Feature requests - Please read before requesting something

[#1]

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 Member]

[Don] - Good idea but you can write your own UFL to add this functionality. Another option is this report: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/index?rid=/library/uuid/301b7dec-9f75-2b10-8887-c53096c9f0a3

And search Forums on "ufl" and you'll find more info on how to. - No Enhancement request for this one.

Allow "relative dates" to be entered for date-typed parameters, and have Crystal translate it to the appropriate date. By "relative date", I mean the ability to specify a date relative to the current system date: Prior Day, Current Month, etc., plus or minus a number of days, months, etc.

Not to dictate how this might be implemented, but more to fully explain the functionality desired, this should support entering dates of the form

{B|E}{P|C|N}[F]{D|W|M|Q|Y}[{+|-}n[[F]{D|W|M|Q|Y}][{/DOW}]]

where {B|E} = Beginning or End of, {P|C|N} = Prior, Current or Next, [F] is optional and indicates a Fiscal Year (without F would mean calendar dates), {D|W|M|Q|Y} = Day, Week, Month, Quarter or Year, with an optional plus or minus number (n) of {D|W|M|Q|Y} (or same as first {D|W|M|Q|Y} if not specified), and an optional Day Of Week adjustment ({/DOW}).

The Fiscal Year would be based on some specification (config file, system registry, Enterprise calendar?, ...) of a date that is the first day of any given fiscal year, and whether or not the fiscal year is 4/4/5 or Calendar based. (Are there other bases for Fiscal Years? If so, they should be included...)

The DOW adjustment would adjust the date to the same day of the week that the date without the +/- adjustment would land on. For example, BPW-1Y/DOW would calculate the date for BPW (if run 12/16/2009 would be Sunday 12/06/2009), subtract a year (giving 12/06/2008), then adjust to the nearest Sunday (giving 12/07/2008).

The primary purpose for this functionality is to allow a single report to be run ad hoc or be set up to run automatically periodically for any (or several) relative date ranges. For example, a Sales Report could be run Daily, Weekly Monthly and Quarterly without having to specify specific date ranges, nor having several versions of the same report.

Thanks,

Carl

Edited by: Carl Sopchak on Feb 2, 2010 4:44 PM (Changed {P|C} to {P|C|N}...)

Edited by: Don Williams on Jul 12, 2010 8:40 AM

[Former Member]

Extremely belated second to Carl's request for relative date parameters.

To give more clarity about exactly what I'm looking for, I want to be able to write my reports so that I can either provide a date range, or leave it blank to give the previous month. However, I tend to write the reports using SQL Commands, and pass the parameters directly into the query -- which means I can't use optional parameters.

I would think that by now, CRS2008 would provide this ability, but it's a rather glaring hole in the scheduling functionality.

[Former Member]

Garrett,

I've basically have implemented a subset of my relative date request. It works by using string parameters for the date(s), and having database and crystal functions that convert the relative date entered into a real date. I have one function for a "starting date" (beginning of month, e.g.) and one for "ending date" (end of month, e.g.). If the string is not a recognized relative date, it assumes it is a regular date, so the functions always returns a valid date - or crashes. The Crystal functions are kept in the repository to make it easy to add to a new report. The database functions allow the relative dates to be passed to SQL (which I also use quite extensively) with minimal impact on the complexity of the SQL.

The only down side to this is that the date picker (calendar) is not available. Since I have always considered them more of a pain than a help, I give that up. (They are never smart enough to start with a reasonable guess as to what the date being entered might be. For example, an ending date picker really should start with the starting date's date most times. They are also very cumbersome to traverse - A drop-down for month would be far better than single-month-skipping arrow buttons. I could go on...)

HTH,

Carl