SAP Crystal Reports Reviews

Native connection, Subreports, pixel free formatting, free hand SQL, multiple sources, supports most databases

Distribution of reports has been improved.

Adhoc and tabbed reporting should be added to the next release.

I've been using it for 14 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

It crashes the designer when the tool with no clear error messages. Working with LOV and Business Views are challenging when migrating environments.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It's good.

We didn't have another solution in place, and use this because of its flexibility and functionality.

Straightforward as it has a native development tool, or working with .Net and (or) Java and deployment to Management console. Setting up the management console is a process.

Implementation of tool needs an implementation partner to follow the best practices and reduce the maintenance issues.

We didn't look at any other solutions.

Perform analysis the purpose of the solution when selecting as oppose to select the solution and define the process.

I use all the features and there is nothing that is more important than the other.

We have a tool to generate all reports for all internal customers. We have different layouts for over 200 reports that change a lot, based on the tool. It is very important to keep everything beautiful and organized.

We are using an old version, and the only thing isn't good is that some error messages are not specific and it is sometimes hard to find the error.

I've been using it for four years day to day, but I first used it eight years ago.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

When I started with my current company, they were already using the solution.

I just have just one situation that I am afraid to update the Crystal Reports DLL version in production to get some features . I do not feel confident to update it even though I have a guarantee that everything will work fine.

Ease of extracting data from various sources and displaying in such a way that user can’t tell the difference.

Largely used by stores manages and senior management to view / analyze sales metrics.

I would like to see a mobile and iOS friendly version.

I have used Crystal Reports for approximately 15 years, and in my current company for eight years.

There some issues with the deployment.

We have had minor issues with its stability.

It's been difficult to scale for our needs.

6/10

It was straightforward in terms of installation, development and deployment.

We’re implementing it through CMC and have an in-house application that pulls the report from CMC.

Versatility between platforms.

It is a pillar of our product to provide embedded reports so I would say it has been an essential part of our system.

They need to offer better support to clients and have a better knowledge base.

I've been using it for 12 years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Terrible, if it wasn’t for the Google community there would not be any support at all.

It was already part of Visual Studio. Later on we bought the developer edition and the installation was very simple.

We used both and try to always work with someone of infrastructure because there is a tendency to have problems with permissions on the latest Windows Server OS.

It came embedded with Visual Studio. Now there is SSRS.

Be aware that SAP Crystal Reports support is practically none existent so be aware that you will need to gather information from other sources.

I value it's ability to satisfy most demanding reporting requirements with ease. No complex programming or tweaking of properties. It can be learned by a power user to satisfy their analytical needs without IT support and, the expert developer can deliver advanced functionality with ease. Mature and works as expected.

Like any tool, the value is derived by how the users use it. I have worked in many organizations and the usage differs, the following are the most value additions I have come across.

• Third party logistics - monitoring their KPIs and highlighting exceptions. 
• Marketing services - generating and emailing thousands of routine reports to it's customers with Crystal Enterprise
• Healthcare industry (Software as a Service) - manage huge report portfolio with a relatively small development team.

The functionality is not evolving much over newer releases. The limitation of the original row based model is still there, and there's no easy way to draw tables. I would very much like to see full multi-dimensional reporting capability. The primitive capabilities have not been improved over the last 10 years.

There were some no issues with the deployment.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It was very good, but now the competition is overtaking, and SAP seems to use it as a cash cow.

It’s ability to connect to multiple data sources, use SQL or individual tables, views or stored procedures, data formatting options, ability to handle and display various date formats and the ability to use VB or Crystal Syntax (or both) within a report.

We were able to develop several On-Time Performance reports to assist with correcting scheduling errors and/or location errors for our buses. This has allowed us to get a much more accurate picture of where we are and how to get where we want to be.

Charts and Graphs are the only reason I don’t give the product a 10/10. Microsoft Excel is far better and Tableau is even better than that. So much so that my company now wants us to start using Tableau as a replacement for Crystal Reports, at least where graphs and charts are concerned.

I’ve used it for 18 years.

When upgrading versions of Microsoft Windows, Crystal Reports would not always work correctly. We would have to reinstall it to make it work right.

With Windows 10, our Crystal Reports XI product stopped working correctly completely, but works fine when we upgrade them to Crystal Reports 2013.

It has been able to scale for our needs.

We have not used any support from SAP that I am aware of.

Fairly straightforward, especially with 2013. With XI, some options were not checked that we needed. With 2013, they are.

We did the initial setup in-house. Make sure you have detailed step-by-step installation instructions if having a team installing it so everyone gets the exact same setup and things don’t get missed. We had that problem early on when upgrading to 2013 from XI and I had to help determine what was missed or done wrong so they could do it correctly.

The licensing is currently $500 per copy, so we are trying to limit the number of licenses we have to keep costs down.

I do not know. It was already being used corporate wide when I arrived.

Make sure you have at least one person (preferable two), who know how to use the product before implementing it corporate wide. The problem at my company is there are 100 licenses out there and we have only 1 person who is an SME (Subject Matter Expert): Me. Everyone else uses it, but they have not had any real training or don’t use it full time.

It is easy to use and it connects to the major databases.

It provides trusted business information for decisions and operations management.

The sales, operations, and IT areas could use improvement.

I have been using Crystal Reports for 20 years, since 1997.

I have had no major issues with deployment.

I have had no issues with the stability.

This is a simple but powerful reporting tool. I don’t have scalability issues for more than 100 users.

I would give customer service a rating of 4.5/5.

Technical support is good. I would give technical support a rating of 4.5/5.

I used Excel, but that was a long time ago when the BI tools were very basic.

I have implemented both with a vendor team and in-house. My level is expert.

The ROI depends on your use. In the first implementation, it was very productive with sales increases and time reduction.

Today, I only use a standalone license.

If you are looking for a cheap operational tool, the Crystal Reports family is the correct decision.

Performance

Drill-down reporting functionality

Report wizard

Variable

Built in Formulas

Presentation Options like Charts, Cross tab reports etc.

We develop many management reports using Crystal Reports. It has reduced the development cost, effort, and provides feature rich reports.

Support of crystal report is also very good, in terms compatibility, many vendors preferred crystal reports as preferred report delivery product.

It needs better support for child reports.

It needs additional formulas.

some performance issues when joining tables using report wizard.

I've been using SAP Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 for four years.

We had no issues with the deployment. deployment is smooth and it depends upon how you are going to deploy, as dll or rpt file.

There have been no stability issues.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer service is good, and responses come within an acceptable time.

Technical support is good, and responses come within an acceptable time.

We previously used SQL Server reporting services. These are also good but complex in some scenarios, like child reports.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

ROI is great as we are using the VS 2010 version which is free with Visual Studio.

Study your requirements carefully, map them into this product, and if you think it fulfills the requirements, you should go for it.