Integrating Xcelsius into Crystal Reports Series – 3 of 3

Thanks to everyone who attended the Reportapalooza “Behind the Reports” webinar yesterday!  Below is  a quick recap of where we are with the Reportapalooza competition.  The final winner will be announced on Nov 22th.

Challenge #1 (Done) – Winner , Mico Yuk (Check out my Coffee Consumption Calculator)Challenge #2 (Done) – Winner, Mico Yuk (based on traffic sent to Report a Hero Page)Challenge #3 (Done) – Winner, Brian Durning (voted best Crystal Reports Video by Community)Challenge #4 (Done) – Winner, David Deitch (voted best Charity Dashboard by Community) Challenge #5 (In Progress) – “Reporting Remix” (What this series of blog post is about).Community Dashboard Challenge (In Progress) – Voting end tomorrow Nov 12th for your favorite community dashboard.Experts Webinar- ”Behind the Reports” (Recording should be available soon) – You don’t want to miss the important tips and answered questions by the experts!

Now for a quick recap of the last 2 posts:

Part 1 – I went over some Q&A on what it would take on a high level to embed your Xcelsius charts and maps into a Crystal Report, as well as some pros and cons of both.Part 2 – I went over how to set up your map in Xcelsius so that it can be consumed by Crystal Reports.  I used Google Maps (compliments of Centigon Solutions) for this example as it much more robust than the out box maps in Xcelsius.Part 3 (the last one) – I am going to show you the  step-by-step process on how to embed your Xcelsius .swf file into your Crystal Reports.

6 Simple Steps to embed your Xcelsius .swf file into your Crystal Report!

1. Open Crystal Reports 2008 -> Click on blue icon to Embed Flash file

2. The Google Map should appear in your dashboard

3. Right click on the Google Map -> Click ‘Flash Data Expert’ to bind the Crystal Report Data

4. Drag the Label field, in this case ‘Sheet1_.Label’ into the 2nd row in the ‘Insert Row Labels’ section

5. Drag the Address field, in this case ‘Lat,Long’ into the 1st row in the ‘Insert Row Labels’ section -> Select ‘OK’. (Note: The map is now connected, so you can see the heat map data display in the preview.)

6. Voila! Your data and your map now appears in your Crystal Report.

As a BONUS, I attached the files that I used for the series.  Click here to download.

Again, just a quick reminder to cast your final votes by tomorrow (11/12) on the 3 dashboards that were submitted by the community to show your support.

Mico Yuk is a 2010 SAP Mentor and the founder of the Xcelsius Guru Network and the Everything Xcelsius blog. To learn more about her, please visit our About Us page

Tags: Business Objects, BusinessObjects, Centigon Solutions, Reportapalooza, SAP Crystal Dashboard Design, Xcelsius 2008

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