Feature requests - Please read before requesting something

[former_member11696]

Hello all,

UPDATE: They are just about to make the Idea Place full featured, currently beta. It's going to be THE place and a great place to post these suggestions with Points being awarded to the contributors, details to be announced also. It's available now, look up, second from the right

[Idea Place|http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/idea-place]

Second page has Crystal Reports, click on the agree to terms if it pops up.

You can start entering your suggestions now, knowing it's still beta, but nothing should be lost when it goes GA.

I'll leave this post open for a while but once it's open please post your suggestions there so you get the credit for your idea.

Enjoy all....

Don

[UPDATE] - Regarding the charting enhancements - Cr uses a third party charting dll and we don't have the ability to add new features to the basic functionality. Check the Feature info on new product lines for any updates to charting functionality. We are well aware of the limitation the basic charting functions have.

I believe we are working on a feature request forum but lots of details to work out yet. In the mean time if you have a request please add it it here. PLEASE keep it short and to the point to conserve space. Steps on where and how it would work if you know. If it's DB or other third party application related specify the product with a link to their site.

As this progresses I may add more info or suggestions.

DO NOT POST YOUR QUESTIONS IN THIS POST. IT IS FOR FEATURE REQUESTS ONLY AND NOT TO BE USED AS A PLACE TO GET ANSWERS. Post your question first and if no work around or solution is sent then post your enhancement here.

I will delete such questions.

Thank you

Don

Enhancement Requests are exactly that. There are no guarantee's these features will be put into Future versions. The Product teams do look at every request and determine if they can be done and when or if they will be added.

If any of these are something that you must have please log a case and provide a very good business Case why they are required and it will get escalated to see if they can be implemented in current product versions. New features are only added to Service Pack patches.

List of Enhancement Request for this post:

ADAPT01449906 - "Deactivate Drill" object property

ADAPT01449910 - Equal Horizontal / Vertical allignment formatting feature

ADAPT01449913 - Reset dialog box positions for larger screen sizes and dual monitors changes

ADAPT01449947 - Allow to adjust/set the number of recent reports to display

ADAPT01449978 - Formula Debugging Features

ADAPT01449983 - Enable Scroll mouse wheel in formula editor dialog box

ADAPT01450043 - Crystal to support Open Type fonts

ADAPT01450238 - Hijra calendar support in our Date Parameter Calendar Prompt UI

ADAPT01450252 - Repeat Subreport Report Header if subreport spans more than one page

ADAPT01450258 - Allow support of spatial queries

ADAPT01450278 - Rotate a text object n degrees

ADAPT01450288 - Spell Checker in Crystal Designer

ADAPT01450755 - Put the Zoom button back in the menu bar

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 9:25 AM

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 13, 2010 7:09 AM

Edited by: Don Williams on Oct 1, 2010 2:43 PM

[former_member11696]

Hi All. See the very top of this post for the latest update.... New link to add your feature requests...

Don

[Former Member]

Hi,

it would be useful to be able to control the size of an OLE-Object (bitmap) depending on data.

Example: I have bitmaps, OLE-object is scaled to 100 % width/height and the object can become bigger. But some of the bitmaps are too big (when printed in 100% size). I'd like to have the possibility to say 'if width of object/bmp exceeds certain size, scale to 50%'

Thanks!

Susanne

[Don]

This is one of those that for performance and RPT file size issues it is better to standardize the image file before saving to your database or file repository. To have CR adjust the image displayed means the original file size is used which takes up considerable room in the RPT file itself. Some reports can have hundreds of images and adding a 16 meg BMP or jpeg to the RPT makes the report unmanageable.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 13, 2010 6:51 AM

[Former Member]

I'd like a way to search through the items on the field explorer, i.e. be able to search for all datetime fields. When you have a table with 200 fields, and aren't sure exactly what the field name is, it takes quite a while to hunt through all of the fields for the one you want.

[Don]

Would be a nice feature but there are other ways to get the info. CR assumes you know the database or there are Universes or Views that can be created to make the field names more informative.

As a work around either get a field name dump from your DBA or run a query through your DB front end tool to get a list.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 13, 2010 6:33 AM

[Former Member]

In the past using the RDC there was a way to capture the NoData event. This capability is not in CR2008 (no longer com objects). Please add this feature back in. It would allow a nice message to our users (since we run reports within our software application) and save a few trees

See above on how to...

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 13, 2010 6:31 AM

[Former Member]

Here's a feature that I'd find handy.

Align drawing objects.

I have totals in my reports that have lines above and below them. (actually the one bellow has two lines. It would be nice to have the align left-> right, same width, etc... I'd align them with my field and text objects.

Thanks,

J

[Former Member]

Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450755

A simple time saving request: I would like the ZOOM icon back on a tool bar in Crystal Reports 2008.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 13, 2010 6:30 AM

[Former Member]

Hi Don

When i draw a chart where the x axis is a date field i would like the chart to plot the missing dates from the range

For example if the datasource has date and quantity, and my chart x axis is date.

