SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

The ability to plug into multiple data sources and present consistent formatted reports for our internal and external clients. We work for multiple clients around the country and this allows us to present standardized reports. Crystal Reports also allows us to pull SAP and present it as an analytical tool rather than downloading data and manipulating it in Excel.

One key improvement has been the elimination of tedious and redundant work. Where we used to do a lot of data manipulation from SAP, we can now run a Crystal Report and get the data we need in the format we desire. It has saved a lot of unnecessary man-hours.

The graphing portion of Crystal Reports is still lacking. I realize that there are other Business Objects programs out there more graphics intensive, but it would be nice if Crystal could fully service those needs as well.

Four years.

No issues encountered.

When we first started using Crystal Reports 2008, we had multiple stability issues. It seemed like at least once a day (usually more than that), it would crash on us. Save Early, Save Often became our way of life. It has improved dramatically since 2011 and Enterprise version.

No issues with scalability.

Customer Service:

Excellent. The sales reps and the technical support folks have been very supportive and have always responded promptly.

Technical Support:

Excellent. We have only had two issues that we went to technical support with but they were very thorough and worked through the issues with us.

No previous solution used.

Straightforward for me. I only had to install the Crystal Reports client and the SAP Integration kit. Everything worked as intended after that.

No other solutions were evaluated.

You should fully understand your business needs and work to integrate all of the applicable programs available as part of the Business Objects suite. It can be a complicated process with all of the available tools.

It is being used for reporting purpose. 

It is an user-friendly solution. 

The financing part needs improvement. 

I have been using the solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

It is a scalable solution. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

We pay fifteen hundred dollars as licensing fee. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

On-premises

We are a software development company and we have a lot of experience with different tools, including SAP Crystal Reports.

This product is one that we have implemented in different hospitals. We have stopped using it at times, but some clients still opt to use it. It is something that we are trying to replace with a mini dashboard for our clients, giving them a nicer way to visualize data.

One of our clients uses it for extracting data from the administrative system and generating relevant administrative reports. In cases like this, we develop reports for them.

The most valuable feature is that from a user's point of view, it is easy to use and requires just a simple click to generate a report.

It has the ability to export to different formats including Excel and PDF, so there is value there when you consider that it's a nice report that can be accessed on different platforms.

This was a good platform when it first came out but right now, it has become a complicated behemoth. These days, things are a little more dynamic and you really need a platform where you can change fast, and Crystal Reports is not it. This is an enterprise solution and there is no innovation there. The only innovation comes through a company that develops reports, such as us. A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code.

You shouldn't need a specialized developer just to code a Crystal Report. Ideally, a general-purpose or front-end developer, which is more cost-effective, should be able to do it.

A lot of times, what happens is that developers reuse or repurpose their domain model to use that to pull the data from a database. I think the main model that they use for the web application, the database model, and then use that to run the reports because they don't want to rewrite the code. This means that those entity models they have are too normalized for the crystal reports. Then, it becomes a bit of a mismatch where they have to change those entities and create new ones. Reporting is different than something like getting data from a web application and we really care about the transactions, which means that you always have to denormalize the data. What I've seen a lot of times is that developers kind of get stuck in this mismatch and they have to recode something. Or, they just drop what they did and do it from scratch, remapping the tables or creating new entities. This is a problem because if you promise somebody a report, only to later realize that it needs to be re-coded, it takes additional time. It becomes even more complicated when you need to re-create the business logic.

Because the users can export data to Excel or a PDF, it sometimes leads to data leakage and can create privacy issues. 

We have been working with Crystal Reports since 2004.

If you're running the Crystal Reports server then you can control it much better. For example, when developers use the web application it means that they don't think about the extra memory that the server is going to require to run these reports. So, you get issues when you run a heap memory and things like that because the report just bootstraps lots of this information, all of the data.

With the infrastructure having to run the report, it might request a lot of memory, especially if you have a lot of users. This is something that can kill your server. That's where you want to offload it to a specialized server, such as a Crystal Report server or a Jasper server. These serve and compile the reports for you. This is why there is a push for companies to get these specialized servers.

Given that you have options for both on-premises and cloud, I would say that it is scalable. They are thinking about these things, although I would say that it is a bit too late.

We have an enterprise license, so we are eligible for technical support. When we have gotten feedback for a client, it has taken time. The other problem is that because it's a closed system, they don't fix bugs right away. Just because an incident is reported and logged, doesn't mean that it will be fixed anytime soon. This means that in the interim, you have to find a workaround for the problem.

We use a variety of different approaches for giving clients the data that they want to see. The first step is understanding what the client need is. If it is just a basic report that they don't want to change often, then we can get away with something static. Most of the time, we have to put in a few variables, or parameters.

Because Crystal Reports costs a lot of money, is a specialized skill, and isn't necessarily better, we try to focus on the data that they need and put it on a dashboard instead. There is a spectrum of things to consider when deciding on the suitability of any particular solution.

