Removal of Crystal Reports in 25R1

Apparently “report designer”, however our last go around with that did not go well. It was not able to handle more complex reports 

I completely agree with your concerns. Many customers have invested significant time and resources into Crystal Reports, and its removal would create a major challenge. It’s also disappointing that there wasn’t more advance warning from IFS about this change, giving users time to prepare. Clarity from IFS on whether this is a definite change—and what alternatives they recommend—would be greatly appreciated. Hoping we can get some official guidance soon!

This is huge for us if it is to happen.

We have over 150 Crystal Reports that drive our business including Purchase Orders, Invoices etc.

Standard reports and business reporter just don’t give us the level of detail we require to run our business on a day to day basis.

How are we only finding out about this now ?
 

Hi,

can someone responsible from IFS add relevant information on this important topic ASAP please??

E.g. we have been already developing CR reports on upgrade project that has go live in May!!!

Best regards

Daniel

Hi, can someone responsible from IFS ​@IFS Elite Solution Experts ​@IFS Community ​@IFS Global Consulting Services ​@IFS add relevant information on this important topic ASAP please??

E.g. we have been already developing CR reports on upgrade project that has go live in May!!!

Best regards

Nicole

Hi ​@cdcnicolev 

Thank you. I am following up on the subject.

This is also of significant concern to me, most of my company layouts are done in Crystal and it’d be a massive effort to both learn new technology (Report Studio? https://docs.ifs.com/techdocs/24r2/060_development/025_operational_reporting/060_report_studio/) and refactor all our existing reports using it.

I don’t even know how good Report Studio is, but I do know we were using Crystal because we found it a better overall reporting product than Report Designer was. (Especially being able to use SQL Expression fields to retrieve read only data from the server where required data is not present out of the box in the REP views).

This would be a significant concern for us as well. We have a few dozen layouts that are currently managed using Crystal Reports (Quick Reports and Operational Reports). We have used the IFS report writer tool, but we have found that Crystal was simpler for us to build new reports from scratch and manage report changes overtime. It was easier for us to manage conditions, and I liked that we could build our own views to manage the report data rather being forced to use the report package. By deprecating Crystal reports, this would cause us to spend more time reworking those dozens of reports we had built. 

This is a huge concern to me and several customers.

The proposed Report Studio lacks the features of crystal and there is no conversion tool to go from Crystal to RS.

Please consider keeping crystal around, it's cheap enough and works great at producing documents.

I wonder if the issue is that Crystal Reports is a product from a competitor ?

If IFS had a comparable working product to replace Crystal then we possibly wouldn’t be facing this situation. 

Hi ​@Grzegorz Byrski, thank you for your introduction.

It would be actually really heplful if we heard from anybody who knows: ​@IFS Community ​@IFS ​@IFS Elite Solution Experts ​@IFS Global Consulting Services ​@IFS RD Product Management following:

1. version 25R1 - the date when it will be realeased and when we should update it with customers?
2. Let’s say tha 80% of customers are using Crystal Report and are in a process of upgrade or performing implemetation so It would be nice to hand over the process of Crystal report in more smooth way then now because now we are creating reports with this tool and customer as well because he can. So what should we do now? 
3. Is it possible to define whether there will be some time even in 25R1 to adjust it or IFS will definitely stop this product in 25R1?
4. It might have been done a slightly different way, because we will pay maintenance fee for the 3rd party product that we will not be able to use?
5. Did IFS somehow manage to discuss it with the Crystal Report partner that the fees will be cancelled? Or why should we pay it?

Those are 6 of the questions I would need your help with.

Thank you

Nicole Valentine

Hi ​Nicole

I am Customer Community Manager and I am managing @IFS Community. Nice to e-meet you.
I’ve contacted the R&D team, and relevant party is going to provide an update here. Thank you for your questions, I’ll pass them on as well.

Many Thanks,
Grzegorz

Hi ​@Grzegorz Byrski ,

Thanks for jumping in! We are also eagerly waiting for further updates from IFS. When do you think we might be able to get an update?

Additionally, could you please add the following concern to the question list?

Since any IFS Cloud version is supported for two years after its release, can we assume that if a customer is on 24R2 and temporarily pauses further release updates—continuing only with 24R2 service updates—they will be covered until the final service update at the end of 2026, without being impacted by the removal of Crystal and SSRS integration?

The reason for asking is that there are rumors suggesting that although this change is associated with 25R1, it may also affect all IFS Cloud versions as well as older IFS versions (Apps 10 and Apps 9) from a certain date.

Could you please clarify if this is true? If so, what is the effective date?

Thank you!

Regards

Kelum

While this is a huge change and forces many users to have to recreate reports in report designer, It should be kept in mind that

1. Report Designer is being integrated into IFS Cloud, allowing users to modify reports without a secondary software or having to buy a license
2. Report Designer will most likely be enhanced more and more alongside IFS’s major updates, adapting with changes in the system rather than straying further away like Crystal Reports currently is. 
3. You can do almost everything in Report Designer that you can in Crystal Reports, only if you are willing to put in the effort to learn the software.

With that being said, the Report Designer application is a severely clunky and buggy software that makes it a pain to use, and especially, to learn. It is not perfect by any means, and can be downright aggravating to deal with, but with some patience, it elevates itself from bad to just average. Crystal Reports shouldn’t be ‘removed’ entirely from IFS and IFS Cloud, but deprecated at the very least.

