display various reports.

Alternatively, you can create a separate VB or .NET project with the Crystal ActiveX viewer, give users a list of reports which can then be displayed.

I'm pretty sure there is a demo of this on 1vbstreet or similar site.

Good luck

 

[greese]

thanks! I'll check that out. I don't have a problem with VB. I managed to get Crystal enterprise running but it is a little clunky and awkward. I would like to be able to just add reports as a palette item or something. I will check out the vb way today and see where it gets me.

thanks again!

 

[jymm]

There is another product that you can buy for cheap from

http://www.rocktonsoftware.com

that will allow you to launch any Crystal report from any GP window --- pretty darn slick - last time I bought it was $1,500 --- but you can also have the reports go across all company databases which is why some people do it.

no more crystal enterprise needed...

 

[greese]

Crystal enterprise is a freakin' pain. It is almost easier to go back to all the MS Access reports I have.

I will check this out. Thanks!

 

[jymm]

btw - Rockton also has a free utility called Lookup Plus - you can use it to auto lookup things like Customer Id & Vendor ID --- VERY slick --- the pay version is like $500 and does more, but the free version was slick for us.

installing reports using his stuff was SLICK too...

Our 'partner' had this guy come to a user demo one day and our main accountant called me mid way through the meeting to come out and see Rockton's stuff --- best part of the day.

 

[Luvsql]

I really like Rockton's stuff, however, we need the ability to deploy reports outside of the application (for our non-accounting users and management type people who do not have access to Great Plains). We only have a certain number of Great Plains licenses (which cost over $3400 to buy just one). We also have other sql databases that require reports. I found that Crytal Enterprise (using unmanaged reports using asp pages within IIS) works great for this.

 

[jymm]

I use Rockton to create the ones that we need from GP and also develop the non GP Crsytal reports then use 1) ReCrystallize pro --- which will make the ASP pages for you (with AD security I can keep the access problems down pretty well) -or- 2) use Visual Cut which is just an awsome product for bursting or decollating reports that you might need scheduled

I used CE for about two weeks and find these ways a bit easier to administer --- to each his own though.