Getting Started With Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft Enterprise

This chapter provides an overview of Crystal Reports and discusses:

Crystal Reports integrations
Crystal Reports implementation

Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft Enterprise Overview

Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft Enterprise enables you to generate both standard and custom-printed reports containing data from your PeopleSoft applications.

Note. Crystal Reports have many more features than are described in this book. See your Crystal Reports documentation for more information. You must have Crystal Reports installed to gain access to this documentation.

See Crystal Reports documentation.

Note. Crystal reports in PeopleTools are language-sensitive.

See Working with Multiple Languages.

Crystal Reports Environments for PeopleSoft Enterprise

PeopleSoft applications are delivered to work with the Crystal Reports 9 runtime environment. PeopleSoft Process Scheduler report definitions are configured to use the Crystal Reports 9 print engine, and the delivered Crystal Report definition files are in the Crystal Report 9 format. You use the Crystal Reports 9 product to create and edit report definitions.

If you are using PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.48 and above, you can optionally use the BusinessObjects Enterprise XI runtime environment to run and view your reports. With BusinessObjects Enterprise XI, you use the Crystal Reports XI product to create and edit report definitions. A PeopleSoft-supplied conversion program, pscrconv.exe, converts the Crystal Report definition files from the Crystal Reports 9 format to the Crystal Reports XI format.

For PeopleSoft applications, you must use either the Crystal Reports 9 or the BusinessObjects Enterprise XI runtime environment. You cannot run a mixed environment in which some reports run using Crystal Report 9 and some reports run using BusinessObjects Enterprise XI.

See Using Crystal Reports XI.

Crystal Reports Integrations

Crystal Reports work with PeopleSoft Query. You use PeopleSoft Query to extract specific subsets of data from your database. You can then use Crystal Reports to format that data and present the information in an easy-to-understand layout.

Crystal Reports Implementation

Crystal Reports implementation can be divided into the following phases:

Install Crystal Reports.
Create and save queries in PeopleSoft Query.
Create and save report definitions in Crystal Reports.

Installing Crystal Reports

If you want to design new Crystal reports, you must install Crystal Reports, which is packaged with PeopleSoft products:

Note. If you are using the Process Scheduler server to run existing Crystal reports, you do not have to install Crystal Reports. All necessary files are installed automatically when you boot the Process Scheduler server. In general, this book assumes that you have Crystal Reports installed.

Step	Cross-Reference
Install Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft on your PeopleTools Development Environment (a Windows-based workstation).	The Enterprise PeopleTools 8.49 Installation guide for your database platform, Installing and Configuring Software for Crystal Reports.

Creating and Saving Queries in PeopleSoft Query

Before you can generate formatted output in Crystal Reports, you need to create and save queries in PeopleSoft Query:

Step	Cross-Reference
Create and save a query to extract a selected subset of your data.	See Enterprise PeopleTools 8.49 PeopleBook: PeopleSoft Query.

Creating and Saving Report Definitions in Crystal Reports

After you've generated and saved queries, you can create report definitions in Crystal Reports to format the fields (columns) used in the queries:

Step	Cross-Reference
Create the report definition.	See Creating and Formatting Reports in Crystal Reports 9.
Save the report definition.	See Creating and Formatting Reports in Crystal Reports 9.
Run the report.	See Running Crystal 9 Reports.

Note. Crystal report definitions do not contain actual data from your database, so each time you use Crystal Reports, PeopleSoft Query retrieves the most recent data. This action ensures that your printed reports always contain current information. However, if you want to track the changes over time, you can save the data with a report.

Other Sources of Information

This section provides information to consider before you begin to use Crystal Reports for PeopleSoft products.

Other PeopleSoft sources of information include installation guides, release notes, PeopleSoft PeopleBooks, red papers, the Updates and Fixes area of the Customer Connection web site, and PeopleSoft curriculum courses.

See Using Crystal Reports XI.