On another note, If IFS was willing to change their mind about removing custom SQL event actions, they might change their mind about this... possibly if enough people (with financial impact) voice their concerns.

Thank you,
Bryan

A note on this ​@bdoucette,

“ On another note, If IFS was willing to change their mind about removing custom SQL event actions, they might change their mind about this... possibly if enough people (with financial impact) voice their concerns. “

IFS hasn’t changed their mind about this, they’ve just backed down temporarily but they still state it WILL be removed at some later stage, they just haven’t committed to a date because of customer outcry about this.

I completely agree with you that it’d be okay to at least “deprecate” Crystal without fully removing it, but a hard remove on 25R1 seems very aggressive.

Also agreed that Report Designer seems very clunky, not sure if Report Studio is any better.

Speaking about Report Designer, side question, because Report Designer isn’t something I have a lot of experience with, but can you actually, within an RDL Layout, perform database calls equivalent to a SQL Expression field in Crystal, to get data not present in the original XML at runtime, or do you HAVE to customize the RDF/RPI packages to change the structure of the XML data being sent and add more attributes to it ?

My limited experience with Report Studio so far has been extremely negative.  From the documentation it appears that it is intended to essentially be a web front end for Report Designer so the same clunkiness remains.  However I cant actually test it properly as it errors constantly, even when putting a simple Text box onto the report.  It is certainly not Production Ready

You cant do the same SQL Expression within Report Designer that you can with Crystal.  All data that Report Designer uses needs to be within the Report XML that IFS generates.  So for new data you either add them as custom fields, or customise the report rdf.  Im not sure many customers will like this, as it means delivering changes via the build place and deliveries whereas before it would be a simple change within Crystal itself.

We do not use Crystal Reports but we do use IFS Report Designer and started to look at Report Studio. It’s attractive to us to have the tool to build reports within the web application. 

The initial results led us to doubt the capabilities of Report Designer. Not all the report elements were converted and it was converted in a format that, even without any modifications, the report was showing a fraction of the information of the legacy format developed with IFS Report Studio. 

We’re hopeful that Report Studio gets built out, but right now, it seems like it would be hard to rely on it. 

I would strongly recommend keeping Crystal Reports in IFS, as it is well-suited to the company's needs. Given the extensive use of bespoke reports, removing it could disrupt key reporting processes and impact efficiency.

It’s nearly two weeks since this thread was raised and our concerns were voiced.

And a week since we were told that R&D would be letting us know through the community what is happening.

As the deadline moves closer, we need answers quickly if we are to adapt our working procedures due to the loss of Crystal Reports in the forthcoming release.

Any news ?

​@darylslinn Hi, I’m trying to actively communicate with IFS and the probably the most important information is that official statement from RnD will be delivered this week..

BR

Daniel

@cdcdaniek, thank you for the communication and update.

I also inquired about the response with the R&D Team, and the communications go through a couple of internal reviews. The team aims to provide the response by the end of this week. If not, it will be provided by the middle of next week at the latest.
 

Thank you for your patience and all the feedback provided.

As per the following link: 

Report Studio currently has a large issue whereby if the driving entity (CustomerOrder for an Invoice report) has custom fields enabled then the report fails to load entirely and cannot be worked on.  The only workaround is to unpublish the custom fields, then work on the report then republish them.  If you want any of the custom fields on the report then you are just stuck until this is fixed.

If IFS do want to remove Crystal as it is a SAP product, then plenty of notice needs to be given and the tools they identify to replace it need to be rock solid and stable, not broken and unusable by something as simple as a basic Custom field

Looking forward to seeing IFS’s official response very soon. I completely agree with the above comments from the community. 
 

Any progress on this topic? 

Every member of ​@IFS Community agrees and IFS is still quit. So it means nobody knows because people who works only 2 weeks a year already did the best they could at SAKO… to promise the results partners should do … that was nice one :)

But the rest don’t be shy ​@IFS Elite Solution Experts ​@IFS Global Consulting Services ​@IFS RD Product Management ​@IFS Lyn ​@IFS User ​@IFS_Fernando ​@IFS_User999 ​@IFS-SachinBhardwaj ​@Sabine Z Claesson 

Can we have anything from IFS that we can say to the customers? Basically what I was asking before (see the points below) and what are the technical aspects to tranfer from CR to e.g. report studio. We haven’ find anything in the technical documentation.

Previous questions:

1. version 25R1 - the date when it will be realeased and when we should update it with customers?
2. Let’s say tha 80% of customers are using Crystal Report and are in a process of upgrade or performing implemetation so It would be nice to hand over the process of Crystal report in more smooth way then now because now we are creating reports with this tool and customer as well because he can. So what should we do now? 
3. Is it possible to define whether there will be some time even in 25R1 to adjust it or IFS will definitely stop this product in 25R1?
4. It might have been done a slightly different way, because we will pay maintenance fee for the 3rd party product that we will not be able to use?
5. Did IFS somehow manage to discuss it with the Crystal Report partner that the fees will be cancelled? Or why should we pay it?

Thank you for actually responding anything helpful except for sending the note this is IFS community and we are here to help you, just to gain some delusional IFS badge.

With kind regards

Nicole Valentine

Why is SSRS also going away?