With the release of SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 4.0 comes the release of a new SAP Crystal Reports designer – SAP Crystal Reports for enterprise. While this designer has a brand new UI and many new features, the point of this short blog is to introduce you to the new Smart Guidelines feature.
The goal of this feature is to make it easier to create and maintain reports by allowing report designers to easily move fields around as if they are built as columns in the report.
A quick example…
In this short video, you can see the Smart Guidelines feature exposed as the blue lines and bars along the top of the report canvas. As you can see in the video, I am able to move multiple fields around at once as if they were a single column – while not losing my flexibility of having a canvas which allows for free-form layout of fields.
In addition to moving columns around on the canvas, I can delete columns. This will cause all columns around the deleted column to shift – without requiring significant rework on the report layout.
Another quick example…
As you can see in this video, I select the column of fields and then right-click on the column header to access the delete command.
Similarly, it is possible to easily add a new field into the layout.
Final example…
I am able to quickly add a new field to the report by dragging the field into the report canvas and then selecting one side of an existing column. This inserts the new field on that side of the selected column.
As you can see from the short videos, the Smart Guidelines feature is quite powerful when it comes to reducing the amount of time required to create and edit reports. I’m definitely interested in hearing your feedback on this feature, its uses, and how we can improve it even further. Let me know…
