Let us assume you have emailed a report in email. This
report is a summary report and someone wants to view this. It is quite simple once
you have downloaded and installed the Crystal Reports Viewer XI. Once this
viewer is installed in your system, the customer that receives your
distribution can simply click on your report. The report opens up and the
customer can then view it and do more.
Besides viewing reports, using the new viewer software allows
you to share reports online on the CrystalReports.com site. Using the On-Demand
option, select the "Share Report on-line" and you can save your
report to crystalreports.com. If you are looking to have a place to store your
reports, this may be an option for you.
You can also save reports to your Business Objects
Enterprise Server. To do this, go to your Edit menu then to your configure
server connections. From this menu click the Add button to add a server. You
need to know the name of the business objects enterprise server and the log on
credentials. Once you set this up, you can open your reports to the Business
Objects server and save reports to the Business Objects server.
Once the report is open the consumer can view the report properties
that have been set up. For instance, keywords, Author, the title, comments and
a subject are available to view. Also, the consumer can export this report to
Excel, RTF formats or pdf from within the viewer. For me this is a key feature
to make available to consumers of the report. This makes the viewer valuable
for more than just report developers.
If the report designer has set up the report to allow
drill-downs, the consumers also will be able to drill down into the reports. This
is up to the designer, so make sure you select drill down on grouped sections when
designing your reports. Selecting drill down in design makes the drill down
feature available to consumers of your reports. Of course we assume those end
users or consumers utilize the Crystal Report Viewer XI.
On the File menu there are options to print either the
currently selected report or the entire report including hidden sections. For
large reports if the end user needs to find something, you can use the Search
option. Simply use select Edit from the menu options. Then select Find from the
Edit menu and enter your text. You can also select options to match case or not
match it from the drop down under the textbox for entering the search text.
