I often find that I am using one report as a template for another when working with Dynamics GP tables because the table structure is the same for many work, open and history tables. For example, if I am creating two versions of an SOP invoice – unposted and posted – most of the tables and fields are the same except for the two main tables. In that case, I just need to change SOP10100 to SOP30200 and SOP10200 to SOP30300. This is pretty straight forward to do in Crystal, however the name of the changed tables will still show with the original name almost everywhere, which can be quite confusing, especially when others may be working on the reports after you are done with them. You can change the display name of any table, view or stored procedure on a Crystal Report using the steps below.

Let’s start at the beginning. I have an SOP Unposted Transaction report that pulls from the following tables, shown in Crystal’s Field Explorer:

I update the tables by going to Database > Set Datasouce Location, selecting the table I want to change under Current Data Source, selecting the table to replace it with under Replace with and clicking Update: 

I repeat these steps for every table I need to change, however the list at the top (under Current Data Source) looks unchanged. Only if I expand the Properties for each table will I see the actual table name:

In Field Explorer I still see the old table names. Very confusing, especially when I come back and work on this months or years after the fact. So how do I change this? Here are the steps:

Open the Database Expert (Database > Database Expert) and find the table in the list on the right under Selected Tables:

Right click on the table, choose Rename:

Type in the new table name:

Click OK when done. You will see the updated names in Field Explorer immediately:

If you would like to see more tips like this, take a look at our GP Reports Viewer newsletter archive. We have recently added a section for SSRS tips to the newsletter, so take a peek at those if you are starting to work with SSRS. If you are looking to print Crystal and SSRS reports in Dynamics GP, check out our GP Reports Viewer. We have demo videos and fully functional downloads available.

For more on this, take a look at my latest article for MSDynamicsWorld.com, The Good News for Users of Crystal Reports with Microsoft Dynamics GP. 

To start, let’s say I have a report with a list of all my 1099 vendors:

What I am checking on this report is whether I have a Tax ID number and an address for each vendor, so I am going to create two formulas these:

taxid:
if {PM00200.TXIDNMBR} = ""
then Chr(168) else Chr(254)

and address:
if {PM00200.ADDRESS1} = ""
or {PM00200.CITY} = ""
or {PM00200.STATE} = ""
or {PM00200.ZIPCODE} = ""
then Chr(168) else Chr(254)

The important parts are in blue in the formulas above, these bring in the Wingdings character codes for a checked box if the condition specified is true and an empty checkbox if it is not true. You can use any characters you want for these, as long as you know what their code is. (More on this a little further down.)

Next step is to add two new columns to the report to show the taxid and address formulas, change the font for them to Wingdings and the font size to something larger (otherwise they will show up tiny). Here is the final result:

Note that vendor DOLECKIC0001 has an empty checkbox for the address, even though there is an address listed. That’s because in my formula I am checking for the ADDRESS1, CITY, STATE and ZIPCODE to all be there. If one of them is missing, I consider that an incomplete address. This is where you really see the power of the checkboxes, when quickly scanning the list it might look like all the addresses are there, however this way no list scanning or guesswork is needed.

To find codes for other characters you might want to use, I have found the following websites:

• Cloford.com Symbol Fonts
• Alan Wood’s Character sets

For more tips like this, sign up to receive GP Reports Viewer newsletters via e-mail or check out the newsletter archive on the Flexible Solutions website.

