Anyone here has invested or is planning on investing to create custom
crystal reports/dashboard?

If you guys are interested I was thinking maybe we can pool resources perhaps even outsource the project somewhere? I wanted to create a nice dashboard for line managers to executives. I think Exact has new version of Business intelligence plug-in which is basically same thing as crystal report/dashboard combo... if anyone purchased this r u happy? Was it worth the $$? Perhaps if someone already Heavily invested in customizing reports rest of us can purchase it from you??

We purchased the Business Objects v 11 Crystal Reports and CR Server. I have looked closely at the dashboard products by Business Objects but they are not in my budget this year. The only advantage that I think the Exact product has currently is it has some canned dashboards there already. Pricing seemed pretty much the same.

My advice if you go the Business Objects route, unless you are really comfortable with their server products, have someone come in to implement. It can be very confusing at times. Not sure where you are located but I have had good experiences with a Business Objects consultant group here in Texas.

I am in Los Angeles , CA ... we do hae crystal reports 8.5 to edit some of the current reports and v11 also jus the pro not the server. I might of missed the canned dashboards with Macola where are they located??

The only time I've seen them is during the demo at a regional seminar. I believe they had a list posted on the website when they ran the special not to long ago. I stopped looking when I found out the cost was similar to that of Business Objects. Since I'm already setting up that infrastructure, I wanted to stay consistent.

Are there any conflicts with Crystal 11 and any of the ICR reports?

I'm assuming ICR is Integrated Crystal Reports, please correct me if I'm wrong.

What I've experienced with ES and Crystal 11 or Crystal 7 (our previous version) is the order of install. ES has to be last otherwise it will not run the integrated reports. I have not modified any yet so I don't know if the version compatibility will be an issue then.

At Engage, Exact said they would start supporting Crystal 10 on one of the 2006 releases and that there were some backward compatibility issues with 8.5 but I didn't get any details on that.

There is no problem using crystal XI, but you cannot use it to modify any canned reports as Progression or ES cannot run anything newer than 8.5, soon to be 10.

I also ran Crystal XI install long after I ran my ES install and the reports in ES all run just fine.

The canned dashboards in Progression are in System Manager, reports, EIS reports. A LOT of info is there and some of it is sure to be of help to you.

By the way if anyone is interested in Crystal Reports Server XI, I have a line on a supplier who is heavily discounting this software, like 30% off. For those that are not familiar with Crystal Reports Server, it allows you to schedule and distribute crystal reports, and it also allows you to publish reports over the web. At one of my customers, they have their sales people running various sales reports at will over the web. Security is in place so that salesperson A cannot see salesperson Bs numbers, etc.

Also the executive team can log in anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection, They then run any report they desire, usually top level business indicators such as sales, backlog, inventory turns, AR aging snapshots, etc.

A 5 user Crystal reports server is $7,500 so it is not cheap, but this is one great piece of software. Unfortunately Exact does not allow its resellers to sell this software (I'd love to make money selling it), so you will have to buy it elsewhere, but it works great.

Sorry for the sales pitch on CR Server, but I can't help myself.

The CR Server is nice but can be challenging to get up and running. Highly recommend working with a CR consultant to get it operational.