Reporting Hierarchy

Assuming you've built out your supervisor structure in Lawson, this data can be retrieved from the HRSUPER table. The issues are 1) how many levels to go, 2) what to do about people who report to themselves or no one, 3) Lawson doesn't handle indirect supervisor/dotted lines, etc. To do it quickly, you could just left outer join xx number of levels, where xx is a reasonable number, like 5 or 8 or 10, etc. To do it really correctly, you'd want to created a stored procedure that recursively walks up the hierarchy until all levels are exhausted.

if you are using oracle for your db you can take advantage of the hierarchical query feature by adding the following as a crystal sql expression

select name-or-whatever
from employee
start with supervisor is null
connect by prior employee = supervisor;

MSSQL 2005 has this feature now as well--search for "recursive queries". If you're using MSSQL 2000, you can simulate it by writing a procedure--search OnLine Library for "expanding hierarchies".

For several recent versions of Crystal you can also set up a hierarchy directly in the report design. Link the EMPLOYEE table to HRSUPER to another copy of EMPLOYEE. That last link should be a left outer join. Group on the employee's ID ({EMPLOYEE.EMPLOYEE}), and then choose Report/Hierarchical Grouping. Enter the parent of the employee ID from the second copy of the EMPLOYEE table.

I can spell this out more carefully if anyone needs.