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Crystal Reports

JoAnn Gruber

Can someone tell me what are the advantages of using Crystal reports over just pulling a query from Raiser's Edge? I am new to all of this and our President is insisting that our assistant learn how to use Crystal reports. We found training at almost $998.00 for just 2 days, which is pricey. I'm trying to justify this expenditure. Thank you.

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Comments

Dennis Ladnier

JoAnn, we stopped using Crystal reports a couple of years ago - we primarily use PowerBI. Either way it appears your assistant would need some type of training.

John Heizer

CR lets you do lots of things you can't easily do in RE, but it's also a "dead" technology in terms of RE. BB no longer supports it and there's an entirely new tool for custom reports in NXT.

What is the President expecting that they will be able to get that they can't get today?

Also, you talked about getting data from Query. Just a reminder that Query is a grouping tool, not a reporting tool. Use Export to get the data out, not Query.

Marie Stark

Despite what Blackbaud says, we still use it all the time. You may find this discussion helpful.
https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/151/49847

J Baumann

JoAnn -

I use Crystal regularly, for a variety of things, including lists, reports and invoices. Once I have the report designed and saved in RE, it's a simple couple of clicks and I have my updated report to print.

I'd be happy to help you get a start in this. It would be helpful to know what your supervisor wants.

When I've taught people Crystal Reports, I tell them: Query is the who, simply selecting the constituents or gifts or participants who will be in your report. Export is the what - the particular data about those constituents/gifts/participants. And Crystal is the how you design what you want to show up on the piece of paper that is the "report." Keep in mind, every canned report in RE is actually a Crystal Report that Blackbaud designed and built into the software.

JoAnn Gruber

Thanks so much for this info! I will share it with my assistant!