The data in the table might be

row 1: date 01/06/2010, quantity 10

row 2: date 04/06/2010, quantity 9

Currently the chart (line chart) will only plot an x axis point at 01/06/2010 and 04/06/2010

I would like to be able to tell the chart to fill in the missing dates from the range, even if there is no data at that point

So it would plot 01/06/.., 02/06..., 03/06..., 04/06...

Best regards

Patrick

[Former Member]

There is an option to do this using RAS: 1487765 - How to stop a report with no data from printing ( not release to the public yet )

I would like the 'No Data' event added for .Net. We used to use the CR10 RDC CR10 for embedding the running of reports in our software application and could give a nice message to our users if the report returned no data and not waste paper. This does not appear to exist in CR2008 (.Net version anyway).

Symptom

Using the Crystal Reports SDK for VS .NET

When using PrintToPrinter function all reports print, even those with no data

To stop wasting a blank page, how to stop the print if no data is retrieved for the report?

1487765 - How to stop a report with no data from printing

Resolution

There are at least four options:

Check a field that will be some particular value if and only if the report has no data (e.g.; some field is NULL). If the field is NULL don't enter the print function

Retrieve the SQL query that returned the data and check if number of records returned is zero. See KBase 1280515 - How to extract SQL query from Crystal reports using RAS sdk

Use the rowset controller to check number of records used in the report. See KBase 1471477 - Using the RAS SDK for VS .NET, how to determine number of data rows returned to a report?

Use the following code for CR for .NET SDK:

If crReportDocument.Rows.Count > 0 Then crReportDocument.PrintToPrinter(1, False, 0, 0)End if

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 2:50 PM

[Former Member]

[Don] - this is a feature of the next version of CR

It will be good to protect the sql command viewing by end user having the *.rpt file

mechanism like password protected .rpt file can be designed to protect the source code and data

more integration of dynamic graphs, chart, flash objects e.t.c

these are the nice to have features in future crystal reports

Thanks

Krishnan

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 2:33 PM

[Former Member]

Don -

I think I have run into some CR internal restrictions as to how many Variables, Functions, Summary displays (like charts and cross-tab tables) CR will tolerate before exceeding some limit before finishing a report and exhibiting random results without an error message.

I have never seen such limitations made explicit (like don't use more than 100 variables in a report, or more than 100 functions) and whether this is RAM dependent.

This problem was true for a report I did in 11R2.6 and shows similar behavior when migrated to 12.2.7.

It would be very helpful for SAP to include this info somewhere accessible (manuals, Help ,etc.) so we don't try to build reports that are doomed to fail.

See for the motivation for this.

Thanks!

[Former Member]

If possible, I really want to have a custom date format function in Chart Expert, like what we have currently in Excel. Considering the internationalization, a reporting template is often designed with several language choice. Therefore the date format should be completely independent from the system's regional settings.

Now even I use the date axis line chart, the date category pre-defined in Crystal is really limited.

I have tried to make a formula to change date into the format / language I want however after this operation Crystal cannot sort the data correctly if the amount of records is larger than a certain number. (this problem still exists in the latest version CR2008 12.1.0.892.)

I suggest a development of more complexe format string which includes regional settings, i.e. by adding "FR" in the format string the output of MMM/DD[FR] could be "18 mai" but not "May 18".

At least, it should be possible to apply a formula onto the real label of X axis in order to mask the real date, without affecting the sort order.

[lisahanson]

[Don] - Typically one would verify the spelling before committing the data but we all make mistakes. This would be a great feature but a huge over head of dictionary files for all languages we support. Being able to Hook into a third party dictionary file may be possible as a feature also - Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450288

I would love to see a Spell Checker added as we use Crystal for almost all of our letters that we merge with our different programs and databases, but even if you only use it for reports, who wants to take a report to a board meeting or put it on a website with mis-spelled headers.

I did find a few add ins out there that will spell check for Crystal. One was horrible, and one turned out to be pretty good, I was just hoping someone else out there had advice on a really good option.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 2:24 PM

[Former Member]

[Don] - this would be a font rendering calculation nightmare. Most won't allow it so it's a lot of calculations and would be a huge processing performance hit.

I'll log it but I doubt it will be added but doesn't hurt to ask - Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450278

Rotate a textobject n degrees

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 2:16 PM

[juergen_robel]

The designer in .NET IDE is using the RDC ( Embeddable Designer control ) which is a function the legacy engine had. In .NET this function is no longer there but I have created an ER to add it into the Designer - Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450276

In the CR Report Designer of MS Visual Studio 2008 you can edit the names of sections (and line objects) via the Properties Window. E.g., instead of having a section named "DetailsSection8" you can rename it to "DetailsSectionForSerialNumbers".

