Crystal Reports recommendations - London

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Jenny Lindvall
Jenny Lindvall ✭
Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Greetings everyone,


We have recently transitioned to RE NXT, and while a lot of the insight and reporting features are really useful, it leaves much to be desired in terms of manipulating the data to suit our specific needs.

We have looked at different products available for creating customisable reports or dashboards, and we are now leaning towards a Crystal Report solution. Does anyone have experience of hiring a freelancer to set these up? I would gladly receive any recommendations, and some detail on how long it may take to develop these and the cost involved.


Many thanks,

Jenny

 
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  • Katie Cagney 2
    Katie Cagney 2 Blackbaud Employee
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Hi Jenny,


    I can recommend Crystal Reports with RE - I used it fairly extensively in my last role, and it could do everything we asked of it.

    It can be hard to find training for, however, - we certainly never found a reasonably priced course - and that's something to consider for your users going forward.

    I'm now implementing it here in my new role and plan to talk to the local University to see if I can create some training - there is also expertise at our local council? I would recommend a few of your team knowing enough to be able to tweak and copy reports.


    In terms of a freelancer, I don't have any experience hiring one, but I think you would, depending on the number of reports you want set up, not need a long time. I can create a good report in about half a day - the data flows direct from RE so you don't need to worry about that part.


    I have a contact who might be interested in freelancing, I'll contact you directly if they confirm that to me


    Katie
  • Jenny Lindvall
    Jenny Lindvall ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Name Dropper First Reply
    Thanks Katie - a few people have flagged that Crystal Reports are getting rather outdated, and there's not a lot of expert knowledge out there any more. Is it still supported by Blackbaud?
  • Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE
    Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Blackbaud does not support CR anymore. I'm not even sure if they offer custom report development either.  If you are interested in learning Crystal Reports I hear http://bekerman.com is a good place to start. ?
  • Crystal Bruce
    Crystal Bruce admin
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Jenny Lindvall:

    Thanks Katie - a few people have flagged that Crystal Reports are getting rather outdated, and there's not a lot of expert knowledge out there any more. Is it still supported by Blackbaud?

    Hi Jenny! 


    To answer your question about support at Blackbaud, they created a KB article to address that. Here it is! Passing along. :-)

  • Kate Sklodowska
    Kate Sklodowska ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    For all things Crystal related: https://kenhamady.com/default.html

     
  • tom berry
    tom berry ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    This may be outdated info since we are just preparing to switch from in-house hosting RE, FE and EE to NXT and I am only now trying to determine what tools will work with NXT. The Blackbaud KB article 109964 mentions SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), and Crystal. If there is a way to use SSRS with NXT you would find it much easier to work with in general; SSRS may be migrated to Microsoft Power BI now. Crystal Reports major strong point is its graphical interface. You can create a much more professional looking report with Crystal but it requires more work. The tools in SSRS/BI are catching up with each release. Users in several community threads have mentioned using SSRS and NXT but I have not yet found how this is done since you can not connect to the actual database. Hope this is still of some relevance . . .

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