Managing and Viewing Crystal Reports

Optimizer supports importing and viewing custom-designed Crystal Reports. The features associated with Crystal Reports are located in the Manage Reports, Report Categories and View Reports pages.

Note: The new Crystal Reports functionality is only supported for Internet Explorer version 8 or above and the latest versions of other browsers (for example Chrome, Firefox and Safari).

Managing Report Settings

The Manage Reports page allows users to create, edit, delete and re-arrange report categories. Reports can then be associated with specific categories.

To create a new category, first select the parent category (i.e. the one that you want the new category to be under in the hierarchy), then click the green ‘+’ icon.

Clicking on the new category twice will allow you to rename it. It is also possible to move categories to different locations by dragging them into other categories.

To delete a category, select it from the hierarchy and click the red ‘X’ icon. If the delete icon is disabled (if it is greyed out instead of red), then the selected category cannot be deleted. A category can be deleted only if it does not contain any other categories or reports.

Managing Reports

The manage reports page allows the user to view, add, edit, delete and archive reports. The main controls in this page are displayed in the following screenshot:

To upload a report, click the ‘Add New Report’ link. A dialog box will appear. Set the report’s name and category. The ‘Admin Report’ checkbox makes the report available to administrators only and allows them to run the report against all users in the system. Reports that are not set as admin reports will only provide information about the logged in user’s subordinates. Click the ‘select’ button to choose a Crystal Report .rpt file to upload.

Once the upload has completed, two additional settings will need to be defined. The connection type checkboxes should be used to set which users you want the report to run against. It is possible for a report to run against Optimizer, Planner and DNA users, and any combination of the three different databases. The second option should be used to map the report database to the name of the database used for your system. After entering these settings click the ‘Add’ button to complete the report upload.

Note: In certain cases it is possible for users to upload Crystal Report files to the web server without completing the setup of the report item in Optimizer. This will result in the report file being retained by the server; however, it will not be accessible via Optimizer. These files will be prefixed with ‘TEMPFILE’ and may be manually deleted from the server’s Crystal Reports upload folder by administrators.

To edit report settings, select a report from the table in the Manage Reports page and click its associated ‘Edit link’. A dialog box will appear allowing you to change the details of the report, including name, category, the Crystal Reports .rpt file and database connection details. Once you have finished editing the report click the ‘Update’ button to apply the changes.

To archive a report, click its associated ‘Archive’ link from the table in the Manage Reports page. An archived report can be unarchived in a similar manner. Reports that are archived will not be listed in the ‘View Reports’ page.

All uploaded reports can also be downloaded via the ‘download’ link from the Manage Reports page.

Viewing Reports

Reports can be generated from the ‘View Reports’ page. The page will initially display the category hierarchy, including the reports that have been allocated to each category. Browse the category hierarchy and select the report that you want to view. A Crystal Reports popup window will appear. Depending on how the report was developed, this window will either show the report immediately, or request additional information before displaying the report.