Embedding Web Controls into your Crystal Reports

Posted byDavid Taylor 6 Comments on Embedding Web Controls into your Crystal Reports

Bringing Together HTML Controls and Crystal Reports

Every once in a while I get a chance to present in a forum or user group and show some new amazing capabilities in the product suite. Last year I had the chance to demonstrate WebElements. WebElements is a collection of Crystal functions which generate HTML.

An easy to use library of functions for Crystal Reports designers who are also using the BusinessObjects platform:

  • Designed by a report designer for report designers
  • Embed different kinds of controls for report consumers
  • Easily distributed as an .rpt file to other report designers
  • Small in size, less than 60k unzipped
  • Automated installation
  • Expandable and customizable and code can be shared

Since Microsoft Reporting Services provides easy to use drop-down parameters, more and more customers are asking for the ability to embed web controls into their Crystal Reports. Now with Webelements we can add radio buttons, list boxes, drop-down selectors, action buttons, etc. In fact, Jamie Wiseman, the original creator of WebElements has a lot of great samples you can download from the Business Objects Diamond Developer website.  You can also search and find information about WebElements off the SDN website here.

Watch a 60 minute webinar on webelements now!

WebElements Webinar

Get started now by downloading the WebElements Custom Function Library here.

Next time I’ll discuss mashups and the new viewer JavaScript SDK in BusinessObjects XI 3.0.

6 replies on “Embedding Web Controls into your Crystal Reports”

  1. Jamie,

    Are you sure Crystal Reports 2008 comes with a 5 user licence of the Enterprise?

    Are the licences concurent?

    Also can you view the components in the developer?

    Thanks
    Tom Herbert

  2. Hi David,
    We are running a .net (2.0) app which uses Crystal reports runtime 11.5 R2 (.NET 2.0) to both generate pdf reports (which are stored as an image in the DB), and to pull stored reports from the DB and present them for viewing. The viewing is done in I.E. with adobe.

    Pulling pre-generated reports from the DB and displaying them is fine. However, generating new reports from scratch takes around 30 seconds. To generate the same report from within the Crystal client software loacally on my PC is fast.

    We also have Crystal Reports Sever and use Infoview (great product). In your blog you talk about managed and unmanaged reporting and taking advantage of Crystal Server.

    Do you hav any tpe for us on how to speed up our report generation?

    Thanks,
    Larry Crawford

  3. Hi David,

    I am new to Crystal Reports and Web Elements. I have installed WACS as web server which is recommended in the installation of Crystal Reports Server 2008. I am not able to enable the pass through HTML feature for WACS. Can you please put some light on this.

  4. Hi,

    I am trying to use WebElements with SAP BW Query. I need to pass few variables including date. The date variable on SAP side is a standard SAP object that starts with 0. Seems like WebElements is not recognising it, if I use SAP customer defined variable starts with Z then it works fine with Webelements.
    Do you know if there is a way to use SAP standards objects in Webelements?
    Thanks,

    Sajjad Qureshi

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