Good morning Group,
(allow me to offer a sad farewell to Troy as well, you have been a
valuable asset to this group and myself, I will still look forward to
any posts you do have to offer)
As a beta tester for Sonoma, I am learning some new tricks all the time.
Today I wanted to pass on a personal tip about reporting that you can
take or leave as you see fit.
When it comes to Sonoma, we are all aware that Report Builder will not
be available to develop new reports (or at least you are now as you are
reading this). Knowing this, I hit Crystal hard to learn to be
efficient. I can now tell you that I can build a report in Crystal in
about the same amount of time as it takes in RB. Granted, I have not
worked out a good distribution setup, but I figure that is a detail for
later. One trick when it comes to speed in Crystal...Create a basic
report connected to the Company table, don't add any fields, but set up
the header and footer the way you want (page numbers, report name
fields, etc.) and save it. This will become your template to build
future reports. It's great to just bring up the report, save it as a
new report and then add a couple tables, group and calculate and bingo
you have a report with a standard design. It speeds up my reporting a
bunch.
Second tip is this. Get very familiar with the BAQ (Business Activity
Query). It is a great tool for "daily" reports that you don't need to
print, or want exported to excel, and it is not going away and in fact
is being used more. I use this for creating general reports that apply
to several departments and then let them export them and sort within
excel. For instance, I have three reports that the same department uses
but wants each report sorted three ways depending on the information
they wish to gather at the moment. I add the BAQs to a separate
favorites menu for each user that wants the reports, and they can view,
or export them as desired. This is also great for new hires as it is
much easier to find someone that is proficient in excel than it is to
find someone that can use Report Builder or Crystal.
So there are my tips for the day. Take them or leave them, but I hope
some find them of value.
Aaron Hoyt
Hittite Microwave Corporation
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
(allow me to offer a sad farewell to Troy as well, you have been a
valuable asset to this group and myself, I will still look forward to
any posts you do have to offer)
As a beta tester for Sonoma, I am learning some new tricks all the time.
Today I wanted to pass on a personal tip about reporting that you can
take or leave as you see fit.
When it comes to Sonoma, we are all aware that Report Builder will not
be available to develop new reports (or at least you are now as you are
reading this). Knowing this, I hit Crystal hard to learn to be
efficient. I can now tell you that I can build a report in Crystal in
about the same amount of time as it takes in RB. Granted, I have not
worked out a good distribution setup, but I figure that is a detail for
later. One trick when it comes to speed in Crystal...Create a basic
report connected to the Company table, don't add any fields, but set up
the header and footer the way you want (page numbers, report name
fields, etc.) and save it. This will become your template to build
future reports. It's great to just bring up the report, save it as a
new report and then add a couple tables, group and calculate and bingo
you have a report with a standard design. It speeds up my reporting a
bunch.
Second tip is this. Get very familiar with the BAQ (Business Activity
Query). It is a great tool for "daily" reports that you don't need to
print, or want exported to excel, and it is not going away and in fact
is being used more. I use this for creating general reports that apply
to several departments and then let them export them and sort within
excel. For instance, I have three reports that the same department uses
but wants each report sorted three ways depending on the information
they wish to gather at the moment. I add the BAQs to a separate
favorites menu for each user that wants the reports, and they can view,
or export them as desired. This is also great for new hires as it is
much easier to find someone that is proficient in excel than it is to
find someone that can use Report Builder or Crystal.
So there are my tips for the day. Take them or leave them, but I hope
some find them of value.
Aaron Hoyt
Hittite Microwave Corporation
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]