SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

It has a lot of flexibility and can be used with a variety of data sources. A lot can be done with grouping and sub-reports.

Our organization previously exported a lot of data to Excel. This had to be endlessly manipulated by sorting, cutting, modifying pasting, de-duping, resorting, etc. Using Crystal Reports means all this manual work is eliminated. The report comes out sorted and in the right format without need for any manipulation.

Crystal also has a lot of options for grouping and creating formulas.

Some features are difficult to use for beginning users, such as shared variables.

About 10 years

With older versions of Crystal there was frequent "crashing" and reinstalling of the program. I have not seen any problems with Crystal 11.

Straightforward. Crystal has an easy installation process.

In-house set-up.

It's a great product that can be used out of the box, however it's always good to invest in training.

The ability to set parameters, especially the cascading parameters, is the most valuable features for us.

We provide solutions to other organizations, so invariably the end reports save our clients time and, of course, money.

The example that comes to mind was where a medical client had a monthly utilization report that took 14 days to complete manually as it involved using MS Access and Excel. After the report was created in Crystal Reports, it took less than 30 seconds to run and it also highlighted data entry errors that could be fixed more efficiently, so a suite of error/exception reports had to be created also.

The linking feature between tables has always been a bit buggy, which is not good because it is really the core of ensuring that the returned data is correct. If one tries to enforce the links created as per the underlying data source, invariably it falls over and results in an error message.

The cascade parameters limit of 1000 records, which although can be increased via the registry, if you have admin rights, can result in report performance issues. Isn't there a better way of doing this?

Being able to have formulas that make up the description for value parameters, potentially on the fly, and then being able to display the parameter value and/or description selected by the user on the report, would be great also

I actually wrote a blog post of the things I wished Crystal Reports could do here: http://maximumimpactsolutions.co.uk/blog/comments.asp?bd=110. Some of the things may have ready been implemented.

I've been using it for four years.

We have had no issues with deployment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues scaling it.

I've never needed to use customer service/technical support.

I've been using this since v7.

It's straightforward.

Implemented it in-house, and there was nothing complex about it.

Our ROI on Crystal Reports is well over 1000%, as we offer both training and consultancy solutions to our clients.

Crystal Reports is a great little reporting tool for a myriad of data sources that provides the user a nice user-friendly GUI, which means that your report creation can be achieved quickly.

The way it allows formatting, that is, the ability to organize the display and fields as we like, are the key elements for us. Presentation for end users is always the big concern for us, so the formatting is an important feature the we find most useful.

We're also able to drag-and-drop tables, joins, and fields, which expedites very basic data pulls. Sometimes, though, a SQL query and export to .xls suffices.

We're able to export to .pdf as well as integrate with PowerPoint. This has become a part of our instructional and sales presentations.

Some of the graphic displays are dodgy. That component is the least intuitive of all the features.

I've used it for ten years, from stale Seagate versions through SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL platforms.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

I've never had to contact customer service.

I've never had the need to use technical support.

There were no issues encountered during the deployment. You need to delete prior versions before implementing the latest one because they seemed to clash.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

The product is expensive.

Lean on the vendor for the initial implementation and follow their steps to ensure independence down the road.

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.

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.

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.