Now that E10 has been out for a bit, I was wondering how others are dealing with the transition from Crystal Reports to SSRS.
I’ve heard several times that Epicor’s roadmap is likely to phase out CR, which makes sense seeing as how it is owned by SAP. However, I’m finding the transition to be rather difficult. My uneducated impression, based on only my experience so far, is that SSRS is much more difficult than CR. I feel like some of the basics are easy to figure out but some of the more complex items, like sub reports, are difficult to figure out…even after searching Google.
I think I’ve seen a few people suggest that SSRS is better than CR, so it’s more likely that I’m just having a tough time with the learning curve.
How are others doing with the transition to SSRS? Are you finding SSRS more difficult or easier than CR?
If you find that you prefer SSRS over CR, how did you make the transition (training classes/site, just Google) or did you just have an extensive background with SSRS prior?
JOE ROJAS
Epicor Applications Manager
VENTION MEDICAL + DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Advancing Your Innovations For Health
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My biggest beef is no WYSIWYG interface
Second biggest beef is when test viewing, using the page layout view is sometimes vastly different than the non-page layout view
SSRS is in no way shape or form better than Crystal. SSRS is a much newer product and although Microsoft has made strides on it recently it still lacks a lot of the niceties of Crystal specially their Report Studio.
SSRS is more difficult to work with… but ALMOST everything you can do in Crystal you can eventually accomplish in SSRS. Generally I recommend that you upgrade your main reports slowly as needed. I haven’t it found to it to be worth the investment to go push a mass upgrade of all reports at once.
Rather slowly bring each report form Crystal to SSRS as needed. Take your regular reports first Invoice, Order Ack, Quote, Cust Ship and upgrade those first since generally those are pretty simply customized and then tackle the major custom reports later.
In terms of training Microsoft Virtual Academy has some nice tutorials you can use
Whilst Crystal does have a lot of good features, and the UI is pretty intuitive, there is no doubt that SSRS has a much greater amount of information on web on how to achieve things, I have always struggled looking around when I have run into a roadblock, particularly in the early days when I was learning. In most instances when using the SAP forums you find the problem, but never a solution
One of the things I found is that the mindset you need when developing SSRS as distinct from Crystal is different, and it does take a bit of time to bend you mind to it. Just persevere, your C.V. will thank you for it, not to mention the discovery of Power Query and Power BI on the journey. Now there would be a really good adjunct to E10.
We are still using Crystal Enterprise that came with Epicor 7.2 Financials for automated delivery of reports. Management love having reports delivered to their mailbox for some reason, but we are slowly swapping them out for subscriptions on SSRS.
One thing of note with SSRS is make sure you do keep your version of SQL data tools up to date, MS do fix some of those annoying bugs in the UI that can make your life a bit of a nite-mare. Printing from a previewed report while developing being one that caused me no end of grief.
Yes I agree with Jose, there is an abundant amount of learning resources for SSRS.
using the SAP forums you find the problem, but never a solution
Yes, SAP forums are pretty sad.
I have found the best help for my Crystal issues here: http://www.tek-tips.com
They have several Crystal related forums depending on what you are looking for.
And some of the best answers I can remember came from the user lbass
Te doy nuestra experiencia con respecto a SSRS, SSRS es una experiencia nueva nosotros tuvimos que aprender una nueva Herramienta y saber el funcionamiento y el manejo total de SSRS, hiciemos una migracion de 100% de los reportes adecuándolos a las custumizaciones, para nosotros CR es muchos mas completo pero es de SAT, entonces nos vimos en la obligación de migrar todo los reportes a SSRS, Hay opciones muchas mas completas en CR de por si nosotros aun lo utilizamos para un modulo fiscal que se requiere aquí en Venezuela.
Si requieres de alguna ayuda me lo haces saber.
