Hi,
I have created various crystal reports for different business users, some are drill down, some are parameter based using SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise version 14.0.7. I am facing issue with deployment of these reports.
We need to provide some interface to users to view these reports, users are located at different locations, just wanted to know from SAP BI experts here, what is the best way to distribute various crystal reports for viewing to different users at Head Office, Stores and different levels such as managers and staff.
I've created a publication at Crystal Reports Server to schedule reports and send as an attachment (PDF/excel) to users by mails, this solution was not approved as they don't want to receive reports in their mails, they want to generate reports as and when they want or require, also the data is these reports are static and drill-down reports are not working in PDF .
Then I suggested to view reports directly from server using BI Launchpad or CMC, but they think that this is way too complicated to going through CMC & BI Lauch pad folders to view their reports. Also there is some license issue so they have only 5 BI users (I want to know from experts here is there any such restriction with any license, otherwise what's the use?).
I have tried following tools so far
- Crystal Report viewer - (Need to install at each & every location, drill-down working here, but again need to select from various reports)
- BI Launch pad (already explained above)
- PDF / Excel (already explained above)
- Dashboards (They just want to see their data i.e. crystal reports(daily, monthly, weekly etc), not graphics, thus not interested in dashboards)
- Central Management Console (already explained above)
But the senior management is not satisfied with the ways, they want real time data (not static like crystal reports exported to pdf, excel or any other format) with the options to select
a) which report they want to view (I think they are looking for some menu based system where they can select say 'Daily Reports' and under that can see all types of daily reports and select which one they want to view from the list by clicking on it as hyperlink or some other way like dropdowns)
b) where they can select different parameters such as location, period etc.
c) It should be user friendly and easy to operate,they don't like going through CMC & BI Lauch pad folders to view their reports.
d)Also they want to view all reports on their mobiles, ipads at any time, any place whenever they travel overseas.
Please suggest/advice.
Thnaks,
Poonam