Let’s say you have a customer list with balances:

Now what if you wanted to make all customers with balances of $50,000 or higher more visible?  Here are the steps to do this using the Highlighting Expert in Crystal Reports (click on any of the screen shots to enlarge them):

• Right click on the field you want to change the display for and choose Highlighting Expert (or click on the field and go to Format > Highlighting Expert).
• Click New at the bottom of the Item list.
• Under Item editor select the conditions to check for and the color, font, background or border you want to display. Below is an example to simply highlight any amount $50,000 or greater in yellow:
  Or to make the amounts show in red, bold and italics, it would look like this: 
  
  Note that I set the Background to Default Color, so that my alternate line shading is preserved. (Check out my Alternating shading for lines in Crystal Reports to see how to set up alternate shading.)
• Click OK to close the Highlighting Expert window and your report will now look like this: 

If you want to highlight the entire line instead of just the amount, you can repeat the steps above for each field on your line, the only change would be under the Item editor section, where you would be testing the condition for your balance field, here is what that looks like:



And here is the final result, after adding the highlighting to each detail field:



For more tips like this, sign up to receive GP Reports newsletters via e-mail. Or check out the newsletter archives on the Flexible Solutions website.

Running totals are a great way to show totals that have a different calculation than a subtotal without having to write additional formulas. 

Let’s look at an example: You have a list of unapplied vendor transactions grouped and subtotaled by vendor class. Below is an example of what this report looks like right now:

For each vendor class you already have a total due, but you also want to show the total credit limit so that you can compare the totals for each class. The credit limit is stored at the vendor level and because your report has more than one transaction per vendor, you cannot simply subtotal the credit limits for all the detail lines. Here are the steps to create a running total for the credit limit by vendor class:

1. Add the Credit Limit field somewhere in your detail section
2. Right click on the Credit Limit field and choose Insert > Running Total:
3. Choose a name for the Running Total
4. Change the Evaluate setting to ‘On change of field’ and enter the vendor ID field (in this case PM00200.VENDORID)
5. Change the Reset setting to ‘On change of group’ and choose the vendor class group (Group #1: PM00200.VNDCLSID in this case):
6. Click OK to close the Create Running Total Field window
7. Go to Report > Record Sort Expert  and make sure that your details are sorted by the vendor class group, then by Vendor ID:
8. Click OK to close the Record Sort Expert window
9. Optionally, hide the Credit Limit field on the detail section by right clicking on it, choosing Format Field and checking Suppress on the Common tab:

Your report now has the credit limit totals per vendor class:

For more tips like this, sign up to receive GP Reports newsletters via e-mail. Or check out the newsletter archives on the Flexible Solutions website.

So if you have a report parameter called ReportDate and you want to calculate the following Monday’s date, here is the formula:

if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 1
then dateadd("d",1,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 2
then dateadd("d",7,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 3
then dateadd("d",6,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 4
then dateadd("d",5,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 5
then dateadd("d",4,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 6
then dateadd("d",3,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 7
then dateadd("d",2,{?ReportDate})

Then to calculate the following Monday date, you can use the following formula:

dateadd("d",7,{@Week1date})

Just keep adding 7 for additional weeks.

As a corollary to this, let’s say you wanted the closest (as opposed to the following) Monday, here is the formula:

if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 1
then dateadd("d",1,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 2
then {?ReportDate} else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 3
then dateadd("d",-1,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 4
then dateadd("d",-2,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 5
then dateadd("d",-3,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 6
then dateadd("d",3,{?ReportDate}) else
if DayOfWeek({?ReportDate}) = 7
then dateadd("d",2,{?ReportDate})

The above will give you the following:

• on Monday – returns the ReportDate entered by user
• on Tuesday - returns the previous Monday’s date
• on Wednesday – returns the previous Monday’s date
• on Thursday – returns the previous Monday’s date
• on Friday – returns the following Monday’s date
• on Saturday – returns the following Monday’s date
• on Sunday – returns the following Monday’s date

For more Crystal Reports tips, check out the Working with Crystal Reports section on my GP Reports page. Past Flexible Solutions GP Reports newsletters can be found on the Flexible Solutions website.

It is entirely possible that many of these fields will be blank, but we need to account for them on reports like customer invoices and statements just in case there are records where these fields are not blank.

