Crystal Reports Hyperlinks to open in a new page BO 4.0 HELP

[Former Member]

Hi Folks,

I have a series of Crystal reports that are being migrated to BO 4.0 from BO 3.1.

These Crystal reports all have hyperlinks to other reports on the enterprise that need to open in new windows. From what I have read the Window=New tag that I'm using currently will not work in BO 4.0. I have also tested this and it doesn't work. However, I have tried in vain to make the supposed replacement Target=_blank to work and it is not working.

I have been told that the only way to get my hyperlinks to work is to create them from scratch, from the anchor <a> level, but to be honest I'm not even sure where in Crystal reports I should even be entering these values. The documentation on this is poor. I thought the solution was to try and create the hyperlinks through Crystal reports 11 using their 'create enterprise hyperlink' functionality but that even includes the deprecated Window=New tag.

So please, can someone tell me how I can get these new window hyperlinks to work?

Thanks,

Jeanne

[abhilash_kumar · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeanne,

Yes I agree that the documentation is a little confusing.

sWindow=New, although deprecated still worked with a few Fix Packs post SP3 (and I guess even with higher Service Packs in XI 3.1), strange that it doesn't work in BI 4.0.

Anyway, what you need to do is:

1) Create a formula in the report with this code:

'<a href = "http://<servername>:<port>/BOE/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?iDocID=12456"target="_blank"> Click Here </a>'

2) Don't turn ON 'HTML Text Interpretation' for the field. Save the report to the Enterprise.

3) On the BI 4.0 Server, browse to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\SAP BusinessObjects\Tomcat6\webapps\BOE\WEB-INF\config\default

4) Open the CrystalReports.PROPERTIES file and add this line to the rest of the text:

crystal_encode_html_for_single_line_field_objects=no

5) Restart the app server

Let me know how this goes.

-Abhilash

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Abhilash,

Thank you!

That is very helpful!

I have one question though.

What do you do if you want the value:

'<a href = "http://<servername>:<port>/BOE/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?iDocID=12456"target="_blank"> Click Here </a>'

Click Here to be a value from the database?

So

'<a href = "http://<servername>:<port>/BOE/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?iDocID=12456"target="_blank">DA...

Is that possible?

Thanks,

Jeanne

[abhilash_kumar · Accepted solution]

Yes you can. The formula will look like this:

'<a href = "http://<servername>:<port>/BOE/OpenDocument/opendoc/openDocument.jsp?iDocID=12456"target="_blank">' ...

-Abhilash

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Abhilash,

Great!!

I am getting closer!! Thank you.

My server name changes depending on which environment I'm on (test, production etc).

Previously this was dynamically determined and worked fine. Now for some reason it is adding some text into the hyperlink which doesn't seem necessary:

'/OpenDocument/long number here/CrystalReports/' do you know what this is?

Thanks,

Jeanne

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

I should add the Open document text is in addition to the text I was already inputting.

[abhilash_kumar · Accepted solution]

When you add an openDoc hyperlink, the browser does seem to modify that URL and add certain elements to it - not sure why.

Does it work anyway?

-Abhilash

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Abhilash,

Unfortunately not. It will work if I remove the extra text, but not with it.

[abhilash_kumar · Accepted solution]

Can you paste the original URL (formula) and the converted URL here?

-Abhilash

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Abhilash,

Thanks for your continuing help on this matter.

I have finally sorted the links by putting as it turned out my relative link was not going straight to the root.

I also had to get around the issue of decimal places displaying for the number value in between the anchor tags in my hyperlinks, but got around this by converting it to text (as numeric functions were not working) and stripping off the decimal places.

Thanks again for all your help!

[abhilash_kumar · Accepted solution]

Glad I could help, Jeanne!

Have a great day.

-Abhilash

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Abhilash! You too!

[Former Member]

Hi Folks,

It's me again.

When I export this report in PDF the hyperlink code obscures the values on the report.

Is there anyway to preven this?

Thanks,

Jeanne

[abhilash_kumar]

Hey Jeanne,

Do you mean to say the PDF shows the openDoc URL code and not the hyperlink text in the PDF?

-Abhilash

[Former Member]

Hi Abhilash

Thanks for replying!

Yes, the pdf and any print outs show the formula code for the open document and not the number in between the anchor tags.

Sorry for bothering you again.

Thanks,

Jeanne

[abhilash_kumar]

I think I remember bits and pieces of this issue when I had faced it with one of the customers.

We had a similar issue with export to pdf 'after' we did the above. I believe that is also due to the fact that we don't check the 'html interpration' option in the report. If we go ahead and check the option, I believe the export to pdf will show the hyperlink, however you then loose the control over opening links in a new window.

Let me confirm this and in the meantime you could check if the html interpretation helps in any way.

-Abhilash

[Former Member]

Hi Abhilash,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Yes, sadly I can confirm that if I select the text interpretation for the field to HTML interpretation then the new window functionality is removed.

[abhilash_kumar]

Hmmm..that's what I guessed too.

If you have a Support License with SAP then I suggest that you should create a ticket and work with one of the engineers to find out if things have changed from the last time I saw this.

If you do get a resolution, please don't forget to post it back here!

-Abhilash

[Former Member]

Thanks Abhilash, I will do!

If they come up with anything I will let you know.