Crystal Reports 2013/2016 Designer Level 2

This two-day course covers the more complex and powerful features of Crystal Reports. The course focuses on the student`s ability to perform tasks using the most productive techniques allowing you to pull data from all times of data sources. The course discusses very technical issues and includes several fast-paced, comprehensive exercises.

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
• Challenge Exercise - Formatting with Multiple Sections
• Challenge Exercise - Conditionally Formatting Using Drill Down Group Level

Using the Running Totals Feature

• Understanding Running Totals
• Creating Running Totals for a List of Numbers
• Conditional Running Totals
• Challenge Exercise - Creating a Conditional Running Total

Prompting with Parameters

• Parameter Field Considerations
• Creating a Parameter Field
• Using a Parameter to Select Records
• Using a Parameter Field
• Using the Parameter Panel
• 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
• Using Parameters in Conditional Formatting
• Using an Edit Mask to Limit String Parameters
• Sorting with a Parameter
• Using a parameter to set N in a Top N Report
• Cascading Parameters
• Challenge Exercise - Using and Displaying Parameters

Using Advanced Formula Features

• Understanding How Crystal Reports Processes the Data
• What Is a Pass?
• 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 Evaluation Time Debugger
• Challenge Exercise - Understand and Set Up the YTD Comparison Report

Using Sub reporting as a Workaround Solution

• Understanding
• Sub reports
• Unlinked versus Linked Subreports
• Creating an
• Unlinked Sub report
• 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
• Challenge Exercise - Creating Reports with Linked Subreports

Creating

• Powerful Groups
• Creating Custom Groups
• Customizing Group Sort Order
• Using Group Selection to Filter the Records in the Report
• Grouping on a Formula Field
• Grouping Hierarchically
• Challenge Exercise – Create Customized Grouping
• Challenge Exercise - Using Group Selection
• Challenge Exercise - Creating a Group Using a Formula

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
• Using the Current Field Value Function
• Challenge Exercise - Cross-Tab Reports

Report Alerts

• What are Report Alerts
• Creating Report Alerts
• Basing Report Formulas or Conditional Formatting on Report Alerts
• Creative Usage for Report Alerts
• Challenge Exercise - Using Report Alerts with Parameter

Successful completion of either the Designer 1 Workshop or the Pre-qualification exercise is strongly recommended.

Experienced administrators, developers and end-users who are experienced with Crystal Reports.