Does anyone know of any ‘good’ Crystal Reporting forums ? if so
could you let me know the url 
Thanking you much 
Rich 
(BOB member since 2002-10-04)
I’ve not used any of them, but I’ve heard the ones on http://www.tek-tips.com are pretty good. There are several forums dealing with all of the different parts of Crystal.
Steve Krandel 
(BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Thanks Steve, have already had a look at Tek - Tips, but wanted to find something as good as this forum but I havent found one 
. Think Im spoilt here. 
Rich (BOB member since 2002-10-04)
Sounds like someone needs to start one. Rich, anything you are looking for? I used Crystal for many years and had to do some very creative things with it.
Scott Bowers (BOB member since 2002-09-30)
Do they have anything with their product support along the lines of the Knowledge Base or Knowledge Exchange?
Have you already bought the product or are you just looking for information on it?
One site I found recently when I was looking for some Brio information was http://www.techieindex.com/ It looks like they have a wide variety of information on many technologies. You might want to take a look there.
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
http://support.crystaldecisions.com/library/kbase.asp?ref=default.asp_selectlist will get you to there knowledge base, but I have to say, of all the times I have tried to use it, 25% of the time I could maybe find an article that helped. 25% of the time there were just too many articles to go through, and 50% of the time there were no matches or nothing that pertained. If you buy there support, you can get answers by email or get phone support, I would say that is 100% useful, but costs some $$.
Scott Bowers (BOB member since 2002-09-30)
Thanks for the info.
We have ‘kind’ of bought ‘Crystal Reports’ in that Im reporting off Psoft and when you purchase Psoft you get 5 Crystal Reports liciences with it.
I attended a week long course of Crytal and have now been tasked to
put a review document together comparing BO, Crystal and
nVision (a psoft Excel Tool) and make a recomendation.
Not being biased but for my needs BO / Webi wins hands down over Crystal for many…many…reasons. Im after a forum because I just want to be 100% accurate on what I say about Crystal as I dont want to be seen as being biased towards going with BO / Webi because thats my area.
Rich (BOB member since 2002-10-04)
Maybe, you are willing and able to share your findings with BOB later on (I have never worked with Crystal Reports)?
Andreas 
(BOB member since 2002-06-20)
I have to say I would love to see your findings, as well. I am in a different boat where I have Crystal experience and I am now working in a B.O. environment where I have quite a bit less experience(well, basically none 
). I still favor Crystal for a few reasons, such as the formula SQL code is color coded (kind of nice), and because I’m used to it, naturally 
…of course B.O. is stronger, from what I’ve seen, in a non-relational database environment that I’m currently dealing with(I get to use non-relational SAS datasets for my database… fun, huh? 
). So I wouldn’t recommend Crystal in my current environment, anyhow…Luckily I have this awesome forum to help.
LStarr (BOB member since 2003-02-24)
If you want to bounce your presentation off someone you can email me at ScottBowers@mchsi.com and I can let you know if I see anything off the wall. I will say that I dont think you will like version 5, it is very outdated and not easily upgradable to the newer versions. It is also lacking in features. I would not use anything lower than version 7 MR1. I came from an enviroment that used Crystal reports for everything, then started using BO also. They wanted a comparison and eventually narrow it back down to one tool. We found that for the business needs there was a place for both and one tool wouldn’t suffice. BO has it strenghts and Crystal has its strengths.
Scott Bowers (BOB member since 2002-09-30)
Oh, yes, we are indeed spoiled here! I haven’t been on any technical forums for any products anywhere that are up to par with BOB!
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
Thanks for all your coments and offers of help, its very much appreciated.
I agree with you Scot that Crystal is better than BO in some areas and BO better then Crystal. Very broadly my main issues with Crystal were
- Not easy to globally deploy as not Web based. (or at least the version of Crystal to be used with our version of Psoft wasnt)
- Security diffcult to implement and VERY maintance intensive.
