Tray/Bin selection, is it possible ?

[DeleGreg]

Hi all,

we've been using CR8 and 9 for a few years, with a classic web-use :

-asp pages, SQLServer or Oracle DB
-using the CR activex viewer for client side print-preview

for the past years, we've been looking for a solution to our main problem :
-some of our reports need to print some pages on different bins/trays !

a few examples :
-tabular report followed by a summary, summary needs to print on pre-printed paper
-one invoice needs to print first page on pre-printed, but subsequent pages on white, batch printing a 100 invoices with no idea of the number of pages per invoice

for all our efforts, no solution seems to exist for doing just that

any help would be greatly appreciated

thanks for your time

Greg

PS : we are actually hiring asp/crystal devs in bordeaux (france), contact us with resume

 

[IdoMillet]

I know of no way to achieve this just with Crystal. However, check the list of 3rd-party tools at

http://www.kenhamady.com/bookmarks.html

.

In the case of my Visual CUT software, the functionality you describe is provided through a special command line argument called After_Burst_Batch. It's described in the user manual, which you can download from my web site.

hth,
- Ido

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

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

 

[DeleGreg]

Hi Ido,

i just read your product's manual, quite a nice product btw

alas i can't use it :

our reports needs to be accessed through the web server
(db server is in dmz)
so the local batch option is unusable

however maybe we could
1-export to pdf
2-during the export, create a txt file containing the page numbers due to print on the alternate tray (using CUT Light for example)
3-prompt the user to download BOTH the pdf and the txt file
4-user uses a 3rd party product to printout the pdf and alternate the trays based on the txt file content

do you think CUT Light could do just that ?
do you know of a 3rd party product providing this kind of pdf printing features ?

thanks for your help and advice

DLG

 

[crystalreporting]

Hmmm - is multiple printers an option? Install the same printer again, giving it a different name and forcing it to use a specific tray - call it something like HP4000 Lower Tray. You can then select which printer to use when designing your reports, based on where you want the ouput to go.

Peter Shirley

http://www.linkcorp.com

 

[DeleGreg]

Nice try, though the real problem is that we need to change the tray DURING report execution. For example, while printing invoices, we need to be able to print the first page of each invoice on Pre-Printed Paper (PPP), but not the other pages. On a large invoice batch, we may have to print as follow :
page 1 on PPP, pages 2-4 on white, (first invoice)
5 on PPP, then 6 on white, (second)
7 PPP, 8-12 white, (third)
13 PPP, 14 white, (fourth)
etc...
another example, financial transfers report, prints the list of transfers generated by the software and summaries for each batch of transfers made, the lists are for checking purposes, the summaries go to the bank (signed validations) so :
pages 1-5 (list) white, page 6 (summary) PPP,
pages 7-8 (list) white, page 9 (summary) PPP,
etc...

so you see we have multiple problems,
1- we are in web mode, no CR installed on the clients
2- we are not able to calculate the number of pages of each entity anywhere except during report execution
3- we need the pages to print sorted, no way to burst the PPP pages, then the white ones

at the time being, we are studying a method to do :
-server side pdf export of the report
-use a UDFL in CR to create a txt file during report execution, containing the page numbers for the PPP pages
-server-side zipping of both resulting files
-client downloads the zip file, renamed to *.mtp (multiple tray printing)
-client machine has a software installed, associated to mtp extension, that temporarily unzips the files, loads the pdf in a pdf printing engine and starts 'n' print jobs using the txt file to control destination

again thanks for the time and advice,
we know this is a complicated problem, we've been looking for solutions for this for a year or so...

 

[putts]

IdoMillet,
Question for you.

I was unable to find it in your user manual but did you say that using your third party software this could be done.

We have a job that runs (VB6) that's an EXE that prints out this report that is several several pages long.

For the most part, it goes invoice/check/invoice/check.

Well, obviously, we need to print the checks out on a different kind of paper than the invoices so we are looking for a way to do that exact functionality. This page goes to this tray, this to that one, this back to the first tray, this back to the second.

If someone could either tell me how that's done or in the direction of something that could do that for us - that'd be great.

 

[IdoMillet]

The answer is yes. Just download the user manual and read about the "After_Burst_Batch" command line argument.

Cheers,
- Ido

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

http://www.MilletSoftware.com