Crystal Reports XI: Beginner Tutorials
Create a Basic Report / Report Wizard pt. 2 - Group & Filter
Subtitles of the Movie (Crystal Reports XI: Beginner / Create a Basic Report / Report Wizard pt. 2 - Group & Filter)
In this movie we're going to continue along our basic report and talk about Grouping and Filtering. Picking up where we left off, where we had just added the fields we needed to see, go ahead and click Next. This comes to the Grouping Window. Now Grouping is optional, but a useful feature. Grouping refers to the ability to group like items together based on the set of your data. For example, if I needed to Group by EmployeeID, I would highlight EmployeeID, pull it onto my report and now when I display my report going forward, I'm going to have a group, meaning it is sorted and organized by EmployeeID. Now, notice after I pulled this field over you have some options. In this case you have Ascending and Descending Order. What this means is, when the report is pulled it's going to organize by EmployeeID in ascending order, which means alphabetical. For example, if we highlight EmployeeID and go back and hit the Browse Data Field, we can see what type of field it is and how it's going to order. So the very first group that we're going to see are all those employees with the ID of 103. Notice in this window here, you have the same search functions in order to browse the field, especially if you're uncertain exactly what populates EmployeeID and you can also find the field if you have a large list to scroll through. In this case we've selected EmployeeID and we're going to leave in Ascending Order. You can also have a secondary grouping, a tertiary grouping, et cetera, so on and so forth. As many fields as I have I can choose how many groups to include. Just like the Field Window, my functionality is the same. I can remove and add Groupings as I see fit. For now let's leave the Grouping as EmployeeID. Go ahead and hit Next. This is actually a fairly important screen. Once you've chosen a Group you have the option to provide summaries. Like, for example, here is my group that I've chosen from the previous screen, and let's say I wanted to add a Summary. I go ahead and I choose Employee First Name and I pull it over. Now, summaries are usually associated with numbers or metrics. We'll get into that later, but in the case of text there are things you can do. You can show the Maximum, you can show the Minimum, you can Count, Distinct Count, Produce a Mode, Define the Nth Largest, the Nth Smallest, and the Nth Most Frequent. In this case, let's go ahead and count. You can add any number of summaries based on the field types you have, whether they be numbers, strings, or so on. Again, notice in this field you have the same option to Browse the data if you're not sure what's in it, or Find a field if you have a large list to deal with. Go ahead and hit Next. This is Group Sorting, slightly different from actual data sorting, but fundamentally here's what you need to know. What Crystal does is it finds the Group or Groups that we have chosen. You choose those Groups here. In this case we've only chosen one group and all we're going to see is one group in the drop-down box. And then it asks you what kind of order you'd like to see. The Default is None. You want to see All Groups. You can also choose Top 5 groups, or Bottom groups. In order to choose one of those you have to have a summary chosen. In this case, Crystal will give us a drop-down of all the Summaries that we've created from the previous page. This is usually most helpful when comparing actual metrics as opposed to strings, such as First Name, so in this case we're going to leave it None. We'll come back and visit this. You also get a chance to chose a Chart. In this case, we're just looking at an Employee Table per se, and having a Chart, well, may not be the most useful thing. So we're going to go ahead and skip this and say No Chart. Now here is something that is very important. These are Record Selections. These help you filter your data set. This will especially come in handy if you're dealing with thousands and thousands of records. For example, I can choose to filter on EmployeeID and these are all my options. I can say is equal to 103 for example. I can say is not equal to 103. I can say is one of, and produce a list, like so and I can do that as not one of. I can, with numbers, say is less than or equal to, greater than or equal to, I can also put is between. The filters you choose are really going to depend on the data that you're working with. In this case, you can also choose Is a New Value. You'll get the same effect if you had removed this field altogether. In this case we're not going to place any filters because we're dealing with a small amount of data. Go ahead and hit Next. The very last option in the Report Wizard is the Template. Templates are pre-defined designs that Crystal has provided with the report. Later in this tutorial we'll go through these and show you how they work. For our purposes, we're going to choose No Template, and click Finish. Congratulations! You've created your first report. It doesn't look like much now, but in the next lessons we'll show you how to design the report and make it look readable.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Crystal Reports XI: Beginner |
| Author: | Kurt Dunlap |
| SKU: | 33966 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-29-7 |
| Release Date: | 2009-02-10 |
| Duration: | 6.5 hrs / 95 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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