Crystal Reports 2008 is the defacto standard for reporting - there is no doubt about that. Almost every programmer that works with Microsoft technologies knows about Crystal Reports as it is embedded with Visual Studio.
Not only that but almost all the major ERP vendors utilise Crystal Reports in one area of their product portfolio or another.
Add to that the fact that 9 times out of 10 when you ask most IT people what they think of when you ask them about reporting tools and they will answer Crystal Reports.
And personally I have been using Crystal Reports since the early 90's when the product was first built by Crystal Decisions. So obviously I was pretty happy personally when the announcement was made in late 2007 that SAP and Business Objects had reached an agreement to come together.
100's of SAP Business One partners and customers around the world are already using Crystal Reports so its pretty exciting that today we made available a free add-on that allows SAP Business One users to publish their reports on to the SAP Business One user interface as well as launching the Crystal Reports designer from the menu.
The basic add-on includes the free .Net based viewer so any user with the add-on can run and view the reports. Of course, to design new reports or modify existing reports you need to have a copy of Crystal Reports as well, but at the risk of sounding like a sales guy, its only around $495 US to buy that.
And to make it easier to experience the power of Crystal Reports and Xcelsius, we have provided 30 day trial versions in the installation image as well.
A number of our SAP Business One Software Solution Partners already have solutions that allow customers to run Crystal Reports and I would advise everyone to look at those as well and you can find those out on the market today.
They offer extended functionality that the free add-on doesnt so check them out as well.
We have published the free add on with source code - written in C# and theres an older VB6 version as well if you are still cutting code on VB6 - so make your way to the SDN Landing page for the add-on. Feel free to use the sample code and adapt it you meet your requirements or use it as is.
You'll find the add-on landing page here.
I have also recorded a few little elearning flash files to help you use/install the add-on.
Publishing Reports with the Crystal Reports Integration for SAP Business One How to install the Crystal Reports integration for SAP Business One
Creating a simple report with Crystal Reports 2008
Adjusting your reports after a database structural change
