Crystal Reports XI Advanced
Duration
Two Days
Course Description
This two-day workshop is designed to enhance your basic report writing skills and move you into creating more complex reports. Time will be spent walking you through the tips and tricks of advanced report writing along with a good amount of hands-on practice. In addition, you will cover professional design, techniques, subreporting, and advanced formulas. This course incorporates a number of hands-on exercises that reinforce the learning process.
Audience
Administrators, developers and end-users who need to create dynamic reports from varying data sources.
Prerequisites
Be able to build a simple report before attending class is strongly recommended.
Course Contents
Refresher Exercise
- Review of Planning a Report
- Creating the Report
- Placing Fields on the Report
- Creating the Formulas
- Advanced Grouping
- Selecting Certain Records
- Helpful Hints for Formatting the Report
- Adding and Working with Text Objects
- Hiding and Suppressing Sections
- Guidelines
Power Formatting with Multiple Sections
- Using Multiple Sections in Reports
- Using the Section Expert to Work with Sections
- Conditionally Formatting Multiple Sections
Using the Running Totals Feature
- Understanding Running Totals
- Creating Running Totals for a List of Numbers
- Conditional Running Totals
Prompting with Parameters
- Parameter Fields Overview
- Parameter Field Considerations
- Creating a Parameter Field
- Using a Parameter to Select Records
- Using a Parameter Field
- Creating a Dynamic Value List for Parameter Values
- Importing a Pick List
- Adding Parameter Values to Text Objects
- Allowing Multiple Values in Parameters
- Using Multiple Parameter Fields in Reports
- Specifying and Limiting a Range for a Parameter
- Using Parameters in Conditional Formatting
- Using an Edit Mask to Limit String Parameters
- Sorting with a Parameter
- Group Sorting with a Parameter
- Using a Parameter to set N in a Top N or Bottom N report
- Displaying Parameter Fields
- Cascading Parameter Fields
Using Advanced Formula Features
- Understanding How Crystal Reports Processes the Data
- What Is a Pass
- Pre-Pass#1
- Pass #1
- Pre-Pass #2
- Pass #2
- Pass #3
- Using Evaluation Time Functions
- Working with Variables
- Declaring a Variable
- Assigning a Value to a Variable
- Using a Variable in a Formula
- Variable Scope
- Separating Statements in Complex Formulas
- Working with Arrays
- Understanding the Formula Evaluation Time Debugger
Using Subreporting as a Workaround Solution
- Understanding Subreports
- Unlinked versus Linked Subreports
- Creating an Unlinked Subreport
- Linking a Subreport
- Database Links versus Subreports in One-to-Many Situations
- Formatting the Subreport
- Passing Data from the Main Report into a Subreport
- Creating On-Demand Subreports
- Creating Hyperlinks
- Using Subreports to Link "Unlinkable" Data
Creating Powerful Groups
- Customizing the Group Name Field
- Using a Field Name to Customize the Group Name
- Using a Formula to Customize the Group Name Field
- Creating Custom Groups
- Customizing Group Sort Order
- Grouping on a Formula Field
- Using Group Selection to Filter the Records in the Report
- Grouping Hierarchically
Working with Cross-Tab Reports
- Understanding How Cross-Tabs Affect Your Data
- Creating a Cross-Tab Report
- Creating a Cross-Tab with Multiple Rows or Columns
- Applying a Formatting Style to the Cross-Tab
- Customizing the Cross-Tab Format
- Changing Background Colors
- Formatting Individual Cells
- Changing the Summary Operation
- Suppressing Rows, Columns or Totals
- Repeating Row Heading for Multi-Page Cross-Tabs
- Using Alias Names for Column and Row Headings
- Charting Cross-Tabs
- Customizing Cross-Tab Group Names
- CurrentFieldValue
Report Alerts
- What are Report Alerts
- Creating Report Alerts
- Basing Report Formulas or Conditional Formatting on Report Alerts
- Creative Usage for Report Alerts
Report Templates
- What is a Report Template
- Standard Report Creation Wizard and Templates
- The Template Expert
- Applying a Template and the consequences
- Template Considerations
- Creating Your Own Templates
- Inserting Template Fields
- Formatting Template Fields
- Giving Template Fields a Value
Appendix A: The Xtreme Sample Database 11
Appendix B: Installation and System Requirements
- Installing the Application
- Minimum Installation Requirements
