Archive for April, 2007



Are 2 BO user groups better than one?

Saturday 28 April 2007 @ 10:17 pm

The current BO partner in Michigan is challenging the former BO partner in Michigan for control of the regional user group. The former partner, CTTS, has a history of sponsoring 3 or 4 very popular full-day meetings each year. According to CTTS, these meetings are well attended and have multiple technical sessions to choose from. I have posted the agenda from their March meeting as an example. More than 75 people braved a snowstorm to attend this meeting. BO provided no promotion, no financial support and no speakers. Their next meeting is scheduled for June 29th and I have also posted the agenda for that meeting.

The official partner for Michigan, DataSpace, isn’t participating in the existing meetings. They have decided to use the power of the BO web site to create (or recreate) the group. They have scheduled a separate meeting Continue Reading »
Are 2 BO user groups better than one?




BO settles lawsuit with former partner

Sunday 22 April 2007 @ 1:29 pm

I just heard from Michael Ward of CTTS in Michigan who has settled his lawsuit with Business Objects. If you haven’t already, you can read my original article on this suit. This story is also written up in CRN. While the financial settlement is ‘substantial’, I found that the big news is in the concession BO made regarding training. Continue Reading »
BO settles lawsuit with former partner




New Features for Visual Cut

Monday 9 April 2007 @ 9:56 am

Ido Millet has added 2 new features to Visual Cut – his Scheduling/Emailing/Bursting/Exporting tool.

You can now import multi-page TIFF files into your pdf exports. For instance you could combine scanned documents (like shipping documents) into your exported report (like an invoice) before emailing it to your customers.

Also, the PDF Export can now generate Form Fields based on formulas placed on the report. This means that you can use Crystal Reports to design pdf forms, and Visual CUT to generate and distribute these forms for your users to fill out.

Contact me if you want more information on Visual Cut or other third party tools. Tell me what you need to do and I can recommend the correct tool.




Installing CR7 on Windows Vista

Monday 9 April 2007 @ 9:41 am

I had a reader ask me about installing Crystal Reports version 7 on Windows Vista. It seems that the CR7 install crashes mid way through. Since I have avoided Vista so far so I didn’t have much advice to offer. Well he later told me that he got it to work by installing up to the point of the crash and then copying the rest of the files into the program folder. A week later he says that it seem to run fine. I am not sure I would recommend this combination or method, but I rarely argue with something that works. If anyone has a different experience or other problems with CR/Vista let me know.





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