We recently installed LBI and I'm looking for a way in LRS / Crystal to create reports that are written to disk. I've heard that some versions of the Crystal server can do this, but I’m told the version of this that Lawson OEM’s with LRS does not have that functionality and that LBI can only publish to a printer or email device. It was my understanding that Lawson was positioning LRS / Crystal as the “new technology” offering for users who wanted to get away from RW100 and HR Writer. The ability to do this seemed so simple we did not discuss it at length prior to implementation. As a workaround we were considering the possability of setting up virtual printers to get the reports to go to a file. Has anyone out there accomplished this?
Hi Joe,
Are you doing RAS on the local box or a remote box? I have a thread here called LBI Installed and I am having some teething problems with Crystal and if you just went through this would love some input.
Our LBI is installed on a seperate machine than the Lawson app server. As an alternative to the virtual printer pointing at a folder, I was thinking about using a PDF printer plugin. Not sure how LBI would like that.
Are you talking about for published "Back-Office" reports, or for "custom" Crystal reports, or both?
Joe: As installed, standard LBI with the Crystal Report Application Server (RAS) will do exactly what you want. All of our Crystal Reports are published by running schedules overnight. They are stored in the LBI Repository as PDF's - and, since we apply bursting security, each individual security view is stored as a separate PDF as well. Here's the key - Tell LBI to publish reports as PDF's, then, look in the LBI Repository.
It's a no-brainer - and now you can look like a genius!
Publication ID is tricky. Under certain cache settings, not all publications will be generated. So I have seen some numbers "missing" in the Publications folder. That occurs when only a few people view report with a lot of different rights assigned. Then, I'm not certain what happens when you add a new user with new rights to an existing report. I would assume that the Publication number would auto-increment, but, I haven't tested it yet.
Thanks for the info - we're going to need to test this. Based on your experience with this, if for example I had a crystal report called sales_report.pdf that runs weekly in LBI for various process levels, would an automated process be able to reliably find that file in the repository every week? If the names are constantly changing, this might be difficult to accomplish.