We have been on Epicor 10.2.700 for a few months now and all reports are running on SSRS but is there any reason why I shouldn’t use crystal reports for some report…
In my last role we used Crystal Reports a lot and although I can get away with SSRS I find that as a reporting engine I prefer Crystal Reports as you can achieve more and produce better reports.
For example I had a request recently to have terms and conditions on the last page of a PO \ Quote etc. With Crystal Reports this was easy as I would just insert an OLE object in the report footer and made sure it started on a new page.
I tried to place terms and conditions on the last page of an SSRS report and it’s an absolute nightmare!! Not only can you not import a pdf but you can only have a page footer and not report footer and as such I have been unable to achieve this.
So I ask again is there any reason why I shouldn’t use Crystal Reports for some reports in E10.2\Kinetic
I was used to use Crystal Reports in earlier Epicor Versions. However, had to switch to SSRS since we learned that Crystal Integration with Epicor will gradually remove.
We are on 2021.1 and I can see the Crystal selection is still available in the menu.
Take your decision !
Unfortunately, there is currently a page footer image in the page footer but I’ll see what I can do with this, unless you have any other suggestions?
I also just looked at the code which is extremely complicated in comparison to “Insert OLE object” which was used in Crystal Reports.
Epicor ending support on Crystal Reports would make sense if SSRS had the capabilities, flexibility and usability of Crystal Reports but this just feels like a step backwards.
My belief was that Epicor dropped it simply because it’s now owned by SAP, which would be a shame because it is a more flexible and easier to use reporting tool.
We use breaking/routing and ECM to manage T&C’s. Upside: The various documents are now maintained independently while still being pulled during printing. Downside: this is completely overkill if this is the only thing you need.
Hypothetically, I think breaking/routing or BPM could be used to chain separate report calls to accomplish the same thing without the expense of ECM. I just haven’t tried that yet. That’s also overkill, though probably fewer lines of custom code than that guy used to embed a PDF in SSRS.
It took me a while to learn ssrs but I have found that you can do anything crystal can do. Yes, crystal is definitely a better UI, but stick with it and you will learn ssrs.
We have been able to do a lot of our reports in SSRS specially ones which we want directly in Excel and on multiple tabs.
I want to know @jkane if you have figured out how to print Report totals at the bottom of the page in SSRS.
Even though I prefer to work in Crystal…
There are actually some good reasons to use SSRS.
e.g. I’d look into differences in options - output format, routing, etc…
Where I think we can count of Epicor to continue to leveraging SSRS “stuff”… Crystal viewed by them as a temporary stopgap only?
I remember a rumor that SAP might stop providing their Crystal runtime. (not sure how true this is, I’ve always thought Epicor only switched to SSRS for other reasons… money).
FWIW - I think Report Builder is pretty horrible. If only MS would improve that…?
In general true but… I have found at least a few things with headers, footers and page numbering that are either very difficult or impossible to do in SSRS
but were trivial in Crystal. I read somewhere were related to differences in how/when the pages are rendered in each.
Just curious if you can give some more details… what type of totals, footer or section, etc…
Typically any totals for say Orders or AR Invoices are in a Group Footer. In Crystal all we have to do is select the check box “Print at bottom of page” and it prints at the bottom of the page. In SSRS there is no such option, as such Order/Invoice totals print in the middle of the page as soon as the report ends.
I’m a little confused or have missed something. If it can do anything Crystal reports can do then how do you put T&C’s in the report footer when a report footer does not exist in SSRS?
Thanks but I am still confused @jkane I can only see page footer in SSRS. No options showing report footer?? I’ve also searched the internet for a solution to my problem with little help.
Yes, that is why I used quotation marks in my earlier post. There is no report footer area called out in SSRS. You will find that a lot of named things in crystal are not named in SSRS. However, if you add a row to your tablix outside of all of the groups, that will be the very last thing to print on the report. If you want it on its own page, add a page break on that row.
Add the page break where? If the added row is outside of all of the groups, then there is no context menu option for row group and no sub-menu option for group properties. Where else can a page break be set?
