I designed a fairly complicated sales report, which prompts for a salesperson code. My client prints it to PDF and emails it to each salesperson monthly.

Is there a way to automate the process so they can generate multiple PDFs, one for each salesperson? Automating the actual emailing is a second issue, but first I want to know if it's possible to generate one PDF per salesperson.

I know how to do this with GridView using a batch file, but I don't know if there's an equivalent using Crystal Reports.

Thanks

Steve

Steve:
PrintBoss can create a different PDF files for each Salesperson.
You just print the report to the PrintBoss driver and it will output different PDF files.

Hi Patricia

How will PrintBoss know to do that? Right now the report is about 50 pages long, with a page break after each salesperson, and there are five salespeople. The number of pages varies for each salesperson.

Thanks

Steve

Steve:

Basically Crystal Reports has to have a page break on change of salesperson and you train PrintBoss to recognize each salesperson so that it generates a separate PDF file for each. Getting PB to email the report to each salesperson is easy.

We've done similar work both for our in house purposes and for our clients as well. If you would like us to create this solution for you please let me know and I'll give you a quote offline.

Steve:

There is a really neat product called Visual Cut from Millet Software .

It can pick up fields in a report and "split" the report into multiple PDF files based on that field. It can also automatically email the separate reports to an email address picked up from the report. (It must be in Group 1 and can be suppressed.)

The author, Ido Millet, is at Penn State University and is very helpful.

Steve:
Further to Ralph's suggestion, there are a number of products that also do that. Here's one I've looked at but not used yet: PDFMachine Their "Ultimate" version is $99.00.

If you have the time to experiment and learn, these could be useful tools. But PrintBoss is proven in the Adagio environment so it may be the best use of your time.

Hi Ralph

You are not kidding, Visual Cut looks really neat. It doesn't hurt that the author is from Penn State, not too far from me.

Tell me if I am correct, in order for Visual Cut to perform its magic, I have to first generate the report with the option to save the data turned on, don't I?

Steve

Actually, no. The Visual Cut interface calls the selected Crystal report and runs it, including, if needed, prompting for parameters.

Wow, Ralph, how come you didn't show us this product at Tips and Tricks!

I am going to be starting a new thread with a related question about emailing.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Steve

Steve,

I thought about it, but I had not yet deployed it fully at the client, and so was not sure if I was going to run into unforeseen issues and did not want to present an untested solution. It is now deployed and has been in use for a while, and is working as it should.

There are a few minor, configuration issues that related to Adagio's use of the older Crystal Reports format. Call me about these if you wish.

Ido was indeed very helpful, but I did need to save the data with the report for Visual Cut to work.

This is what he said was the problem - "Visual CUT 11 failed to connect to your data source. So it couldn't refresh the data on its own."

I know this is not strictly an Adagio issue, but maybe someone can explain how to tell VC 11 to connect to the Adagio data.

Thanks

Steve

I had to use the 8.5 version of VC which works with Adagio's interface to Crystal.

Hi Ralph

To (hopefully) complete this thread, using the 8.5 version of VC worked. Following an error message about the wrong version of CRVIEWER.DLL, I had to copy the CRVIEWER.DLL in my C:\Windows\System32 folder over the existing one in my C:\Program Files\Seagate Software\Viewers\ActiveXViewer folder to synch versions, but after that it worked like a charm.

Thanks so much for your suggestion and follow through. I just know my client is going to be ecstatic, and I have another wonderful tool in my consultant's toolbox.

Steve

Steve, I'm glad to see that you found a good solution for your customer. Thanks to Patricia for suggesting PrintBoss which would have been a good solution as well. PrintBoss is extremely flexible and has many features that solve most printing issues. We hope that Adagio resellers, whom we have supported for many years, remember to talk to us about solving any printing problem.