This 2-day workshop is designed for beginning users with little or no exposure to Crystal Reports. The intent of the course is to familiarize the students with the Crystal Reports environment, and get them up and reporting quickly. The workshop provides the basic steps for creating, modifying, saving and viewing reports to more flexible tasks such as basic formulas and the powerful automated features.

Prerequisites

Working knowledge of Windows 9x environment is required. Familiarity with relational database concepts (tables, fields and records) is strongly recommended.

Audience

Administrators, developers and end-users who need to create dynamic reports from varying data sources.

Course duration

2 days

Course outline

• Before you begin
• Purpose of the report
• Determining the layout
• Finding the data
• Organizing the data
• Deciding what fields and tables are needed
• Creating a report
• Starting the program
• Choosing a data source
• Choosing tables
• The report design environment
• Sections
• Toolbars
• The Field Explorer
• Adding fields to the report
• Positioning and sizing fields
• Using guidelines
• Adding text objects
• Saving the report
• Saving with saved data
• Using Autosave
• The report preview environment
• Navigation buttons
• Refreshing the data
• Getting Help
• Formatting
• The Report Style Expert
• Using the Format toolbar
• Using the Format editor
• Adding lines, boxes, and graphics images
• Auto-arranging the report
• Changing page orientation
• Setting the margins
• Inserting fields into a text object
• Placing multi-line text objects
• Using Special fields
• Filtering Data
• Using the Select Expert
• Selecting multiple values
• Filtering on multiple fields
• Modifying the Selection Formula
• Record selection formula templates
• Grouping, Sorting, Summarizing
• Creating groups
• Modifying groups
• Multi-level grouping
• Creating groups on date/time fields
• Sorting records within each group
• Summarizing group data
• Selecting top or bottom N groups
• Calculating percentages
• Report Experts
• Using a Report Expert to create a report
• Setting default options and report options
• Layout options
• Database options
• Reporting options
• Field and Font settings
• Setting Report Options
• Linking tables
• Adding multiple tables to a report
• Using Smart Linking
• Creating and using formulas
• Using formulas
• Working with the Formula Editor
• Using numeric calculation
• Manipulating strings with formulas
• Doing date calculations
• Applying Boolean formulas
• Making decisions with formulas
• Conditional reporting
• Using the Highlighting Expert
• Section formatting
• Conditional formatting
• Creating summary reports and charts
• Hiding sections
• Drilling down on summary fields
• Creating charts
• Formatting charts
• Choosing a template
• Defining the grid
• Showing data labels
• Using the Analyzer tab to modify charts
• Changing object colors
• Auto arranging
• Exporting reports
• Exporting to a disk file
• Exporting to an HTML format
• Exporting to an application
• Getting Help
• FastPlanet Support Forum
• Technical Support Cards
• Additional Manuals
• Appendix A - Mapping
• Creating a map
• Understanding map types
• Using the Analyzer tab to modify maps
• Changing map layers
• Using the Map Navigator
• Resolving data mismatches
• Appendix B - Creating an ODBC Connection to a Data Source
• Appendix C - Xtreme Sample Database
• Appendix D - Reference list of functions and operators
• Appendix E - Pre-Qualification Exercise for Power User workshop