Sams Teach Yourself Crystal Reports® 9 in 24 Hours

Chapter 15. Using Record Selections and Alerts for Interactive Reporting

One of the things you've probably learned so far is that it's quite easy to create a report with a whole bunch of data. The challenge in creating an effective report is to highlight the subset of report data that is important. Think of a report as just a smaller haystack. You still have to look for the needle, but helping the reader find the needle is the real art. Key information is often outliers: data that falls above or below the average or a specified threshold. This usually indicates either a good or bad trend. Bad trends need attention so that they can be corrected, and good trends need attention so that they can be repeated.

This hour focuses on drawing attention ...