When we go back and speak with clients, a lot of the time we find that they don't really need Crystal Reports. They need something that is a canned report that they can go back and look at all the time. If that's the case then you can get a simple HTML5 page, which is much faster to develop and easier to maintain. Ultimately, it depends on the client's use cases.

The difficulty of the initial setup depends on your skillset, and I would say that it is somewhere between straightforward and complex. Getting it going within your web application takes some time for things such as getting the proper JAR files.

The server can deliver the reports to you, but you still have to integrate it with your database. This is something that can be time-consuming.

This product costs a lot of money.

At this point, I would just go with something that is matched with Power BI. It's coming from the Microsoft world, and the users will be comfortable with it.

I would say that its suitability depends on who you speak with. For a front-end developer, they are not going to like Crystal Reports. On the other hand, if you're a back-end developer and you understand the architecture then you're going to be okay with it. Again, it really depends on the client's use cases, the skillset, and the resources.

If your organization does not have many users, the traffic is low, and doesn't have any compliance issues, then you can get away with open-source solutions. They are going to be much faster to implement, easier to deploy, easier to manage, and have a low overhead. With the Google Chart Library, for example, you have all of the charts that you need.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

On-premises

Performance

Drill-down reporting functionality

Report wizard

Variable

Built in Formulas

Presentation Options like Charts, Cross tab reports etc.

We develop many management reports using Crystal Reports. It has reduced the development cost, effort, and provides feature rich reports.

Support of crystal report is also very good, in terms compatibility, many vendors preferred crystal reports as preferred report delivery product.

It needs better support for child reports.

It needs additional formulas.

some performance issues when joining tables using report wizard.

I've been using SAP Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 for four years.

We had no issues with the deployment. deployment is smooth and it depends upon how you are going to deploy, as dll or rpt file.

There have been no stability issues.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

Customer service is good, and responses come within an acceptable time.

Technical Support:

Technical support is good, and responses come within an acceptable time.

We previously used SQL Server reporting services. These are also good but complex in some scenarios, like child reports.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

ROI is great as we are using the VS 2010 version which is free with Visual Studio.

Study your requirements carefully, map them into this product, and if you think it fulfills the requirements, you should go for it.

I appreciate the ability to connect to just about any structured data source. This makes it very flexible. We can use it in any Windows-based technical environment, but now we specialize with reports for just one data source, QuickBooks via QQube. Since we have Crystal Reports viewers available for our customers to use, they don't need to purchase the product, but can run the reports that we build for them.

We use it as a tool to build custom designed reports that our customers can run at a single click against their own data. It's the foundation of our company's existence.

We would like to see a Crystal Reports desktop version with built-in functionality to edit a single reference that exists in multiple formulas. This would be a big time saver. We would also like to select multiple detail area fields and insert the same summary field for all of them instead of having to do it one at a time.

We have used it for 20 years.

We haven't had deployment issue per se, as much as part of a greater stability worry.

It's always been known to crash unexpectedly, so get in the habit of frequent saving. I never liked the auto-save feature, though because it ends up saving things I didn't intend to retain. Since version 2008 it's been much more stable.

We have never encountered scalability issues.

I never use it because those folks don't even know as much about it as I do. However, if I encounter a bug, I will go to the SAP SDN to check it out or to report it.

No other solution has been used. I've been working with it since I worked in Tech Support for Seagate Software when they owned and supported the application.

It was simple and easy to install. The hard part was knowing/learning the structure of your data source and what you want to do with that data. Like any skill, it takes a long time to master. I have done incredible, innovative things with Crystal Reports, but only because I knew it so well and could synthesize breakthrough ideas on how to give the customer what they wanted.

Hire experts for a fixed period of time while longer term employees shadow until they learn how to use it. Otherwise a new reporting endeavour will take too long. The end users need their reports.

• You can write very complex formulas
• Field conditional formatting
• Subreports
• Specific formatting for report sections (headers, footers, etc.)
• Crosstab reports
• Coders can write their own custom SQL statement

Users have learned to write their own reports, reducing the load on our IT department.

• Easier to use crosstab interface so beginners create reports faster
• Allow for customization of crosstab row/column labels
• Installation takes more than 15 minutes on our workstations

I've been using it for seven years.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I have never contacted tech support for help.

This product was recommended by our banking system vendor.

The setup is pretty straightforward. You can install all options to make it easier.

We installed it using our IT team. I would recommend scripting for a large deployment because it takes about 15 minutes per workstation to install.

Saberlogic Logicity provides free Crystal Viewer software. Users who only need to run reports can use this free of charge, so you can save on license costs.

• Document views or report models to make it easy for users to choose their data sources.
• Point novice users to the crosstab report. It is fairly easy to use.
• For moderate to heavy users, you should send them for training.
• Users with programming or scripting skills can create really complex reports.
• Saberlogic Logicity provides free Crystal Viewer software. Users who only need to run reports can use this free of charge, so you can save license costs.

