Chapter 14: Distributing Reports

Overview

Chances are that if you've come this far in the book, you've become somewhat proficient in using Crystal Reports. But now that you have a number of saved report files, you're probably interested in learning how to distribute them to other users.

The majority of your report users won't necessarily have Crystal Reports installed on their computer. This chapter looks at the variety of methods available to you for report distribution.

In this chapter, we first explore report exporting options, such as a spreadsheet or word processing document. These options provide the best methods for distributing static versions of a report. A static version means that the report's data becomes fixed at the time of the report generation. In other words, these static versions of a report provide an easy means for providing data at a certain period of time. However, static versions of a report cannot have their data refreshed.

Should you wish to provide your report users dynamic versions of your report (meaning your users can view and refresh a report), one of the following options must be available:

• Your report users will need to have a version of Crystal Reports installed on their computer. However, doing so also means that the user can edit a report, which may be functionality that you do not want report users to have.

• You (or a developer) will need to create a custom application that delivers reports. Developing such applications is beyond the scope of this book. To do so, you'll also need to have the Developer or Advanced editions of Crystal Reports.

• You can use the Report Application Server (which is provided with the Professional and Developer version of Crystal Reports), an out-of-the-box web interface for real-time reporting.

• You can use Crystal Enterprise (another Crystal Decisions product) as a prebuilt report distribution system.

• You can use a third-party software report viewer. Viewers provide your report users with the ability to run (but not edit) reports from any computer. Some of these are discussed in Appendix D.

This chapter looks at each of these options. For the purposes of this book, we assume that you are using the Crystal Reports Standard Edition. Thus, in this book, you mainly focus on using a third-party software report viewer for report distribution.

Note

Report distribution is typically a system administration function. There are factors such as security that come into play when considering how reports should be distributed. Check with your system administrator to determine which distribution method works best for your organization.