How would you like your reports to be automatically run, exported to a PDF and delivered to your Email InBox every Monday morning at 6am? The Crystal Reports designer doesn’t provide a way to do this (unless you upgrade to CR Server or BO Enterprise). But if you look at third party products like those on my LINKS page you will find several reasonably priced or free tools that do this. Some do even more.  So every year I go through the list and publish a feature comparison on my blog.

I discovered and added one new tool this year, bringing the pool of reviewed tools up to nine. The article provides a brief introduction to each product and describes what sets that product apart. Then there is a detailed feature matrix that shows the key specifics for comparison, including prices and the install base. To clarify the matrix I have written a feature glossary to explain what each feature means. Finally there are links to the vendor websites so that you can get more information on each product.

In May I will be updating a separate article covering server based scheduling tools. If you think one person can manage all of your scheduling you are probably fine with one of these desktop tools, regardless of the number of people receiving the scheduled output. But if you plan to have multiple people scheduling reports then you may want to consider a server based tool.