Develop > Introduction

Introduction

Service Manager reporting works with Crystal Reports to provide improved reports and Business objects for the batch scheduling of reports. To run Service Manager reports with Crystal Reports, you need a working knowledge of the following:

  • Service Manager
  • Crystal Reports
  • The Service Manager ODBC driver.

To create reports you need a working knowledge of your DBMS or RDBMS, Crystal Reports, and a general understanding of Service Manager applications and utilities.

For additional information about any of these concepts, see the following:

  • For information about a particular RDBMS, see the vendor documentation for your database type.
  • For database configuration, see Prepare your RDBMS.
  • For information about Service Manager administration and configuration, and customizing the Service Manager product, see the Service Manager Help Center.

About the Report Files

With the appropriate developer license for Crystal Reports, all report files (*.rpt) can be customized to meet the needs of your business. Non-Crystal Reports users can review the shipped report files (*.rpt) to determine which queries, joins, and filters were used for the development of the report. They can then use these details to recreate similar reports by using their own queries, joins, and filters. Each query interacts with any application compatible with the Service Manager ODBC driver.

All the released operational reports provided in the 9.50 installation package are based on the Service Manager Classic out-of-box data and therefore cannot be used from Service Manager Codeless. For Service Manager Codeless, you can create your own reports based on the instructions in this document.