User login based reports?

[Balmark]

Hi,

I'm currently looking at using Crystal Reports for a reporting solution, however, I'm not too sure if some of what I need is possible with it. I'm hoping someone will be able to help me with a few questions.

I'm wondering if I can set up crystal reports like this, using the login security that exists.

I want to have crystal reports have reports available to users within groups, when they view the reports, it will populate the data based on the group (1 report with different results for each group of users)

I've read that this may not be possible, but I was considering writing a Java based admin tool to administer the CR users, assign them to 'my' groups I admin with my admin tool, then after creating a report I can use my tool to deploy the report and modify it for each group (the report being deployed would be modified for each group and deployed to each users inbox)?

(In the example below.. consider that there might be many different departments with multiple users that can view the reports and there can many different reports, if the basic reports are the same but 1 parameter is different (for the different departments) which is based on the group they're attached with, do I need to create 1 new report for each department, which would be a nightmare to maintain.. )

An example of what I'm trying to do would be:
Users in Departments A, B, C, D each need to run a report Report1

Report1 pulls the salary for every member in their own department and makes it viewable

Each department should never be able to see the others


If the basic query behind the report was
select * from employee_table where department = 'Department A'

Can I populate 'Department A' based on the users login+group or do I have to make a Report1 for Department A, a Report1 for Department B and so on, then maintain each?

Also is the very maximum number of concurrent users allowed for a crystal reports server 20? I was hoping to have upto 120 concurrent users.

Thanks for reading and I love you for replying

Bal


ps. I know alot of that reads bad, but the summary is:

Can one user view different data to another user looking at the same report, having the report take the logged in users group into account?

 

[IdoMillet]

The enterprise level platform provides that type of functionality. If your budget/scope requires a simpler solution, consider a 3rd-party tool (see list at:

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

My DataLink Viewer provides a way to restrict records based on the user Window's login.

- Ido

view, e-mail, export, burst, distribute, and schedule Crystal Reports.

http://www.MilletSoftware.com

 

[Balmark]

Thanks IdoMillet

You're talking about Crystal Reports Enterprise (now Business Objects Enterprise XI ?)

Time to read up on data link viewers *grin*, is this an application you wrote that sits in the application layer (I was trying to get my head around the Business Enterprise XI whitepapers, I'm still not sure where 'my code' is meant to sit in there, the BOE server has a web interface for viewing reports, do I just ignore this and do my own by using the API to get reports in html lets say? All the different versions/products of 'crystal reports/business objects' is pretty confussing)

The business objects enterprise product seems to be very broken up, can I plugin to any part or are there parts of this that are core business objects?

I'm sorry if I sound like a complete novice where this is concerned, its probably because I am, I'm in the pre design phase, so I don't want to end up starting off on the wrong track using the wrong technologies.

Thanks,

Bal

 

[Balmark]

Doh, I thought data link viewers were part of Business Objects Enterprise, I just saw them on the link you provided (I had assumed the link was just a link to freeware/open source reporting tools)

 

[midnightdsob]

You could do

select *
from employee_table a,
employee_table b
where b.employee_id = CurrentCEUserName
and a.employee_id = b.employee_id
and a.department = 'Department A'


Or something similiar. The main thing, assuming that you're user is logging into Crystal Enterprise is to pull the CurrentCEUserName special field and compare it to your employee table to get a list of valid departments they can see. Assuming that your crystal user is logging in to crystal with the same ID as thier employee ID.