This is very convenient for addressing sections when programmaticly accessing a report object with one of the Crystal Reports APIs (like RDC or .NET), see also [;.

In the Report Designer of Crystal Reports you neither see the section object names (e.g. you can see section "Details a" but not its object name "DetailsSection1") nor you can edit them.

For line objects you can see the name (e.g. "Line1") in the Report Explorer but not edit it. The same holds for box objects, too.

What you can do is editing the object names of fields and text objects in their formatting dialog.

Please add a function to give custom names to sections (and line/box objects) in the Report Designer of Crystal Reports 2008 and XI R2 (since the latter is the popular version that we are using, too).

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 2:13 PM

[Former Member]

[Don] - Crystal Reports RPT formats are proprietary so we will not be saving them in XML format. You can export to Report Definition and use a text editor to compare info. If anything is missing log a case and we can add the parts that are missing.

Will not be logging an Enhancement request.

A missing Feature, which I think is a must for any developper, would be to have the .rpt file as a text based (XML???) file so that it could be possible to compare different version of a same report to find what has changed.

If this is not possible (for any reason), at least offer the possibility to export all the formulas of the report to a text file.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 2:05 PM

[Former Member]

I'll second Rene's request: There needs to be a way to compare report versions that will show all changes. I'd think most auditors would consider this a requirement as well...

Thanks,

Carl

[ido_millet]

Crystal Reports allows you to export any report to a "Report Definition" text file.

[Former Member]

I've found that to be useful, but not useful enough for use in version control. What would be best would be a straight two-way text converter so that if a report was edited by two users, the version control system could merge the changes back together.

Besides, Report Definition Format doesn't include the data, so if you change the SQL Command, or the linked tables, you'll never see it.

[Former Member]

[Don] - this may be be to complex for CR Designer so it may be added to another one of our Database query tools - Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450258

I would like a spatial parameter type . If my report access a database that support spatial queries (Sql Server 2008, MySql) I would like to supply a region (polygon, circel etc) as an input parameter to to the report.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 1:40 PM

[Former Member]

[Don] - you can do this using a second Detail section and suppressing using the page count so the section A titles only show on new page.

It would be a nice feature though - Not sure how they would do it though, there is no Page Header sections in a subreport. It would have to be a custom option for the Report Header to allow it to display for each following page of subreport data. May be tough to do but I will add it. - Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450252

Currenty, Crystal Reports, according to the online help, only displays heading information on the first page of subreports. Subreports are often used, but the customers complain about not seeing relevant heading information on secondary pages and beyond. We would like to see that ability within Crystal Reports.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 1:19 PM

[Former Member]

[Don] - that could be very dangerous. Your PC may have enough space when designing the report but the user running the same report may not and this would cause an error or undetermined problems to debug etc.... What you are asking for a Record Set in active memory, there are other options to do this rather than using arrays in CR. XML data source is one option....

No enhancement logged.

If you need more than 1000 then there are more efficient ways to hold those values. Stored Procedure and have the DB server do all of the work which it is designed to do much more efficiently than CR can do.

Please remove the limit to the size of an array. The limit should be based on available RAM + VM. If that's not practical for whatever reason, please make the max size as large as possible.

Thanks,

Carl

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 1:31 PM

[Former Member]

It would be good if you could implement a new property like 'No orphan' on GroupHeader, so if a GroupHeader should be added at the bottom of a page with no space left to put at least one record, the GroupHeader would be forced to be displayed on the next page instead.

[Former Member]

I'll second Rene's request...

Carl

[Former Member]

I too support Rene's request. And Carl's previous request for a way to cancel the Refresh...

[Former Member]

I second the request for group header force to next page if not enough room to print atleast one line after the header.

[adam_alsop2]

I have to second the idea of being able to "force" a header to the next page (conditionally!) when the group cannot print at least one record for that group. I've posted a question regarding this ability in the Discussion section.

[Former Member]

[Don] - I doubt Google would allow this to happen - Options are to download a local copy and link it in the Designer and manually refresh the download/save as. You may want to post your query to Google and ask them how one would use Crystal to report off of their Doc's. They may not allow it or have an SDK that CR could use, if so then you could write a UFL to connect and get the info. Possibly even without a Google SDK and just some custom code within the UFL.

I would really like to connect with my Google Docs via. Crystal.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 1:10 PM

[Former Member]

Hi All,

We used to use Crystal Report 8 and any text/formula/database field that were placed in the Page Footer and had "Can Grow" checked will dynamically size correctly in the Page Footer.

However, it seems like this feature was no longer supported in Crystal Report version 12.

It would be nice if this feature will be added back on since it used to work in version 8.

