SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

The ease of making simple reports. The facts that many people use it, hence a lot of expertise can be found on the internet and trainings are available.

I develop reports for customers, for an ERP system that collects a lot of data, but has very few standard reports. Customers use the reports for making decisions and negotiations.

• Sub-reports in sub-reports
• Making graphs is very cumbersome
• Exporting to Excel
• Using Stored procedures
• Complex SQL Queries

I've used Crystal Reports in general for about 20 years, and v2008 for about six years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We haven't needed to scale it.

I wasn't aware of there being any.

It's very straightforward.

I have only installed the developer version, and that can anyone do with it’s eyes closed.

The training of users can be more expensive. User training can take two to five days, and in addition, the user needs to understand the database, the tables, and where to get the data.

The training of users can be more expensive. User taining can take two to five days, and in addition, the user needs to understand the database, the tables, and where to get the data.

It does what it does have to do, but seems development has stuck for several years now. Many things are not possible either. Complex queries are impossible, you need to make SQL statements. Sub report in a sub report is impossible.

One valuable feature is the ability to integrate seamlessly with the Business Objects Enterprise Software solution.

It allows the organization to share information/data with their customers so that they can make decisions based off of actual data.

I feel an improvement would be allowing users to change the font on translated fields. I remember having to work around this by overlaying fields with a formula because formatting was not available in the translation management tool.

I have been using Crystal Reports software for over 10 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

The team did have questions on stability/scalability practices for the Business Objects Enterprise Software solution. SAP has provided documentation and is working with us on this.

7/10

It was pretty straightforward in terms of setup. It contains the basic setup for data sources. It has a good amount of options which makes the software flexible.

We implemented it with an in-house team and were lucky to have certified individuals involved with the project so they were familiar with all aspects and features of the products.

The organization has evaluated other products, but felt that this is a more mature reporting platform solution. It met many of our needs.

The only advice I can give is to just make sure that you are very familiar with the products and the services that they offer. Ensure there is someone involved who is familiar with the product and its features for the implementation of the SAP Business Objects Enterprise Software solution.

The ability to able to write your own SQL commands, parameterizing reports and putting them online.

Being able to produce online parameterized reports, so the end users can do their own reports, increases productivity.

Crystal 2008 - the export functionality could be improved, right now it will only export approximately 65K into one spreadsheet tab. When it reaches the max rows, it will continue on the next tab. This is really only an issue when users are exporting in Business Object. Currently, known larger files need to eported into txt or csv, the end users generally aren't as familiar with bring in this type of file into excel workbook.

Also, charts and mapping functionality could be much improved.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

I wasn't involved in the implementation.

It was implemented in-house.

In general, Crystal Reports 2008 is a very robust reporting tool. It is definitely geared toward the professional user. There is a learning curve and I would definitely take a class to learn all the functionalities.

Native connection, Subreports, pixel free formatting, free hand SQL, multiple sources, supports most databases

Distribution of reports has been improved.

Adhoc and tabbed reporting should be added to the next release.

I've been using it for 14 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

It crashes the designer when the tool with no clear error messages. Working with LOV and Business Views are challenging when migrating environments.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It's good.

We didn't have another solution in place, and use this because of its flexibility and functionality.

Straightforward as it has a native development tool, or working with .Net and (or) Java and deployment to Management console. Setting up the management console is a process.

Implementation of tool needs an implementation partner to follow the best practices and reduce the maintenance issues.

We didn't look at any other solutions.

Perform analysis the purpose of the solution when selecting as oppose to select the solution and define the process.

I use all the features and there is nothing that is more important than the other.

We have a tool to generate all reports for all internal customers. We have different layouts for over 200 reports that change a lot, based on the tool. It is very important to keep everything beautiful and organized.

We are using an old version, and the only thing isn't good is that some error messages are not specific and it is sometimes hard to find the error.

I've been using it for four years day to day, but I first used it eight years ago.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

When I started with my current company, they were already using the solution.

I just have just one situation that I am afraid to update the Crystal Reports DLL version in production to get some features . I do not feel confident to update it even though I have a guarantee that everything will work fine.

Ease of extracting data from various sources and displaying in such a way that user can’t tell the difference.

Largely used by stores manages and senior management to view / analyze sales metrics.

I would like to see a mobile and iOS friendly version.

I have used Crystal Reports for approximately 15 years, and in my current company for eight years.

There some issues with the deployment.

We have had minor issues with its stability.

It's been difficult to scale for our needs.

6/10

It was straightforward in terms of installation, development and deployment.

We’re implementing it through CMC and have an in-house application that pulls the report from CMC.

Versatility between platforms.

It is a pillar of our product to provide embedded reports so I would say it has been an essential part of our system.

They need to offer better support to clients and have a better knowledge base.

I've been using it for 12 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Terrible, if it wasn’t for the Google community there would not be any support at all.

It was already part of Visual Studio. Later on we bought the developer edition and the installation was very simple.

We used both and try to always work with someone of infrastructure because there is a tendency to have problems with permissions on the latest Windows Server OS.

It came embedded with Visual Studio. Now there is SSRS.

Be aware that SAP Crystal Reports support is practically none existent so be aware that you will need to gather information from other sources.

I value it's ability to satisfy most demanding reporting requirements with ease. No complex programming or tweaking of properties. It can be learned by a power user to satisfy their analytical needs without IT support and, the expert developer can deliver advanced functionality with ease. Mature and works as expected.

Like any tool, the value is derived by how the users use it. I have worked in many organizations and the usage differs, the following are the most value additions I have come across.

• Third party logistics - monitoring their KPIs and highlighting exceptions. 
• Marketing services - generating and emailing thousands of routine reports to it's customers with Crystal Enterprise
• Healthcare industry (Software as a Service) - manage huge report portfolio with a relatively small development team.

The functionality is not evolving much over newer releases. The limitation of the original row based model is still there, and there's no easy way to draw tables. I would very much like to see full multi-dimensional reporting capability. The primitive capabilities have not been improved over the last 10 years.

There were some no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It was very good, but now the competition is overtaking, and SAP seems to use it as a cash cow.