SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

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. 

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.

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.

• Tabular reporting, primarily just data and tables, no charts
• Specific highlighting/formatting.

I've used it for a long time, and familiarity with the product allows for faster delivery.

• Pixel-perfect formatting
• It's extremely customizable.

Charting capabilities are incomplete relative to competitors.

It’s ability to connect to multiple data sources, use SQL or individual tables, views or stored procedures, data formatting options, ability to handle and display various date formats and the ability to use VB or Crystal Syntax (or both) within a report.

We were able to develop several On-Time Performance reports to assist with correcting scheduling errors and/or location errors for our buses. This has allowed us to get a much more accurate picture of where we are and how to get where we want to be.

Charts and Graphs are the only reason I don’t give the product a 10/10. Microsoft Excel is far better and Tableau is even better than that. So much so that my company now wants us to start using Tableau as a replacement for Crystal Reports, at least where graphs and charts are concerned.

I’ve used it for 18 years.

When upgrading versions of Microsoft Windows, Crystal Reports would not always work correctly. We would have to reinstall it to make it work right.

With Windows 10, our Crystal Reports XI product stopped working correctly completely, but works fine when we upgrade them to Crystal Reports 2013.

It has been able to scale for our needs.

We have not used any support from SAP that I am aware of.

Fairly straightforward, especially with 2013. With XI, some options were not checked that we needed. With 2013, they are.

We did the initial setup in-house. Make sure you have detailed step-by-step installation instructions if having a team installing it so everyone gets the exact same setup and things don’t get missed. We had that problem early on when upgrading to 2013 from XI and I had to help determine what was missed or done wrong so they could do it correctly.

The licensing is currently $500 per copy, so we are trying to limit the number of licenses we have to keep costs down.

I do not know. It was already being used corporate wide when I arrived.

Make sure you have at least one person (preferable two), who know how to use the product before implementing it corporate wide. The problem at my company is there are 100 licenses out there and we have only 1 person who is an SME (Subject Matter Expert): Me. Everyone else uses it, but they have not had any real training or don’t use it full time.

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.

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

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.

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 is good, and responses come within an acceptable time.

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.

It can gather data from many sources and consolidate that data.

It is easy to get quick results, but also allows you to create more in-depth reports.

It contains a relational database that allows you to join tables from different tables in the same report.

It can export to Excel, text files, or PDF and many other formats.

A non-IT person can create some reports, and an IT person can take it much further.

If you have Crystal Reports, it can import Excel files that were made in Excel 2003, files with a .xls file extension and file format. It does not yet recognize files with a .xlsx file extension, which would be from Excel 2007, 2010, 2013 or 2016. With Access files, Crystal Reports can import databases with a .mdb format, but not the newer format if .accdb.

This was true as of Crystal Reports 2013. They may have changed it since
then.

I have used it with several clients to create complex reports that required multiple data sources and complex relationships.

They need to make it work with new file formats for Excel and Access. It also needs to be more compatible with other data sources.

I have been using Crystal Reports for over 10 years, and this version for about two years.

I have seen integration with SAP , and it seems pretty seamless. There are versions of Crystal Reports that come embedded with other software programs, like Peachtree, etc. I would recommend that you upgrade to the full version so you can take advantage of some of the features.

I've experienced no issues with performance.

I have the single user edition.

Their support is top notch, although you may have to pay for it.

I created many reports using Access. Crystal reports is similar, but more robust.

I have the single user version, and had no problems.

I installed it myself.

It's a great product that works with many data sources. I highly recommend it.