Great Flexibility - the limitations in how or what the report will look & feel is really limited by the developer. Formulas can be placed on virtually any field or level. Data can be conditionally suppressed, fonts changed, splashes of color added all dependent on the data provided.Data sources options - whether you're connecting via DB2, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, a WebService, or any other number of connection types - there are tons of inherent connections to the tool. Configuring a connection is done easily with a wizard, and changing the connection (say during an upgrade of the source system or a server change) can be done very easily as well while retaining the report fields.Sub-Reports - many times a complex report may report on many different aspects of the data, tethering tying together lots of different data together into a nice little report. Using sub-reports allows the different reports and their SQL to be compartmentalized, while still allowing the reports fields and the variables to be shared between the main report and the sub-report(s).Formulas - Once you get the hang of the formulas in Crystal Reports, they are very powerful. Different flags and indicators can be constructed, suppression based on the formula fields, or formula fields based on other formula fields in conjunction with the source data. Creative formula construction is just one of the many tools in Crystal Reports that allows this tool to be so flexible and robust.

All the options - These same options that allow Crystal Reports to be so customizable and really achieve the report your customers desire can be a burden. If you have "inherited" an existing report, there are a number of different ways that the "Look and Feel" of the report may have been achieved - and sometimes figuring out how something was done in Crystal Reports can be like solving a Hardy Boys mystery!Syntax constructs - the syntax used in Crystal Reports (formulas) is slightly different than most other languages, using a combination of curly brackets and pipes with some traditional syntax. When constructed incorrectly, there isn't much assistance in what steps you need to take to correct your formula - only something telling you it is wrong!

The fact that I can write my own SQL command to pull data for a report. You can just select tables and join them together and get a report, but there are times when you need to do something more complex than just a simple query. I have used this to do things such as getting just the most recent records in a set of data, all of the procedures for a patient where the patient had a specific procedure, pivoting data so that I don’t have to use a cross-tab, and much more. At this point, if a report is going to use more than two tables, I’ll generally write the SQL for it so that I can tune it to make it run faster. I’ve written a blog about the best practices for working with commands, which can be found here: http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports/blog/2015/04/01/best-practices-when-using-commands-with-crystal-reports.

Also, the ability to export reports to a variety of formats, even though there are limited options for formatting that output.

Not my specific organization, as I am a consultant. However, for many of my clients this is the de-facto reporting tool for operational data. Especially because it can either be integrated into an application using either the .NET or Java SDK, or reports can be published to Crystal Reports Server (an economical version of SAP Business Objects that just runs Crystal reports.) There are also many third-party tools available for working with Crystal Reports.

There are very few options for formatting reports that are exported to Excel or PDF formats.

The “Report Definition” export doesn’t contain all of the information about a report. The only way to get all of the configuration of a report is to write a program using one of the SDKs or to purchase a third-party tool.

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise, which is the new version of Crystal Reports that is optimized for working with HANA, BEx queries, and other things specific to SAP’s other products definitely lags behind “classic” Crystal Reports in terms of features – especially when it comes to formatting objects.

I've used it for 19 years – since version 4.5. When I first started with it, I was also using its Delphi VCL component, and now I use the SAP Crystal for Visual Studio .NET component as well as the SAP Crystal for Eclipse Java components.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We haven't faced any issues.

I have not had any issues with deployment or stability. However, with SDK there are limitations on the number of open reports (3) and the usage of sub-reports (no more than 99 visible instances of a sub-report within a single run of a report). The options for scaling up from that are to purchase SAP Crystal Reports Server or SAP Business Objects, both of which can be expensive for smaller companies.

For companies that just have SAP Crystal Reports without one of the SAP server products that come with annual maintenance, about 3/10. Since SAP purchased the product, they have not spent much time focusing on companies that just own Crystal Reports, choosing to focus instead on the large companies that are running other, larger SAP products. However, there is a very good online community available at http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports. There are several SAP support folks who answer questions there along with several other folks (like me) who are experts in the software. This is the “go-to” place for support and we’ll try to answer questions so that users can avoid having to pay to open a case with SAP.

I have used several reporting tools, including Web Intelligence which comes with SAP Business Objects. Each has its own place in the grand scheme of deploying a Business Intelligence solution. Crystal Reports is the tool for “picture perfect” reports, like form letters, or for very complex requirements. It is also a moderately priced tool that is good for smaller companies or for companies producing software that requires some reporting capabilities.

As a desktop tool, it’s very easy to install. The one thing that can be a “gotcha” is that you have to be logged in as a user that has Administrator credentials on the workstation because the install updates registry settings and adds a couple of files to subfolders under C:\Windows.

For implementing just SAP Crystal Reports, there’s no need for a vendor team. However, it’s very helpful to get some training on how to use the software. For the server products, like SAP Crystal Reports Server, it can be helpful to have an SAP Partner assist with configuration and training.

The tool can be incredibly powerful and flexible for generating reports. However, there is a somewhat steep learning curve to get beyond writing “basic” reports.