I would like to hear how other organizations handle their report writing needs. Do you have a staff person dedicated to that function, and if so a job description? Or do you have several people filling in as needed? Is crystal the only report writer you use? If anyone has something to say about how they handle reports over and above the standard reports, I'd love to hear from them in this forum or by email. Thanks, Judy Judy Brockmeyer Database Administrator Jewish Home Foundation San Francisco [Email Removed]

Most of our reports are done by me. We use some custom reports, but the majority are done using Crystal Reports. I have been trying to use Queue to automate these report; however, at this time Queue is not exporting custom reports in the my version of RE. Some of our Directors run canned reports, but I'm often called to discuss the results as there are usualy filters that need to be applied depending on the type of report. Nora Isaac Manager, Information Technology The ALS Association, Greater Phila. Chapter www.alsphiladelphia.org  [Email Removed]

Judy - All we use is Crystal and I'm the only one who builds reports. Building custom reports in RE is a real pain because first RE exports the data your report will run on into an Access database. In order to export it though, you have to build an export. If you don't want to export your entire database everytime your custom report runs (I know I don't) then you'll need to build a query to feed to your export. Even though the query may have filters in place to limit the results, once the export runs with it, half of the filters are ignored and have to be re-applied in the crystal report. Otherwise it's a lot of fun. Nora - you might want to have a look at AutoMate. It's automation software that we've been using for our staffing software and it's amazing. There's not much it can't do. Dan Larson Programmer Saint Cloud, Minnesota To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks." ~Jack Handy

Thanks, Dan. Do you still prepare custom reports in RE or use a sql query from an odbc connection and use Automate? I'm definitely going to look at it. We have lots of things to automate - that's for sure. Nora Nora Isaac Manager, Information Technology The ALS Association, Greater Phila. Chapter www.alsphiladelphia.org  [Email Removed]

Where can I find automate. There are a few things we could use it for. Thanks The Washington Institute for Near East Policy Data Services Coordinator

I actually use AutoMate for a staffing program called One-Staff right now. It automates all the interfaces between our HR and Kronos systems. Haven't tried it with RE yet. There's a free 30-day trial though so definitely give it a shot. As for RE reporting, when I first started here I got real frustrated with RE's requirement to first export the data THEN run a report on it. It just took forever! So I started building sql views on the backend and basing my reports on those views. The reports run much quicker but aren't accessible from RE. Sooo, I'm back to square one and struggling with the limitations of RE's custom reports. It just seems so odd to export the data you want on your report to a file somewhere and then run the report off of that export. Why not just run the report directly from the db? Dan Larson Programmer Saint Cloud, Minnesota To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks." ~Jack Handy

http://www.networkautomation.com/downloads/  Dan Larson Programmer Saint Cloud, Minnesota To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks." ~Jack Handy

Judy - In the past, an independent programmer/consultant created many of the crystal reports we use today. I was hired specifically to maintain these existing reports & create new crystal reports; in addition I generate about 80% of the reports/queries we run from RE. I do a majority of the importing functions as well overall database management. I will email my job description to you directly! Tracie Cassidy Database Coordinator Seattle Children's Hospital Foundation (206) 987-6833 [Email Removed]

Dan, I think the "custom reports" having to run from an export stems from the OLD versions of RE where it was run off a proprietary database, not SQL server/Oracle. They didn't want to grant you access to see that database, so they came up with this schema. I would throw my meager support behind removing that stupidity and moving to a model where you can run reports directly off the database from RE. The only part that would stink is if they started to make us create user logins for every user we add instead of using the REUser profile as the generic SQL login. Right now I use the crystal reports server to publish reports to "Infoview", which allows all users to run the reports. I'm pretty much the only one that builds the reports (my coordinator and one of my campus people have limited experience in building them, though they usually run them). If you bought/buy the developer version of Crystal Reports XI (like I did 2 years before BB decided to release it, and they only release the standard edition), you get 5 named licenses to Infoview free, so its worth the cost. Doug Doug Creek University of Alaska Database Administrator [Email Removed] Get on the bus (Blackbaud User Society)! http://www.blackbus.org

That makes a bit more sense then. Switch to windows authentication and you wouldn't have to worry about REUser. We have a windows AD group for all Blackbaud software users and I just grant db access to that group and we're done. Although my db logs still fill with the failed logon attempts of REUser. Dan Larson Programmer Saint Cloud, Minnesota To me, it's a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, "Hey, can you give me a hand?" you can say, "Sorry, got these sacks." ~Jack Handy