Designing summary reports

Designing and distributing summary reports is a relatively easy way to ensure that users quickly find the data they need over the Web. A summary report can include as much data as any other report. However, by hiding a summary report's Details section, you avoid overwhelming users with data they may not immediately need.

When the Details section is hidden, users navigate with the Group tree first, to locate the desired data. Then, by drilling down on the report, they can request specific data, which is returned quickly without unnecessary records. This is especially important to improving navigation of long summary reports, which might consist of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of pages.

To facilitate navigation in this way, you first need to group the data and insert the summary fields you want to include in your report. For detailed information and instructions, see Grouping data and Summarizing grouped data.

Once you've grouped and summarized your report data, hide the Details section (and any other large report sections) so that users can easily navigate to the data that's important to them.

Hiding details in a summary report
  1. Open your report in Crystal Reports.

    If you haven't yet created a grouped and summarized report, open "summary group.rpt" from the Feature Examples samples folder.

  2. On the Format menu, click Section to open the Section Expert.
  3. In the Sections list, click Details.
  4. On the Section Expert's Common tab, select the Hide (Drill-Down OK) check box.
  5. Click OK.

You'll notice the details are now hidden. To view the details, navigate through the report using the Group tree, and then drill down on the appropriate area of the report.

Note:    For details on minimizing data transfer with summary reports, see Performing grouping on server.



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