If you simply add all the address fields individually to a report, here is what the report design will look like:

And the results would be:

To get the address to appear without any blank fields, instead of adding each field individually to your report, use a  text object:

1. Go to Insert > Text Object.
2. Place the Text Object in the area where you will want the address and make it at least a few lines tall, you can always resize the text object as needed later.
3. Drag each address field inside the text object in the order they should appear. Insert carriage returns and additional spacing or punctuation where needed between the fields:
4. Right click on the text object and choose Format Text. On the Common tab check Suppress Embedded Field Blank Lines. On the same tab, Can Grow is also useful – this lets you make the text object the size of your typical address and if the address is larger, Crystal will automatically adjust the size of the text object and the rest of the report:
5. Click OK and take a look at your results, they should now look a lot nicer:

For more Crystal Reports tips, check out the Working with Crystal Reports section on my GP Reports page. Past Flexible Solutions GP Reports newsletters can be found on the Flexible Solutions website. And if you’re looking to replace Dynamics GP Sales Order Processing (SOP) reports with Crystal Reports, take a look at this demo video.

Here are the steps to have Crystal dynamically determine how many decimal places to use for the quantity fields:

1. Right click on the report field and choose Formal Field
2. Go to the Number tab and click Customize
3. Click on the Formula button next to Decimals:
4. Enter the formula that determines how many decimal places to use – the result of the formula will be the number of decimal places the report will use

In the Dynamics GP SOP example, for SOP quantities the formula should be:

{SOP10200.DECPLQTY}-1

If you want do use a formula for the currency amounts, use the following:

{SOP10200.DECPLCUR}-1

And check out the latest demo video for GP Reports Viewer showing how easy it is to replace Dynamics GP’s SOP reports with Crystal Reports!

I think this is the first time I have seen a product with Service Pack 0.    For some reason, this is pretty difficult information to find and I cannot seem to locate any information for older versions of Crystal Reports. If anyone would like to share, I will add it to the table.

I also recently found a great list of Support End Dates on the SAP site.

Updates:

• April 24, 2010: Lots of additional information and helpful links can be found on the Software Forces website.
• August 3, 2010: Added version for SP 3 of Crystal 2008 and links that I have found for various service pack downloads.
• March 8, 2011: The links for the Crystal 2008 Service Packs sometimes do not work, if they’re not working for you, try getting to the downloads from this list.
• June 15, 2011: Added version and link for Crystal Reports 2008 SP 4 (thanks very much to Christian Müller for this).
• June 22, 2011: Added support end dates link and RTM version for Crystal 2011.
• June 23: 2011: Added version and link for Crystal Reports 2011 SP 1.

I have created a statement report, but it’s a little bland, especially when there are only a few lines of data to show:

First step is to copy the watermark image to the Page Header section. On my report I was not using the page header, so I could put the watermark there. If your report is already using the page header, you can add an additional page header by right clicking on the Page Header section and choosing Insert Section Below:

Once you insert the watermark image you may need to re-size it or reposition it lower so that it is does not show up at the top (unless that is what you want).

Now go to Report > Section Expert, click on the Page Header (if you created a new section, it will be Page Header b) under Sections and check Underlay Following Sections on the Common tab:

Click OK and go to your report Preview. I had to go back and move my watermark down some more, but here is the end result:

You can sign up for the GP Reports newsletter to get these tips monthly or you can see the archived newsletters on the Flexible Solutions News & Events page. You can also see a list of all the Crystal Reports tips published so far on my GP Reports page under Working with Crystal Reports.

Want to spruce up your Crystal report a little by adding alternate color shading to the lines? Here is how. (Click on the screenshots to see them clearer.)

As an example, let’s start with a report that lists of customers from the GP sample company:

I want to shade the alternating lines to make this a little easier to read.  Here are the steps:

• Go to Report > Section Expert
• Click on Details on the left and switch to the Color tab on the right
• Click on the formula button:

•  Copy/type the following formula in:

select RecordNumber mod 2
case 0: crWhite
case 1: color(222,222,222)

• Click Save and Close
• Click OK to close the Section Expert window

 Here are the results:

You can make the color of the shading anything you want. Crystal has colors that you can call by name, here is the list: crBlack, crMaroon, crGreen, crOlive, crNavy, crPurple, crTeal, crGray, crSilver, crRed, crLime, crYellow, crBlue, crFuchsia, crAqua, crWhite. I have found that most of these are much too dark, so I just pick my own RGB colors.

