Using Events in Crystal Enterprise 9 1

[bessebo]

Can someone direct me to some documentation on using events within Crystal Enterprise 9.

Currently I have 4 manual reports that are certificates that we send to our customers. Currently a shipping user manually enters a sales order number for the specific certificate to be printed after the product is shipped in our ERP system. I have been tasked to make this whole process happend automatically when product is shipped. So, I'm thinking that I need to create a trigger on the table that contains the status of the shipment and what I will probably do is write to a custom table the sales order number of the order whose status has just changed to "shipped/transferred". Then what I will probably do is make a determination based on a particular line number which certificate to print. I also have to make sure that the certificate prints out for the user that just shipped the product. I think I can just grab the network NT user name and write that to the table as well.
I figure I'll have to set up recurring jobs or a job with events to run constantly out there under specific users that I know ship product for us. Based on what gets shipped I will have to create a file out in a network location which will make the job kick off. But somehow I will have to clear out the file after it prints and I will probably have to set up separate folders for each shipper user so that I'm only looking at their folder to decide or not what report to print.
If I have completely confused you I wouldn't doubt it. I would love any suggestions from anyone who has done anything remotely along these lines. I will also clear up any questions you may have.

Thanks,
Bessebo

 

[ShortyA]

On the launchpad for Crystal Enterprise there is a link to the Administrators Guide. This will provide information on events including the types, how to use them etc.

Hope this helps.
ShortyA

 

[bessebo]

Thanks for the info. I would love to hear someone out there who actually use file-based or schedule-based events with Crystal Enterprise, how they create the file which triggers the event, how they delete the file after the event is triggered, etc. I have a feeling not many people use events with CE.

 

[ShortyA]

You're in luck on the file-based events as they are used on the current site I am working on.

The event only occurs when the file appears as you have suggested above. For example if you have a file called report.txt that is created and you want to use this as a trigger.

1:01pm - Report.TXT - doesn't exist.
1:02pm - Report.TXT is created
1:02pm - The Event Server will recognise the file and an event will be triggered.

The Report.TXT file must be deleted and we use schedules on the Crystal Enterprise server to remove the file overnight eg via a batch file.

Hope this helps.
ShortyA

 

[bessebo]

Thanks for the info. I think what I will have to do is, assuming there are 4 users who can ship product, I could have 4 network folders that I could create files in (based on the username). It is very unlikely that one particular user would ship product within a span of say 5 minutes. So I wouldn't have to worry about multiple saves by one particular user within a short span. I am going to have to start sketching this out and see what I can come up with but thanks for responding.

Regards,
Bessebo