SAP Crystal Reports

Avantages

This current program that needs no introduction is the most accurate and systematic product for all reports and statistics, as well as the development in our Bussines

Inconvénients

It is a very advanced and well-known program..!

Avantages

a. Excellent dashboard with inbuild AI coding language
b. Based on python language and solid UI/UX design
c. Securely linked with other tools like SAP ABAP, Tableau and google workspace
d. Ample amount of storage space with Realtime tracking
e. AI enabled automation available which makes your report effective and customized

Inconvénients

a. Way too expensive for unlimited access license, not right for small-med enterprises
b. API integration with non google support tools are a bit problematic. It needs inhouse product team to work on.

Avantages

Crystal Reports is very friendly for the non programmer. For someone working in the analytics industry and not well versed in programming, this product works very well.

Inconvénients

Sometimes the groupings can be confusing and the hierarchy of where to put the groups in the report.

Avantages

It connected to our POS system to make reports.

Inconvénients

When we upgraded out POS system we are no longer about to send out reports. It was hard to actually make reports with the report builder.

Avantages

It is easy to use. Easy to set up. Allows a lot of datasources, and you can play with the information once you get it

Inconvénients

Sometimes, it can be dificult to define the sections on te report, based on metrics and single fields.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à SAP Crystal Reports

Avantages

- My Journey in SAP Crystal Reports started when my career in SAP also started. It has been a crawl, to a walk kind of journey where initially, I could only do some basic things in Crystal Reports but now I can do some pretty amazing staff with the application like Drill downs, create layouts from scratch, reports with sub reports,charting, report optimization etc.- SAP Crystal report is a very important tool in the SAP ecosystem and very crucial to a successful career in SAP. You literally cannot call yourself a senior SAP Consultant if you have not attained a certain level of expertise in Crystal reports. - With SAP Crystal reports you can create interactive reports from various data sources both SAP and Non- SAP data sources which can be customized to the very specific client needs.- It goes without saying that SAP Crystal Reports integrates seamlessly with applications in the SAP Ecosytem. - One of the most awesome things about SAP Crystal Reports is the fact that reports and layouts can be exported and shared in various formats including excel, pdf, and more.

Inconvénients

- There is definitely a learning curve involved in crystal reports. If you want to be able to do respectable things in Crystal reports, then you might want to invest in acquiring the knowledge. For example, I have had to buy like 2 courses from Udemy on the same. The courses have been a huge help. I wouldn't be where I am today without the courses.

Avantages

Ease of use - ability to link up multiple data sources. Customizations are user friendly and quick to learn.

Inconvénients

SAP Crystal Reports fulfils all the aspects we needed for our custom database reports.

Avantages

It did exactly what was advertised which was great

Inconvénients

It is very inflexible with Intergrations

Avantages

Crystal reports helps me create presentable reports both for myself and for my clients.It's a robust and advanced tool that has many capabilities. First of all it is compatible to most of the common database options for ERPS - Microsoft SQL, Oracle, HANA database etc.The drag and drop capability of crystal reports makes it easy to do basic things like adding a new column in an already existing report.Crystal reports has a powerful functionality that enables me to add the desired parameters to my reports. An example of a common parameter in reports is the rate range parameter.Another useful functionality of crystal reports is the fact that you can export your report in various formats like Excel, PDF etcCrystal reports integrates well with other all SAP Products.

Inconvénients

Since Crystal reports is a complex and robust tool, it has a bit of a steep learning curve. If you want to be able to do powerful and meaningful stuff using crystal reports, you must be willing to put in the work to learn how to use it properly and be willing to put in daily practice so that you do not forget how to use it.

Avantages

What I like the most about SAP Crystal Reports is the fine tuning when doing data visualization, it gives you excellent tools to make the task easy and accessible for the end user.I also like the ease of use whenever you're filtering and making use of the reporting tools.The integration with the product was not complex but it had a lot of configuration to be done.

Inconvénients

I think there are some features that could be improved, like for example database connection and responses, sometimes whenever you're using old databases that have a good response, the tool works flawlessly, but when a connection is refused or problems arise, you do not have a good logging tool to keep track and follow the issue.The integration was not difficult but it was really configuration heavy, I think that works well in favour.

Avantages

I use SAP Crystal Reports in supporting my application reporting needs by integrating it with the Oracle Database via a JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) driver. The integration is very simple and resembles the same JDBC code that we use when connecting from a Java application or server component to the Oracle database. Very nice formatting features that can simply help lay the relational tabular data from multiple SQL views or queries to the report generation engine. Performance is extremely high even with large data sets which makes it a great tool for supporting real-time reporting. I know that Crystal Reports can integrate with other databases via custom plugins. I actually used it back in the day with MS-SQL Server and the experience was great as well.

Inconvénients

1. The price is a bit high for single user licenses.2. Adding permissions to a category of reports is not that easy to configure. It has to be done on a report-by-report basis.

Avantages

1. Depending on the report requirements, Crystal reports has great capabilities to allow you to create all kinds of reports. You can place images, forms etc using OLE.
2. It allows a user to define multiple data sources, making it flexible when transferring to different platforms.
3. It allows a user to conditionally suppress sections within the report which enables certain parameters to be checked in certain sections of the report.
4. It enables the drill-down feature which allows the final user of the report to drill down further within a report to view more specific details.
5. It can do complex queries and allows a user to incorporate SQL statements in a flexible manner.
6. A user can create sub-reports, group selections and easily format various sections of the report in order to achieve different requirements.
7. It allows format parameters to be used easily and flexibly e.g. one item on the report can be bolded and displayed in italics due to specified parameters.
8. Supports different types of data sources e.g. HANA, MS SQL, Excel etc

Inconvénients

1. For a new user, it might be challenging to create new reports and one might not fully utilize most of the features.
2. Graphical features such as charts are not as enhanced as in other reporting tools.
3. Development of complex reports might take a bit of time depending on the user's experience level
4. When you export a report created with crystal reports to excel, there is a lot of distortion depending on the excel format. It will take a lot of trial and error and eventually, the data on the report is hard to edit on excel.
5. It might crash often after a software update.

