One of the perks of using Crystal Reports is the number of third party tools that have been developed to work with the software. My Product Links page has links to more than 70 items.

So it came as a surprise when a user pointed me to a free tool that I had never heard of. This user had asked me if there were tools that would run and export reports from the command line.  I pointed him to my ‘Viewers’ comparison page which has several options. He replied that he had decided to use Crystal Reports Helper which lets you run reports for the command line and export them to a handful of formats. Because it runs from the command line the scripts can be saved in .bat or .cmd files and run from a scheduler. It is a free tool and I had never heard of it.

Crystal Reports Helper was created by Big Ideas Computing Ltd. It was initially created for users of their software application, named dbFront. dbFront lets you quickly build simple web facing applications that allow users to enter and update data. Crystal Reports Helper has since been released it to everyone for free, all you have to do is request it from the vendor.

And thanks to Rich Head of the Greater Iowa Credit Union for sharing this link with me. I haven’t tried Crystal Reports Helper but Rich said it worked fine for him.

One of the managers at SAP recently shared a link with me that I had never seen before.   It is a comprehensive FAQ page for the Crystal Reports product family.  If looks like about 40 pages of material and covers a wide variety of topics.  (For instance, A5 has a searchable list of all the service packs and C5 links to the Knowledge Base).  Here is the outline:

A. Overview
A. 1. SAP Crystal Solutions Overview
A. 2. SAP Crystal Solutions Licensing
A. 3. SAP Crystal Solutions Hardware specs, minimum requirements, etc
A. 4. What is the numbering of versions
A. 5. SAP Crystal Solutions Service Packs
A. 6. SAP Crystal Solutions Product versions
A. 7. SAP Crystal Solutions Maintenance and Support
A. 8. SAP Crystal Solutions compatibility

B. Purchase
B. 1. SAP Store purchase
What versions of SAP Crystal Reports are available through the SAP Store?
What versions of SAP Crystal Server are available through the SAP Store?
SAP CR 2020 and SAP CR 2016 available on selected 3rd party marketplaces.
B. 2. SAP Store additional questions
B. 3. SAP Store Upgrades
B. 4. SAP Store Order Fulfillment
B. 5. End User license agreements (EULA)

C. Installation
C. 1. SAP Crystal Solutions Installation
C. 2. Lost license keys and registration numbers
C. 3. SAP Crystal Solutions How-to Guides
C. 4. SAP Crystal Solutions Videos and Tutorials
C. 5. SAP Crystal Solutions Guided Answers and KBAs
C. 6. SAP Crystal Solutions Third Party Training and Consulting

D. Developers
D. 1. SAP Crystal for Developers
D. 2. Retirement of the SAP Distribution Reselling and PartnerEdge Open Ecosystem

E. Error and Issues Handling
E. 1. SAP Crystal Solutions product tips and tricks
E. 2. Vulnerabilities

F. Other topics
F. 1. SAP Crystal Solutions Third Party Apps
F. 2. Ask your own question
F. 3. Recruitment with SAP Crystal skills

Some of the links in this FAQ, like the link to the knowledge base search, require an SAP “Universal ID” to get full access.  These are free.

There are many ways to deploy Crystal Reports to users. I normally lean toward the simpler and less expensive options, like locally installed viewers, or scheduled delivery of PDF output. But there are environments where a web based option is necessary. The “official” options from SAP are Crystal (Reports) Server and BO Enterprise. But there are other, less expensive products out there that also provide web delivery of Crystal Reports. These third party products allow your users to run and view reports from a browser. You can also centrally manage your report deployment from a browser.

I have created a page on my blog that lists and compares these products, and I update it every Winter with info from the vendors. This year the list features 8 products:

Crystal Reports Server – a traditional Web portal
Report Runner Web Portal – a traditional Web portal
IntelliFront BI – a traditional Web portal
Ripplestone – a traditional Web portal
rePORTAL CR – a traditional Web portal
ReCrystallize Server – a traditional Web portal
ReCrystallize Pro – a launch page generator for the web
Bezlio – a SaaS Web viewer

The blog page mentioned above contains a brief rundown on what each product does and provides links to all of the product web sites. I have also posted a feature matrix (xls) that shows some of the specifics for comparison, including prices.