- Users have to have knowledge of sql to create data to report on in
Crystal. - Scheduling of Crystal reports through the Psoft Process Scheduler
ignores users security profiles.
etc…
Once Ive finished my doc I will make it make it avalaliable. One thing I should point out though is that the document will be written in the context
of using Crystal with Peoplesoft. As Crystal is Psoft choice of reporting tool it is very well intergrated with it i.e there is functionlity in Psoft that takes you directly into Crystal and vice versa. Therefore the work flow for using Psoft and Crystal is quite specific and in its own right creates a number of issues.
Rich (BOB member since 2002-10-04)
Another avenue you might want to try…contact your sales reps. Since they sell against the products, they can probably each tell you what their sales strategy against one another would be…which would help you figure out the pluses and minuses of each of the products. 
Eileen King (BOB member since 2002-07-10)
I am not sure about version 5 of Crystal, I used 7 and up mostly so I cant remember if these features are included with 5. You can also contact Crystal, it might be pretty cheap to get upgrades to a newer version.
Anyway:
Yep, if you can get your hands ahold of a newer version, they have web deployment. Also, check with the SDK that comes with Crystal, I know 7 comes with a java viewer, an ocx viewer and one other one that I cant think of the name of. You might very well be able to deply to the web very easily. I just dont remember what version came with that.
We used Active directory so it was very easy to take care of Security. Just add them to a group, give the group rights on the sql server and also in the lan enviroment and it was done. Security on your files as well as the data.
There is a report expert that is very much like the query designer in Access, at least in version 7 and above. It will even link the tables together. They links may not always be right, but the most the user has to know is how to join the tables toghether.
Version 7 comes with Crystal Info, it is a scheduling software that is very easy to use and incorporates security. If I remember right, it has crystal reports and crystal query as components of the software, so if you bought one liscense of version 7, you could deply it through Crystal Info to everyone since Crystal Info comes free. I think you can have 100 users with one copy of Crystal Info.
Also, if you have one copy of Crystal and VB, you can design reports right inside VB and export them back out as report files.
Scott Bowers (BOB member since 2002-09-30)
Keep in mind that Crystal’s current release is 9. I don’t know if it’s mass shipping yet, but 8.5 has been out for while.
If you were to compare BO, I’d want to see a comparison of current versions, not the old stuff.
Steve Krandel (BOB member since 2002-06-25)
Ok, but Im restricted to Crystal 8.5 because that is the version that
the Latest version of PeopleSoft tools 8.4 supports. As I said the review I will do is in the context of PeopleSoft, so would only be of any real use to someone in the same environment.
Scott : thanks for the info again Im restricted to what Crystal software I get with Psoft and thats only the basic modules.
Im starting to think my document might only be of use to me , sorry folks . May be a more broader not specfic review could be done.
Rich (BOB member since 2002-10-04)
I personally would use or compare Crystal version 8 or 8.5 to anything. They are bug infested. Problems fixed in version 7MR1 were recreated in 8 and not fixed in 8.5. Version 9 from the little testing I had with it seemed to be pretty stable with some really cool features. Like a component repository that lets you share formulas and subreports with other users or for yourself to quickly recreate a part of a report in another report. BO and Crystal make great compliments of each other. I will say that so far I haven’t found anything from Crystal that I cant recreate in BO, sometimes takes some serious creativity, but I am becoming more of a BO fan than a crystal fan, uless of course you need serious VB integration, then I favor Crystal.
Scott Bowers (BOB member since 2002-09-30)
I´ve noticed that many users of this forum have a wealth of experience to offer relating to Crystal products and as BO has taken over Crystal (or as one user put Crystal taken over BO), why not include a discussion for Crystal in this forum? I have not been able to find a useful Crystal forum (tek-tips included)
Decisys (BOB member since 2004-05-21)
That was the situation three years ago. It is not the case now.
There are two sub-forums under “Building Reports” for Crystal questions. It’s just that many members of the board who are still on legacy versions of BusinessObjects might never visit those forums.
There are also forums related to the components of Crystal Enterprise that became XI.
Anita Craig (BOB member since 2002-06-17)
I know one though, which can compete with our BOB!. Here is the link. Try to post a question and see the response
godgift 
(BOB member since 2004-07-09)