If you want to shade Group lines instead of Detail lines, change the formula to the following: 

select GroupNumber mod 2
case 0: crWhite
case 1: color(222,222,222)

~~~~~

CREATE VIEW view_Security_Roles_and_Tasks
AS

/**
view_Security_Roles_and_Tasks
Created Mar 12 2009 by Victoria Yudin - Flexible Solutions, Inc.
For updates see http://victoriayudin.com/gp-reports/
Shows all security roles and tasks by user by company
**/

SELECT	S.USERID UserID, S.CMPANYID CompanyID,
	C.CMPNYNAM CompanyName, S.SecurityRoleID,
	coalesce(T.SECURITYTASKID,'') SecurityTaskID,
	coalesce(TM.SECURITYTASKNAME,'') SecurityTaskName,
	coalesce(TM.SECURITYTASKDESC,'') SecurityTaskDescription

FROM	SY10500 S   -- security assignment user role

LEFT OUTER JOIN
	SY01500 C   -- company master
	ON S.CMPANYID = C.CMPANYID

LEFT OUTER JOIN
	SY10600 T  -- tasks in roles
	ON S.SECURITYROLEID = T.SECURITYROLEID 

LEFT OUTER JOIN
	SY09000 TM  -- tasks master
	ON T.SECURITYTASKID = TM.SECURITYTASKID 

/** the following will grant permissions to this view to DYNGRP,
leave this section off if you do not want to grant permissions **/
GO
GRANT SELECT ON view_Security_Roles_and_Tasks TO DYNGRP

~~~~~

Disclaimer: I tested this on limited data, if you find an issue or have a suggestion for improvement, please let me know and I will post the update here for everyone.

Ever try to delete a parameter from a Crystal Report and get a pop-up message saying the field is in use on the report and then discover that you can’t find where it is actually used?  Or need to be able to document your Crystal Reports for others on your team?  Here is a quick and easy way to get a detailed report definition:

• With the report open, go to File > Export > Export Report
• Choose Report Definition (TXT) under Format
• Choose Disk File under Destination
• Click OK and choose where to save the file

Now you have a text file with all the sections and fields on your Crystal Report.

Sign up for the Flexible Solutions GP Reports Newsletter to get tips like this delivered directly to your mailbox.  There will also be some exciting announcements for added functionality in GP Reports Viewer over the next few months!

Often when creating a Crystal report for something that needs a new page for each group (like Invoices or Purchase Orders) we use the New Page After option for the Group Footer in Crystal’s Section Expert.  This works great, however it prints a blank page at the very end of the report. 
 
To remove this blank page, you can add a formula for the New Page After option instead of simply checking it.  Click on the formula button and add the following: 

Not OnLastRecord

Save and Close and you’re done.  Now everything except the very last group will get a new page after it.

To get future tips like this as well as GP Reports news and promotions, you can subscribe to the Flexible Solutions GP Reports newsletter.

Since I get asked for recommendations on Crystal Reports books all the time, I thought I would blog about this one - it’s Crystal Reports Encyclopedia Volume 1: Professional XI Reports by Brian Bischof.  I typically find that I use this book as a reference for looking up specific topics as I need them, but it does also have chapters geared towards beginner Crystal Reports users. 

Besides the wealth of information, I really like the author’s clear and straightforward writing style.  Even for those of us who like reporting, this is not necessarily an easy topic and finding someone who speaks plain English to explain it is not always simple.  I would recommend this book to those already using Crystal Reports and searching for some additional information or anyone looking to start creating Crystal Reports.