If you have any feedback to share on these tools I would be happy to hear from you.

Everyone has been talking about the new Java security vulnerability called Log4j. I have been talking to colleagues to determine if this affects Crystal Reports, Crystal Enterprise or anything else in the Crystal ecosystem. SAP put out a note that states that this vulnerability does not affect SAP Business Intelligence 4.2 or 4.3. It doesn’t mention earlier BI versions but these are no longer supported.

There was a support note about this topic, but nothing in the support note mentions Crystal Reports or the Crystal runtime engine used by third party applications. One of my colleagues said that since this is a Java vulnerability, it should not affect stand alone Crystal Reports, and I tend to agree. I also believe that if Crystal Reports were affected it would be mentioned in that support note. The same goes for the Crystal runtime files, but it would be nice if SAP responded specifically to these questions in the discussion above.

Last, thanks to Andrew Baines of Pursuit Technology and Danny Shahrabani of rePORTAL Software for helping me track down and make sense of the SAP support note.  If anyone else has info to share on this topic, please let me know.

I recently helped a new user who wanted to purchase Crystal Reports, but wasn’t sure what product(s) to buy. He had read about a server component, a ‘developer’ component and a viewer, but wasn’t sure what the names were or which he needed. The SAP website didn’t clear things up for him.

“I saw an architecture diagram that broke it into tiers, but that did not help.”

This isn’t the first time I have had this type of question, and I thought my response might help other users.

There are three levels in the Crystal product line (four if you count the Business Objects Enterprise level) but most users only need one, SAP Crystal Reports. That is all I use. Here is the main product page. This is often called the Report Designer or the Developer, but the official name is SAP Crystal Reports. It is the only product that lets you create a Crystal Report.

You can currently buy 2 different editions:

2016 (32-bit)
2020 (64-bit)

If you get a free trial from the product page I think you will get 2020, but if you buy it you can choose either edition. I currently use 2016 because the 64-bit product is relatively new. I also use lots of third party tools that aren’t ready to jump to 64-bit and I don’t want to leave them behind.

The other products are Crystal Server and SAP Crystal Reports Viewer. Crystal server is a web portal that lets people run the reports from their browser. But, you still have to create them in Crystal Reports and then publish them to the portal.  This product can get quite expensive.

The Crystal Reports Viewer is free but is pretty much useless in my opinion. It lets you open reports, but only those that are saved with data. You can’t refresh reports unless you are logged into CR Server.  There are plenty of inexpensive third-party viewers out there so not many of my customers bother with the SAP Viewer. Here is a list of the ones I review each year.

If you have any questions about the Crystal Reports product line, let me know and I will try to help.

I create reports for several customers who use Raiser’s Edge donor management software. One of my customers shared this note from BlackBaud that went out today:

“On December 15, 2021, we will no longer support the ability to create or edit custom reports using Crystal Reports directly within any Blackbaud solution. Users will still be able to view historical reports and export file formats that work with Crystal Reports.”

Before the 15th it wasn’t clear if reports would still run in RE, but now it appears that they still do. The only noticeable change is that users don’t have a built-in copy of the Crystal Reports designer. To modify reports they will need to purchase their own license.

If you decide to buy a copy of Crystal Reports to work with your RE export (mdb) files, I recommend that you buy Crystal Reports 2016 instead of Crystal Reports 2020. That will give you something that works very much like what you have now. Crystal Reports 2020 can be made to work but it is 64-bit so it will use different drivers. You could modify reports but you won’t be able to run that same report both outside and within RE.

See this article for a link to the Crystal Reports product page and for clarity on what you do and don’t need to buy.

After releasing my course materials and my “Expert” series I realized that I had forgotten one item: My set of calendars. This three report set, with instructions, allows you to generate 3 different styles of calendar from your data (continuous, monthly and daily). The first two allow you to show multi-day events as boxes that stretch from the beginning to the end of the event.

The reports are designed so that you can swap in your fields instead of the sample data fields. You can read more about them in my original blog post, or download the set and try them out.