Dan

[Former Member]

[Don] - third party dll's

Unify dialogs for chart options

The settings concerning the axes are dispersed among several dialogs, e.g. whether they have a time, ordinal, numeric or logarithmic scale.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 1:00 PM

[Former Member]

[Don] - Possibly the easiest way is to write your own date function UFL. search in forums on "ufl" for more info and how to write one. It can include all of your functions required. As for the calendar UI itself look in our C:\Program Files\Business Objects\Common\4.0\crystalreportviewers12\js folder and Calendar files. You could modify these to work for you but be aware any patches installed may/will over write any changes you have done.

I will add this as an enhancement request for supported platforms - Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450238

Hi All

and author Don

We Need Hijra Date Picker In Crystal Reports.

Also We need to convert all the dates accordingly from gegorian to Hijra.

I mean If we peform any Calculations Then It should calculate exact.

Functions Like Date diff, number of days added to hijra Must Work Properly For HijraDate

Any Help Regarding This Issue Will Be Appreciated......

Would like to hear from you all

Ashfaq

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 12:47 PM

[Former Member]

Vertical text alignment

See threads [Vertical Alignment in Fields|; and [Vertical alignment of text fields|;.

[Former Member]

User editable crosstab cell margins

In the crosstab expert, I can check the checkbox "show cell margins" but I can not set their size.

[Former Member]

I'll second florianschneider's request...

Carl

[Former Member]

Enhancement_Request: ADAPT01450043

I would really like to see Crystal support OpenType fonts. I am told by my design group that OpenType fonts are a "superior, widely-supported format", yet I cannot use them in my reports. I am finding this limitation very frustrating as my organization has a specific set of OpenType fonts that we are expected to use for branding purposes, but I can't use them in my reports! And I can't find TrueType versions of the fonts, so I am forced to use other fonts and end up with a very different end product.

Thanks!

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 11:22 AM

[Former Member]

[Don] - all depends on the options you have enabled. I don't have this problem. The Cancel button is enabled in the Parameter UI.

No enhancement logged.

In Report Designer, the first time that you refresh a report, there is no way to change your mind (at least in XI R2). You must supply parameters and run the report. This is a request for a way to cancel the refresh, returning to the design tab.

Thanks for listening,

Carl

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 11:16 AM

[Former Member]

[Don] - The problem with this is where and which section gets removed to make the crosstab fit. When CR renders each page of the report there has to be space reserved for the page footer etc.. Subreports must be limited to predefined allocated space to allow the main report to format the remaining sections.

No enhancement logged.

Let subreports grow horizontally

Give subreports the possibility to grow. That option is automatically disabled for subreports. In my opinion, there should be a possibility to enable that option, e.g. for subreports that contain crosstabs. When the subreport crosstab grows horizontally over multiple pages, the main report truncates that.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 10:52 AM

[Former Member]

[Don] - lots of work arounds for this using UFL's or in CR 2008 changing the local should also translate. Other option is to use a database field to specify the location and then use a formula to use the correct text info accordingly.

No enhancement logged.

Hmmm I posted a few feature requests here but everything past Feb 19 was deleted?

Oh well, here I go again: List lookups. (think internationalization) to translate column headers into other languages.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 10:48 AM

[former_member11696]

You can use UFL's ( User Defined Functions to do this ) Look in the developers help for more info on how to. Also search notes for info and an example of how to create and use a UFL that supports Internationalization.

Again, please post your question as a new post first before requesting a function that already exists....

[Former Member]

Hi Don,

In my original post I also said 'easy'. I had forgotten about UFLs but for people with no .Net or Java background having them create a custom function might be a bit much.

It's a feature I can see quite a few people wanting and it wouldn't be that difficult to implement (implement a collection/dictionary/hashmap)

Anyway for my problem I'll create my own UDF.

Jason

[Former Member]

[Don] - not much info to go on but I assume you were updating old reports. Designing New report with the grid enabled does not have this problem.

No enhancement logged

I would like a datagrid control. I spend hours aligning labels and fields in a box with vertical lines that span header and detail with another horizontal line at the top of detail.

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 10:46 AM

[Former Member]

[Don] - I can understand why you would want this but changing database info requires knowledge before hand so no way to anticipate what you will change it to. If you use customized info then it is up to the user to maintain the info. I understand why you would want this but it doesn't follow current policies to use ANSII standards.

You could always use our SDK's to maintain and do batch datasource updates to your reports.

No enhancement logged.

Hello Don

When the datasource for a report is changed (Set Datasource Location) i would like the overridden qualified table name property to be retained, if this property was already set.

Example: to change the datasource (in my case Oracle store procedure) i must enter parameters for the new datasource, once this new datasource is in place the overriffen qualified table name property is cleared. To set it i must enter the value and then re-renter the parameters.

I think this property should either only be maintained by the report developer or should be automatically set to the name of the new datasource - maybe that could be an option or registry setting

Best regards

Patrick

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 10:42 AM