Move crystal report from test to production

[former_member580112]

Hello,

I have developed many reports in our TEST environment. Now some of the reports are ready to move into production environment. Do I need to develop it from beginning in production environment or I can simply move the test environment report to production?

Please advice.

Thank you.

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

You will use the Promotion Management option in the CMC to move your reports from Test to Production (assuming the environments are on different servers.)

1. In the TEST environment, make sure that the reports that you're promoting are in the correct folders where you want them to appear in Production prior to promoting them. If these are new folders, make sure that security is correctly set up for them as well.

2. Log in to the CMC and go to Promotion Management. Create a new promotion job that contains the specific reports that you want to migrate. If these are new folders, you'll need to promote Object Security with them, otherwise don't include security.

3. Since these are Crystal reports, if you're using dynamic prompts, make sure you include the "Repository Objects" for any objects that were created/updated in the Business View Manager (BVM) for these reports.

4. After creating the promotion job, do a "test promote" to verify that everything will promote smoothly.

5. Run the promotion job.

6. Since these are Crystal reports, the first time you promote any report you'll also then need to locate each promoted report under Folders in the CMC for the production system.

a. For each, right-click and chose "Refresh Options" and UNcheck "Default database logon information", then click on "Update". This will prevent the db credentials from being overwritten every time you promote changes to the report.

b. For each, right-click and chose "Database Configuration".

c. Set "When viewing and scheduling a report:" to "Use the same database credentials as when the report is run" unless your users individually have their own credentials to the database. If those credentials are configured in BOBJ/CRS for the users, you'll instead select "Use user database credentials for database logon". If the user credentials are not saved, you'll select "Prompt the user for database logon (viewing only)".

d. If you have a single logon for the report and you don't need to have the user enter their database credentials, you'll need to configure the credentials under "Database logon information:" If the connection name for production is the same as your test report, select "Use original database logon information from the report" and enter the correct database credentials. If the db connection is different, select "Use custom database logon information specified here" and fill in the appropriate database info. If you're connecting to Oracle, you don't need to enter the "Server" info, just the "Name" for the database that's configured in the tnsnames.ora file.

7. If there are new repository objects for dynamic prompts, you'll have to log in to the BVM and update the credentials on any new data connections.

What will happen when you promote a report using this method is that the internal SI_CUID value for the report will remain the same in both systems. If you have to update the report in the future, use the version that's in your TEST environment - DO NOT copy it to a different location in the test system because you'll change the SI_CUID value! When the report is ready to promote, you'll create another job in Promotion Management to promote it. By maintaining the SI_CUID value, any schedules for the report will continue to run (unless you've edited any report parameters while updating it) and any instances will remain. If you don't maintain the same SI_CUID, when there's a report with the same name in the destination folder, the promotion will fail or you will lose and schedules and instances from the original report.

-Dell