Avantages

Our industry based software comes with a limited scope of canned reports and Crystal has proven to be a great supplemental reporting program. When our software falls shorts, Crystal offers many solutions. Upper level management, executives, and owning partners love how they can drill down into the finite details the Crystal reports can be built to display. And our data analysts use very detailed reports with minimal formatting exported as excel documents to create a plethora of pivot tables and other analytics including profit margin information and auditing information. I also like that the formulas are more similar to excel then other reporting syntax I have used.

Inconvénients

Anyone who has built a Crystal report from scratch can tell you it can be difficult to link tables and other data source issues can cause major problems with the information. Some of this difficulty comes the complexity associated with the software tables linked to the crystal report data source of course... but I do not think the average user can pick up the syntax very easily. And I have found that advanced formatting and cascading parameters can be a major headache.

Avantages

Data Synchronization with different data sources. Using this for a long time, I am quite impressed with the way it performs with different data sources.

Inconvénients

The User Interface is very simple and outdated. It can be made more futuristic.

Avantages

I like that crystal report is able to customize the different reports we generate daily and multiple users can view them. Also, I like that it allows for multiple users to feed and draw data from these reports. I like that its all centralized in one place with the flexibility of expanding or changing if need be. I am impresses with how data can be formatted with the various options and once you are trained it actually easy to use.

Inconvénients

This tool takes time to become acquainted with, fortunate for us some of our guys were already familiar with the tool and was willing to train the other team members. The upside to this tool is once you are trained it is a good tool to use.

Avantages

Fully customizable Report tool suits for the entire company. Even without an expert in programing Crystal Report can be used to deliver decision-making reports. Very easy configuration with MS SQL, MS Access, and much more other databases.

Inconvénients

Could not notice any big cons up to now.

Avantages

Love the ability to create forms like invoices, statements, receipts, etc. You can add images to the reports. Easy to suppress sections depending on page.

Inconvénients

The software doesn't allow for really complex business rules. To get great reports, you need to setup views in your database instead of doing it within the reporting tool. It doesn't always easily swap from production to test databases. Often times, I have to go back in and remap the tables or views manually. Thank goodness for the "View SQL" option, where you can see what database it is using for each table/view. When they are out of sync, it's a long, manual process to fix.

Avantages

- customers can display their company's reports
- easy to adjust if the customer wants a report to be changed

Inconvénients

- at this moment in time I have nothing bad to say about this software

Avantages

Crystal Reports lets you create custom reports that allows you to extract data that you need. It is a great tool to drill down to a certain level when you have a large pool of data. I love the fact that you can schedule Crystal Reports through BI, and have them emailed or saved to a network folder.

Inconvénients

It isn't always intuitive. Creating formulas can be tricky and some of the functions and operators don't work as you would logically expect them to. Creating a report can be very time consuming.

Avantages

If you are familiar with MS Access, and it's built in Reports - Crystal Reports is similar feature, but much fancier, and a lot more flexible. You can built any kind of reports from your SQL Server Database. You can either do filtering in the report, or use custom view from SQL Server. Unlike MS Access where reports are simply nice - these look professional.
(I mainly used it with SQL Server, but it also works with MySQL, Oracle, MS Excel, etc)

Inconvénients

I haven't had any issues, but I heard people say that their support is not very responsive. I was able to built some very sophisticated reports, and never needed any support.

Avantages

The best thing about the software is the variety that it offers in terms of report writing. You can link many different databases together and pull them all into one report.

Inconvénients

The software is fairly complex and could be a bit more intuitive. I am using an older version, so it is possible that the new versions are better. The software is quite costly.

Avantages

Crystal Reports can connect to a great number of data sources. Data Export functionality is feature rich allowing for exporting to most major file formats. Learning and understanding report creation and layout is very easy.

Inconvénients

Sometimes software updates can break functionality so take care in applying them. Crystal Reports is now owned by SAP, so beware of the horrible contractual and licensing agreements that may apply.

Avantages

We came from doing things using an excel-and-quickbooks-based homebrew system to Sage 300 and Crystal Reports. Using Crystal Reports saved us days or weeks of time last year generating financial reports and architectural transmittals.
+ Extremely Versatile
+ Can be used to bend commercial software to individualized needs

Inconvénients

- Report designer is not intuitive, but this is common for powerful and customizable software!
- Testing reports with Sage 300 specifically can be a bit of a pain as you need to re-enter parameters repeatedly.

Avantages

We use Crystal as our software reporting tool. It is easy to design, format, and implement custom dynamic group-by reports. We prefer this product over Microsoft's SSRS reporting tool.

Inconvénients

I wish it was easier to design a report that had pdf fill-in functionality, aka captured checklists and signatures

Avantages

This is a very useful application for me, because it lets me modify according to what I need. I used to change signatories of my clients every now and then. also, i can add queries, that i used for filtering information that will be shown on the report.

Inconvénients

Maybe it can be difficult for others to use if they have no background in simple programming. But if they have. it is very easy to manipulate and custom the report.