Development of Crystal Reports¶
Crystal Reports can be used in two different ways in IFS Cloud.
- As Quick Reports, to be able to present data in more sophisticated way than ordinary plain SQL statement Quick Reports.
- As a layout format for operational reports (invoices, order confirmations and that type of documents), instead of using Report Designer layouts.
Since these two different usages of Crystal Reports doesn't have that much in common, each of these solutions are described separately.
- Using Crystal Reports as Quick Reports
- Using Crystal Reports Report Designer layouts for operational reports.
General Crystal Reports Q&A¶
Which version of Crystal Reports should be used with each IFS Cloud version?
IFS Cloud is bundled with Crystal Report runtime engine version 13.0.x. This version of the runtime engine is compatible with Crystal Report layouts designed with version XI, XI R2, 2011, 2013, 2016 and 2020.
Can I have multiple crystal runtime versions inside the same machine?
Crystal Reports does not support multiple versions of their design tool or runtime to be installed simultaneously and therefore nor does IFS Cloud. As long as the IFS Cloud versions you want to coexist on the same machine use the same Crystal Reports runtime version there's no problem installing multiple version.
Is Crystal Reports and the IFS integration backward compatible?
There's no simple yes/no answer to this question.
Crystal Reports Developer 2011 is backward compatible, meaning it can open and view reports developed with earlier versions of Crystal Reports.
The IFS integration basically relies on the backward compatibility of the Crystal Reports runtime engine, so the integration is also able to run reports developed with earlier versions of Crystal Reports.
Just because Crystal Reports and the integration is backward compatible does not mean it's forward compatible. A report developed or saved using a newer version of Crystal Reports compared to the runtime files bundled with the IFS Cloud version can not be expected to always work in that older version of IFS Cloud. In some cases it might, if only using functionality already available in the older version and if the file format is the same / compatible. It all depends on what's changed in newer Crystal Reports versions.
What edition of Crystal Reports Developer should we or the customer buy to do basic report development and/or support report developers for IFS Cloud?
As of Crystal Report Developer 2011, there is only one version. Please contact your regional Crystal Reports reseller to get more information on licensing and purchasing.
Why dose it takes a long time to process or execute a Crystal Report from Aurena?
There are some known design-time factors that might affect performance of processing or executing a Info Service Report or Quick Report of type Crystal Report. Have a look at this link for more information.